“Thanks.” I took the box and closed the door behind him, a little disturbed that I was only a little disturbed by the mention of his night job. “What’s the occasion?”

“No occasion. I need to talk to you, and I was hungry.”

Okaaay… “What do we need to talk about?” I set the pizza box on the coffee table and flipped open the lid to find the pie still steaming and gooey with cheese.

But instead of flopping into my dad’s favorite chair, Tod stood in the middle of my living room, watching me like he wasn’t sure what to do next. “Are you alone?”

“Not as alone as I was a minute ago,” I said, and at that, he cracked a smile—but a small one. “What’s up, Tod? Is something wrong?”

“We need to talk about Nash. And Sabine.”

I dropped onto the couch and grabbed a slice of pizza, then gestured for him to help himself. “Pizza isn’t enough to get me to talk about Sabine. You should have brought chocolate.” I chewed my first bite as he sank onto the opposite end of the couch, but made no move on the pizza. “She broke into my car this morning and wouldn’t get out, so I had to take her to work with me. Then she left my car unlocked, like a tribute to suburban crime statistics.”

Tod’s mouth quirked in a half smile. “You’re lucky she didn’t take a bat to it.”

“So I hear. That girl is seriously damaged.”

“I know. She came to see me after she left the theater.”

“At work?”

“Yeah. She’s hurting, Kaylee.”

“I know. Now explain the part where that’s my fault.”

“It’s not. But she’s not the only one. I talked to Nash after that.”

I frowned and swallowed another bite. “You have too much free time. Two jobs, yet you’re never at either of them. I’m in the wrong line of work.”

He shrugged and glanced at the pizza, but didn’t take a slice. “I have a lot of ‘driving’ time to kill, so I stopped by home—” by which he meant Nash’s home “—on the way to a delivery address.”

“Convenient.”

“Yeah.” He frowned. “It almost makes up for the whole walking corpse thing, huh?”

“Anyway…”

“Anyway, Nash is in bad shape, Kaylee. On Friday, he had been reunited with a good friend and was a couple of steps from getting back together with his girlfriend. Today he has neither one of those.”

“He has me,” I insisted. “We kinda made up. He even came over last night.” Or early this morning…

“Yeah. You ‘kinda’ made up. In the sense that he’ll drop everything to come running when you call, but you still haven’t forgiven him enough to deal with his problems. Which meansthat he’s still alone in every way that counts. And being alone is really hard on his willpower.”

I made myself swallow another bite. “By willpower, are we talking about resisting certain Netherworld addictive substances, or certain willing ex-girlfriends?”

“I’m talking about frost, Kaylee. Demon’s Breath. He can’t do this on his own, and Mom and I can’t be there all the time. Especially now that I have two jobs.”

“When were you ever there?”

“I was around. He just didn’t know it. But I’m not gonna let my brother start using again.” He looked right into my eyes then, and I saw a hint of true turmoil flicker in the cerulean depths of his eyes. Turmoil and…something else. Something even more aching and suppressed. “Being alone and in pain makes everything harder to resist, and right now Nash is hurting because he knows you can’t forgive him. And he’s resisting something that already has a hold on him. He’s fighting the undertow, Kaylee, and he needs your help.”

Nash hadn’t said anything to me about that. He didn’t talk to me about his cravings or the lingering effects of withdrawal, because he knew I wanted nothing to do with that part of his life.

“You think I should forgive him?” Like it was just that easy.

Tod blinked and met my gaze. “I think you should give him up. You need to let Sabine have him.”

20

“I NEED TO WHAT?” Tod was kidding. He had to be.

The reaper held two hands up in a defensive gesture. “Okay, just hear me out before you start yelling, okay?”

I nodded, because the truth was that I could barely speak, much less yell. My vocal cords were paralyzed by shock. Which almost never happens to a bean sidhe.

“Kay, you and Nash are no good for each other,” Tod said. I tried to interrupt, but he spoke over my inarticulate mumble. “You know it, even if you won’t admit it. He needs you, but you don’t need him.”

“That’s not true.” I shook my head, emphasizing my denial. “I do need him. I needed him last night.”

“No, you didn’t. He said that by the time he got there, you’d already expelled the hellion, tied up the host, and cut your dad loose, all by yourself. You’re so strong, and smart, and you never hesitate when something needs to be done, and that’s all…amazing.” Tod’s irises sparked with a sharp twist of bright blue before going suddenly still. “But Nash needs to be needed. You both want each other—even a dead man could see that—but you’ve changed, and he has nothing to offer you anymore, and eventually you’re going to realize that on your own. But probably not before you’ve wasted years of your life—and his—with the wrong guy.”