“I might have told the car owner in question that Luca was looking to...expand his social circle. And there’s a slight chance I might have been a bit overzealous in my amplification of your cousin’s worst fear—which, at the moment, is losing everyone she loves. Including Luca.”
“Sabine! I swear, every time I think you’re turning into a decent person, you do something to prove me wrong.”
“I was trying to expedite the process. I had no idea she was capable of vandalism. But I have to say, I’m a little impressed. Which is why I let her dad and the cops think I slashed the tires, then made her carry the weapon. He’s in there right now trying to Influence us out of here.”
“You took the blame because you’re impressed that my cousin committed a crime?”
“Yeah. And I might be feeling a tiny bit of something similar to but definitely not the same as...guilt. Kind of.”
I groaned into the phone and sank onto the couch again, with my elbows on my knees, my forehead resting in my free hand.
“Is Luca there, too?”
“Yeah. It’s kind of a public spectacle. Sophie’s totally humiliated, and Luca can’t convince her that it’ll be all right. And she’s refusing to tell him why she did it.” Sabine made a wet chomping noise in my ear, and I realized she was chewing gum. At the police station. Like being there was no big deal. “So, what’s the emergency? What’d you need?”
“Backup. When you guys get out of there, come straight here. And bring my uncle.” I hung up before she could ask why, and I had to admit, hanging up on Sabine felt kinda good.
Next I called Harmony. She didn’t answer her phone, either, which was really weird. Harmony always answered her cell except when she was working, and her shift at the hospital didn’t start until eleven. It was only four in the afternoon.
I dialed Tod next. When he didn’t answer, either, I got so frustrated I nearly threw my phone at the wall. Where the hell was everyone? Well, Em was still at school, but she wouldn’t be able to help me locate my father anyway. Neither would Nash, but...there was no one left to call.
He answered on the first ring.
“Hey.”
“I am so glad you answered your phone.” I pushed hair away from my face and leaned back on the couch, suddenly hating the empty house I’d been thrilled with ten minutes earlier.
“You...are?” I could hear the confusion in his voice and the road noise in the background. He was in a car.
“Yeah. I can’t get a hold of anyone else. Where are you going?”
“I’m picking up Emma in Sabine’s car. Bina’s at the police station with—”
“I know. I just talked to her.”
“Didn’t you just say people aren’t answering their phones?”
“She answered my uncle’s. Hey, have you talked to Tod today?”
His silence stretched over the wireless line between us, and I realized I’d said the wrong thing. I was getting really good at that. “Is that all you want? You called me looking for Tod?”
“No, that’s not all I want. But, yes, I called looking for him. It’s important, Nash.”
“I haven’t talked to him since lunch. Why?”
“I need help, and I can’t find him. Or your mom.”
“She crossed over.”
Harmony was in the Netherworld? “Why?”
“She’s looking for some kind of herb, or root, or leaf, or something to help Traci keep her baby. Which is a really dumb-ass idea, you know. Why on earth would you want to bring another incubus into the world when the last one killed you?”
“It’s more complicated than that. And it’s not my decision.” I exhaled, trying to decide exactly how close we’d gotten to true friendship. “Nash, I need help. Not that you owe me anything, so it’s totally okay if you don’t want to help me, but I’m asking. In fact, I’m kind of begging.”
“I’m in.” He didn’t even hesitate. “What’s wrong?”
“Avari took my dad.”
“Seriously?” I heard the squeal of his tires on pavement as he stomped on the brake. “How? Is he okay?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have any of the answers, but I have to get him back.”
“It’s a trap. You know this is a trap, right?”
“I know. Which is why I need help.” If I went after him alone, I was as good as dead. Well, deader, anyway.
“Okay, I’m coming. Let me turn around....”
“No, get Em first, then meet me at my house. Please. I have to find him before we can go after him, anyway. Maybe by the time I manage that, we’ll have more people willing to follow us into the breach.”
“Oh.” I could hear the disappointment in his voice. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll get Em, and we’ll meet at your place in half an hour.”
“Thanks, Nash. Just...thank you.”
“Anytime, Kaylee. That much hasn’t changed.”
Chapter Eleven
I stood alone in my high-school cafeteria, feeling like a fool. The room was empty, but I was incorporeal anyway, just in case. Nash and Emma were probably pulling out of the parking lot at that very moment, but they had no idea I was there. I couldn’t tell them, because they’d never let me do what I was planning. What, under normal circumstances, I would never even have considered.
You need only bleed and use my name.
I understood the words but not their meaning. I’d had no idea hellions could even be summoned until Ira had told me. In fact, I wasn’t sure exactly what he’d told me. But I knew how to bleed.
It took a minute of searching through commercial-grade stainless steel drawers in the kitchen, but I finally found a drawer full of knives. I selected the shortest—a paring knife—and slid the drawer closed with the clang of metal. Then I sat on the floor, my legs crossed in front of me, and silently hoped I was doing the right thing. And that whatever summoning involved, it wouldn’t put me in danger of being killed or captured in the next few minutes.
Then I sliced open my palm.
