A tingling began deep in my stomach and traveled up my spine, bringing with it a warmth like I’d never known. Tod was giving me a first—a very important first—and he was trusting me to keep a secret he’d never told anyone else, except his mother. And though I’d accepted my fate days ago, suddenly the injustice of my own death seemed unbearable for a whole new reason.

I wanted more firsts with Tod.

But all I had left was a handful of lasts. My last day. My last hour. My last minute. My last words. And my last breath.

“You sure you want to hear this?” Tod asked, eyeing me in concern—my eyes probably gave away my every thought. “We are allowed to talk about something other than death.”

“I wanna know. You’re the only person I know who’s survived death.” Other than Emma and Sophie, who didn’t remember anything. “I want to know what I’m in for.”

Tod frowned. “Your death won’t be like mine, Kaylee. No two deaths are the same, but mine was more different than most. I was recruited by the reapers—before I died.”

“Before you died? How does that work?”

“It’s a blind choice. To be eligible for recruitment, you have to be willing to make a sacrifice for someone else, without knowing you could be rewarded with an afterlife.”

“I don’t understand.” In fact, I understood less than I had before he’d started talking.

“Okay, here’s the typical recruitment scenario…” Tod let go of my hand, so he could gesture with his. “Once the personnel request comes down, the local reaper district manager will start sorting through the potential recruits in his area. But he’s not looking for someone scheduled to die. He’s looking for someone who might be willing to die for someone else. That’s how they weed through the power-hungry psychos—though Thane is proof that the system isn’t perfect.”

“No kidding.” Whoever recruited him should be fed to a nursery of bloodthirsty Netherworld cannibal children. “Wait, does that mean you weren’t supposed to die?” That tingle in my spine became an outright chill….

“Everyone’s supposed to die. But no, I wasn’t supposed to die then.”

“What happened?” I felt like a kid at story hour, riveted by the tale unfolding in front of me.

“I was driving late on a Friday night, and some drunk ass-hole hit me head-on. I didn’t see him till it was too late to get out of the way, ’cause he was driving without headlights.”

No wonder my dad didn’t want me driving in the middle of the night on weekends. Not that that mattered anymore…

“I was fine,” Tod continued. “I hit my head, and the steering column came within inches of crushing my chest, but I wouldhave lived. But my passenger wasn’t buckled. He flew forward and cracked the windshield with his head, and died a couple of minutes later. It was too late to call for an ambulance, so I did the only thing I could think of. I begged the reaper to give him more time.” Tod swallowed thickly, and I realized he was seeing something else again—maybe that dark road, more than two years in his past. “What he gave me instead was a choice. I could let the kid die—or I could take his place.”

And he’d done it, of course. That part of the story was obvious. But… “Why would you do that? Why would you agree to die for someone else?” I mean, my mom had done it for me, but I was her flesh and blood…

And that’s when I understood what Tod wasn’t saying.

“It was Nash, wasn’t it?” I whispered. Tod didn’t answer, but I could see the truth in his eyes. “Nash died, and you traded your life for his. And that got you noticed by the reapers.”

“More or less.”

“And he doesn’t know!”

Tod shook his head. “He would have been all messed up if he knew he was the reason I died.” He seemed to choke on a bitter laugh. “The joke was on me, though, because he blamed himself anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because he was the reason we were out so late. On that road.”

“You and I both died in car crashes…” I said, thinking out loud. “Do you think that means something?”

“I hope not, because you and Nash both died in car crashes,” Tod pointed out. “I got my chest beaten in by a pint-size reaper eager to fill the opening in his district.”

“If you hadn’t, I never would have met either you or Nash. And if Nash had never told me what I am, eventually I would have wound up in Lakeside again. Which means I would have died in the mental health ward.”

“Well, at least something good came out of the whole thing.”

“A lot of good came out of it, Tod. You’re like that guy on It’s a Wonderful Life, only the opposite—if you’d lived, bad things would have happened to everyone around you.”

Tod’s pale brows rose in surprise, then he burst into laughter. “I’m going to miss you, Kaylee.” His irises swirled slowly with an odd mixture of sorrow and wistfulness. “You have no idea how much I’m going to miss you.”

“Good. Maybe I won’t be out of mind as soon as I’m out of sight.”

“I saw you in the hospital once. Way before you started going out with Nash.”

“In the hospital…?” That was the day they checked me into Lakeside. It had to be. I hadn’t been in the hospital for anything else.