Something told me that getting us all out of the Netherworld would not be as easy as Alec seemed to think….

23

TOD HAD TO REPORT to work at noon, but before he popped out of my living room at three minutes ’til, he swore he’d be back by five o’clock. That he would find someone to cover his shift, even though he’d already burned most of those bridges with his previous absences. Then he disappeared from my reality, leaving me alone with thoughts of my missing father and boyfriend.

Well, with those, and with Sophie’s phone.

Great.

With a frustrated sigh, I grabbed her phone and my keys, then shrugged into my coat on the way out the door. All the way to Sophie’s house, I tried out different explanations for how I’d gotten her phone, and why she’d woken up on her living-room floor with a big bump on the back of her head. But my efforts turned out to be unnecessary—she was still unconscious when I got there.

My old house key still worked, and when I pushed the front door open, I found Sophie lying facedown on the living-room floor, her cheek against the carpet, her eyes closed.

She looked so fragile without her figurative fangs bared at me, or her eyes flashing in bitter triumph over the advantages her life had over mine. Unconscious, she looked frail and tragically human, and it was easier than usual to remind myself that she hadn’t chosen her own path in life any more than I had chosen mine. And she certainly hadn’t chosen to have her body hijacked by a nefarious Netherworld entity she didn’t even know existed.

Even if she had deserved the whack on the head. Speaking of which…

I knelt on the spotless white carpet next to the huge remote control and gently prodded the lump on the back of my cousin’s skull. Sophie didn’t even flinch. How hard had Tod hit her?

Resigned, I sat on the coffee table and slid my cell from my front pocket, dialing my uncle’s cell number from my contacts list. He answered on the second ring.

“Kaylee? What’s wrong?”

Jeez, what isn’t wrong? I honestly had no idea where to start, without completely freaking him out. “Okay, Uncle Brendon, I have to tell you something, but first I need you to promise you won’t tell Harmony. I swore to Tod that we’d keep his mother out of this, no matter what.”

Something clicked, and background music died, leaving only highway noise and the sound of his engine. He was in the car. Hopefully on the way home. “Did something happen to Nash?”

I sighed. “Just promise, or I can’t tell you until it’s over.”

“Kaylee, you’re scaring me…”

“Then promise.”

He exhaled heavily. “I promise.”

“Thank you.” I sucked in a deep breath, then spit the whole story out, as coherently as I could, considering my current state of exhaustion, stress, andfear. “Avari the hellion of greed is holding Nash and my dad in the Netherworld, and after he took them, he possessed Sophie so he could call me and try to talk me into trading myself for them. But I know he’s not really going to send them back. So Tod hit Sophie on the back of the head with your universal remote to kick Avari out of her body. It worked, but now Sophie’s unconscious on the living-room floor with a big bump on her head. Could you come home and take a look at her? And maybe let me nap on your couch for a couple of hours?”

For a moment, there was only silence on the other end of the line. Then my uncle released the breath he’d been holding. “I’ll be right there.” The phone went dead in my hand, and I smiled, more relieved than I could express that he and my father were two completely different people.

Twenty-five minutes later, my uncle walked through his own front door, and he seemed almost as relieved to find me still there as he was upset to find Sophie still unconscious. “I think part of it is exhaustion from being possessed,” I said as he knelt beside me. “Emma slept for a long time afterward, too.”

“Emma Marshall?” he asked, gently turning his daughter over. “This hellion possessed her, too?”

I nodded solemnly. “Tod said that so long as they’re sleeping, he can get anyone with a connection to the Netherworld. Which Em and Sophie both have, since they’ve both been technically dead.”

“Yes, but that takes an enormous amount of energy from a hellion. He shouldn’t be able to do it very frequently or for very long.” He brushed Sophie’s hair back from her face and pulled back her eyelids to check her dilation. “Otherwise, you’d hear about people committing crimes in their ‘sleep’ all the time.”

I shrugged and perched on the end of the coffee table. “Well, he has a proxy, and Tod thinks he’s feeding off my dad and Nash, now that he has them.”

Uncle Brendon’s expression went as hard as I’ve ever seen it. “I’ll kill him.” Presumably Avari, not Tod. Tod was already dead. But was Avari actually living?

“That’d be great, except we don’t think you can kill a hellion, and you can’t cross over on your own.”

“Take me.” He stood in one fluid motion, lifting his daughter like a sleeping toddler.

“No way.” I shook my head. “You have to stay here and watch Sophie, to make sure Avari doesn’t take her over again.” And because you can neither defend yourself in nor escape from the Netherworld… “Don’t leave her vulnerable just because you want revenge, Uncle Brendon.”

“I don’t just want revenge.” My uncle stomped down the hall and into Sophie’s room so quickly I had to jog to keep up.