It was a small cut. In the movies, they always make a huge gash whenever they need blood to summon the forces of evil, but that had always felt like overkill to me. Surely evil doesn’t care how dramatic your blood loss is, right?
In the movies, it never really looks like those gruesome self-inflicted cuts hurt, but in real life—even for the undead—it hurt. A lot.
I set the knife down and let blood well up into my palm until there was a pool the width of a dime. It was slow going, until I realized my heart wasn’t beating, which meant my blood wasn’t flowing. Not very quickly, anyway. So I concentrated on making my heart function, and blood collected faster.
Then I made a fist and let it drip onto the tile floor in front of me, because I wasn’t sure what else to do with the blood. Or what exactly Ira meant when he told me to “use” his name.
“Ira.”
My voice didn’t echo, because I was inaudible to human ears and thus most of the physical plane. So I wasn’t really surprised when nothing happened.
“Ira.” I tried it again, audible to the whole world, had anyone been there to hear me. That time there was a slight echo of my voice in the empty room. But no hellion appeared.
“Come on! You promised you’d...be summonable!” And hellions couldn’t lie.
My frustration and anger built as I stared at the blood still dripping slowly from my hand onto the floor. There were a couple of little red squiggles, because my hand had jiggled. They almost looked like...
Letters.
And suddenly I understood. He hadn’t told me to say his name. He’d told me to use his name.
I unclenched my fist and dipped my forefinger into the blood. Then I wrote his name in capital letters, several inches above the small pool of my own blood.
“Ira.” I wasn’t sure if saying it again would really help, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, out of nowhere, the hellion appeared in front of me, his denim-clad knees level with my eye
s.
I looked up. And up. And up. Ira was tall. He was also the youngest-looking hellion I’d ever seen, and it bothered me more than I could even comprehend that I actually had a basis for that comparison.
“I knew you would call.” The hellion dropped effortlessly into a squat in front of me, and I lurched backward when he was suddenly staring into my eyes. “Blue. Nice, but they’d look better in red. If you’re ever mine, your eyes will be red. It’s a painful procedure, of course—not that it has to be, but it will be—yet utterly worth the effort. You would look brilliant in red.”
While I gaped at him in shock, the hellion sank onto the floor in front of me, leaving his name and the small pool of my blood between us. He crossed his legs, and I was almost certain he was mirroring my position on purpose.
“Ira?”
“Of course. No one else can come when I’m summoned by name. That’s how it works.” He must have seen the confusion in my face. Or else he was reading my thoughts—a possibility that terrified me, but that I couldn’t safely rule out. “This is your first summoning?”
I nodded, nearly mesmerized by the dark red veins in his solid-black eyes. By his shoulder-length hair, so deeply red it was almost black. He looked like an evil rock star. In jeans.
I’d never seen a hellion in jeans.
“That’s because none of the other hellions you’ve dealt with are strong enough to appear when called. They don’t like admitting that—it makes them look weak—so they simply refrain from mentioning the possibility.”
“Avari is too weak for...summoning?” My fear was back, and it was rapidly bleeding into true terror. Avari could snap me in half with two fingers. He could breathe in my general direction and freeze me solid. If he was too weak for this, then just how powerful was Ira?
The hellion frowned, but no lines appeared on his broad, clear forehead. “Oh, no, my little fury, don’t be scared. I enjoy your fear, true, but I’d much rather have your anger.”
“I don’t give a shit what you want.”
“Ah, that’s better.” Somehow, his smile made him look even scarier. And...oddly satisfied, for a hellion of rage. “And true, no doubt. Because this is about what you want, isn’t it?”
“How does this work?” I wasn’t going to say another word until I understood just how much danger I’d put myself in. Had I just unleashed a hellion into the human world, with no restrictions? “What exactly does ‘summoning’ mean?”
“Think of this like a phone call, only we’re talking face-to-face. Convenient, huh?”
“So, you’re not really here?”
“Of course I’m here. But because you summoned me, and I accepted your invitation, I can’t touch you without your permission. And I can’t interact with anyone else while I’m here.”
“How do I send you back?”
“Tired of me already?”
I nodded. “Before you even got here.”
Ira chuckled, and I saw that his tongue was as dark red as his hair. Nearly black. “All you have to do is swipe my name from the floor.” He leaned toward me, over the mess between us. Like he’d whisper a secret. “But you should know that I can end this appointment, as well, so you may not want to truly anger me until you’ve gotten what you want from me.”
I had no intention of truly angering him. Ever. At all. Under any circumstances.
“So, what can I do for you today, Kaylee Cavanaugh?”
“Take me to my father.”
“Of course. The price is your immortal soul.”
“No.”
Ira didn’t look surprised in the slightest by my refusal. “This is not a negotiation, little fury. That’s the price for what you’ve asked for.”
“Well, I can’t pay it.”
“You can. But you won’t.” He frowned, staring down into my eyes, as if to confirm the statement he’d just made. “Fine. If the price is too high, ask for something less expensive.”
“I don’t suppose you’d bring my father back to the human world for me, alive and as unharmed as he is now, for anything less than my soul. Right?”
“That is correct. You’re taking this negotiation in the wrong direction.”
“I thought we weren’t negotiating.”
