I stepped back, surprised. “What’s wrong with you? You’re being a dick.” And whatever was wrong with him was about more than a couple of strung out friends. It had to be.

Nash sighed and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I just don’t want you driving around with that in your car. Please let me take care of it, so I won’t have to worry about you.”

“Fine.” It was not fine, but I didn’t want to argue. Again.

“Give me your bag.” I rounded the car and opened the trunk, standing ready in case the weighted balloon somehow rose and escaped. It did not. Instead of handing me his bag, Nash leaned into the trunk with it and shoved the balloon inside, then zipped it before anyone could see what he was doing. “Don’t get caught with that,” I warned. None of the teachers would know what it was, but anyone who’d seen Scott’s melt-down might. “And don’t forget to put his key back.”

He grinned, good mood intact once again. “I’m a big boy.”

“I know.” But on the drive to work with Emma, all I could think about was Nash walking around with a balloon full of Demon’s Breath in his backpack, where anyone might find it.

So after a later-than-expected shift at the Cinemark, I called him as I was getting ready for bed—I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I knew he’d safely disposed of the balloon. He assured me he had given it to Tod, and we talked for about half an hour, until my dad knocked on my door and told me to hang up and go to sleep.

Rolling my eyes, I said good-night to Nash and turned off my lamp. But even once I’d curled up with one leg tossed over my extra pillow, I couldn’t stop the slideshow playing behind my eyes.

Doug’s car smashing into mine.

Scott’s fit in the parking lot.

Nash holding the stolen balloon.

We were in deep with the Demon’s Breath, and as I lay in my dark room, trying to sleep, something told me that taking Scott’s stash was about as helpful as plugging a hole in the Hoover Dam with a chewed-up piece of gum….

7

“NOOOO!” MY OWN SHOUT echoed in my head like gunfire in a closed room, shocking me into semiawareness in spite of the thick gray haze swirling languidly around my ankles. The haze was like smoke—heavier than air and impossible to see through—except that it carried no heat and no stench of burned debris.

Hesitant to move when I couldn’t see my surroundings, I turned in place, then turned again, searching the gray haze desperately for some familiar landmark. Or even an unfamiliar landmark. For anything that could tell me where I was. But I saw nothing but more grayness, as if I’d gone blind, and what lay behind my eyelids now was not the sparking, staticky darkness of closed eyes, but a vast, featureless expanse of gray.

A thing of nightmares.

Okay,Kaylee, think! I demanded silently. Why were you screaming?

For one long, terrifying moment, the answer wouldn’t come. I didn’t know why I’d been screaming. Then I sucked in a deep, fog-bitter breath and held it, focusing on how thick and oily the grayness tasted in my mouth. I wanted to spit it out, but I couldn’t stop breathing it, because there was no fresh air to be found.

Then the answer came to me, slithering softly into my head like a snake into the solace of a dark pond. Hoping to escape notice.

I’d had a premonition. I’d been screaming because someone was going to die.

Crap! I was in the Netherworld. I had to be, because no place in my world had fog like the thick haze oozing over my jeans to curl around my hands, brushing my fingers like swabs of damp cotton.

Wait, that wasn’t right, either. I’d never actually seen fog in the Netherworld. I’d only seen it layered over my own reality when I peeked into the Netherworld. So, was I peeking? And if so, why could I now feel the fog, which had always been a simple visual element before?

Something was wrong. I wasn’t in the real Netherworld. I was in some stylized version of it as if I were…

Dreaming.

That’s it! I was asleep, dreaming about someone’s death. Which put me in some dream version of the Netherworld, the best approximation my subconscious mind could come up with. And even as that truth sank in, the scream welled up in my throat again, greeting the dark, fuzzy form coming toward me out of the fog.

The walking dead.

It was human. Or at least humanlike, with head and shoulders in the proper proportions, and presumably matching pairs of arms and legs. I couldn’t tell the figure’s gender, though it was only feet from me now, because it was thoroughly obscured by the grayness, which seemed to thicken even as I thought of it.

I clamped my jaws shut against the scream scraping my throat raw and clenched my fists hard enough to draw blood with my nails, hoping to wake myself up. To leave this sleep-version Netherworld before I saw whose demise I was dreaming. Whose death my subconscious was predicting with every bit of stubborn certainty my waking body put into each screech that left my mouth.

But nothing happened. I felt no pain in my palms, saw no blood, and certainly did not wake up. And the figure kept coming.

Five feet away now, and its steps made no sound on the ground. Four feet away, yet there was no brush of fabric or click of heels.

Three feet, and the features started to come into focus through the Nether-smog. A nose. Two shadowy eyes, like the hollows of an unlit jack-o’-lantern. And a mouth like a great, dark void…

My throat hurt so bad I thought it would swell shut. It felt like I’d swallowed rose stems, thorns and all, and someone was trying to pull them back up.