Unfortunately, I couldn’t make myself go back to sleep for fear that Sabine would be waiting to attack me again from my own subconscious. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Nash, huddled in a corner, telling me I wasn’t worth staying clean for. So I got up and padded into the kitchen, where I found Alec wide-awake, fully dressed, and halfway through a box of snack cakes.

“You, too?” I asked, trudging past him to take a glass from the cabinet.

“Kaylee?” Alec coughed, nearly choking on his snack in surprise.

“Yeah. I live here, remember?” I ran tap water until it turned cold, then filled my glass.

“Of course. I didn’t expect you to be awake. At this hour.”

I raised one brow at him over my water glass. “You okay? You sound…tired.” And less than perfectly coherent. “And Dad’s going to kill you for eating all his cupcakes.”

An annoyed expression passed over Alec’s strong, dark features, but was gone almost before I’d seen it.

“You wanna hear something interesting?” I asked. “And by interesting, I mean terrifying beyond all reason…”

One dark brow rose as Alec closed the end of the snack box. “You have my attention.”

I had his attention? “If you’re trying to sound your real age, I think you’re finally getting it right.”

He frowned, like I’d spoken Greek and he was trying to translate.

“Anyway, remember my nightmare last night? I just had another one, but it turns out that they aren’t real dreams. Well, not natural dreams, anyway.” I leaned against the counter with the sink at my back. “Nash’s ex is giving them to me. On purpose. She’s a mara, if you can believe it. The living personification of a nightmare. How messed up is that?”

“Nash’s former lover is a mara?” Alec wasn’t even looking at me now. He was staring into space as if that little nugget of information took some time to sink in. I knew exactly how he felt.

“Yeah. She wants him back and has decided I’m in her way. But I have news for that little sleep-terrorist—it’s going to take more than a couple of bad dreams to scare me off, so I hope she has something bigger up her sleeve.”

But as soon as I’d said it, I wanted to take it back. Challenging Sabine felt a little bit like staring a lion in the mouth, daring it to pounce.

“YOU OKAY?” MY DAD asked, pouring coffee into his travel mug as I walked into the kitchen. He wore his usual jeans and steel-toed work boots, his chin scruffy with dark stubble above the collar of a flannel shirt.

“Just tired.” I couldn’t go back to sleep after my middle-of-the-night chat with Alec, so I’d stretched out on my bed, silently rehashing my argument with Nash, analyzing every word he’d said ad nauseam. “Can I have some ofthat?”

My father frowned at the pot of coffee, hesitating. Then he gave up and poured a second mug for me. “If you need coffee at sixteen, I hate to think what mornings will be like when you’re my age.”

Considering how many times I’d nearly died since the beginning of my junior year, I’d settle for just surviving to his age. But I knew better than to say that out loud.

“Hey, Dad?” I said, pulling a box of cereal from the cabinet overhead.

“Hmm?” He opened his carton of cupcakes—the breakfast of champions—and frowned into it. “Did you eat my snacks?”

“No. Dad, what do you think the chances are of two teachers dying on the same day?”

He looked up from his box, still frowning, but now at me. “I guess that depends on the circumstances. Why?”

“’Cause Mr. Wesner and Mrs. Bennigan both died yesterday. At their desks, at least six hours apart. You didn’t see it on the news last night?” The story had been a short, somber community interest piece—a small Dallas suburb mourning the loss of two teachers at once. “There were no signs of foul play, so they’re calling it a really weird, tragic coincidence.”

“And you don’t believe that?” His irises held steady—it took a lot to rattle my father—but unease was clear in the firm line of his jaw.

“I don’t know what to think. It probably is just a coincidence, but with everything else that’s gone down this year…” I couldn’t help but wonder. And I could tell my dad was thinking the same thing.

“Well, let’s not borrow trouble until we come up short. I can ask around.” Meaning he’d talk to Harmony Hudson and my uncle Brendon. “But I want you to stay out of it. Just in case. Got it?”

I nodded and poured milk into my bowl. That’s what I was hoping he’d say. And now that I’d been expressly forbidden from investigating the massively coincidental teacher deaths, I should have felt free from the compulsion to do just that. Right? So why was it so hard to get Mrs. Bennigan out of my head? Why did the soft rise and fall of her back haunt my memory?

Alec trudged into the kitchen and I shook off my morbid thoughts and sank into a chair at the table with my cold cereal. He headed straight for the coffeepot.

“You, too?” my dad asked, with one look at the bags under his eyes.

Alec shrugged and scrubbed one hand over his close-cropped curls. “I didn’t get much sleep.”

My dad’s brows furrowed as he glanced from Alec to me, obviously leaping to a very weird conclusion. “Is there something I should know?” he half growled, glaring at Alec as he spooned sugar into his mug, completely oblivious to my father’s suspicion and sudden tension.