As if our fear were enough—for now.
Uncle Brendon heard Tod shout and saw us coming. He turned, looking for Harmony, then let out an anguished cry when he found her. With the huge hammer still clenched in his right fist, he scrambled over the pile of broken cinder blocks to kneel at her side.
We were several feet from the hole in the wall when he swept bloodstained hair from her face and felt for her pulse. We were two feet away when Avari gave another grand sweep of his arm and a thin barrier of ice formed over the hole in the wall like a patch in a pair of jeans. The ice crackled as it thickened, bluish in color but almost perfectly transparent.
Tod pulled me to a stop inches away, and in the second it took us to recover from surprise, the ice thickened layer after layer, trapping tiny cracks and bubbles inside until it was too thick to break. Until it sealed us in and my uncle and his mother out.
Uncle Brendon looked up and hardly seemed to notice the new barrier. He said something, but we couldn’t hear him.
“What?” I shouted, my palm an inch from the ice, so close I could feel the cold but was afraid to touch it. For all I knew, making contact with it would freeze me solid, like the green woman, and I would shatter into a million pieces of Kaylee, never to be reassembled.
My uncle shouted again, and that time I heard enough to understand. “She’s alive!”
“Go!” I whispered to Tod. “Take them home.” He could blink into the human world, then back into the Netherworld on the other side of the ice nearly instantly.
“If Cain so much as twitches, I will have Abel’s head torn from his body.”
It took me a second to process the reference—an odd one coming from a hellion—but then Avari waved one hand at a door on the other side of the room and one of his monsters threw it open. Nash—Abel—appeared in the doorway, then was shoved through it by Belphegore, the hellion of vanity who’d killed Emma. Belphegore was the personification of beauty, with flawless features that defied ethnic classification but slipped from my memory the moment my gaze left her face.
She had one perfect, graceful hand around Nash’s arm, and though his forehead was furrowed in fury, he looked...sober. She hadn’t yet forced a dose of her own breath on him.
Behind them, Invidia hauled Sabine into the room. The mara took in the seething mob of monsters, and her dark eyes widened. But then her gaze returned to Nash. She could cross into the human world whenever she wanted, but she wouldn’t leave him, and with the hellions between them, she couldn’t reach Nash to take him with her.
“Your mother or your brother?” Avari watched Tod patiently, savoring his indecision.
Through the ice, we saw my uncle pick Harmony up and carefully begin climbing the huge mound of debris with her broken body limp in his arms. My fists opened and closed uselessly. The ache in my chest rivaled the fevered rush of my pulse, and I felt more helpless—more human—than I had since the day I’d died.
“Which will you choose, reaper?”
Nash saw us and exhaled in relief—until he looked past us through the ice. He and Sabine seemed to realize what they were seeing at the same time. “Mom!” He tried to push through the throng of claws, fangs, and horns ready to spill blood and devour flesh at one word from Avari, but Belphegore held him back with no visible effort.
“Go get her!” Nash shouted at his brother. For the first time since we’d met, Tod looked...unsure. Torn. His mother was badly hurt but alive. Yet Nash could lose his head in the blink of an eye.
“Your mortal attachments are like a puppet’s strings,” Avari said, both hands clasped casually at his back. “One need only pluck the right cord to make the puppet dance.” His smile was almost creepier than his threats. “Dance, reaper.”
Tod’s eyes flashed with storms of midnight-blue fury. “You knew.”
“That you and the little bean sidhe were a distraction? Of course. She might very well have been willing to sacrifice her own soul in exchange for her father’s life, but you would never go along with that. So now the question is what will you give up for your brother? What is his life worth to you?”
“Just go!” Nash shouted, and Belphegore jerked his head back by a handful of his thick brown hair, stretching his neck at a painful angle. “Tod, go!”
My uncle was shouting again, and when I turned back to the ice, I found him halfway up the pile of rubble, headed for the hole in the building, cradling Harmony to his chest while her arms and head hung limp.
