But... “Traci, there’s one more thing.” I’d never hated myself as badly as I did for what I was about to say. She nodded for me to go on, and I could see in her eyes that though she might not have anticipated the wording, she knew at least some of what I was going to say. “If you can’t do this...” I took a deep breath, then started over.
“If it turns out that nurture can’t trump nature and your son becomes dangerous, I’ll have to...stop him.” That wasn’t in my job description, strictly speaking, but I already felt responsible for whatever this theoretic incubus might do later in life, because I’d agreed to help bring him into the world. Against my better judgment. “I can’t let him hurt people, Traci. I’ll be watching him. And I won’t be alone. Your son will get a chance, but he’ll only get this one chance. And the next tough decision on his behalf won’t be yours to make.”
It would be mine.
And I would damn well make the right one.
Chapter Eight
“You know, there were times when we were little when I would have done almost anything to be an only child, but now all I want in the world is to be her sister again.”
“You’ll always be her sister, Em,” I said as we backed out of the drive, wishing I could see her face from the backseat. “Even if she doesn’t remember that.”
I’d never had a sister. I’d had Sophie for thirteen years, but she never let anyone labor long under the impression that we were anything more than cousins. Emma was the closest thing I’d ever had to a sister, and I knew exactly how Traci felt having lost her, because I’d lost Emma twice before, and both times I’d found a way to bring her back from the dead.
And even if she died a dozen more times, I would move heaven, earth, and the Netherworld as many times as it took to bring her back.
But it would be much easier if I could figure out how to keep her from dying again in the first place.
“Girls.” The tone of Harmony’s voice told me I wasn’t going to like whatever she had to say next. “I can’t explain how badly I hate to have to say this, but I think we need to consider the hard truth here.”
“No.” Em crossed her arms over her chest and stared out the passenger’s-side window. “We’re not killing her baby.”
“Of course not!” Harmony stomped on the brake and the tires squealed as she pulled to a stop two full feet from the curb. She shifted into Park, then twisted in the driver’s seat to face us both. “I would never suggest anything like that. Whether or not to end her pregnancy is your sister’s choice. But you both need to understand that even with my help, there’s every chance in the world that Traci will still lose this baby and maybe her own life in the process. In fact, whatever help I’m able to give her may make that more likely.”
“What? Why?” Em looked almost as confused as she was clearly terrified.
“Because if left alone, her body will almost certainly reject the pregnancy when it starts to threaten her life. That’s the case in a full two-thirds of incubus pregnancies. But if I help her keep the baby into her second or third trimester and her body still rejects it, the miscarriage could kill her, too. You’d be losing not just your nephew, but your sister. Is that something you’re willing to risk?” She was talking to Emma now. I had no say in this.
Emma shouldn’t have, either. She shouldn’t have had to wrestle with a decision like that. But she was the only one of Traci’s relatives who knew the truth.
“Me? No.” Em shook her head firmly. “But Traci knows the risks. She made her own decision, and I don’t think that would change, even if she remembered making it.”
“So you’re sure you want me to help her, rather than letting nature run its course?”
Em turned on her, and the spark of anger in her eyes surprised me for a second. “There’s nothing natural about this. Nothing.” She swiped unshed tears from her eyes in one angry motion. “My sister was raped by a monster, and now she’s carrying one. I was killed by another monster. Nothing will ever be the same for either of us.” She glanced at me and seemed to reconsider. “For any of us. But Traci’s made her choice, and we are damn well going to respect it.”
Harmony nodded. And that was the last of that.
* * *
“Where were you today?” I dropped onto the end of Tod’s bed and crossed my legs beneath me, then set my shoes on the floor. They landed on a pile of laundry he wouldn’t get around to washing until he had nothing left to wear. At all.
Laundry day was my favorite day to visit for that very reason.
“Work. I didn’t get your text till this afternoon.” He came out of the teeny bathroom—the only other room in his tiny suite in the reaper headquarters building—holding two plastic cups of water. “I’m all yours now, though. What will you do with me?”
“What are my options?”
“Anything you want, Kaylee.” The heat in his gaze set me on fire in all the right places. “Time is on our side, youth is our immortal legacy, and you are all I’ve ever wanted. This could be the best night of our afterlives.”
“Then what would we do tomorrow night?”
“Tomorrow, we top our personal best.” He set the cups on the minifridge serving as his bedside table, and the dim overhead light cast highlights and shadows on every plane and ridge of his bare chest. “I like a challenge.”
“I like you.” I pulled him onto the twin mattress with me. Tod landed on his side, propped up on one elbow. I leaned down to kiss him, and when I started to pull away, his hand slid behind the back of my head, his fingers in my hair, holding me in place gently so our kiss would last. And last. And last....
When Tod finally let me go, my head was spinning, and that had nothing to do with the fact that I hadn’t taken a breath in several minutes and everything to do with the fact that he made me feel alive. He was the closest thing to a drug that I’d ever experienced, and I had yet to find a limit to what I’d be willing to do to protect him. To keep us together.
