parking lot with my face against the cold passenger’s side window. Confused, I blinked and sat up to find Nash watching me, frowning, his hands clenched around the wheel again.
“You okay?” He looked upset, but made no move to reach for me across the center console.
“Yeah.” I stomped on the floorboard, trying to ease the tingling in my left foot, which hadn’t woken up along with the rest of my body. “Just worried about this whole frost mess.” I glanced at the dashboard clock, surprised to see that my shift started in ten minutes. “And tired, I guess.”
Nash nodded, but his worried look held. “Hey, I’m sorry I got mad. I’ll find out if Scott’s tried it yet.”
“Thanks.” I smiled, determined to take him at his word. I didn’t understand his change of heart, but I’d take it.
“You need a ride home?” he asked as I opened the car door and hauled my duffel into my lap from the rear floorboard.
“Em said she’d take me. I’ll call you when I get home.”
His grin that time looked more natural. “Is your dad still working overtime?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll bring pizza if you pick up a movie.”
“Deal.”
He leaned in for a kiss, and I kissed him back, trying to believe everything would be okay. “Don’t worry about Scott’s balloon,” he said as I got out of the car. “I’ll take care of it.”
I CHANGED INTO my ugly red-and-blue polyester uniform in the bathroom, then pulled my hair into a ponytail and met Emma in the box office, where she was already counting the cash in her drawer. Somehow she’d scored us matching shifts selling tickets, which almost never happened. Usually one or the other of us got stuck scooping popcorn or emptying trash cans.
I counted my own drawer in silence, trying to decide whether or not to tell her to stay away from Doug. And what to cite as the reason.
I wasn’t sure if she knew what he was taking, and even if she did, I couldn’t tell her what frost really was. Not without scaring the crap out of her, anyway. And my policy on Emma and Netherworld stuff was to keep the two as far apart as possible, for as long as possible. How was I supposed to know Netherworld trouble would find her all on its own?
Finally, after two hours, a steady stream of customers, and a snack break during which I’d done little more than nod along with her chatter, she went suddenly silent on the stool next to mine, sitting straighter as she aimed a bright smile through the window in front of us. I looked up to find a familiar face halfway down the line across from Emma’s register.
Doug Fuller.
I had to nudge Emma into giving change to an elderly lady taking a small child to see a PG-13 comedy. Emma slid the change and receipt under the window, then glanced at me as her next customer ordered two tickets for a Japanese horror flick. “Doug’s here,” she whispered.
I ran a debit card through the scanner, then dropped it into the dip in the counter beneath the pane of glass. “I see him.” And I didn’t like what I saw.
Oh, I understood the attraction. He was tall, and dark, and undeniably hot, and was just edgy enough—he didn’t care what anyone thought of him, including his own friends—to intrigue Emma. But Doug wasn’t just “she’s so drunk she doesn’t know what she’s doing” dangerous. He was “spend the rest of your life in a padded cell” dangerous. And that was the best-case scenario.
“I knew I should have waited to take my break.” Emma slid three tickets and a receipt beneath the glass to her next customer, glancing at Doug every chance she got.
“Em, what do you see in him? I mean, other than the obvious.” Because for a short-term, nontoxic, casual good time, the obvious would have been plenty.
She shrugged and slid two more tickets under the glass. “I don’t know. He’s hot and he’s fun. Why does it have to be deeper than that? We’re not all looking for a lifetime commitment at sixteen, Kay.”
“I’m not.” I started to argue, then gave up. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for from Nash, but it definitely wasn’t short-term fun. “Em, I don’t think you should—”
“Shhhh!” she hissed as Doug stepped up to the counter, his lopsided grin showing off just one dimple, and I knew I’d lost her. She smiled and leaned forward on the counter, and somehow her uniform clung to her curves, where mine only hung from my angles. “Hey.”
“Hey. So, you wanna come over after you close?” he said, and the people in line behind him started grumbling.
I slid a debit card beneath the glass on my side of the counter and tried not to groan out loud.
Reason number eighteen that Kaylee should not lie: she never gets away with it.
Em frowned. “I’m not closing—it’s a school night. I get off in two hours.”
“But Kaylee said.” Doug glanced at me, and I stared at the counter, relieved when the customer behind him moved into my line, giving me something to do.
“She was wrong.” Em was mad. Of course she was mad. “Meet me at five?”
“Uh, I gotta do something first.” His hand jerked on the counter, and my stomach pitched. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“Okay.” Emma smiled for him, but didn’t even look at me until he’d stepped out of line, already heading down the steps toward the parking lot. She served her next customer in silence while I handed back change, then both lines were empty for the moment.
Emma turned on me while Doug veered toward the rental I’d seen in his driveway, now double-parked in two handicapped spots on the front row. “What the hell, Kaylee?”
I twisted on my stool, brainstorming damage control that would not come. “I’m sorry. I just. I don’t think he’s good for you.”
“Because he hit your car? That was an accident, and I’m sure he’ll pay for it.”
“Yeah. He already got me a loaner.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
I sighed, grasping for some way to explain without … well … explaining. My urge to protect her from all things Netherworld was overwhelming, and my gut was all I had to go on at the moment. “He’s not safe, Emma.”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t want safe. I want fun, and Doug is fun.”
“Yeah, he’s so fun he tried to haul you off while you were drunk. What do you think would have happened next, Em?”
“Nothing I didn’t want to do.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “What? You think Nash is perfect?”
My pulse spiked and I thought about him Influencing his way up my shirt that morning. But Em didn’t know about that. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.” Emma sighed and leaned
