“Okay...” Nash looked fascinated. “So, yesterday when you got all badass and hell-bent on revenge, you were probably taking a little of that from Kaylee. She’s been itching to make Avari pay since the day you died.”

Since before that. Since the day Avari tricked me into killing Alec. That’s when I’d started channeling my pain into anger—a much more useful emotion.

Luca frowned. “So then, whose anger was she syphoning today? Somebody must have been really pissed off, if the portion she took was strong enough to make her go off on you like that.”

Oh, shit. I hadn’t even thought about that. Em’s rage had a source, and considering how many hellions were known to frequent the Netherworld version of our school, chances were good that that anger wasn’t human in origin. Which meant that someone at Eastlake could be about to lose control.

Again.

Chapter Five

“Where are you going?” Nash said when I stood, already pulling my phone from my pocket.

“To find whoever sent Em into anger overdrive before he explodes in someone’s face.” More violence was the last thing we needed at America’s most dangerous high school. Of its size. “You had chemistry before lunch, right?” I said, trying to remember her new schedule, and Em nodded. “Whose class?”

“Mr. Flannery.”

“Did anyone look angry in your chem class? Anyone lose his or her temper?”

Em shook her head. “Only me.”

“That just means that whoever it was did a good job of hiding his anger.” Which meant those around him would be completely unprepared when and if he snapped. “I gotta get a look at Mr. Flannery’s roll book before lunch is over. I’ll see you guys later.”

Before anyone could object, I took off across the quad, headed for the corner of the building, texting Tod on the way. His shift at the hospital had just ended. With any luck, he’d have time to come help me deal with...whatever was about to go horribly wrong.

As soon as I was out of sight of the quad, I let myself fade from human sight, then blinked into Mr. Flannery’s first-floor chemistry lab. The room was empty, thank goodness, and his roll book was open on his desk, which was another stroke of luck in itself. Most of the other teachers had long ago switched to an electronic attendance and grade program. Fortunately, Mr. Flannery was nearly sixty and set in his ways. I’d once heard him complain to a colleague about how long it took him to enter the grades into the computer all at once, at the end of each term.

Still invisible, in case anyone came in, I flipped through his roll book to the third period page and scanned the list. Emily Cavanaugh had been penciled in at the bottom. Most of the students were juniors, which meant I knew nearly all of them. All but four had been in the quad withus—underclassmen usually got stuck eating inside on nice days.

All four of the missing kids were members of the baseball team—Nash’s former teammates—who’d started eating in the practice field’s dugout in the two weeks since Brant Williams’s death. They seemed to think that was the best place to remember him. And to avoid adult supervision.

They kind of had a point.

I closed the roll book and blinked onto the baseball practice field, but a quick glance showed me that only three team members were in the dugout. Marco Gutierrez was missing.

After several more minutes of looking—I blinked into every men’s room in the building as well as both locker rooms—I finally found him under the bleachers in the gym, just as the bell rang. Lunch was over. In six minutes I’d be late to English.

I faded into the corporeal plane at his back—visible and audible only to him—then took a deep breath. “Marco? Are you okay?”

He turned, obviously startled, and the moment his gaze found me, it hardened in anger. His eyes narrowed. His nose flared. His fists clenched at his sides. And I knew one thing immediately, though it made no sense.

Marco Gutierrez wasn’t just angry. He was angry at me.

“Kaylee Cavanaugh. How kind of you to save me the trouble of searching for you.”

Chills raced up my spine and tingled at the base of my skull. Marco didn’t have such a formal, stilted speech pattern. And he had no reason to be mad at me, that I knew of. “Avari.”

Marco was possessed.

“You do not seem surprised to see me....” Marco lifted one brow and clasped his hands at his back in a gesture no high school junior makes, unless he’s standing at ease in ROTC.

“Surprised to hear from you? No. The escalating pattern of your intrusions into my life is pretty hard to miss. But I can’t say I expected to see you...there.” I waved one hand at the body he’d borrowed. The body of another relatively innocent, uninvolved classmate.

Still, seeing him by proxy was much better than seeing Avari in the flesh. And the fact that he hadn’t come in a body of his own told me he currently lacked the ability to come in a body of his own. Which was a huge relief.

“What do you want? And how did you get in there?” Hellions could only possess people who’ve died—even if they were resuscitated minutes later—people who’ve been to the Netherworld, and people they have some kind of personal connection to...

That last thought led me to the answer to my own question. “He huffed frost,” I concluded, and Avari frowned in confusion. “Demon’s Breath.  Your breath.”

“Ah. Yes, Mr. Gutierrez was among those who sampled the product your new lover delivered for me.”