“You’re going to send Nash an email, begging him not to come over. Tell him to calm down, and you’ll talk to him tomorrow, at school, but you’re not going to let him in while he’s this angry.”

My teeth clenched together so hard my jaws ached in protest, and I had to force my mouth open to speak. “No.”

“Do it. It has to be in your own words, with only your prints on the keyboard.”

I craned my neck to look up at him, wishing he could see the fury surely raging in my irises. “You want to kill me? Fine. Kill me. But I’m not going to help you frame Nash.”

Beck leaned so close I felt his breath on my ear. The tip of one blade bit into my skin. I gasped at the sharp pain and couldn’t help wondering how much worse the real thing would hurt. “You’re going to do it, or when I’m done with you, I’ll take Emma and your cousin back to Emma’s house and we’ll have a little fun while your soulless corpse cools.”

A bitter, black pain settled into my stomach, and threatened to swallow me whole. “Don’t touch them,” I whispered furiously, with all the volume I could manage.

“You have my word that I won’t, if you do exactly what I tell you to.”

Hellions can’t lie; did the same thing go for incubi? I didn’t know, but I had no doubt that if I didn’t write the email, he’d do to Em and Sophie what he’d done to Danica. Or maybe what he’d done to her mother.

He was making me choose. Nash or Emma and Sophie.

If I wrote the letter and the police found it—no doubt Beck would leave it open on my laptop—Nash would probably spend the rest of his life on the run. As would Harmony, because she and Tod wouldn’t let him go down for my murder.

But if I didn’t write the letter, Emma and Sophie would die, either from the energy Beck would drain from them, or to give his demon children life.

I couldn’t let them die. Not again. Not because of me. So I started typing.

Tears blurred out the screen. I blinked, and they trailed down my cheeks in hot rivers of my own terror, and anger, and remorse. But I did what I had to do. I begged Nash not to come over. I promised I’d talk to him at school, but not until he calmed down. And at the end of the letter, I told him he scared me when he was like “this,” as Beck ordered. Tears dripped on the keyboard when I typed my name at the bottom of the screen. More dripped from my chin while my pointer hovered over the send button.

“Do it,” Beck whispered into my ear, and I could hear his breathing escalate, like he was turned on by what he was making me do. By the pain and chaos he was creating. “Do it, or I swear they will die screaming in both pleasure and pain. Tonight.”

My entire body shook with sobs. But I clicked Send. And ruined everything, for everyone I’d ever loved.

“Good girl…” Beck crooned, pulling up on my arm until I had to stand. Mylegs almost refused to hold me. Shock settled over me, blurring things. Numbing me. I couldn’t think through the fog swirling in my head, like my brain had given up and crossed over into hell without the rest of me.

“Sit down,” he murmured, and I only realized I’d sat on the bed when I felt the mattress sink beneath me.

I may as well have killed him. I’d ended Nash’s life just the same, with the press of a few buttons and a single click of the mouse.

“Here, let’s take your shirt off—just a little scene setting. Small-town cops usually need it spoon-fed to them, and we don’t want to leave any doubts.”

Would Tod forgive me? He’d never know why I did it, but he’d know it wasn’t true. Would he hate me for eternity for what I’d done to his brother? To his mother?

I barely felt Beck unbutton my shirt, but vaguely I was aware that he did it one-handed, because those twin points of pain—promise of an end to this new misery—never left my side.

“Lie down now…” There was gentle pressure on my bare shoulder, and the bed rose up to meet me. I was drowning in guilt, so cold and bitter I could no longer feel the fear I’d been living with for the past five days. Fear didn’t matter anymore—I was going to die whether I was afraid of death or not.

The only things that mattered were the people I loved, and I’d just betrayed every last one of them. My life was a series of small lies, but my death was the biggest one of all.

Beck leaned over me, his head backlit by the light on my ceiling. His cheek brushed mine, an intimate invasion I hated, even on the verge of death. “This’ll only hurt for a minute,” he promised. “And since you’re not going to make a last confession, maybe I should.” He sat up then, and I forced my gaze to focus on the cruelty and joy shining in his eyes. “I’m still going to take Emma and your cousin. They’ll die screaming my name.”

I blinked, and my room roared back into focus, so sharp and crisp my eyes burned. Rage blazed through me, igniting my every nerve ending, sparking in every synapse. And suddenly I realized I had nothing left to lose.

“The hell they will.” I smacked his knife hand away from my chest, and one blade sliced across my left palm. Blood flowed, and the pain was sharp, but I’d caught him by surprise. I sat up, my right fist already flying, and through sheer luck, the blow actually glanced across his chin.

Stunned, Beck reached for me. I dropped beneath his grasping hand and rolled off the other side of the mattress, reaching for Nash’s bat. But it had rolled too far under the bed, and Beck was there in an instant, my incompetent fighting skills no match for his supernatural speed. He threw me against the wall, one hand around my neck. Gagging, I tried to shove my knee into his groin, but he blocked the blow with the fist still clenching the knife.