I’d spent most of my life setting boundaries. Lines I wouldn’t cross. Lines I wouldn’t let others cross. But with Tod, there were no boundaries. No limits. Time was not an issue. I loved him without reservation. I’d given him everything I had and everything I was, and he’d done the same. He’d given up his life for Nash, but he’d been willing to give up eternity for me. Not just willing—he’d actually done it.
I’d seen Levi, his boss, confiscate his soul and end his afterlife because he’d refused to kill me and reap my soul.
We had eternity to love each other, but after the way our relationship had begun—with loss and death and sacrifice—every single moment felt like a gift neither of us was willing to take for granted.
“Oh! I almost forgot.” Tod rolled away from me and reached past the edge of the mattress to pull open the top door of the minifridge, which exposed the even-more-mini freezer. When he rolled toward me again, he held a small container of Phish Food, my favorite ice cream, and two plastic spoons. “I know it’s small. This is the only size that would fit in the freezer.”
“What’s the occasion?” I took the spoon he handed me while he opened the carton and peeled off the plastic seal.
“Tuesday.” He frowned and twisted to glance at the alarm clock on top of the freezer. “For another forty minutes, anyway.” He handed me the plastic seal and I licked ice cream from it, then leaned over to drop it into the trash can at the foot of his bed. Which was wedged into a scant foot of space between the mattress and the only chair in the room. His place was so small we could practically reach everything in the room from one end of the bed or another.
But it was all his. Ours, he insisted, on nearly a daily basis. We were the only two people in either world who knew exactly where his place was. Nash had been in the room, but Tod had blinked him there, so on his own, Nash couldn’t find reaper headquarters again even if he wanted to. And he did not.
The rest of the reapers and my dad knew where the headquarters building was but not which room was Tod’s.
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And the best part about Tod’s place was that there was no exit. Literally. The only door was the one separating the tiny bathroom from the small main room. There was no exit because reapers didn’t need doors, and now I didn’t, either, and that was beyond convenient, because this way neither of us could lose the key. The absence of windows made things feel a little claustrophobic sometimes, but the fact that no one could burst in on us made up for that completely.
“Do you have any idea how hot it is when you lick that plastic ice-cream thing?” Tod’s eyes were swirling when I scooted across the mattress toward him, rumpling the already chaotic mess of sheets and blankets. It never ceased to amaze me how disheveled his bed always was, considering that he rarely slept at all. If ever. I’d never seen him sleep, anyway.
“No. But you’re welcome to tell me....”
“It’s so hot I’m considering opening another carton, just to watch the replay.”
I smiled. “Sounds like you need to cool off.”
“That’s not what I need. In fact, that’s the opposite of what I need. But I might accept a short delay in the form of one of those little chocolate fishes.”
Laughing, I dug a fish-shaped bite of fudge out with my spoon and fed it to him.
“Mmm... This is the best part of being dead.”
“No, this is the best part of being dead.” I kissed him, and his tongue was cold and he tasted like fudge. So I kissed him again.
“We did that when you were alive, you know.”
Yeah, but only for a day. Because I’d died on the second day of our relationship. And... “But never here. Never in absolute privacy. Never after my father went to sleep, in a totally separate building, with no idea where we are or what we’re doing.” If I were still alive, my dad would be enforcing my curfew much more strictly.
I took a bite of ice cream and let it melt slowly in my mouth. We’d suffered a criminal lack of perfect moments since the day I’d kissed him in the hall at school. There always seemed to be something or someone standing in the way of perfection, however brief, and that something was a hellion more often than not. But this moment was perfect. This moment was chocolate, and privacy, and bare skin, and cold mouths, and warm hands, and cell phones set on Silent.
I didn’t want to ruin the moment, but Tod seemed to realize at about the same point I did that we could eat ice cream and hold hands, but if we didn’t also do something constructive, we would look back on this moment plagued with guilt, when our lack of preparation got someone killed.
Someone who wasn’t already supposed to die, that is.
“Anything new with Sophie?” he said, but his tone and the eye contact he was making with my mouth told me he was less interested in the answer than he was in...me.
“Sabine says half a drop of liquid envy is more than enough. We were right about that. Turns out my cousin is a possessive little monster, though, so Sabine’s going to skip the morning dose tomorrow, because no one has any pre-lunch classes with Sophie, and we don’t want her to...well...go psycho when no one’s there to help.”
“Really? I think that might be kind of entertaining. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“You know how Laura Bell has this horrible Pat Benatar-from-the-eighties haircut?”
“I don’t even know who Laura Bell is, and I can’t honestly say I care about her hair. Your hair is the only hair I care about.” He ran a strand of it through his fingers. “And I love how it looks kinda red in the light, and how it feels when it trails over my skin when we’re—”
I could feel my cheeks burn. “Well, Laura has tragically short hair, courtesy of Sophie, from back when Invidia was polluting the entire school with a monster dose of jealousy. We’re trying to avoid as many civilian casualties as possible this time. Especially since the point of this whole thing is to keep the hellions from doing any more damage at Eastlake.”
“Great. Good plan. I approve. Now can we do that thing where your hair trails over...?” He made a vague gesture encompassing his chest and my hair.
I laughed. “In a minute. Business first.” I slid another spoonful of ice cream into his mouth when he started to object.