He was shouting for us to go, too, but he couldn’t see Nash and Sabine. He wanted us to leave him and Tod’s mom and my dad in this Nether-hell and escape with only our own afterlives.
But we couldn’t leave without Nash and Sabine, yet we couldn’t get to them without abilities that didn’t work in the Nether. Sabine could get him out, if she could reach him. But for that, she’d need a distraction. An opportunity.
“My dad’s not here, is he?” I demanded, and Avari actually laughed.
“No.” And that had to be the truth, because hellions couldn’t lie.
“Go get him. This negotiation is over if I don’t see him here, alive, in three minutes.”
More hellion laughter, and this time it resonated in my spine like a physical blow. “This negotiation was never real.”
“I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to her.” I looked past Avari to the hellion of vanity, who still clutched one of Nash’s arms. “I don’t like the way Avari plays, so I’m going to offer you the same deal I offered him. Send my friends and family back to the human world, and my soul is yours. This offer expires in one minute.”
“She’s lying!” Avari shouted. “She doesn’t have to keep her word.”
No one listened to him.
“Why would I trade those four souls for your one?” Belphegore called, and Invidia’s focus volleyed eagerly between us.
“Because Avari wants mine. Think of what you could get out of him for the trade,” I said, and Belphegore’s perfectly arched brows rose over the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen. They seemed to be every color all at once. “You could get anything you want.”
“Kaylee...” Tod said, but I ignored him.
“Thirty seconds,” I said while Belphegore studied me, trying to assess my sincerity. “If I don’t have my dad in thirty seconds, Invidia gets the same offer.”
“Done!” the hellion of envy shouted. She turned on Belphegore with an eagerness bordering on mania, and a murmur rolled over the throng of monsters. “I want her. Give me the boy....” She let go of the mara to reach for Nash, and Belphegore tried to pull him out of reach.
Sabine saw her shot and burst into motion, like I’d hoped she would. She lunged for Nash just as Avari disappeared, right in front of me.
“Go!” I shouted. “Sabine, get him out of here!”
The mara grabbed Nash’s hand. They both disappeared the very instant Avari appeared behind them, grasping for Sabine. Nash’s screams of protest echoed into eternity, eclipsed only by the hellion’s shout of rage when he was left with only a thin handful of Sabine’s long, dark hair.
Invidia snarled and pounced on Belphegore, cursing her in some language I couldn’t identify, which seemed to be made entirely of consonants and birdlike screeches.
Avari bellowed in rage, and I turned to the ice to see my uncle put Harmony on the ground outside the hole in the basement, then climb out with her. The crowd seethed around me, twitching, growling, and panting with impatience, and my nerves buzzed like live wires beneath my skin.
I fumbled for Tod’s hand, and it wrapped firmly around mine. Avari’s roar echoed in my head even as we materialized in the human-world basement a second later.
Tod dropped my hand as soon as he saw Sabine and Nash, their fear and anger barely visible in the dark as she rubbed a spot on the back of her head. “I’m going back for Mom.”
“No!” I reached for him again, but for the first time since I’d met him, Tod pulled away from me. “If he catches you, he’ll tear you ap
art.”
“What happened?” Nash demanded, scrubbing angry tears from his face in the deep shadows. “Where’s Mom?”
“I’m not just going to appear in the middle of the crowd and ring a dinner bell, Kaylee.” Tod’s shoes shuffled on the dirty concrete as he stepped closer and kissed me, lingering just for a moment in the dark. A moment we couldn’t really afford but that he obviously knew I needed. “I know what I’m doing.”
“What happened to Mom?” Nash shouted, and I turned to him, suddenly conscious of the fact that we were in the human world, and that he couldn’t make himself inaudible. He was going to bring anyone within hearing range downstairs, and we’d be caught. At least, he and Sabine would.
“Avari blew out the wall, and your mom got hit by the debris. But Uncle Brendon took her out through the hole in the wall.” I wasn’t sure if he’d seen that part. “He’ll protect your mom.” Or die trying. I had no doubt of that.
