“We’re talking about this!” Addison whirled her sister around until she faced a mirror hanging on the wall above a beige couch. “Look!”

Regan looked, and her eyes went anime-wide. But though her cheeks flushed bright red, no color returned to her eyes. That beautiful blue was gone, along with her soul.

“What…?” Regan started to step closer to the mirror for a better look, then changed her mind and stepped back instead, shaking her head slowly in denial. Then she whirled on John Dekker and his reaper with a rage and confusion almost equal to her sister’s. “What’s wrong with my eyes? How can I see if I don’t have eyes? You didn’t say anything about this.”

“It was in the fine print.” The reaper crossed her arms over a gaunt, black-clad chest, contempt glittering in her normal gray eyes. “You are old enough to read, aren’t you?”

Dekker laid one hand on her forearm, and the reaper seemed to fold into herself, as if he’d just jabbed her off button. “There’s nothing wrong with your eyes.” His voice was calm and smooth, but it had nothing on Nash. “It’s a side effect of the process. And we have an easy fix for this, don’t we, Addison?”

Dekker glanced at the older Page sister, but she only glared at him, jaw clenched in vicious anger as he handed two small white boxes to her sister. “These are your prescription, I believe, and a virtual match to your own eye color. I’ll have new boxes hand-delivered every six months. These should last until then, but please be careful with them.” He winked his own nondescript brown eyes. “They aren’t exactly cheap.”

Regan’s empty eyes filled with tears again, and I couldn’t remember ever being scared of a crying eighth-grader before. But I was scared then. The incongruity of her very human tears with those distinctly inhuman eyes gave me chills in places I didn’t even know I could get cold. “Will they stay like this?” She turned hesitantly toward the mirror again, then away before she could possibly have really seen herself. “Why do they look so…empty?”

“Because they’re empty,” Tod said, and we all spun around at the sound of his voice. Tod stood near the kitchen doorway, next to a small redheaded boy who barely came up to the reaper’s shoulders. “The eyes are the windows to the soul, and without your soul, there’s nothing for them to reflect.”

Dekker’s pet reaper went stiff on the edge of the room. Was Tod really that scary?

“Do you have another brother?” I whispered, standing on my toes to reach Nash’s ear. “And did your dad have red hair?”

“That’s Levi,” he whispered back, and the little boy nodded politely at me, shrugging with his hands in the pockets of a baggy pair of khakis.

“Levi-the-reaper?” I asked, a little embarrassed when myvoice went high with surprise. After all the truly weird stuff I’d seen since discovering I was a bean sidhe, a freckle-faced little-boy reaper shouldn’t have fazed me in the least. But it did. “Tod’s boss, Levi-the-reaper?”

“The one and only.” Levi shot me a disarmingly sweet smile. One his eyes didn’t match. Then he turned a ferocious glare on the rogue reaper. “Bana.”

She froze with that one syllable—her own name, spoken in a child’s high, soft voice—and her fingers twitched nervously at her sides. She looked like she wanted to run, but couldn’t.

“I wasn’t sure who to expect, but I must admit your name never occurred to me.” Levi strolled forward like a kid in the park, and I had the absurd thought that he should have been carrying a baseball bat on his shoulder, or a skateboard under one arm. He stopped several feet from Bana and her boss, and gave John Dekker only a fleeting glance, as if he didn’t recognize one of the most famous faces in the world.

Which struck me as especially ironic, considering the reaper’s apparent age.

“Who is this?” Dekker asked, but before Bana could answer—and I seriously doubt she would have—the boy pulled his freckled right hand from his pocket.

“Levi Van Zant. Senior reaper in this district. I’ve come to relieve Bana of her duties. And her soul.”

Bana’s arms went stiff in anticipation, and I realized she was trying to blink out of Addy’s house, and out of Levi’s reach. My breath caught in my throat. We were going to lose her. But did it even matter? We were too late to stop her from ferrying Regan to the Netherworld.

But despite her obvious effort to disappear, she remained fully corporeal.

And before I could release my breath—before Bana could even suck one in—Levi’s small hand shot out and wrapped around her wrist. His fingers barely met on the back of her arm, but any doubt I had about the strength of his grip was put to rest with one look at her face, twisted in agony, as if his very touch burned.

“Bana, look at me.”

She tried to refuse. Her free hand clawed uselessly at the wall behind her, scratching the Sheetrock, resistance etched into the terrified, angry lines of her jaw and forehead. But she couldn’t resist. Nor could she blink out. Somehow, Levi was blocking her abilities. Guaranteeing her cooperation.

Would Tod ever have that power?

“Look at me, Bana.”

Her eyes flew open, and a cry leaked from her mouth. She looked straight into Levi’s green eyes, which seemed to…shine. To glow with a bright, cold light.

We watched, every one of us fascinated. Including Dekker, but especially Regan Page, who was getting her first terrifying glimpse of the world she’d just entered. The world she’d sold herself to.