“Sure we are.” Emma rolled her eyes and took another drink. “We’re going to sock it to the immortal hellions capable of squashing us like ants on the sidewalk. So what if they can’t be killed, or caught, or even hurt, as far as we know. Maybe we can kill them with kindness. Or maybe they’ll see us wearing our big-boy pants, all ready to take them down, and they’ll die laughing. That’s the only way we’re going to get them. I know nothing about the Netherworld, but I know that.”

“I have a plan, Em. A good one.”

“I know you do. I’m sorry.” She shoved limp brown hair back from her face and sat, still holding her glass. “I just... I attended my own funeral today. There’s just no way to improve a day that started with throwing clods of dirt on your own coffin.”

“I know.” My hand tightened around Tod’s. I hadn’t seen myself buried, but I had been...well...murdered. Sacrificed, in fact. As a virgin.

Cliché? Sure. Painful? Hell, yes.

Reversible?

Nope.

“Well, at least you’re compatible roommates,” Sabine said as Luca headed into the kitchen. “Kaylee’s dead, but pretending to live in her own body, and Emma’s alive in someone else’s body, but faking death. Your living situation was meant to be. Unlike mine.” The mara threw an angry glance at my cousin.

Since her foster mother’s death, Sabine had been staying with Sophie and my uncle Brendon, who’d officially applied to be her new foster parent, to keep her within the fold. Because in spite of obvious  attitude...issues, she’d proved useful.

Also because if we tried to get rid of her, she’d only claw her way back into Nash’s life, stepping on everyone in her way. She’d certainly done it before.

Sabine had a unique perspective on boundaries—she refused to recognize them.

Sophie stepped away from the wall she’d been holding up and adjusted her black silk dress. “Hey, Luca, I told my dad we’d put in an appearance at the reception,” she said, but we all saw through that—she looked more comfortable in her three-inch stiletto heels than in my house. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah. Just a sec.” Luca looked up from the kitchen peninsula, where he was talking softly to Emma with his back to the rest of us. He said something, and she actually chuckled. When he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear—Lydia’s ear—the look Sophie gave them should have boiled the blood in their veins.

Em and I were supposed to go to the reception, too, but when I’d told my dad how she’d reacted to her mother at the funeral, he’d agreed that we should probably forgo any more close contact with Ms. Marshall until they’d both had a little time to adjust to Emma’s death.

“Luca?” my cousinrepeated.

He stood and gave Emma one more smile before joining Sophie in the living room. “Hey, I was thinking maybe you could give Em a hand with her hair before school tomorrow.” He tried to take his girlfriend’s hand, but she pulled it firmly from his grasp. His smile faltered, but he barreled forward, and I was impressed by his resolution in the face of imminent temper tantrum. “She’s never had to work with thin, fine hair before, so—”

“Are you saying my hair is limp?” Sophie demanded.

“No, your hair is beautiful.” He tucked a long blond strand behind her ear and ended the gesture with his palm cupping her jaw. I could practically see Sophie melt. “I was just thinking that Em’s a little insecure about her new look, and you’re good with stuff like that, and she’s your friend, so...?”

“Yeah. Of course.” Sophie blinked. “No problem.” She almost looked ashamed of herself, and I couldn’t resist a smile. She was nicer when she was with him. She wanted to be better, which made me want to like her.

Luca was the best thing that had ever happened to my cousin, and he’d come at the best possible time—in the middle of the worst year of her life. I think she truly cared about him. I couldn’t help hoping that someday she’d actually deserve him.

After Luca and Sophie left to mourn my best friend in public, Emma brought her half-empty glass into the living room and sank onto the couch on my other side. “Okay, let’s hear this brilliant plan. How are we going to bring the hurt to everyone’s least favorite hellions?”

“We’re not.” I smiled. I was proud of my plan, even if it still had a few kinks to work out. “You were right—we can’t hurt them. But they can hurt one another. A lot, hopefully. Maybe they can even kill each other.” Because goodness knows we couldn’t kill them. We’d never even come close to hurting a hellion, even though a couple of weeks before, I’d been forced to stab Avari over and over every time he took a new form in the human world—stolen from a murder victim—to torture us.

“Okay, that sounds promising.” Nash leaned forward in my dad’s chair, and Sabine put one hand on his back. “How do we get them to do that?”

“We’re going to use their weaknesses against them.” Tod’s hand tightened around mine again. He already knew the plan. We’d gone over and over it during his breaks at work for nights on end—he was both a reaper at the local hospital and a delivery boy for a nearby pizza place, but the reaper gig came with more free time.

Way more people ordered pizzas than met their death on any given night.

“Weaknesses?” Sabine said. “Hellions have weaknesses?”