“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” Alec mumbled at my back, and my father’s harsh laugh sounded more like an angry bark.

“Considering your current predicament, I’m betting that’s the first smart thing you’ve said all night!”

“This isn’t what it looks like.” I frowned and shoved myself to my feet, then glanced back at Alec, who could only stare at me in humiliation. “Actually, I’m not sure what it looks like,” I admitted, turning back to my father. “It’s to keep us both safe…” I ended lamely, wishing I could just melt into my bedroom carpet and disappear.

“Safe from what?” my father demanded softly.

“From…” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, then met his stare again and started over. “I was gonna tell you everything when you got home. Nash made me promise.”

Behind me, Alec shifted on the bed—as best he could, with three limbs bound to it—and I could practically taste his anxiety.

“What does Nash have to do with you tying Alec to your bed?” But honestly, he looked like he didn’t really want to know the answer to that.

I perched on the corner of my desk and turned off my stereo. “I’m assuming you want the short version….”

“That would be good.”

So I sucked in another deep breath, then spat the whole thing out. “Avari’s been possessing Alec and killing my teachers—we have no idea why he picked teachers—so we’ve been sleeping in shifts for the past couple of nights, to stop it from happening again. But now I’m so tired that I can’t stay awake—” no need to tell him about Sabine just yet, since she wasn’t immediately relevant to the hellion or the dead teachers “—so Alec thought I should tie him up, in case I fall asleep and Avari gets back into his body. You know, to keep everybody safe.” I shrugged miserably, then watched my father, waiting for the fireworks.

“I don’t even know where to start,” he said. But he got over that pretty quickly. “Avari’s the one killing teachers?” he said, and I nodded. “And he’s using Alec to do it?” Another nod from me. “And you’ve known this for two days without telling me?”

“I was afraid you’d kick him out. And even if it were okay to do that to a friend—and it’s not—if you kick him out, there won’t be anyone around to make sure Avari can’t use him as a murder weapon again,” I finished, proud of my own coherence, considering how incredibly tired I was.

For several moments, my father stood mute, obviously thinking. Then his focus shifted from me to Alec. “Those teachers died without a mark on them,” he said, and I could see in the angry, frustrated line of his jaw that he’d come to the right conclusion, with far fewer clues than I’d needed.“What are you?”

“I’m half hypnos.” Alec met my father’s gaze unflinchingly—his species wasn’t his fault, after all—but looked genuinely sorry for the danger he’d involuntarily exposed us all to.

“Please tell me your other half is human,” my father said, and Alec and I both nodded.

My dad sighed and pulled a folding knife from his back pocket. “Well, Kaylee, you’re right about one thing—we can’t leave him on his own. Not unless we want the next blood spilled to fall on our hands.”

My relief was almost as strong as my confusion when he strode forward purposefully and cut Alec’s left ankle free.

“Mr. Cavanaugh, it’s not safe to let me sleep free,” Alec insisted, as my father rounded toward the head of the bed.

“Which is precisely why you won’t be sleeping in my daughter’s room.” He slashed the rope around Alec’s left arm, then leaned over him to repeat the process with the remaining knot. “Ever.”

A few minutes later, we all stood in the living room, my father unwinding a new rope he’d produced from a pile of not-yet-unpacked cardboard boxes in the garage. Alec sank into my dad’s recliner and positioned a pillow beneath his head, then my father tied his feet to the metal frame of the foldout ottoman. While I spread a blanket over our poor houseguest, my dad pulled Alec’s arms toward the back of the recliner, where he tied his wrists to each other, linked by a taut length of nylon spanning the back of the chair.

But even with this new precaution and my dad’s much sturdier knot work, he wasn’t willing to let Alec sleep alone, just in case. So when I finally headed to bed at almost one in the morning, my father was settling onto the couch with his pillow and a throw blanket, determined to protect us all from the most recent Netherworld threat. Even in his sleep.

“HE KICKED HER OUT topless?” Emma shoved her spoon into the pint of Phish Food and dug out a chocolate fish, her brown eyes shining in the light pouring in through the kitchen window. After a long, mostly sleepless night, Saturday morning had dawned bright and clear, in blatant disrespect of my foul mood.

Fortunately, Emma had come bearing ice cream. Two reserve pints sat in the freezer.

I nodded, letting my bite melt in my mouth. Chocolate may not cure everything, but it goes down a lot better than any other medicine I’ve ever tasted.

The front door opened before I could respond, and Alec walked in, carrying a newspaper under one arm, nose dripping from the cold. He closed the door, then noticed us in the kitchen.

Before he could speak, I pointed the business end of my spoon at him and said, “Where were you? You weren’t on the schedule today.” He’d been gone when I woke up, both the ropes and bedding stowed somewhere out of sight.