“We’re not negotiating a new price for your original request. But each task comes with its own price. Think smaller, unless you’re ready to pay a big bill.”
“Can you tell me where my father is right now? Do you know where Avari’s keeping him?”
“I do know, and I can tell you.”
“How much?”
“A taste of your anger.”
“A taste? What does that involve?”
“Just a kiss, little fury.”
“A kiss?” Eww! Seriously? “Does that mean the same thing in the Netherworld as it does here?”
What little I knew about kissing on the other side of the world barrier, I’d learned from Addison and Nash, who’d both kissed hellions as part of a business arrangement—an exchange of service for payment.
But for me, kissing meant Tod, and private moments, and delicious tingles deep down in my stomach and sometimes lower. Kissing meant sharing something vital and intimate with someone I loved with all my soul, and I had no intention of sharing that with anyone else, much less with a hellion.
“As far as I know,” he said. “But we’re not in the Nether, are we? Might that fact broaden our options a little?”
“No.” No way in hell. Chill bumps rose on my arms, and nausea churned in my stomach.
“I have a boyfriend.”
“I fail to see the relevance.”
I frowned. “He’s relevant because I love him. He’s the only one I kiss. I’m not going to hurt him.”
Ira’s eyes narrowed with impatience. “Human adolescent drama doesn’t appeal to me until it involves homicidal rage. Does your boyfriend have that kind of destructive potential?”
My frown deepened. “Are you asking if he’d kill you for kissing me?”
The hellion laughed out loud, a deep, creepy sound of malevolent amusement. “Killing me isn’t an option, though I suspect I would find the attempt highly entertaining. I’m asking if he would kill you.”
Over a kiss? “Skimming right over the fact that I’m already dead...no.” Nothing in the world—in either world—could make Tod want to kill me. He’d already proved that. But losing him because I’d kissed a demon might make my afterlife not worth living....
“Then this conversation is already starting to bore me. Make a choice. Your father’s location or your boyfriend’s ‘feelings.’”
“I’m not going to kiss you. There must be some other way.”
His dark brows rose. “It has to be a physical exchange, little fury. Perhaps you’d like to suggest an alternative method of connection?”
That nausea swelled into an all-out roil of disgust twisting inside me. “About this kiss...” Definitely the lesser of two evils—I hoped with all my heart that Tod would understand that, even as I hated myself for thinking it. “I need specifics. What kind of kiss?”
“My mouth and your mouth. And my tongue, of course. For that taste of your anger.” He leaned forward again and winked at me with one of his creepy red-veined black eyes. “I promise you’ll enjoy it.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“What’s your answer, little fury?”
“One kiss? Mouth-to-mouth? No biting or taking of any liberties whatsoever?”
“You’re a smart little thing, aren’t you?”
Only smart enough to know that everything has a price. A horrible, unthinkable, irreversible price. “I’ve learned to take nothing for granted.”
That time his frown looked truly irritated. “Remind me to thank Avari for that.”
“Take your taste. Then back the hell off.”
“As you like, little fury.”
My pulse raced in fear. My skin crawled at the thought of him touching me, and my heart ached at the sudden brutal understan
ding of what I’d agreed to. It took every drop of courage left in my veins to keep me from swiping my hand over the blood on the floor and running faster and farther than I’d ever gone in my life.
I concentrated on my dad. On the thought of bringing him home. Of keeping him safe. And I kept my eyes wide open, even though Ira seemed to be enjoying whatever he saw in them.
Instead of leaning toward me, he dipped one finger into the pool of blood between us, careful not to smudge his name. Then he reached for me, and before I realized what he intended, he ran his finger over my lower lip, coating it in my blood.
The moment he touched me, anger swelled inside me, hot and bright. Raging almost out of control. I was drowning in it. Choking on it. He traced my upper lip with what remained of the blood on his finger, and that anger inside me tried to burst through my chest.
When he could clearly see the rage churning in my irises, he leaned forward and slid one hand behind my neck. He pulled me closer, and we met in the middle over the blood on the floor.
His mouth touched mine, and every grievance I’d ever harbored was suddenly there in the front of my mind. All of them at once. Everything from the boy who’d pushed me off the swings on my first day of kindergarten to the hatred I’d felt for Sabine the day I met her.
His lips opened, and his tongue slid into my mouth. I tasted my own blood, but beneath that, I tasted him. I expected him to taste like anger. Like rage. But Ira tasted like calm. Like peace, perfect and still. And as we kissed, he pulled the anger from me. He sucked it out of me. Yet the fury burning within me never abated.
My cup ran over, and though he drank and drank, kissing me deeper and deeper, the fount of rage inside me only seemed to swell, and I couldn’t pull away because I needed him to take it. All of it. I couldn’t exist with that much bitter fury storming inside me, so I gave it to him, and I kept giving.
And Ira kept taking.
I didn’t come back to myself until he made a noise. A deep moan of satisfaction against my lips. Somehow inside my mouth. That’s when I realized what was happening. What I’d done. And what it damn well better buy me.
I shoved him away and his hand trailed around my neck and over my chin as he let me go. “Enough!” I swiped the back of my uncut hand across my lips, and it came away bloody.