Alec frowned. “What were you going to have him arrested for?”

I glanced at the sticky ground beneath my feet, avoiding his eyes. “Inappropriate, unwelcome contact with a minor.”

“Sexual assault?” Alec hissed. “You were going to get me arrested for groping a sixteen-year-old girl in the back of a theater? Are you insane?”

I bristled over his use of my least favorite nonmedical descriptor, but I had to admit that hearing it aloud made it sound pretty bad. “It was just a bluff,” I insisted, staring up into his horrified eyes. “And anyway, I would have recanted.”

“Kaylee…”

“What else was I supposed to do?” I demanded. “I didn’t have anything to hit you with, and I couldn’t just let him use you to kill that poor man.”

“Fine.” But he didn’t look like it was fine, and the longer he stared at me in horror, the guiltier I felt. “Just promise me you’ll come up with some better threats. Preferably nothing that’ll get me arrested.”

“I swear. And you have to promise not to fall asleep by yourself.”

“That’s a lot harder than it sounds, you know.”

“I remember. I spent days trying to stay awake, to keep you from dragging me into the Netherworld in my dreams.”

“I said I was sorry about that.” Alec groaned.

“And I’m sorry about this. But I gotta go. I spent my whole break talking to a hellion in the back of the theater.”

Alec flinched. “I’ll make it up to you.”

But I didn’t see how that was even possible. I started walking back toward the concession stand, where my shift was tragically Emma-less—she’d gotten stuck in one of the ticket booths—then stopped when something else occurred to me.

“Alec?”

“Yeah?” He turned, halfway to the break room, and followed when I gestured toward the shadowed alcove housing a supply closet.

“Avari said you’re in on this. That you’re his partner, and that you’re getting a portion of the energy from each of his kills.”

Alec frowned. “Kay, would I be this exhausted if I were getting any of that energy?”

Oh, yeah. Still, exhaustion could be faked… “He also said hellions can’t lie. That’s total BS, right?” I asked, trying in vain to think of a time Avari had lied to me. But I came up blank.

Alec’s frown deepened. “Actually, that part’s true.”

“Then how could he say…?”

“That I was his partner in this new serial slaying?” Alec finished for me, and I nodded. “He probably didn’t. Hellions can’t tell an outright lie, but they’re very, very good at implying things and letting people draw theirown conclusions. Did he actually say I was in on it? Or did he just ask leading questions, then fail to correct your assumption?”

I thought hard, but I couldn’t remember. The whole encounter was indistinct now, but for the memory of his hand over my arm, the sickening warmth of his breath on my ear, and the skin-crawling revulsion I’d felt over both.

What kind of world was I living in, where the only people who never lied to me were the ones out to steal either my soul or my boyfriend?

17

THAT NIGHT, AFTER my father went to sleep, Alec came into my room and we took turns sleeping in two-hour shifts. True to her word, Sabine stayed out of my head, but because Avari had made no such deal with Alec, and especially since I’d evicted him from his earlier occupation, I shook him awake every time he so much as grunted in his sleep, and every single time, I made him tell me what color my first bicycle was.

He passed the test each time. We’d dodged a bullet, but I was far from sure we’d be able to do the same thing night after night. Especially considering how exhausted I was the next morning, after nearly a week without a decent night’s sleep.

Friday was a blur of desks, textbooks, and piercing school bells, made even more miserable because Nash ignored both me and Sabine again. All day long. And I have to admit that once I was sure no more teachers had died, I kind of mentally checked out of the school day. I was just too tired to concentrate.

Until some sophomore, bitter over not making the basketball season cheerleading squad, was caught dumping bleach from the custodian’s closet all over the cheerleader uniforms hanging at the back of the team sponsor’s classroom during lunch. That woke the whole school up.

As Principal Goody escorted a gaggle of pissed-off cheerleaders to the office to call their parents, she stopped in the hall and I heard her tell the team coach she’d be glad when this week was over.

I knew exactly how she felt.

That night, I had to work, with neither Emma nor Alec to keep me company. After my shift, I checked my phone for missed calls and found a voice mail from Nash. I listened to it in my car, in the dark, with nothing to distract me from the intimate sound of his voice in my ear.

“Hey, it’s me,” he said, and just hearing from Nash made my chest ache, after two days of near-silence from him. “I’m sorry about the other day. Are you working? You wanna come over tonight? Just to talk? We could order a pizza, and Mom made some of those fudge cookies before she left for work.”

He paused, and my sigh was the most pathetic sound I’d ever heard.

“Anyway, I figured if I invited you, you wouldn’t feel like you had to sneak in under the cover of…Tod. Give me a call?”

Then the phone went silent in my hand.