“For the last time, I don’t need you to protect me! So just tell me how to contact this Ira asshole and let me decide how much I’m willing to pay to get my mother out of the Netherworld. Let me deal with the consequences of my own decisions!”

“That’s not how it works!” My cheeks were flushed, and my heart pounded so hard I was almost dizzy—my body was no longer accustomed to such a rapid flow of blood. “This is a team sport, Nash. We’re in it together, and we can’t afford for you to run off half-cocked playing hero and get yourself killed. You have to think about the group. About what’s best for all of us!” I couldn’t believe how rash he was being. How selfish!

“Kaylee. Nash. It’s too tense in here....” Em put both hands over her ears, as if she could physically stop herself from syphoning our anger.

“The group?” Nash was shouting now. “Is that what you were thinking about when you summoned Ira all by yourself? How come when you do it, it’s noble, but when I want to do it, I’m ‘running off half-cocked to play hero’? You didn’t even tell anyone what you were doing. You just disappeared. If something had gone wrong, we would never have known what happened to you. How is that acting in the best interest of the group?”

“That’s different,” I insisted, reeling from the sting of his words. “I’ve dealt with Ira before. I’ve dealt with summoning before.” Only once, but that was one more time than he’d done it. “And I know where my boundaries lie. He can’t tempt me with—” I bit off the next words before I could say them and almost bit my tongue in the process.

Why was I so angry? Was this because Ira had been feeding from my wrath, or was my wrath what attracted him to me in the first place? Could that much rage have been there all along, buried, just waiting for a chance to burst through my emotional armor, like lava through the crust of the earth?

“With what?” Nash’s voice was soft now, but anger roiled beneath the surface of the sound, like water about to break into a boil. “With his breath? Is that what you were going to say? At least he can’t tempt you with  drugs?” He spat the last word at me from across the room, and I flinched.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“Why not?” Nash demanded. “At least that part was the truth. The rest of it is you lying to yourself and to us. I may be an addict, but I didn’t exactly choose that path for myself, in case you don’t remember. And I’m fighting it every single day. But you’re lying and hiding things from the people who care about you the most, and you don’t even have addiction as an excuse. How do you justify that?”

“Shut up!” Emma shouted, sitting stiff and straight on the center couch cushion, staring from him to me, then back. “Shut the hell up, both of you! Are you trying to drive me crazy?”

“Em, I’m sorry.” I sat next to her, hoping that my rapidly fading anger would ease her burden. I hadn’t meant totrigger abilities she couldn’t control yet.

“Me, too.” Nash’s irises swirled with amber threads of regret, but he didn’t sit. He hadn’t backed down. “I’m sorry, Emma.” He turned to me again. “But I’m going after my mother, and, Kaylee, I swear on my immortal soul that if you stand in my way I will never forgive you.”

“Whoa, what did I miss?” Tod said from the kitchen, and I looked up to find him staring at all of us.

“More fireworks,” Sabine said. “And what we’ve learned from this little episode is that Kaylee and Nash are like those rocks ancient cave people used to make fire. Bang them together, and you get sparks.”

“Let’s never again use the phrase ‘bang them together’ in reference to my brother and my girlfriend,” Tod mumbled.

“She means their heads,” Emma said. “And I’d like to bang them together right now.” She scowled at me, then turned her disapproval on Nash. “You two are fighting for no reason. You both want the same thing—to protect people you love. You just don’t agree about how to do it.”

“She won’t tell me how to summon a hellion,” Nash explained.

“Good for her.” Tod smiled at me, but I couldn’t smile back. He hadn’t heard the whole thing yet. “I fully support any efforts to keep you and hellions on separate planes of existence.”

“So, she can do it, but I can’t? That’s bullshit! Did she tell you she saw Ira today?” Nash demanded. Tod blinked. The colors in his irises betrayed none of what he was feeling, but I could tell he was hurt, and I felt like the world’s biggest jerk. “She said she wanted everyone to go to school for strength in numbers, but when Emma was possessed and Avari was demanding to talk to Kaylee, she was gone. She was off summoning a demon, without telling anyone what she was up to or that she might need help. But when I want to contact Ira to find out where our mother is, with full knowledge of the entire group, she won’t even tell me how to get in touch with him.”

Tod blinked again, and I would have given anything to know what he was thinking. What he was feeling. He leaned against the doorway into the kitchen and crossed both arms over his chest, then met his brother’s gaze. “Is that really what you’re mad about? That you’re not getting quality time with a hellion?”

“No! And yes. But only because she didn’t even get the information she went to him for. I’m pissed off that she would put herself in that kind of danger, then walk away with nothing to show for it. That means she could have died or worse—we all could have lost her—for nothing. I’m pissed off that she wasn’t willing to do for our mother what she did for her father. I’m pissed off that Mom’s gone and there’s nothing I can do about it. You can all cross over whenever you want. You can all search and sacrifice and bleed to try to save her, but all I can do is sit here and wait.”