“Human?” Tod’s brows rose. “She’s not human, Kay. Not even close. Nash didn’t tell you?”

Crap. He’d tried to tell me something about Sabine. Tried twice, but she’d suddenly shown up to prevent him both times. “What is she?” I said, turning to watch the cleanup effort under way at our table as my heart tried to sink into my stomach.

“She’s your worst Nightmare, Kaylee,” Tod said, his frown widening. “Literally.”

6

I STOMPED THROUGH the empty hall, each step putting the cafeteria farther behind me. But I couldn’t outrun anger and humiliation.

Sabine wasn’t human. The one advantage I’d thought I had over her was that Nash and I had bonded through a mutual lack of humanity, which set us apart from everyone else at school. I knew what he really was and what he could do. I knew things about him that he could never tell anyone else.

But evidently, so did she. And Nash hadn’t bothered to tell me.

Oh, he’d started to a couple of times, but I couldn’t help thinking that if he’d really wanted me to know, he wouldn’t have let Sabine’s timely interruptions stop him.

Tod had started to tell me everything, but I’d cut him off. I wanted to hear it from Nash, when we had enough time and privacy for me to demand real answers. I needed to yell at him, but I didn’t want to do it in front of Sabine. I couldn’t let her know that her declaration was getting to me, nor was I willing to let her see me mad at Nash. She would only take that wedge and drive it deeper.

I turned the corner and stomped past two open classroom doors, ignoring the chair squeaks and whispers from inside as my thoughts raced, my cheeks flaming with anger. The door to the parking lot called to me from the end of the hall. There were only five minutes left in lunch, and then I could escape into my English class, where no one could challenge me, lie to me, or threaten to take my boyfriend.

I had both hands on the door’s press bar when Nash shout-whispered my name from behind. “Kaylee, wait!” I froze, then turned slowly. So much for escape.

He jogged to catch up with me and I crossed both arms over my chest, displaying my anger, in case he hadn’t picked up on it yet.

“She’s not human?” I demanded softly, when he came to a stop inches away. “Is that what you were going to tell me?”

“Along with some specifics, yeah.” He shrugged apologetically. “I tried to tell you earlier, but…”

“Sabine got in the way, right? I have a feeling that’s about to become routine.”

Nash exhaled slowly. “Can we go somewhere and talk? Please? I want to explain everything, but I need to be able to speak to you alone for more than a few minutes at a time.” And from the frustrated twist of color in his eyes, I knew he wanted to talk about more than just Sabine’s species. We hadn’t really spoken—not like we usedto—in more than two weeks.

I missed talking to him.

“Please,” he repeated. “Skipping one English class won’t hurt anything.”

Talking to him without Sabine around was exactly what I needed. I opened my mouth to say yes—then snapped my jaw closed before I could form a single word, terrified by the sudden, familiar thread of pain and primeval need winding its way up my throat.

No!

“Kaylee?” Nash whispered, while I glanced around the hall frantically. It was empty, but the dark panic inside me continued to swell. Someone nearby was going to die. Soon, based on the strength of the scream clawing its way up my throat.

I clamped one hand over my mouth and aimed a wide-eyed, desperate look at Nash. He knew the signs. His brow furrowed and his irises began to swirl with brown and green eddies of distress. “Who is it? Can you tell?”

I rolled my eyes and gestured with one hand at the empty hall at his back, trying to swallow the raw pain scraping its way toward my mouth as the scream demanded its exit.

Nash whirled around, and when he reached for my free hand, I let him have it. We raced past first one closed classroom door, then another, stopping to peek through the windows, but found nothing unusual. Until we got to the third door. I peered through the glass over Nash’s shoulder to see Mrs. Bennigan slumped over at her desk, where she’d obviously fallen asleep during her lunch break. Her back rose and fell with each breath.

“Is it her?” Nash whispered, but I couldn’t tell with the closed door separating us. So he pushed it open softly.

Shadows enveloped the sleeping teacher like a cocoon of darkness, where there’d been nothing a second before. Panic crashed over me, cold and unyielding. The scream reverberated in my head with blinding pain. A thin ribbon of sound began to leak from between my sealed lips, then spilled between the fingers covering them.

My hand clenched Nash’s. Mrs. Bennigan was going to die. Any minute. And there was nothing we could do without condemning someone else to her fate instead. Because while Nash and I—a male and a female bean sidhe—could work together to restore a person’s soul, we couldn’t save one life without taking another.

“Come on.” Nash took off down the hall, and I let him tug me all the way into the parking lot, one hand still clamped over my mouth. The urge to scream faded a little with each step, but even when the school door closed behind us—locking us out—the demand was still there, the unvoiced scream still scratching the back of my throat and reverberating in my teeth.

“Are you okay?” he asked, and I shook my head, clenching my teeth so hard my jaw ached. Of course I wasn’t okay. Someone was dying—another teacher—and there was nothing I could do but wait for her soul to be claimed by whichever reaper had come for her, so the screaming fit would pass.