Tod laughed. “I can’t speak for ancient, fictional creatures, but you were thinking that you wanted to retain what little normalcy still exists in your life. Er, your afterlife. Also, going back to school and work is part of proving you’re still alive, and being alive is the only way to prove that Nash didn’t kill you.”

“Oh, yeah. But I went back for a day, and everyone saw me, so they know I’m alive now. So I don’t have to go back, right? Tell me I don’t have to go back.”

“You don’t have to go back.” Tod leaned down and kissed me, and my hand slid into his hair, holding him close as my mouth opened beneath his. “If you quit school we could spend every afternoon just…” Kiss. “Like…” Kiss. “This.” Another, longer kiss, and this time when he pulled away, he left me gasping for breath.

“Aren’t you supposed to tell me to be responsible and stay in school?”

Tod’s lips brushed my ear. “I signed on for the role of ‘boyfriend,’ not ‘conscience.’ If you want wholesome and ethical, you’ll have to look elsewhere. But I promise that won’t be half as much fun as this is… .”

His hand slid down my side and over my hip, and my heart beat faster.

“That feels so good,” I whispered as his lips trailed over my chin and down my neck. “You feel good. Real.” Solid, like no matter how incorporeal he made himself, I would always be able to touch him. To feel him.

I gasped when his line of kisses skirted my collarbone and dipped into what little cleavage I’d accumulated before death put an end to the possibility of accruing any more.

“You, too,” he said, his lips still pressed against my skin. “You make me feel alive. Every time I touch you, I feel like there’s some kind of charge flowing between us. Like tiny little bolts of lightning, setting me on fire. Can you feel it here?” He pushed my shirt up and laid one hand on my stomach.

I closed my eyes. “I feel it.”

“Can you feel it here?” His hand glided over my skin and around the curve of my ribs until his finger brushed the edge of my bra, and I stopped breathing, just for a second.

“I feel it.” I pulled him back up and slid my hands beneath his shirt, feeling my way over his chest as I pulled the material up and over his head. I dropped his shirt on the floor and laid my hand over his heart, and I could feel it beating.

“Does it do that all the time?” I whispered, and he shook his head, his eyes swirling with pale blue twists of need, and hunger, and something deeper, and steadier, and…endless. “Mine doesn’t, either.”

Tod laid his hand over my heart and I blinked up at him. “It’s beating now,” he said softly.

“Yeah. It is.”

He kissed me,and I didn’t realize my legs had wrapped around his hips until he moaned into my mouth and pressed himself into me.

I felt so alive in that moment. So real and—

“Kaylee, are you home?” my father called from the living room, and the front door slammed shut on the tail of the question.

“Shit!” I whispered, before I remembered that he couldn’t hear us. He couldn’t see us, either, but I couldn’t hide the rumpled comforter.

Tod sat up and reached for his shirt while I straightened mine. “Relax,” he said as he pulled his T-shirt over his head. “What’s he going to do, kill us again?”

“Not me.” I ran both hands through my hair to smooth it. “You.”

“You’re almost seventeen, and you’re dead. He has to know that his parental influence is nearing its end stage.”

“He does. I think. We’re gonna talk about it. Just…not today.”

“Kaylee?” My dad’s footsteps echoed in the hall, headed our way.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on making myself both visible and audible. “In here.” I opened the door and my dad stepped into the doorway as I dropped the amphora around my neck. “Hey, do you wanna go out for…” His words melted into a sigh when he noticed Tod, but then he rallied with a smile. “Hi, Tod, I didn’t realize you were here. In my daughter’s bedroom. With the door closed.”

“Happy to be here,” Tod said, and I groaned out loud.

“Kaylee, can I talk to you for a minute, please?” my dad said with a glance at the rumpled comforter.

“Um, yeah.” I followed him into the kitchen, where he pulled a soda from the fridge and popped the tab.

“I know things are inevitably going to change, but I’m not going to pretend to be happy that the two of you were here, alone, behind closed doors.” I didn’t bother to tell him that doors no longer mattered. The only time I didn’t feel alone was when Tod was with me.

“I don’t really want to have this conversation with you, Dad.”

“I don’t want to have it, either, but you’re kind of forcing my hand.”

“No, I’m not.” I took a soda from the fridge for myself, and after a moment’s consideration, I grabbed one for Tod, too. “If you think about this logically, you have to admit that most of the reasons for me to wait to have sex died when I died.”

My dad flinched. “You said it out loud. There’s no going back now, is there?”

“Nope.”

He was thinking about my mother. Wishing she was here for this conversation. I knew, because I was thinking the same thing. But wishes were worthless, so I launched into logic.