“Bullshit! Avari will catch them,” Nash said through clenched teeth, frustrated, angry tears shining in his eyes in the light from Sabine’s cell screen. “You know he’s probably catching them right now. Those monsters probably came pouring out of that building like bees from a hive, and your uncle can’t cross over.”
“I’ll find them,” Tod promised his brother. “I’ll bring them back.”
“I’m going with you.”
“No.” Tod turned back to me, and his irises were achingly still. I couldn’t tell if he was hiding something from me or from Nash. “Take Nash and Sabine back to your house, please, and I’ll meet you there. I won’t stay long. I just want to cross over and check around the building, in case Brendon’s hiding her somewhere where I can get to them quickly. Maybe this isn’t as bad as it seems.”
But I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only one who wished my uncle could have carried both Harmony and the giant hammer.
Nash grabbed his brother’s shoulder and pulled him around. “You’re not going without me. She’s my mother, too.”
“And I would take you, if you could get back on your own. But you can’t, which means I’d have to look out for you while I look for Mom. Stay here. Help Kaylee and Sabine keep an eye on the others. That’s the best way you can help.”
“That’s bullshit!” Nash shouted.
“Shhh.” Sabine took his hand in her half-casted one. “You have to shut up, or we’re going to get caught.” He started to argue, but she clamped one hand over his mouth. “If you promise to shut the hell up, I’ll go with him and help find your mom.”
“No!” He pulled her hand away, and his next words were clearer. “Putting yourself in danger isn’t going to help her.” About a second after he’d said the words, Nash seemed to realize they applied to him, too. “Fine. Point taken. I’ll stay if you stay.” When Sabine nodded, Nash turned back to Tod. “You sure you got this?”
The reaper nodded grimly. “And the longer I wait, the harder they’ll be to find. Assuming they got away.”
Please let them have gotten away.... “I’ll take Nash and Sabine back, then join you.”
“No,” Tod said. My temper flared, and I started to argue, but he spoke over me. “Please stay here. I may be able to get to my mom and your uncle, but we have no idea where your dad is. And if something happens to you, who’s going to find him?”
“He wasn’t in that basement,” Sabine added. “You got false information.”
“That’s impossible.” I pushed hair back from my face, wishing I had a ponytail holder. “Hellions can’t lie.”
She shrugged, shining her cell phone screen in my face. “Okay then, your hellion was wrong.”
“He’s not my hellion.” Ira would devour my soul just as soon as Avari would if he could get it.
“He’s as much yours as I ever was,” Nash said, eyes flashing in anger. “And he got to first base a hell of a lot faster.” I gaped at him in shock. Tod’s fist was already in motion when Nash backed up, warding off the blow with two open palms. “I’m sorry. That was out of line.”
“Sure as hell was,” Tod growled.
“I take it back. I’m sorry. I’m just...” He blinked and made a visible effort to push back the fear and frustration obviously sharpening his tongue. “This is messed up. Avari has my mom.”
“He has my dad, too. And Sophie’s,” I pointed out. We were all in the same position.
“Shit,” Sabine swore. “Who’s going to tell her?”
“Isn’t scaring the crap out of my cousin kind of your raison d’être?” Look at that. You can use French outside of French class!
Sabine shrugged. “She’s not horrible all the time. And you gotta respect a girl who travels with a pair of scissors in her purse.”
A designer purse, no doubt. Maybe designer scissors.
I exhaled heavily. Until there was no air left in my body. “She’s my cousin. I’ll tell her.” I owed her that much.
“Okay. I’m going back in,” Tod said, and I pulled him into another hug before he could blink out.
“If you’re not back in half an hour, I’m coming after you,” I whispered into his ear, standing on my toes so I could reach. “There’s no one left here who can stop me.”
He clutched me tighter and nodded. “I’ll be back.” Then he let me go and disappeared.
I took Sabine’s good hand in my left and Nash’s in my right, then blinked all three of us into my backyard, where I was pretty sure we wouldn’t accidentally land on someone. Or in something.
