When I stopped talking I realized I stood in front of the mirror, where Tod was wetting a rag at the sink. Which is when I noticed that blood streaked the lower right side of my face, from where Ira’s hand had trailed down my chin. And that more of it was smeared around my mouth, like a clown’s lipstick, in spite of my attempt to wipe it off.

I didn’t just look angry. I looked scary.

“Kaylee, I’m so sorry.” Tod wrung out the rag and started wiping blood from the back of my jaw. “Whose is this? What happened?”

“I summoned Ira.”

His hand went still, and his irises churned with tight, twisting streaks of cobalt fear. “You what? How? Why?”

“I summoned him with my blood—this is all mine—and his name. Because I couldn’t get a hold of anyone else who could help me.”

“Please tell me you did not make a deal with a hellion of wrath.”

“I’m not going to lie to you.”

“Oh, Kaylee.” He sank onto the edge of the tub, the rag in his hand forgotten as he stared up at me in true fear. “What did you do?”

“I asked him to get my dad back safely, but the price was too high. He wanted my soul. I said no.”

Tod slumped with relief for a second, then sat straighter and pushed pale curls back from his forehead. “So what’s with the blood?”

“He said he’d tell me where my dad was being held for a smaller fee.”

“What fee?” There was no end to the depth of his voice in those two words. They were a bottomless chasm of fear and dismay and dread, and I stood on the brink, poised to fall in. Balancing on the edge. “What did you do?”

“He just wanted a kiss.” My tears finally fell, and they burned all the way down my cheeks. “He wanted a taste of my anger, so he wiped my own blood on my mouth and kissed me. And I let him.”

Tod blinked at me. His arms rested against his legs, his hands hanging between his knees, and his eyes were so still. Still like true death. And for the first time since I’d met him, he looked like I might have expected a reaper to look. Like death itself, he was both the object that could not be moved and the force that could not be resisted, and the longer he stared at me without reacting—without showing a single ripple of emotion beneath his frozen-lake eyes—the deeper my heart ached, until I thought it would split open and fall apart.

“Please say something.” I sank onto the closed toilet seat, my knees inches from his. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what else to do. I would take it back if I could, but I’m not going to lie about it, and... Are you mad?”

“You kissed a hellion.”

My heart pumped once, painfully, then stopped. “Yes, but it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like kissing you—”

“I sure as hell hope not!” A single thread of ice-blue anger twisted through his irises, then they burst into a dizzyingrange of shades from cornflower to cobalt, displaying a storm of emotion like I’d never seen. Anger. Fear. Jealousy. Confusion. Frustration. They were all there, but the scariest of all was grief, as if he’d lost something he couldn’t get back.

As if we’d lost something...

He stood, and I stood in front of him, as if I could possibly block a reaper’s path if he wanted to leave. “No. Tod, wait.” I put one hand on his chest, feeling for his heartbeat, but it wasn’t there. “It wasn’t like that. I swear on my afterlife. I swear on my soul. It wasn’t a kiss like people kiss. I don’t think hellions even truly understand why people kiss. This was an exchange of information.”

“It was an exchange of saliva.” That churning continued in his eyes, and my heart shattered when I saw a midnight twist of disappointment.

“No!” I grabbed his hand—if he tried to blink out, he’d have to take me with him. “Well, yes, but it wasn’t about saliva. It was about blood. My blood, and the anger it carried. That’s what he wanted.”

“That’s part of what he wanted.” Instead of pulling his hand away, Tod squeezed mine, like everything important he wanted to say could be read in his grip, when I couldn’t make any sense of what I saw in his eyes. “He wanted to taste your anger, but he also wanted to cause more of it. And he did, right? Making you kiss him pissed you off, didn’t it? It’s sure as hell pissing me off, and he probably wanted that, too. Nothing hellions want is simple, Kaylee. Nothing they take is simple, either, and they always take more than you realize you’re giving.”

Suddenly the maelstrom churning in his eyes collapsed into a single sapphire coil of pain. “I can’t stand the thought of him touching you.” His free hand rose, and his thumb brushed the fullest part of my lower lip, still crusted with dried blood. “Kissing you... I don’t even know what he looks like, but I can’t stop seeing it.”

I tried to breathe and realized I couldn’t. “I’m sorry.” More tears trailed down my cheeks, and I took the rag from the sink where he’d dropped it. The cloth was cold now, but I swiped at my face furiously, scrubbing the blood off without the benefit of the mirror, trying to erase what I’d done. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could take it back, but I can’t, and I had to do something. I can’t just leave my dad there, but I’m so sorry for how I paid, and if I lose you—”

“Kaylee. Stop.” Tod took the rag and stared at it for a second. Then he used one clean corner to gently wipe the blood I’d missed from around my lips. “You’re not going to lose me. I’m not happy about what happened, but losing you would make that worse, not better. You’re never going to lose me, and certainly not because one of hell’s ambassadors bullied you into kissing him.”