“You didn’t stop her.”

“I was about to…”

“Yeah. You can tell from how far down her throat your tongue was…” Tod said, sarcasm threaded boldly through each word.

Nash turned on him. “This is none of your business. What are you even doing here?”

“You owe me $15.99. Plus tip.”

Nash looked confused until he noticed Tod’s uniform. “I’ll owe you,” he finally snapped. “Get out.”

“I’m going, too.” I headed for the door as Sabine’s car started in the driveway.

“Kaylee, wait.”

“Where’s her bra?” I asked, my hand already on the doorknob.

Nash closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, miserably. “She wasn’t wearing one.”

18

“KAYLEE!”

Someone grabbed my shoulder and my head flopped forward as he shook me.

My eyes flew open. Alec stood over me, his hair rendered even darker by the halo of light shining around his skull from the fixture overhead. His brown eyes were wide and worried, his generous lips thinned into a tight frown.

“What?” I wasn’t even dreaming, much less having a nightmare. In fact, he’d interrupted the first almost-peaceful sleep I could remember getting in the past few days.

And even as that thought faded, I realized the problem—I was supposed to be watching him, not dozing. I’d insisted that he take the first shift sleeping under the assumption that my dad would get back from my uncle’s house—where they were conferring about the sudden spike in the teacher mortality rate at Eastlake—while Alec was still asleep. That way I could explain about Avari’s murder-by-proxy without having to break my promise to Alec to his face.

Obviously I’d underestimated my own exhaustion.

“Sorry.” I sat up and wiped an embarrassing dribble from the corner of my mouth. “Is my dad home yet?”

“No,” Alec said, and I glanced at my alarm clock in surprise. It was just after midnight. “Kaylee, this isn’t going to work.” He sank onto the edge of my rumpled bedspread, broad shoulders sagging in frustration and obvious fatigue. “How are we supposed to watch each other if neither of us can stay awake?”

“I’m fine,” I insisted, standing to stretch. “I just need some coffee.”

“If you guzzle caffeine, you won’t be able to sleep when it’s your turn, either, and that’ll just make everything worse.” Alec hesitated, and I read dread clearly in his expression. “You’re gonna have to tie me up.”

“What? No.” I sat on the edge of my desk and pushed tangled hair back from my face, hoping I’d heard him wrong. “I’m not going to tie you up, or down, or any otherdirection!”

“Kay, I don’t think we have any choice. Avari’s just waiting for a chance to get back into my head, and how happy do you think Sabine’s going to be with you, after her little stunt tonight failed?”

I’d given him the short version of my visit with Nash, skipping my promise to fill my dad in on everything.

“If either of us falls asleep at the wrong time, things are going to get a whole lot worse.”

My tired brain whirred, trying to come up with a viable alternative, but in the end, I was too worn out to think clearly, much less argue. Survival and a good night’s sleep trumped my deep-seated aversion to restraints—born of my week-long stay in the mental health ward—so I finally relented and trudged into the garage for the coil of nylon rope looped over a long nail on the wall.

In my room again, I turned my stereo on and cranked the volume, hoping the noise would keep me awake. Then Alec helped me cut the rope into workable sections and showed me how to tie a proper knot. Evidently he’d had practice restraining…things…for Avari in the Netherworld.

I bet the hellion never thought that particular skill could be used against him, and that thought made me smile, in spite of encroaching exhaustion, and the disturbing reality of what I was about to do.

The plan was for me to tie Alec to the chair in one corner of my room—the one I’d woken up in—but the back was one solid, padded, curved piece of wood, with nothing to tie his hands to. The desk chair was no better, and since I wasn’t willing to tie him up in the living room, where my dad would see him before I’d had a chance to explain, our only other option was my bed.

I cannot begin to describe my mortification—or the flames burning beneath every square inch of my skin—when I knelt at the head of my bed to secure Alec’s right arm to my headboard. “It’s okay, Kaylee,” he insisted, head craned so he could watch me while he voluntarily submitted to something that would have sent me into a blind panic. “This’ll keep us both safe.”

“I know.” But I didn’t like it, and my revulsion didn’t fade when I tied his other hand, or bound his first foot to the metal frame beneath the end of my mattress. I had trouble with the final knot, but had almost secured his right ankle when a sudden hair-prickling feeling and a subtle shift in the light told me that someone was behind me.

“What in the hell are you doing?” my father demanded, his voice low and dark.

I whirled around so fast I fell onto one knee, and the end of the rope trailed through my fingers to hang slack. My dad stood in my doorway, his irises swirling furiously in some perilous combination of anger and bewilderment.

The music had covered his footsteps, and evidently the sound of his car.