I’m sure my grin looked more like a grimace. “And for this…” I propped my foot on the dash again and pulled up my jeans cuff to reveal my ankle. At which point my grimace contorted into an expression of disgust and fear, and my words trailed into shocked silence.

My ankle was twice its normal size. The flesh beneath the double ring of punctures was inflamed and covered in those weird, red webbed veins, which now crept beneath my sock and halfway to my knee. Fluid sloshed beneath the skin over my ankle, hanging lower at the back, just above my shoe, where gravity tugged hardest.

Nash’s sudden intake of breath hissed throughout the car, and I looked up to see him watching me, rather than the road. “Kaylee, we have to get that looked at.”

“Ya think?” I tried to smile, but my sense of humor had deserted me. “Eyes on the road!”

He jumped, then turned the wheel back on course, but kept sneaking glances at my ankle while I tried to decide whether or not to poke it. “That antibiotic cream made it worse,” I said. “Will a human doctor even know what to do for this?”

“I doubt it.” Nash divided his attention between my ankle and the lightly populated highway. “But Mom will.”

I glanced at Tod, eager for a second opinion. “What do you think? Can this wait?”

The reaper swallowed thickly and studied my ankle for a moment. Then he met my gaze, his blue eyes shadowed in the backseat. “I think so.”

“You sure?” I asked. Because he didn’t sound very sure.

“Yeah.” Tod nodded firmly. “You’ll be fine. We’re not looking to drag this out, anyway.”

“Okay. Good.” I sank back into my seat, feeling a little better now that we’d decided on a course of action. “As soon as we’re done at Prime Life, we’ll call your mom and have her meet us at your house,” I said to Nash, then twisted to look at Tod. “I’ll call Addy and tell her we’re on the way. You go find this hellion. Avari. But try not to let him see you. And if he does, don’t tell him we’re bringing Addy and Regan. Somehow I doubt he’ll be eager to give their souls back, even if he thinks he’ll be getting two more in exchange.”

For once, Tod nodded without arguing. Then he gave me an unexpected kiss on the cheek and disappeared with Nash’s phone before I could recover from the surprise.

“I take it that’s a thank-you,” I mumbled, rubbing the spot on my cheek where the reaper’s lips had touched me. They were warmer than I’d expected from a dead man.

Nash huffed, but he didn’t really look mad. His brother’s kiss spoke more of gratitude than anything else.

While he watched out for our exit, squinting beneath streetlights at regular intervals, I pulled my phone from my pocket. But before I could scroll through thecall history for Addy’s number, a small message at the bottom of the display popped up to tell me I’d missed five calls.

Crap. My dad had discovered my empty bed.

Please tell me he didn’t call the police!

Three messages were from him, as expected. The first two had come in less than an hour after I’d left the house, while we were in the Netherworld bargaining with the fiend the first time. They were virtually identical—my father’s angry voice demanding to know where I was, and what the hell I was doing. My dad didn’t cuss much. Only when he was really, really mad. Or scared.

The third call was from Emma, warning me that my father had called her house at one o’clock in the morning. Which woke her mother up and led to all kinds of questions Emma’d had to dance around.

Oops. I made a mental note to bake a pan of brownies for Emma, too, to try to make up for the trouble I was getting her into.

Fortunately, her mother hadn’t noticed the missing car, and it hadn’t occurred to my father—yet, anyway—to ask if I’d borrowed it.

The fourth call was from Harmony, who was worried, and even sounded a little angry. She said my dad was “beside himself” and about two seconds from driving the streets in search of me. Then she wanted to know if I’d seen Nash, who wasn’t answering his phone, either. Which meant he would have messages, too.

That was her way of warning us that she knew we were in this together—whatever this was—and that we’d better have a good explanation when we finally turned ourselves in.

I liked Harmony, and I was afraid that once she found out what we were doing, she’d shorten the long leash Nash had enjoyed since way before I’d met him. And that would be my fault, too.

The fifth call was from my dad again, saying he was going to drive around town looking for me, and if he hadn’t heard from me by three, he’d go to the police.

Wonderful.

A quick glance at the clock on my phone display said it was two fifty-four in the morning. “I gotta call my dad,” I said, glancing at Nash in dread. He nodded grimly, having obviously heard at least part of the messages.

As my dad’s phone rang in my ear, I tugged my pants leg down and set my foot on the floor, gasping when even that slight movement made the accumulated fluid slosh.

“Kaylee?” my dad barked into my ear. “Is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me. I’m fine,” I added before he could ask. And that was true, relatively speaking. I hadn’t been mugged, or kidnapped, or turned out on the streets. “Look, I don’t have much time to talk, but the bottom line is that I’m sorry I snuck out, but I had to. I have to finish something important, then I’ll be home. A couple of hours, at most.”