“I wasn’t going to put it like that, but yes,” Tod said. “I blinked in and out around the perimeter of the building, because that’s safer than actually walking around the Netherworld, and at first it looked pretty bad. There were creatures clustered in groups too tight for me to see what they were looking at. But eventually the groups started breaking up and I got close enough to see that they were gathered around several spots of blood. Just a few drops. They’re tracking Mom and Brendon, but they haven’t found them yet.”

“But they will,” Nash said, and Sabine took his hand.

“Yes, eventually, they will.” Tod flinched, as if the truth hurt coming out. “Unless we find them first. But the good news is that the blood trail has stopped. The last thing I saw them gathered around was a strip of material. It was part of your dad’s shirt.” He glanced at Sophie, whose eyes were wide and damp. “It looks like he bandaged my mom’s wounds, which has slowed—or maybe even stopped—the bleeding. Which makes them harder to track.”

“Okay. Good.” I sat next to Tod when he held one hand out to me. “So, we’ll keep looking, in shifts. Me, Tod, and Sabine.” Because we could cross over safely if we were smart about it.

“I’m coming, too,” Sophie said. Before anyone could object, she rushed on, “Not alone. I’m not stupid, and I don’t want to die. But I can get there and back, so there’s no reason I can’t go with one of you. I can help.”

The rest of us must have looked skeptical, because she scowled at us all. “Four eyes are better than two, right?”

She’d said the opposite to Chelsea Simms during the two years she’d been stuck in glasses before her parents let her get contacts. But whatever. I liked Sophie 2.0 better anyway.

“Fine,” I said, and my cousin gave me a grim smile of thanks. “You can come with me, but not until you learn how to control that wail of yours. You don’t have to unleash it at full volume, you know.” Saying that reminded me that Harmony wasn’t there to teach Sophie like she’d taught me. I wasn’t entirely sure I could do her lessons justice.

“You can come with me, too,” Sabine said. “But the first time you do something stupid or put either of us in danger, I’m dragging you back here.”

“That won’t happen.” Sophie looked slightly less thankful for Sabine’s concession than she had for mine.

After that, we took up a collection and Emma ordered dinner for those who needed it while Sabine took a shift searching in the Netherworld and I tried to teach Sophie what I knew about the one bean  sidhe ability she’d inherited.

Turns out my cousin’s big mouth was more practical than I’d ever given it credit for.

Chapter Fifteen

Sabine’s shift took longer than it should have, because she couldn’t blink from place to place in the human world, nor could she become invisible to humans like Tod and I could. Which meant that she had to actually drive partway to the hospital to pick up the search where Tod had left off, and she had to be away from onlookers when she crossed over, so no one would see her disappear.

She was still gone when the Chinese food delivery arrived, and Sophie and I took a break so she could eat.

I left my cousin at the kitchen table with Luca and Emma scooping rice and chicken from cartons onto paper plates. Then I headed into the back of our small house in search of Tod and Nash.

Halfway down the hall, I heard them, one whispered masculine voice, then the other in answer, coming from my room. I stopped breathing so I could hear them better, torn between the knowledge that I shouldn’t be eavesdropping and the relief that for the first time since Nash and I had broken up, the Hudson brothers were alone in the same room and they weren’t fighting.

It was a moment I wanted to treasure. Definitely a moment I didn’t want to spoil. So I listened, just for a minute.

“The truth, Tod. You think she’s still alive?” Nash’s voice was low and strained. He was worried.

“Yeah, I do. I think Brendon would do just about anything to protect her.”

“He’s just one man.”

“Yeah, but he’s a smart man, and a big man, and a man who’s been around for more than a century and a half. He’s also a man who has every reason in the world to want to get both himself and our mom back here as soon as possible.” Tod paused, and I pictured him shrugging, though all I could see was my mostly closed door. “Anyway, if she were dead—if either of them were—Avari would want us to know. He’d want to feed from our suffering.”

“We’re suffering just from not knowing where they are. Or how they are.”

“But not like we would if we knew they were dead. Not knowing allows room for hope, and Avari can’t feed from worry and hope like he can feed from true pain.”

I snuck closer until I could see Nash through the gap between my door and its frame. He sat on the end of Emma’s bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, the toes of his shoes resting on the ground.

“Maybe they’re dead and he just doesn’t know it.” Nash’s gaze followed Tod as the reaper paced the rug in front of him, like he had energy to burn. Worried, angry energy. “Maybe one of those man-eating freaks killed them and ate them, and Avari hasn’t told us because he doesn’t know.”

Tod stopped pacing and sat on the edge of my desk. “I think it’s dangerous to assume there’s anything Avari doesn’t know.”