“Which means they’re useless to us, since we know incubi are actually thoroughly physical psychic parasites,” I concluded, and Tod nodded.

“That kick to the groin method isn’t looking so bad now, is it?” Emma said.

“Neither are the scissors.”

“We’ll call that plan B,” Tod said, pulling open the fridge in search of another can of soda.

Two hours later, I was starving, and we’d still had no word from my dad or uncle about the family dinner, which I’d invited both Tod and Em to stay for. Nor were we any closer to a decent plan A. Evidently no one in the history of the internet had ever successfully annihilated a real live incubus.

“I think we’re going to have to call it quits on the ambush,” Emma said, closing her laptop with a soft click. “At least for tonight.”

“No!” I refreshed my browser and typed in another variant of the same “banish kill incubus” keyword search I’d been scouring the internet with. “I’m not going to have another night!” And I didn’t want to die without knowing Beck would be no threat to my best friend. “Besides, if we’re not there when he shows up tonight, he’s going to know something’s up, and we’ll have lost the element of surprise. And we—or you guys, since I’ll be dead—won’t get another shot at him if he knows you know what he is.”

Emma shrugged, meeting my gaze reluctantly. “Maybe that’s for the best, Kay. If he figures out what he’s up against, maybe he’ll just…move on.”

“But that’s just passing our problem on to someone else. Someone who won’t know how to fight him.”

“We don’t know how to fight him,” she pointed out, with infuriatingly sound logic. “The lack of information to the contrary suggests that incubi are probably immortal and practically invincible. So what choice do we have, Kaylee? You may be immune to the evil hotness, but I’m not, and I don’t want to walk away from this pregnant with a demon fetus. Or dead because I knew too much.”

“She’s right, Kay,” Tod said. “It’s not fair to involve her in this. Not when we can’t guarantee her safety.”

“I know.” I closed my laptop slowly, burning from the inside out with anger and frustration. “Maybe I could…”

“Not by yourself,” Emma interrupted. “I know you’re going to die anyway.” She swallowed and closed her eyes in a longer-than-normal blink. “But that’s not how you want it to happen, is it?”

“Besides, if Beck shows up at Emma’s house and you’re the only one there—or at least the only one he can see—he’s going to know something’s up,” Tod said.

I couldn’t argue against their logic, butI couldn’t give up the fight, in either my head or my heart. At some point, I’d started equating a “good death”—the only thing I had left to aspire to—with defeating Beck and protecting my school. I didn’t want to die without knowing he’d gone first.

But before I could put any of that into words, my phone rang, and the display showed my dad’s number. I held up a one-minute finger to Em and Tod, then flipped my phone open. “Hey, are you on your way home?” I asked, when I recognized road noise in the background. “Uncle Brendon and Sophie are probably already on their way.”

“Kaylee, I didn’t go to work today. I’m with Brendon, and we’re not going to make it back for dinner. He’s already called Sophie. I’m so sorry, honey.”

Suddenly the kitchen felt too cold and goose bumps popped up on my arms. “Where are you?” I crossed into the living room and started to sit, until I realized I had an almost physical need to keep moving. To burn nervous energy. So I paced back and forth in front of the coffee table.

“On the way home from Tallulah.”

“Tallulah, Louisiana?!”

“Um…yeah. Brendon spent all night tracking down that incubus he ran up against fifteen years ago, and we got lucky.”

“You found him?” I asked, and Tod and Emma followed me into the living room, listening carefully, and dropped onto the couch.

“Yeah, his name is Daniel, and we set out this morning to pay him a visit.”

“Hey, Kay-bear,” my uncle called to me over the line.

“Hi,” I returned, pausing in midstride to stroke Styx’s head when she jumped into the recliner. “So…did this Daniel tell you how to take out an incubus?”

“Well, he wasn’t very forthcoming with any information we could potentially use against him, but he did introduce us to his son—an eight-year-old incubus named Charles. It turns out that Charles is the only reason his father hasn’t relocated or changed his name—he’s trying to give the kid a stable childhood, at least until he comes into his psychic appetite, around puberty.” Which seemed to be typical for most nonhuman species.

“Okay, hurray for Charles and his father-of-the-year.” Unfortunately, I wasn’t hearing anything that would actually help us get rid of Beck.

“That’s not all,” my dad continued, in that “pay attention” tone. “Daniel is a very proud father, and he insisted on introducing Charles to us. Kaylee, the kid’s eyes swirl, and that can only mean one thing. His mother was a bean sidhe.”

“A bean sidhe?” I said, and on the edge of my vision, Emma turned to Tod in question. “I thought incubi had to breed with human women.”