Spitting sounds came from the bathroom as Nash brushed his teeth, drawing me out of the nightmare she was painting for me, this time with words. “Then what?”

Sabine shrugged. “He grabbed my arm, and I tried to cross back over, but I couldn’t concentrate enough to make it happen. All these thoughts kept spinning around in my head. All kinds of stuff. People who’ve pissed me off. The juvenile court judge who set me up for vandalism. You.” She shifted beneath the covers, like she was uncomfortable with whatever she was about to confess. “No offense, but when I first met you, I hated you like I’ve never hated anything before, and when Ira touched me, I couldn’t get you out of my head. You kissing Nash. Him touching you. The two of you dancing at some lame high school party to a song no one with actual ears has ever enjoyed. Stuff like that. Crap I never even saw but used to imagine during the worst days this past winter.”

“Yeah.” I tucked one leg beneath me in the rolling chair. “Ira’s M.O. seems to be fictionalized flashbacks designed to thoroughly piss you off, so he can feed from your anger.”

“Well, it musta worked. I couldn’t think with all that shit in my head, and then everything went dark.” She shrugged again and tugged the covers higher. “The next thing I saw was this.” Sabine spread her arms to take in my whole room. “I didn’t know how I got here until Nash told me how Tod found me. Crimson creeper? Seriously?”

“Yeah. Tod said you were tied to the ground with four vines of it. Baby vines. And you must not have been there very long, or you couldn’t have recovered this fast, even with Harmony’s antivenom. Especially with three sets of pinpricks.”

“Speaking of which...” Sabine held up her wrist, and I saw that the swelling was almost completely gone. Either maras healed faster than bean sidhes or Harmony had really perfected that antivenom. “Any way to get rid of the marks?”

“Not that I know of.” I propped my foot on the edge of the bed and pulled up the hem of my jeans to show her my own double row of red dots.

She dropped her arm into her lap. “Maybe people will think it’s some kind of obscure tattoo. Something tribal.”

“Maybe.” It was good to see her looking on the bright side.

Across the hall, the bathroom door opened. A second later, Nash stepped into the bedroom. “Did you and Tod have any luck?” he asked, sinking onto Emma’s bed as I vacated the desk chair.

“Nothing since the bandages we found at the hospital. But the good news is that Avari has evidently promised a whole horde of fiends that whoever turns them in wins the grand prize—Demon’s Breath, of course. Which means—”

“Avari doesn’t have them,” Nash finished for me.

“Not yetanyway. We haven’t found anything since then, but we’ll keep looking.”

“Be careful,” Sabine said. “I don’t want to have to go back in after you.” But she would if it came to that. That’s what she was really saying, and the unspoken promise was not lost on me.

“Don’t worry. Tod and I are going in together or not at all. We’ll watch out for each other.”

Before heading back to the hospital, I went into the living room to check on everyone else. Emma was already asleep in the recliner, stretched out as close to horizontal as the chair would go. Sophie and Luca were curled up on the couch together, even though the twin mattress he’d blown up for himself was only a couple of feet away. He slept on the outside, curled around my cousin with his arm draped over her stomach. Anything that wanted Sophie would have to go through Luca first, and seeing them together made my heart ache.

Seeing Emma alone made my heart ache even more.

Not seeing my dad in his bed—not hearing him snore in the middle of an otherwise quiet night—also made my heart ache so fiercely I let it stop beating altogether, just to spare myself the pain.

Chapter Seventeen

“Are you sure you want to go to school? You could just stay here with me.” Tod patted the vinyl cushion next to him on the hospital waiting room couch, and I sat sideways to face him, trying to ignore the dozen early morning patients, none of whom could see or hear us.

“I wish I could stay here with you. I wish I never had to go anywhere else. But Em, Nash, and Sabine are going. We’re still hoping to turn the hellions against one another, and if one of them possesses someone at school, I might be needed.”

That was true. But it wasn’t the whole truth. I needed to talk to Ira again, and if Tod knew what I was thinking, he’d insist on going with me. I couldn’t let that happen for two reasons.

First, I didn’t want them to meet. I didn’t want Tod manipulated by the hellion of rage like I’d been. I didn’t want him touched by evil any more than he already had been.

Second, I didn’t want Tod to be upset by—or stand in the way of—any payment made to Ira if I needed to buy more information, and as badly as I hated to think about it, that possibility was looking pretty...um...possible. He understood the lines I would cross—and those I wouldn’t—to get my dad back, because he’d do just about anything to protect his mother. But he didn’t need to actually see payment rendered. Especially considering that his anger would just make it even easier for Ira to feed from him.

I felt bad about lying to Tod—even a lie of omission—but I’d feel worse if my inaction led to someone else’s death. Especially my father’s.