Tod’s eyes flashed with storms of midnight-blue fury. “You knew.”

“That you and the little bean sidhe were a distraction? Of course. She might very well have been willing to sacrifice her own soul in exchange for her father’s life, but you would never go along with that. So now the question is what will you give up for your brother? What is his life worth to you?”

“Just go!” Nash shouted, and Belphegore jerked his head back by a handful of his thick brown hair, stretching his neck at a painful angle. “Tod, go!”

My uncle was shouting again, and when I turned back to the ice, I found him halfway up the pile of rubble, headed for the hole in the building, cradling Harmony to his chest while her arms and head hung limp.

He was shouting for us to go, too, but he couldn’t see Nash and Sabine. He wanted us to leave him and Tod’s mom and my dad in this Nether-hell and escape with only our own afterlives.

But we couldn’t leave without Nash and Sabine, yet we couldn’t get to them without abilities that didn’t work in the Nether. Sabine could get him out, if she could reach him. But for that, she’d need a distraction. An opportunity.

“My dad’s not here, is he?” I demanded, and Avari actually laughed.

“No.” And that had to be the truth, because hellions couldn’t lie.

“Go get him. This negotiation is over if I don’t see him here, alive, in three minutes.”

More hellion laughter, and this time it resonated in my spine like a physical blow. “This negotiation was never real.”

“I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to her.” I looked past Avari to the hellion of vanity, who still clutched one of Nash’s arms. “I don’t like the way Avari plays, so I’m going to offer you the same deal I offered him. Send my friends and family back to the human world, and my soul is yours. This offer expires in one minute.”

“She’s lying!” Avari shouted. “She doesn’t have to keep her word.”

No one listened to him.

“Why would I trade those four souls for your one?” Belphegore called, and Invidia’s focus volleyed eagerly between us.

“Because Avari wants mine. Think of what you could get out of him for the trade,” I said, and Belphegore’s perfectly arched brows rose over the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen. They seemed to be every color all at once. “You could get anything you want.”

“Kaylee...” Tod said, but I ignored him.

“Thirty seconds,” I said while Belphegore studied me, trying to assess my sincerity. “If I don’t have my dad in thirty seconds, Invidia gets the same offer.”

“Done!” the hellion of envy shouted. She turned on Belphegore with an eagerness bordering on mania, and a murmur rolled over the throng of monsters. “I want her. Give me the boy....” She let go of themara to reach for Nash, and Belphegore tried to pull him out of reach.

Sabine saw her shot and burst into motion, like I’d hoped she would. She lunged for Nash just as Avari disappeared, right in front of me.

“Go!” I shouted. “Sabine, get him out of here!”

The mara grabbed Nash’s hand. They both disappeared the very instant Avari appeared behind them, grasping for Sabine. Nash’s screams of protest echoed into eternity, eclipsed only by the hellion’s shout of rage when he was left with only a thin handful of Sabine’s long, dark hair.

Invidia snarled and pounced on Belphegore, cursing her in some language I couldn’t identify, which seemed to be made entirely of consonants and birdlike screeches.

Avari bellowed in rage, and I turned to the ice to see my uncle put Harmony on the ground outside the hole in the basement, then climb out with her. The crowd seethed around me, twitching, growling, and panting with impatience, and my nerves buzzed like live wires beneath my skin.

I fumbled for Tod’s hand, and it wrapped firmly around mine. Avari’s roar echoed in my head even as we materialized in the human-world basement a second later.

Tod dropped my hand as soon as he saw Sabine and Nash, their fear and anger barely visible in the dark as she rubbed a spot on the back of her head. “I’m going back for Mom.”

“No!” I reached for him again, but for the first time since I’d met him, Tod pulled away from me. “If he catches you, he’ll tear you apart.”

“What happened?” Nash demanded, scrubbing angry tears from his face in the deep shadows. “Where’s Mom?”

“I’m not just going to appear in the middle of the crowd and ring a dinner bell, Kaylee.” Tod’s shoes shuffled on the dirty concrete as he stepped closer and kissed me, lingering just for a moment in the dark. A moment we couldn’t really afford but that he obviously knew I needed. “I know what I’m doing.”

“What happened to Mom?” Nash shouted, and I turned to him, suddenly conscious of the fact that we were in the human world, and that he couldn’t make himself inaudible. He was going to bring anyone within hearing range downstairs, and we’d be caught. At least, he and Sabine would.

“Avari blew out the wall, and your mom got hit by the debris. But Uncle Brendon took her out through the hole in the wall.” I wasn’t sure if he’d seen that part. “He’ll protect your mom.” Or die trying. I had no doubt of that.

“Bullshit! Avari will catch them,” Nash said through clenched teeth, frustrated, angry tears shining in his eyes in the light from Sabine’s cell screen. “You know he’s probably catching them right now. Those monsters probably came pouring out of that building like bees from a hive, and your uncle can’t cross over.”