“You read him? In class?” I snapped. Was she trying to get caught?

“Yeah, and I probably won’t get another chance.” She shrugged, and a sly grin blossomed. “So I guess it’s a good thing I got what I needed on the first try, huh?”

Em stuck her spoon into her yogurt, where it stood straight up. “You know what he is?”

“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” I demanded, crossing my arms over my chest.

Sabine huffed. “Because this is a favor, not a charity. Nothing’s ever really free, Kaylee.”

“You’re a credit to capitalism. Now spill it.”

Sabine leaned over the table, and I scooted closer to hear her when she lowered her voice. “Okay, I’m about eighty-percent sure—”

“Eighty percent?” I bit back a groan.

“Reading fear isn’t an exact science, Kay,” Sabine snapped. Then she frowned and seemed to reconsider. “Okay, it kinda is, but it’s fear reading, not mind reading. The only things I know for sure are what he’s afraid of.”

Em waved her hand in a “get on with it” gesture. “And that would be…”

“Failing to procreate.”

“What?” Emma and I said in unison.

“He wants a baby. Specifically, a son.”

“Okay, I think he’s a little young to be so desperate for kids, but reproduction isn’t exactly the most dastardly of deeds,” Emma said.

But my stomach had started to pitch and a chill was crawling up my spine. Mr. Beck wasn’t human and he wanted a baby, but he was afraid he wouldn’t get one. Danica Sussman had just suffered the gruesome miscarriage of a baby that wasn’t her boyfriend’s, leaving her insides permanently damaged.

“He’s not young,” Sabine said, but I could barely hear her over the horrible conclusion building to a crescendo in my head. Beck—whatever he was—was preying on teenage girls. “In fact, he’s afraid he’s waited too long, and that he won’t live to see another fertile period.”

“Fertile period?” Emma echoed, and the picture refusing to come into focus in my head grew a little darker.

“What is he?” I stared at the table beneath my hands, concentrating on the grout between the tiles to focus my thoughts.

Sabine exhaled and crossed her arms on the slick four-inch tiles. “My best guess is…incubus. Our new math teacher is a no-shit, in-the-flesh lust-demon. What are the chances?”

“Pretty damn good, considering Eastlake High makes Buffy’s hellmouth look like a crack in the sidewalk.” I shoved hair back from my face and met Sabine’s black-eyed gaze, which practically sparked with anticipation—the sure sign of an adrenaline junkie. “What exactly are you basing this assessment on?”

“Other than the fact that he’s not human, but he lives on this side of the barrier?” she asked, and I nodded. “Mostly the fertile period part. Incubi are only capable of breeding, like, once a century. Or something like that. And if he’s afraid he’s too old, I’m guessing that rumor about him being twenty-two is way off base.”

“Wait, incubus?” Emma said, glancing back and forth between us, desperately trying to keep up. “Like, the band?”

I was starting to really regret my promise of full disclosure. “No. Like the psychic parasite.”

“Psychic…parasite?” If Em frowned any harder, her face would cave in on itself. “So, what? They drink thoughts?”

Sabine rolled her eyes. “The only thing worse than working with one clueless do-gooder is working with two.” She twisted on the bench to face Emma, and I leaned closer to listen. My knowledge of incubi was limited to a couple of stories from our mythology unit in English the year before, and if those were as inaccurate as the stories about “banshees,” then I really knew next to nothing.

“Psychic parasites feed from human energy, in one form or another. An incubus, specifically, feeds from lust.”

“Please tell me this means you’ve come up against one before,” I said, hoping for a ray of sunshine in what was otherwise turning out to be a very cloudy day.

“As interesting a story as that would have been…no.” Sabine actually sounded disappointed. “I did meet a succubus once, though. That’s the female version of an incubus,” she added, glancing at Emma. “We did not get along.”

“Color me shocked.”

“Okay…” Emma frowned at Sabine. “Incubi and maras both feed from human energy, right?” she said, and Sabine nodded, already scowling in advance of Emma’s point. “So that makes you different from Mr. Beck how?”

“When I feed, I don’t kill people,” Sabine snapped.

“Well, neither has he,” Em insisted. “We don’t even know for a fact that Danica’s baby was his.”

“Like I said, I’m eighty-percent sure of his species, and if I’m right about that, the probability of that being his baby is closer to ninety-nine percent.”

And if he’d lost both the baby and the ability to have another with Danica, would he be looking for a new potential mother from among his remaining students? Maybe…students who needed help with math?

“Can we please forget the percentage points?” Em groaned. “This is already too much like school.”

“And if he’s as old as I think he is, he has killed,” Sabine continued, ignoring Em’s complaint. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have survived this long.”