“I told them I had an announcement,” Tod said. “They probably expect me to announce my retirement.” Which, for a reaper, meant requesting or accepting his final death. “It’s kind of...been coming.”

I frowned and dropped the ice scoop into the sink, and he shrugged. “It was hard without you, Kaylee. I couldn’t let you go, but I didn’t know how to be here without you. If I’d never met you, I probably would have been fine.” He shrugged, and that same stubborn curl fell over his forehead. “I mean, creatures who only exist in the dark don’t know they’re missing the sun, right? But once you’ve seen the sun. Once you’ve seen it light up the world...once you’ve felt its heat all around you...inside you...” He clutched his own chest, and my heart cracked open. “It’s hard to live in the dark after the sun dies.”

“I’m so sorry.” I set the last cup on the counter and threw my arms around him again. “I’m so glad you didn’t do something...permanent.”

“I almost did. I started slipping away again. If not for my mom and Emma, I might have lost most of my humanity by now.”

“Em? You and Emma?” I pulled back to look at him, my chest aching, and I had to remind myself that four years was a long time, and they were only human—mostly. And that I’d left them, and they’d thought I was dead, and they had had every right to move on. To at least try...

Tod’s eyes widened, then he laughed and pulled me closer. “Not like that. Emma has a boyfriend. A necromancer friend of Luca’s. They’ve been together almost three years now.”

“The guy in the picture on her dresser?” They looked happy in the photo. They looked...normal. Emma deserved some normal.

“Yeah. He’s a good guy, and he loves her, and he knows how to handle the occasional syphon meltdown. But even if none of that were true...” Tod put a hand on each of my arms and looked right into my eyes. “You have my heart and soul, Kaylee Cavanaugh, and that never changed, even when I thought you were gone. Em and I are just friends. There was never anyone else. Which means that all of this—” he stepped back and spread his arms with a grin I’d missed like I would miss my own heartbeat if I never felt it again “—went to waste for four very long years.”

“Well, that’s all over now. An ego like that deserves to be stroked.” I ran my hands over his chest and stood on my toes to whisper in his ear, “Or at least humored.”

“Humored, huh?” He laughed. “I’ll take what I can get. For now...”

I pulled his head down for a kiss and didn’t let him go until an engine rumbled to a stop out front, and my heart stopped with it. “They’re here.” One of them, at least. I’d only heard one car.

I raced to the front window and peeked through the gap in the drapesto see an unfamiliar vehicle in the driveway. The driver’s door opened, and I hardly recognized the man who stepped out. He had Nash’s artfully mussed hair, but I couldn’t see his eyes behind a pair of dark sunglasses. And he was...bigger.

My heart ached. Each beat seemed to bruise me from the inside out.

Nash had grown up, like Tod and I never would. Mental math told me he was twenty-two now, and though I could see it, I couldn’t truly believe it.

The passenger’s-side door opened and a headful of long, straight, dark hair appeared over the roof of the car. A second later, Sabine rounded the front bumper and slid her hand into Nash’s, and I’m sure my eyes nearly bugged out of my head.

She’d grown up, too, and she was gorgeous, in a mature, collected way the teenage mara I’d come to thoroughly tolerate had never been. And she looked...happy. Even with all the eyeliner she still wore and a familiar pair of guys’ khakis hanging low on the swell of her hips.

“This is bizarre,” I whispered, and Tod’s hand settled at my lower back.

“I guess it must be, seeing it all of a sudden like that.” He shrugged. “They grew up.”

“And they’re...okay? They’re good?”

“Yeah. Better than I would have expected.” His arm slid around my side and pulled me close again, just as the rear door of the car opened, and my breath caught in my throat.

Emma.

Lydia’s body had grown up, too, and Em now wore it like it was her own. She’d cut her thin hair, and it looked healthier than I’d ever seen it, bouncing on her shoulders in light brown waves. Her arms were tanned, and she’d finally figured out how to dress a body with no curves to speak of—a dilemma I remembered well.

I was still watching her walk up the sidewalk when Nash knocked on the door, then opened it and came in without waiting for the key Em had dug from her purse. “Hey, Peter Pan? You in here?”

Sabine followed him inside, and I could tell by the way their gazes passed over us, then settled on the cups of ice lined up on the kitchen counter that they couldn’t see either of us yet. I hadn’t gone spectral on purpose. Evidently—subconsciously, at least—I wasn’t ready to be seen.

“Kay?” Tod said, and they didn’t hear that, either. “You ready?”

I nodded, and I only realized that was the truth at the very last second.

Tod cleared his throat. Nash and Sabine turned our way just as Em stepped into the house.

For a moment, shocked silence reigned.

Nash took off his sunglasses, and his hazel eyes were as wide and still as I’d ever seen them. Emma dropped her purse, and Styx skittered away from the falling debris. Sabine’s mouth widened in a stunning smile. She was the first to believe her eyes, and, somehow, that didn’t surprise me.