“She…? Oh, Lydia.” Tod brushed one stubborn blond curl from his forehead. “Yeah. I mean, she’s scared to be on her own, but anything’s better than that place.” He glanced over his shoulder at Lakeside. “And she has your number, right?”

“Yeah.” As I drove home, I played with the idea of inviting her to stay at my house. In a perfect world, that would have been…perfect. My dad needed someone to take care of, and he was about to lose me. Lydia needed to be taken care of, and she couldn’t go back to her own parents.

But if we lived in a perfect world, I wouldn’t be days from death and Lydia wouldn’t have been locked up in the first place. The reality was that she could never take my place, and my dad would probably be in no shape to take care of anyone for a while after his grand scheming failed and I died.

How could there possibly be so many things left to fix, and so little time in which to fix them?

“You wanna come in?” I asked, as I pulled my key from the engine.

Tod looked at me in the light shining through the windshield from the porch light. “Don’t you need to do some homework, or get a good night’s sleep, or something equally wholesome?”

I pushed open my car door. “I am no longer attending school for the purpose of education. At this point, I’m only showing up to keep an eye on Mr. Beck. And speaking of evil demon sires, I have a theory I need to verify. Interested in helping?”

The reaper shrugged. “I have nothing else planned till midnight.”

“Good.” I got out of the car and shoved my door closed as he stepped right through his. “That gives us five hours to…” Oh, crap. I glanced at my cell phone screen again, then groaned. It was just after seven.

I’d stood Nash up. Again.

I took several steps toward the house, then froze when my gaze landed on the front porch. Where Nash sat watching us.

“You know, pretty soon I’m going to start taking this personally.”

13

“Hey, I’m sorry. I lost track of time.”

Nash stood as I unlocked the door, but instead of following me inside, he stepped into the doorway, one hand on either side of the frame. Symbolically blocking Tod from entering, since he couldn’t physically keep the reaper from doing anything. “I need to talk to Kaylee.”

“So talk.” Tod disappeared from the front porch, then reappeared next to me in the living room, and when Nash turned around, his eyes were flashing in anger.

“This is private.”

Tod opened his mouth, then seemed to change his mind about whatever he was going to say and looked at me instead, brows raised in question.

I nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks for…everything.” But I owed Nash both an apology and anexplanation.

Tod disappeared from my living room as fast as he’d appeared, and Nash closed the front door and leaned against it, watching me. “What happened?”

I collapsed onto the couch next to Styx, and ran one hand over her fur. “Sabine figured out that Beck’s an incubus, and Alec said that if he’s in heat, or whatever, Danica probably isn’t the first student he’s slept with, so we did some research and figured out—”

Nash shook his head. “I know all that. I talked to Sabine while I was waiting on your front porch. For almost an hour.” He dropped into my dad’s armchair and stared at me across the coffee table. “What happened with Tod?”

“With Tod?” I said. And then his meaning sank in, and my gaze dropped. I hadn’t done anything wrong—other than breaking into Lakeside and springing a patient—but I couldn’t deny that I knew what he meant. Not anymore.

“Don’t let him do this, Kaylee.”

“I’m not letting him do anything,” I said, as exhaustion, confusion, and fear crashed over me, drawing all of the day’s overwhelming risks and revelations into one sharp point of focus. “What good is it going to do for us to have this conversation? I’m sorry I stood you up, but nothing happened with Tod.”

Nash blinked. “But you know how he feels?”

“I kinda figured it out.” But not as soon as I should have. Maybe if my life wasn’t full of nightmares, and hellions, and incubi, I would have had time to stop and notice what was going on with the people in my life who weren’t trying to kill me.

“Then why are you still hanging out with him? How am I supposed to take that?”

“He’s my friend, Nash.” Styx twitched in her sleep beneath my hand, and I watched her, wishing my life was as simple as hers. Eat. Sleep. Growl at everyone you don’t like. There was something to be said for simplicity.

“No.” Nash shook his head and leaned forward in the chair, elbows on his knees, trying to catch my gaze. “He’s in love with you, Kaylee.”

“That’s…” Wait. What? I hadn’t thought it through using those words. I hadn’t realized…

My heart pounded, and I didn’t know how to interpret the sudden lurch of my stomach into my throat.

“No,” I said, trying not to remember Tod holding my hand in the adolescent ward, or pulling me out of the Netherworld right before Avari could grab me, or staying all night with me and Emma to make sure no one tried to possess her again. Or telling me I don’t belong with Nash… “But even if he is, what does it matter, Nash? Really. I’m going to die in a few days, and after that, none of this will matter.”