Alec shrugged. “I didn’t.”

“He vacated on his own…” I mumbled, as Em’s muted, bare footsteps echoed toward us. “He never planned to kill her. He’s just playing some kind of twisted game.” But why?

Emma came back into the room before he could answer, but even if she hadn’t, I doubt he’d have had anything to say. Though he’d lived with the hellion for a quarter of a century, he seemed no more privy to Avari’s thought process than I was.

“So…what’s up?” Emma asked, handing me the spoon. She sank onto the bed and pulled the lid from the carton of ice cream. “What’s the latest cloud on the horizon of my pathetic existence?”

“Dramatic, Em?” But I had to grin. Nothing ever seemed to get Emma down. Even being told she was in danger from some mysterious force she probably would never understand.

“It’s poetic. I like it,” Alec said, and I swear I saw Emma flush, which hadn’t happened much since the night she’d snuck into my room at one in the morning to tell me all about losing her virginity.

“You’re not pathetic, and you’re not in danger.” Anymore… “We had a scare, but it seems to be over.”

“A scare of the Netherworld variety?” Emma’s smile faltered. She knew just enough about the non-human side of my life to be scared senseless every time it was mentioned. And I intended to keep it that way. If she was scared, she was much less likely to dig for information. Her fear was keeping her safe. Or at least safer than she’d have been otherwise.

“Yeah, but it’s fine now.” I stood, eyeing Alec. “You ready?”

“Wait!” Em waved the spoons at him slowly, like she could hypnotize him with the lure of shiny metal. “Stay and have some ice cream.”

“Em, it’s almost three in the morning.” And I had to get back to my dad.

“Hey, you two woke me up from some very pleasant dreams. The least you can do is mollify me with ice cream.”

One look at Em—who only had eyes for Alec—and I knew I was fighting a losing battle. So I stayed for just a few bites, if only to keep her from making any beyond-friendship overtures toward a man three times her age.

Then Alec and I headed home, where I cleaned my father’s head wound while Nash called his mom at the hospital and asked her to send Tod to the police station for another handcuff key.

We never found the one Avari had taken.

22

AFTER ANOTHER MOSTLY sleepless night and an early breakfast spent watching Harmony stitch the gash on my dad’s head, I held my breath as I walked into the school on Tuesday morning, half-afraid of what I’d find. I knew better than to believe that yesterday’s campus chaos had faded into the ether.

I was right.

I’d made it halfway to my locker when the door to the girls’ bathroom flew openand slammed against the wall right in front of me. I lurched out of the way as two bodies stumbled into the hall and collided with a stretch of lockers, ringing the metal doors like a gong. Hair flew, too wild and fast for me to identify either of the fighters as I scrambled out of the immediate impact zone.

A crowd formed quickly—a living boxing ring—as each girl tore at the other’s hair and clothes, clawing at exposed skin. They screeched and grunted, a primal racket of pain and rage, punctuated with just enough profanity-riddled half sentences for me to understand the cause.

They were fighting over a guy. Someone’s boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend, or stupid, unwitting crush.

A couple of teachers came running to break up the fight, already haggard before eight in the morning, and as I bypassed the action, I noticed two of the school’s larger coaches hauling a boy apiece down the hall in my direction. The student on the left had a split lip and a black eye. The one on the right was bleeding from a head wound and a totally crunched nose.

In spite of their injuries, it was everything the coaches could do to keep them apart.

“Did you hear?” Emma asked, when I finally slid into the seat next to her in algebra.

“About the fights in the hall? Caught the live show and nearly got flattened. It’s like going to school in a war zone.”

“Not that.” Emma looked just as put together as always, in spite of her interrupted sleep. Obviously middle-of-the-night ice cream was the cure for dark under-eye circles. “They took Coach Peterson away in handcuffs this morning. The custodian caught him trashing Rundell’s office, shouting that he would have been the head football coach if Rundell hadn’t married the superintendent’s daughter.” Emma leaned closer to me, not that it mattered. Everyone else was busy passing the same news. “I swear, Kaylee, the entire school’s gone insane!”

Yeah. Including the teachers, which was a new development.

By third period, there had been four more fights and another teacher removed from school grounds, for undisclosed reasons. Whatever she’d done, she’d done in the teachers’ lounge, and the rest of the staff wasn’t talking. Which left us to interpret her crimes as we saw fit. And there was no shortage of rumors.

After third period—my free hour—I headed across the deserted gym toward the cafeteria, but stopped short when I heard a screech from the girls’ locker room. “Sophie, no!”

I dropped my books on the polished wood floor and raced for the locker room, then threw open the door and froze in surprise at what I saw.

In one hand, Sophie held a huge pair of metal scissors with jagged blades. The ones she’d been using for her Life Skills project—pinking shears, Aunt Val had called them. In the other hand, my cousin held a thick chunk of Laura Bell’s long, shiny brown hair.