I nodded. “And did she tell you what that means?”

Emma frowned. That’s what I thought. “She’s a Nightmare, Em. Literally. She reads people’s fears and exploits them for her own entertainment.” Or nutrition. I was still a bit fuzzy on that detail. “And that’s what she’s doing to you right now. Exploiting your fears.”

And that’s when it hit me. The school chaos. The fights and jealousy. They had nothing to do with Avari—what did he care if a few kids got arrested or expelled?

It was Sabine. All of it. I’d heard her talking to Sophie and Laura about the Snow Queen title last week. She’d chatted with the basketball team at lunch. And now she was moving in on Emma. She was feeding from their fears and insecurities. And it had to stop.

I took a deep breath, then faced my best friend, without letting Sabine out of my sight. “Em, I swear I’m not going to let you die. No matter what. Your life is definitely a priority, so you can stop worrying about that.” I closed my eyes, weighing pros and cons in my head, then met Emma’s suspicious gaze again. “And I’m going to tell you everything. I promise.” It wasn’t fair for me to keep her in the dark—I, of all people, should have known that. “But right now, I have to deal with the mess Sabine’s gotten us all into. I’ll meet you in the cafeteria, okay?”

Without waiting for her answer, I grabbed Sabine by the arm and hauled her across the gym. She just laughed and let me pull her. “Where are we going?”

“To find Nash.” If anyone could reason with an out of control mara, it would be our mutual ex. Her one true love, according to Tod.

My anger burned even brighter at that thought.

“Oh, good!” she said, as I hesitated in the middle of the basketball court, debating the shortcut to the quad through the cafeteria. But pulling Sabine through a crowd of students she’d already worked into some kind of fear-fed frenzy would be a very bad idea. So I turned right and headed for the gym exit. “But you should probably know he’s not speaking to me.”

“Fortunately, he is speaking to me.”

“So, what, you’re gonna tattle on me for telling Emma I’m not human? That wasn’t your secret to keep, Kaylee. Totally my call. And if blowing my own cover happens to poke holes in your credibility…well, we’ll call that a big fat bonus!”

“You are such a bitch.” I shoved open the heavy exterior door and pulled Sabine into the parking lot, then took an immediate left, circling the building toward the quad.

“That’s hardly breaking news.”

“Yet the headlines just keep coming.” I tightened my grip on her arm. The quad was in sight by then, but I saw no sign of Nash. In fact, all the tables were empty, which was weird, considering wewere ten minutes into lunch.

“Okay, this has been real fun,” Sabine said, as I stopped next to the first empty table. She jerked her arm from my grasp and faced me, her goading grin gone, true anger flashing in her eyes. “But if it isn’t gonna get Nash to talk to me, I’m done with this.”

She started to stomp off toward the cafeteria, but I grabbed her wrist. “Get back here.” Nash would have been so much better at talking some sense into her, but since he wasn’t there, it was up to me.

Sabine jerked her arm away again. “The novelty of your badass act is wearing off quickly.”

And suddenly I realized that the lack of a crowd was as much disadvantage as advantage—she probably wouldn’t hesitate to punch me if there was no one around to see it. “How could you pull Emma into this? She has nothing to do with your sad little obsession with Nash.”

Sabine rolled her eyes. “I didn’t hurt her. I barely even got a taste of her fear. And as for my disclosure, you of all people should know how scary it is when you don’t understand the world around you. I would have thought you’d want to spare your own best friend from such painful ignorance.”

I couldn’t fault her logic and I’d already decided to tell Emma everything. But even if Sabine’s argument was sound, her intentions were not. She’d been using an innocent bystander to piss me off, and it worked. “Just leave Emma alone.”

“I don’t answer to you about anything, Kaylee. Including my dinner plans.”

Fresh flames of rage licked at my skin; I felt like I was standing too close to a bonfire, and if I didn’t back up, I was going to get roasted. And I was fine with that—so long as Sabine got singed, too. “You cannot just go around feeding from people! You’ve turned this school into a war zone, and people are getting hurt.”

Sabine rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “I told you I didn’t kill those teachers. And I’m not responsible for how a bunch of human sheep deal with the loss of a couple of shepherds.”

“They’re people, not sheep!” Even if they did tend to follow the herd and stand around bleating uselessly at times… “And no matter what you call them, you don’t have the right to turn them against one another and get people thrown in jail, or sent to the hospital!”

Sabine frowned. “Okay, you can’t even see sanity from where you’re standing. I had nothing to do with any of that.”

“Right.” I stepped closer, shoving my fear of a broken jaw—or worse—to the back of my mind. “I heard you talking to Sophie and Laura the other day, and today Laura’s missing a chunk of hair from the back of her head.”