He? I took that last step forward, pulse roaring like the ocean in my ears, heedless of the danger for one moment as desperate, blinding curiosity overwhelmed every need I’d ever felt. Tod stood in the middle of the bare floor, facing the half of the room I couldn’t see. And when I saw what lay at the reaper’s feet, still waiting to be claimed by the hellion, understanding clicked into place in my head, like someone had thrown the breaker in my skull.

Thane. Unconscious and crumpled like a feed sack on the floor, one eye swollen and black above the massive blue bruise his cheek had become.

But even with that new information, I still had no real answers to the questions I couldn’t even properly form through the haze of gratitude and amazement now swirling around me like the Nether-fog. Tod had found Thane, knocked him out, dragged him into the Netherworld and given him to Avari to dispose of. Or maybe to feed from.

All to make my last days as peaceful as possible. Was he even going to tell me?

Tod crossed his arms over a plain white T-shirt. “Just bind him, or lock him up, or do whatever it is you do to keep people here.” Because reapers could cross over anytime they wanted. “I’m done with you both.” Tod shoved Thane with his foot, and the unconscious reaper rolled onto his back, revealing another dark bruise on the right side of his face, disappearing beneath his hairline.

I stifled a gasp, but Tod must have seen my hand fly to my mouth in his peripheral vision, because he looked at me, then immediately returned his attention to the half of the room I couldn’t see.

For one long, terrifying moment, I was afraid Avari had seen his glance into the hall and figured out what it meant. I stepped away from the doorway, and when no one emerged to rip me limb from limb, I let myself breathe again. A little.

“Our business is concluded,” Avari said, and Thane’s feet—all I could still see of him—slid across the floor and out of sight. “Unless you’re willing to present my offer to Ms. Cavanaugh. One century of life in the Nether, untouched in both body and mind, in exchange for her soul.”

“She’d rather die than be your ward in hell,” Tod spat, and in my heart, I cheered.

“Two centuries. You could be with her every day. I’ve seen her lifeline, reaper, and in the Nether, it could stretch into forever. You could greet eternity together…”

“You will never have her,” Tod said, and as his footsteps thumped across the floor toward me, Avari’s reply echoed in my head, so soft I wondered if he’d actually said it out loud.

“We share that misfortune, reaper…”

A second later Tod was in the hall, taking my arm above the rubber glove, and that same fog rolled over my feet before I could protest. Before I could do anything but close my eyes. When I opened them an instant later, I stood in the human world, in the middle of the hall, staring at Tod in amazement, my heart still pounding from our narrowescape.

I pulled my arm from his hand just as a group of girls in Eastlake softball uniforms came around the corner carrying equipment bags and duffels. Several of them laughed at my chemistry safety gear, but I hardly noticed. And when Tod reached up to pull the goggles from my face, I only vaguely realized that meant they could see him, too.

“Why are you dressed like a mad scientist?” he whispered, dropping the goggles on the floor between us.

“Why did you give Thane to Avari?” I countered, as he pulled my first neoprene glove off slowly, as if baring my hand meant more than it should have.

“I think you know why.” He took the scissors from my other hand and slid them into his pocket, and when his gaze met mine, he let me see the blues swirling madly in his irises. “I think you heard most of that.”

“You made a deal with him to get rid of Thane?”

“The deal was for evidence against Thane.” Tod pulled my remaining glove off. “If I could find one of the souls he was supposed to have turned in, we’d have proof that he sold it instead. Avari was going to see if any Thane’s recent reapings had turned up in the Netherworld.”

“In exchange for what?”

Tod dropped the second glove on the floor at my feet, but his gaze never left mine. “There’s this guy in the county jail, waiting for his trial. I reaped the soul of the girl he killed. I saw what he did to her. If anyone deserves eternity at Avari’s hands, it’s him.” Tod shrugged. “Now the courts will get that bastard, and Avari gets Thane’s older, more powerful soul.”

My head was still spinning. I could hardly wrap my mind around it all. “When did you set all this up?”

“In Scott’s room, at Lakeside.” He glanced at his feet for a minute, then back at me. “I was there when you came into his room, negotiating with Avari through Scott.”

I blinked, stunned. Scott had been talking to someone else! “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Tod’s brows dipped low over bright blue eyes. “I didn’t want you to know about any of this.”

“Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t fix anything. Avari’s right—I can’t save you. But I saw Thane tormenting you at lunch, and I couldn’t wait for evidence that may never come through. That psychotic bastard shouldn’t be anywhere near you, and he damn well shouldn’t be the last thing you ever see.” He glanced at the gloves lying between us on the floor, and when he looked up again, the fierce ache in my heart swelled until I thought it would burst, and that falling feeling was back, like I might never regain my balance. So I did the only thing I could think of to bring the world back into focus and make sense of the waves of confusion lapping at me from all sides. I stood on my toes and wrapped my arms around his neck.