not actively engage it.
“My name is Ira, incidentally.” He leaned back in Ms. Hirsch’s chair and crossed her slim legs, and the ease with which he moved told me that even if he wasn’t familiar with her particular body, this wasn’t his first time in human form. “In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m a hellion of wrath. And I’ve been itching to make your acquaintance of late. I think we can help each other out.”
“Not gonna happen.” I remained standing, but I put the rock down. I couldn’t hurt Ms. Hirsch, which Ira obviously knew.
“Oh, I think it might, if you knew what I had to offer.”
“No.” Never make a deal with a hellion. That’s the first thing they tell you in “Surviving the Netherworld 101.” Or it would be, if such a class existed. Hellions love to bargain, but they never agree to a deal if they’re not getting the better end of it. The vastly better end.
That other end tends to leave humans dead, or dying, or injured, or addicted. Or worse.
“There’s nothing I want from the evil incarnation of anger.” Nothing I was willing to pay for, anyway.
“Belittling my existence with understatement doesn’t change the facts. I am much more than an ‘incarnation of anger.’” Ms. Hirsch sat straighter and pinned me with a gaze too steady and merciless to come from anything other than a hellion. “I am in the clench of every fist. I am the hot thrum of blood rushing through your veins. Every thud of knuckles against flesh is the cry of my true name. I am the glint of rage in your ex’s eyes, the livid grinding of his teeth. My pulse is the wave of anger washing over the crowd. The swing of a corpse from the noose. The final twitch of a man murdered in revenge. I know you, Kaylee Cavanaugh. I know you very, very well, and I can give you what you want most in the world. What no one else can give you.”
“I don’t want anything from you,” I insisted, with less certainty this time, but repeating that didn’t make it true.
“Really? Not even justice for everything they’ve taken from you? For everyone they’ve killed? For everything they’ve cost your friends and family?”
Oh, crap.
The hellion smiled slowly with Ms. Hirsch’s perfectly glossed lips. “You want Avari, Invidia, and Belphegore to pay for what they’ve done.”
My chill bumps were back, and this time they felt like small mountains. I sucked in a breath I didn’t truly need and tried to swallow my fear and unease. I tried to bury that traitorous spark of interest piqued within me by his words—that soft voice whispering that it wouldn’t hurt to hear him out. Just to see what he was offering…
Because that would hurt. I knew better. Hellions don’t hand out free samples. But I couldn’t help wondering.…
“And you’re going to do that for me?” Surely sarcasm disguised my curiosity. “Why would you conspire against your own kind?”
“My kind?” He actually laughed, and laughter looked nothing on him like it looked on the real Ms. Hirsch. “Avari is no more my kind than a garden spider is your kind. We inhabit the same world, but he would stomp on me with no more thought than you’d give to stomping on that spider.” He leaned forward, pinning me with a familiar brown-eyed gaze. “I would stomp on him, too. Then I would grind him into the dirt beneath my heel, just like you would, if you were capable of exacting justice on your own.”
“Hellions don’t deal in justice.” That was too noble a concept. “You’re talking about revenge.”
Ira shrugged. “That’s just as well, because justice isn’t really what you want.” He leaned forward again, and his gaze intensified, as if he were looking for more than he could possibly find in my face. Behind my eyes. “Your wrath is graceful. Has anyone ever told you that? Your anger has the bold, sweet overtones of blind rage, but the delicate tang of self-righteousness, because you actually think you’re after justice. But that’s not true, is it? You know there is no justice to be had. Hurting those who’ve hurt you and yours cannot undo what’s been done. Nothing can bring the dead back to life or unscar the wounded. But you still want to hurt them, don’t you? You still want to kill Avari in cold blood for what he’s done to you. That, my sweet, vengeful little flame, is revenge, not justice.”
I blinked, mentally denying everything he’d said. “So, I’m getting ethics lectures from demons now?” That was new.
“You misunderstand.” His smile was back. “I stand in full support of your thirst for vengeance. I would gladly feed it to you drop by decadent drop. I would see you nourished and strengthened by the taste of blood spilled in anger. Of course, that offer comes with a price.…”
“We’re done here.”
He rolled Ms. Hirsch’s eyes. “And sanctimony rears its ugly head again. You are in denial, child. You won’t be satisfied until you get what you crave, and that can’t happen until you admit to yourself what it is you truly want.”
“You’re wrong.” Hellions couldn’t lie, but they could be wrong. Way wrong. “I’m not looking for revenge. I want justice for Emma and Alec, and everyone else Avari has hurt or killed.”
“And for yourself? Don’t you want this ‘justice’ for what he’s done to you? For commandeering your body? For putting possessed hands on you? For making you the instrument of your friend’s death? For abducting your loved ones? You seethe with anger, little flame. You practically glow with it. And some of that ire feels very, very personal.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” My pulse whooshed in my ears, which rarely happened now that I was dead. He was wrong. He had to be. “Get out of Ms. Hirsch. Now.”
“Don’t you at least want to know the price for your vengeance? It may be less than you think. I’m feeling generous.”
“No. Get out.” I turned and headed for the door.
“You’ll be back, little flame, and I’ll be waiting. When you’re ready to deal, you may summon me. You have my word that I will answer. You need only bleed and use my name.”
I fled the office as fast as I could go without running. I left Ms. Hirsch in the hands of a hellion, not because I didn’t know how to evict him without being expelled for attacking a staff member—though that was true—but because I was scared to listen to him anymore. I couldn’t hear one more loaded word from the hellion of wrath, because deep down, part of me wondered if he might be right.
And that wasn’t a question I was prepared to answer. Not yet, anyway.
On my way back from the counselor’s office, I was texting Tod to fill him in when I looked up and realized I’d wandered down the wrong hall. I was standing in front of the nurse’s office, which reminded me of Marco. Because that’s where we’d left him the day before—unconscious in one of the two empty patient rooms.
I should check on him. And I would check on Ms. Hirsch, too. But I just couldn’t bring myself to hit my guidance counselor in the head, even to expel a demon.
I ducked into the bathroom, glanced around to make sure it was empty, then let myself fade from all human sight. Then I blinked into nearly two dozen different classrooms until I finally found Marco Gutierrez in a fourth period senior AP English
