I concentrated on my dad. On the thought of bringing him home. Of keeping him safe. And I kept my eyes wide open, even though Ira seemed to be enjoying whatever he saw in them.

Instead of leaning toward me, he dipped one finger into the pool of blood between us, careful not to smudge his name. Then he reached for me, and before I realized what he intended, he ran his finger over my lower lip, coating it in my blood.

The moment he touched me, anger swelled inside me, hot and bright. Raging almost out of control. I was drowning in it. Choking on it. He traced my upper lip with what remained of the blood on his finger, and that anger inside me tried to burst through my chest.

When he could clearly see the rage churning in my irises, he leaned forward and slid one hand behind my neck. He pulled me closer, and we met in the middle over the blood on the floor.

His mouth touched mine, and every grievance I’d ever harbored was suddenly there in the front of my mind. All of them at once. Everything from the boy who’d pushed me off the swings on my first day of kindergarten to the hatred I’d felt for Sabine the day I met her.

His lips opened, and his tongue slid into my mouth. I tasted my own blood, but beneath that, I tasted him. I expected him to taste like anger. Like rage. But Ira tasted like calm. Like peace, perfect and still. And as we kissed, he pulled the anger from me. He sucked it out of me. Yet the fury burning within me never abated.

My cup ran over, and though he drank and drank, kissing me deeper and deeper, the fount of rage inside me only seemed to swell, and I couldn’t pull away because I needed him to take it. All of it. I couldn’t exist with that much bitter fury storming inside me, so I gave it to him, and I kept giving.

And Ira kept taking.

I didn’t come back to myself until he made a noise. A deep moan of satisfaction against my lips. Somehow inside my mouth. That’s when I realized what was happening. What I’d done. And what it damn well better buy me.

I shoved him away and his hand trailed around my neck and over my chin as he let me go. “Enough!” I swiped the back of my uncut hand across my lips, and it came away bloody.

“Oh, that will never be enough for me, little fury. But it’s enough to make your hellion of avarice green with envy. Which will then produce hate, maybe for you, certainly for me. And the only thing more powerful than righteous anger is the rage of a hellion.”

“You got what you wanted. Now pay up.”

“I’d say there’s no need to get angry, but we both know I like it.” He chuckled again, then licked my blood from his dark, dark lips. “Your father is being held in the basement of the local insane asylum. Are they still called that? But you won’t be able to retrieve him. And when you return for my help again, the price will be higher....” Ira winked one black eye at me and swiped hispalm across the floor between us, smudging his name into a smear of my blood.

Then he faded from the human world, right in front of me.

I shuddered with revulsion and wished desperately for something to wash the taste of my own blood from my mouth. I closed my eyes, and silent tears slid down my cheeks. Then I sucked in a deep breath and made myself still. Completely motionless, as only the dead can do. No heartbeat. No pulse. No breathing. A moment of self-imposed, absolute calm while I tried to control the anger Ira had left coursing through me.

It didn’t work. In the end, I could only ride the wave while the pressure built inside me, pushing me toward an edge I didn’t know how to come back from.

When I realized I couldn’t just bury that much anger, I opened my eyes, swiped my hand over the blood finally starting to dry on the tile floor, just in case, then blinked into my own bathroom.

My house still felt empty when I arrived—there were no voices, and Styx was there to greet me almost instantly, which she wouldn’t have done if she was standing watch over guests or intruders. So I rinsed my bloody hand in the bathroom sink, blotted it dry around the cut, then dug beneath the counter for a large bandage.

I didn’t even glance in the mirror, because I was afraid of what I’d find. Afraid that I’d see the rage that had drawn Ira to me. The rage he’d fed, damn it, and that if I saw that in myself, I’d know he was right about me. That I was changing. That I was fighting for revenge, rather than justice.

Instead, I turned and stomped into the hallway—and ran smack into Tod, who was scowling at his phone. “Hey, Kaylee, I have a missed call from you and five nasty voice mails from Nash. What’s going—” He looked up from his phone and his eyes widened. “What happened?” His gaze dropped to my chin, and he shoved his phone into his pocket, then turned my face to the right for a better look. “Is that blood? Are you okay?”

“Where the hell were you?” Tears filled my eyes, and I spoke through teeth clenched to stop the flow of more angry words I knew I had no right to speak. Tod wasn’t the problem. I was angry. I wasn’t thinking straight.

“I was in the Netherworld. They don’t have cell towers. What happened?”

With one glance at the concern in his eyes, my anger fled and guilt washed over me.

“Avari took my dad. Again.” I let him lead me into the bathroom. “I have to go after him, but I don’t think I can get to him on my own without going through Avari, so I called everyone, but Nash was the only one who answered. Well, Sabine answered my uncle’s phone, but they can’t come because Sophie committed her first criminal act, and the police aren’t a forgive-and-forget kind of operation.”