“I don’t know!” Emma shouted as his steps pounded after us. “She won’t tell me!”

And that was enough for Nash.

“Kaylee, stop!” he yelled, even as he raced after me. “Wait!” But I couldn’t stop. I’d let Nash down. I’d let Scott down. But I could save this one.

Thirty feet. My nose dripped, and my throat burned.

“Stay here,” Nash ordered Emma, but his footsteps never slowed. “Kaylee, stop!”

Twenty feet. The form against my car came into focus, his features coalescing in the swirling shadows to form a face I recognized. He raised the balloon. The weighted clip hit the ground.

Ten feet. My jaws ached from being clenched. My throat felt like I’d swallowed razors from holding back his soul song. My hands clenched into fists at my sides, pumping as I ran. And now I could hear him.

“Hudson, you’ve been holdin’ out on me!” His smile was joyous. Relieved. Uncomprehending. “I’ll pay you back….”

“No!” Nash shouted behind me, but I didn’t turn. There was no time. “It’s too strong!”

But Doug put the balloon to his mouth, anyway, and drew in a long, deep breath.

He smiled, even as he began to convulse….

17

“NO!” NASH YELLED AGAIN, and in the next instant, time seemed to shift into fast-forward. My world hurtled through space and time so quickly my head spun and the neighborhood around me swam in and out of focus.

Doug shook violently and fell against the car. Strands of shaggy brown hair flopped into his wide, empty eyes. His hands seized around the balloon. Demon’s Breath burst from it in a frosty white vapor. I skidded to a stop two feet from him, one hand over my mouth to hold the scream back. But I was out of breath and couldn’t help sucking in air through my nose to satisfy my abused lungs.

Strong hands grabbed my arms from behind, lifting me. The world spun around me as I inhaled. The air I pulled in was clear and cold. And clean. The hands shoved me forward and I stumbled onto the neighbor’s yard, my feet barely brushing the ground.

I fell facedown on cold, dead grass, recently sprayed green with fertilizer. My graceless landing jarred my mouth open, and the scream ripped free from my throat, calling out to Doug’s soul as it prepared to leave his body.

Doug fell forward, draped across the sidewalk, still convulsing. His shoes slammed into the road. His knuckles scraped the sidewalk. His skull bounced on the grass. Dark, translucent shadows swirled all around him.

The Nether-fog rolled in from nowhere, swallowing my world whole.

Nash grabbed the balloon he’d dropped and tied the opening into a quick knot, trapping what little vapor hadn’t escaped into the air. Then he dropped to his knees at Doug’s side, two fingers at his throat, feeling for a pulse, uninhibited by the fog he couldn’t see.

Isaw both layers of reality, and was desperate to separate them. To push the fog back. Yet still I screamed.

“No!” Emma’s mouth formed soundless words of denial. She sank into the fog next me, hands covering her ears, hunched over her knees in shock. Dark things scuttled around her, and revulsion skittered up my spine. Tears filled my eyes, then ran over. “No!” she shouted again, though I couldn’t hear her over my own screaming.

Nash looked up.

His eyes reflected pain, and regret, and guilt, and horror, swirling as madly now as they’d sat calm moments earlier. He left his friend still seizing in the fog and churning shadows and dropped to his knees beside me. Nash turned me so that I couldn’t see Doug. His lips brushed my ear, but I couldn’t hear him. He wasn’t using his Influence. Because I’d told him not to.

He leaned back and shouted at me, as Emma sobbed, but I couldn’t hear either of them. Yet I knew what Nash was saying. Pull it back. You can do it, Kaylee. You have to let him go….

It was hard. It was so hard without Nash’s help. But I couldn’t let him back in my head.

I closed my eyes and slapped both hands over my mouth, but that wasn’t enough. I could practically feel the gray haze lapping at my skin. I forced my jaw closed, but the screaming still leaked from my sealed lips, scraping my insides raw. So I swallowed it, fists clenched against the pain, locking the wail inside myself, where it bounced around my throat like a swarm of angry wasps.

When I opened my eyes, the fog was gone. Nash was still watching me. Doug was still convulsing. Em was still crying. Nash glanced from one of us to the other, and finally his anxious gaze settled on me. “Can you drive?” he asked, and I nodded, relieved to be able to hear him. I wasn’t sure I really could drive, with Doug’s death song consuming me from the inside, but Emma had been drinking.

It was either me or a cab.

“Okay.” He left Doug—still convulsing—and hauled Emma up by both arms, as gently as he had time for. “Em, you have to calm down. He’s still alive, and I’m going to do what I can for him.” We both knew Doug was as good as dead, but maybe Emma didn’t know I’d never yet had a false premonition. “But I need you and Kaylee to get out of here before she starts screaming again.” He walked with her as he spoke and carefully settled her into the passenger’s seat, then closed the door.

“Go straight to her house,” he said, circling the car to open my door for me as I held one hand firmly over my mouth.

“Drive slowly, just in case. I’ll call you later.”

I nodded. I would answer his call, even though we’d just had the biggest fight in the history of fights, because things weren’t as simple as “break up and make up” between me and Nash.