“Fine,” Tod said when his mouth was empty again. “So, how’s Emma holding up? Any more accidental syphoning?”
“Yeah,” I said around a bite of chocolate-laced marshmallow cream. “I think she was taking a bit of her sister’s...pregnancy emotion this afternoon.”
“What emotion would that be?”
“Several at once, as near as I can tell. Fear. Grief. This fierce love for her unborn child, which was kind of amazing to watch. I mean, she’s never even seen the baby. And she can’t have felt it kick yet. I looked it up, and it’s too early for that, unless things are different for an incubus pregnancy. But she loves that baby like it’s the only thing she has in the whole world.” Which wasn’t true. But that didn’t make the intense love I’d seen in her eyes any less real.
“I guess sometimes the parental bond begins in utero.”
“I guess.” I sat up and put the lid on the ice cream carton, then handed it to him. “Tod, do you ever wind up with any...extras?”
“Extra what?” He swiveled on the edge of the mattress to put up the ice cream, and when he turned again, he handed me one of the cups of water, then took a sip from his own.
“Extra souls.”
Tod choked on his drink, then coughed while I pounded on his back. Dead people can’t choke to death, but you’d never know that from the way it still feels when you inhale water.
“You okay?” I said, when he finally stopped coughing and met my gaze.
He set his cup on the fridge without even glancing away from me. “Kaylee, I know what you’re thinking, and you need to stop thinking it. Seriously. It won’t work.”
“He’s a baby. We can’t just let Traci’s baby die.”
“Yes, we can. We have to.”
“What is wrong with you?” Angry and disappointed, I stood and stomped across the floor and into the bathroom—a four-step trip—and dumped my water into the sink.
Tod followed but hovered in the doorway. Giving me space but not giving in. “Kay, listen to me. Please. I’m not just being randomly cruel. I have nothing against Traci Marshall, and you know I’d never intentionally hurt Emma.”
Unless it was to save me. He’d hurt Em to save me. He’d hurt anyone to save me, and I didn’t quite know how to deal with that knowledge.
“Traci’s baby is an incubus. She wouldn’t be so sick otherwise, right?”
I nodded. But I didn’t look up. I couldn’t look at him, because I wasn’t sure what I’d see swirling in his eyes this time.
“That baby will never be on my list. Just like his father never would have. Just like Avari never will be. Because they’re...they’re monsters, Kaylee. Predators.”
“Sabine’s a predator. She can’t live without hurting others.” That sucked, but it was true. “If she can control it, so can Traci’s baby.”
“No.” Tod stepped into the bathroom and stood at my back, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his skin through my shirt but not close enough to actually touch me. “Sabine’s the exception, Kaylee. She’s native to our world. She’s the product of two human parents. She’s a predator, but not a monster. Beck was different. His son will be different. You know what Beck did to Traci. You know that he would have done the same thing to Emma. And to Sophie. And to you, if you weren’t immune to his abilities.” Because I was a bean sidhe. “He feeds to survive, just like everyone else in both worlds. The difference for incubi is...what he did to Traci. To your friend Danica. They had no choice.” He stopped talking, waiting for a response from me, but I had none. I didn’t know what to say.
“Kaylee, look at me, please. I need to know that you know I’m not just being cruel.” He closed what little distance stood between us and pressed his chest against my back. He ran his hands slowly down my arms, and finally I met his gaze in the mirror and saw
the truth swirling in his eyes.
Regret. Disappointment. Fear.
He didn’t like telling me what he was telling me, but he felt it had to be done.
“If we help Traci bring another incubus into the world, he’s going to do what his father did, to hundreds of girls your age or younger. Maybe thousands over his lifetime. But I can’t live with the knowledge that he did it even once, and we helped make that possible.”
Finally, I turned, and he was so close I had to crane my neck to look into his eyes. “But you don’t know that. Incubi don’t have to feed during sex. They can feed from lust. Without...touching. Traci could raise him to do that. Surely nurture has as much as nature to do with how any kid turns out. Even incubi.”
Tod shook his head slowly. Sadly. “Kaylee, that won’t happen. Yes, it could happen, but it won’t. That’d be the incubi version of living on nothing but cabbage. He’d slowly starve until he got so desperate for sustenance that he gave in to hunger. And maybe that’s not entirely his fault. I’m in no position to judge a creature for doing what’s in his nature. But would you seriously want your teenage daughter anywhere near Traci’s son when he hits puberty and his appetite kicks in?”
“I’m not going to have a daughter.” Ever. Nor a son.
Tod exhaled slowly. “I know. Me, neither. But you get my point, right? What if it were you? What if you weren’t a bean sidhe and Beck had made you...do things?” The swirling in his eyes grew angrier and more intense at the thought. “But what if you didn’t know he’d made you do it? What if you thought you were just the kind of person who’d cheat on her boyfriend, or sleep with a teacher, or give away something that should mean something? What if that had been your first time?”
My stomach churned. What if I’d lost my virginity to my evil math teacher with no idea I’d been under the influence of incubus pheromones at the time? What would that have done to my relationship with Tod? What would that have done to the rest of my life?