“He’s only been there six weeks,” I added, still stroking Styx’s fur while she slept. “He’s Mr. Wesner’s replacement. Sabine knew he wasn’t human, but we didn’t know anything was wrong until Danica Sussman had a miscarriage in the middle of first period on Friday, and it turns out the baby wasn’t her boyfriend’s,” I said, trying not to remember her on the floor, bleeding…

“Uh-oh.” Alec scuffed one hand over his tight, dark curls. “Okay, let’s start with the facts.” He popped his can open and took the first sip, then set it on an end table. “Incubi are all male, and they do feed from lust, either indirectly—kind of like sunbathing on a bright day—or directly, which involves…pretty much exactly what you’re thinking.”

“Ew!” I tried and failed to purge the visual of Mr. Beck feeding during sex, but Sabine only shrugged.

“At least you’d die happy.” Her brows rose. “Hey, maybe that’s how you’re gonna go, Kaylee….”

I shook my head, firmly denying the unease crawling slowly up my spine. “No way. No.” But I couldn’t deny the coincidence. Our new math teacher was a psychic leach and I was scheduled to die in four days. Please, please, please don’t let those two things be connected…

“Don’t worry.” Alec leaned forward to scratch behind Styx’s ears. “I doubt his charm would have much of an effect on either of you, considering you’re not human.”

“Charm?”

“It’s like sexual charisma, or some kind of strong, supernatural pheromone. He can direct it, to a certain extent, but a little bit of it is always going to leak out and draw people to him. And he, in return, can feed indirectly off the lust those people feel for him.”

“So, every time some poor student gets a crush on her math teacher, he has a little snack?” I said, horrified by the very concept.

“Yeah. Only he’s not limited to students. Or girls.”

“Lucky bastard!” Sabine set her can on the floor. “He doesn’t even have to wait for anyone to fall asleep.”

“Yeah. That’s the part of this that’s messed up.” I turned to Alec, trying to forget how much Sabine had in common with Mr. Beck, at least on the surface. “Any other incubus facts?”

“Well, you’re right about the breeding. The incubus fertility cycle lasts a hundred to one hundred twenty years, but they’re only actually fertile for twelve to fourteen months of that. The exact length of time varies, like a woman’s menstrual cycle.”

“That is nothing like a menstrual cycle,” Sabine said, and for once, I had to agree with her.

“So, what you’re saying is that Mr. Beck is ready to have kids for the first time in roughly a century, and he picked Danica Sussman to be the mother?”

“Well, I doubt she was the only one,” Alec said. “Incubi can breed with human women, but it takes a lot of work toproduce just one little baby incubus.”

“What does that mean?”

Alec shrugged. “I don’t have concrete numbers, but from what I’ve heard—” and because he’d spent a quarter of a century in the Netherworld, Alec’s information was the best we’d have access to “—for every dozen or so girls he gets pregnant, only one will give birth to a healthy baby boy. The rest will either miscarry or give birth to a girl.”

“So then Danica was just the first, right?” I asked. “There will be more like her?”

“Yeah, or there may already have been. He could have a whole string of miscarriages and pregnant girls behind him, but based on the fact that he’s still trying, I’m guessing he doesn’t have a son yet.”

“Who cares if it’s a boy?” Sabine asked. “What, he’s a sexist lust-demon?”

Alec actually laughed. “Only the boy babies are incubi. Girls share their mothers’ species and are usually considered worthless.”

“So, you can’t put an incubus and a human girl together and get a succubus?” I asked, sorting through the details in my head.

“Nope.” Alec shook his head. “They’re two completely different species. And consider yourself lucky you’re dealing with an incubus, because the only thing scarier than a succubus trying to get pregnant is a succubus who’s already pregnant. Talk about hormonal…”

“What did you mean about the girl babies being worthless?” Sabine asked, her eyes going dark again, and I realized he’d hit one of her hot buttons. As a toddler, Sabine was abandoned by her parents on a Dallas church doorstep, and after that, she’d bounced from one foster family to the next, for most of her life.

Alec shrugged. “They’re almost always abandoned by the incubus. As recently as a few decades ago, it was difficult for a mother to raise an illegitimate child alone, so the baby might have been abandoned by the mother, too. That’s not much of an issue today, though.” The mara didn’t answer, but I could see anger simmering quietly in the dark depths of her eyes.

“So, how does this charm work?” I asked, trying to redirect the discussion.

Alec shrugged. “I’ve never actually met an incubus, and I’m not sure his charm would work on me even if I liked guys, because I’m half-hypnos.” His father was a minor Netherworld creature who fed on the energy from sleeping humans, as it bled through the barrier between worlds. “But from what I understand, just being around him makes people…well, want him. If he’s reining it in, which he probably is in a public place, it’ll exaggerate the symptoms of physical attraction. Students may start competing for his attention. They’ll flirt and try to impress him. They’ll touch him and try to get him to touch them. They’ll become infatuated with him very quickly and personally offended by criticism of him.”