Styx barked her head off when we came in through the back door, and even after she saw me, she kept barking until I picked her up and scruffed her fur. Tensions were high, and she could feel that. Seeing me was no longer enough to assure her that I was okay.
I heard the plastic clatter of the television remote being dropped on the coffee table—a sound I made on a daily basis—then footsteps pounded through the living room and into the kitchen.
“Well?” Em demanded, while Sophie and Luca fell into place behind her. Their eyes were wide. Sophie clutched Luca’s hand. They were all three scared.
“Okay, first of all, when someone walks in through the back door unannounced, don’t assume it’s someone you know.” Sabine marched past me and into the kitchen, where she pulled open the fridge door. “Assume it’s someone—or something—that wants to kill you. And come armed.” She turned to me with her good hand wrapped around the door handle. “Where’s that baseball bat?”
“I gave it back to Nash.” But maybe she was right. Maybe we should be arming ourselves, even on the human plane.
“Did you find your dad?” Luca asked as Nash marched past him into the living room and I locked the back door.
“What’s wrong with him?” Em stared after Nash. “What happened?”
“Where’s my dad?” Sophie said as I pulled a container of raw meat from the fridge and plopped a chunk of it into Styx’s food bowl. She dug in, and Sophie spoke again, quieter this time, as if she already knew the answer. “Kaylee, where’s my dad?”
I turned on the kitchen faucet with my elbow and rinsed the deer blood from my hands, then washed with soap. Then I made myself look at her. “He’s still there. He’s okay, as far as we know.”
“As far as you know?” Sophie looked stunned, and my heart ached for her.
Luca looked from me to Sabine, then to Nash. “What the hell happened?”
“Avari blew the side out of the building!” Nash sat on the arm of the couch and ran one hand through hair that was once artfully mussed but now just looked messy. Then he swiped both hands over his face, angrily wiping away frustrated tears. “The concrete wall fell on my mom. Sophie’s dad carried her out, but he can’t cross over, so they’re kind of stuck there.”
“Shit.” Luca put an arm around Sophie, who stared at the floor like she hadn’t heard what she’d expected and hadn’t quite processed that fact yet. “Is your mom okay?”
“Don’t know yet,” Sabine said. When I turned, I found her digging through the ca
binet over the short kitchen peninsula. She pulled down a bag of Doritos and removed the clip, then shoved a chip into her mouth.
We all stared at her while she chewed.
“What?” She swallowed, then dug out another chip. “Sometimes you have to fix the problem that can be fixed. I can’t get your parents back, but I can fix the munchies.”
“So, he’s still there?” Sophie sank into a squat on the kitchen floor and wrapped her arms around her knees. “You left him there?”
Luca pulled her up, then guided her to the couch.
“No.” I refused the bag of chips when Sabine held it out to me. “Tod went back for them.”
“Alone?” Sophie looked up from the couch, and her gaze speared me with the weight of my own guilt. “We only have three good parents left between us.” Except for Luca’s, who were half a country away and had no idea their son was a necromancer. “You’re telling me that they’re all three trapped in the Netherworld, and only one of you went back for them?”
“We all wanted to go, but Tod thought putting more of us in danger would be...well, dangerous. And he was right,” I insisted. “If we all go back and get killed, who’ll be left to rescue them once we find them?”
“Find them?” Sophie demanded. “You don’t even know where they are? You lost my dad?”
“He had to run,” Sabine said, another orange corn chip held at the ready. “He had to get Harmony out of there before the ice melted and that horde of monsters ate them alive.”
Emma sank onto a bar stool, from which she could see both rooms at once. “That sentence is simultaneously unintelligible and terrifying.”
Sabine shrugged. “Unintelligible and terrifying is what the Netherworld’s all about.”
“Screw this.” Sophie stood and jerked her hand from Luca’s when he tried to take it. “I’ll go get him myself. Where did you last see him? At the psych ward?”
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