feel his temper rolling off him in waves. “Get. Out.”
Tod watched me for another second, while I tried desperately to calm the storm of confusion battering my heart from all sides. Then he disappeared.
“I can’t believe he said that to you.” Nash pulled me up by the hand he still held, and I let him tug me toward the living room.
“He was talking to you,” I said softly, as I sank onto the couch next to him, and Nash went very, very still.
It was the thing we didn’t talk about. It had happened, more than once, and it had broken us up for a while, but he felt horrible about it, and the whole thing was behind us now. And I was fine as long as I didn’t think about it. About what was said and seen and done while I wasn’t in control of my own body.
Nash looked straight into my eyes with an intensity and sincerity that made me catch my breath. “It’s never going to happen again. Not even if you lived to be a thousand. You know that, right?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?” I said at last. Wasn’t that proof enough that I was trying to move past it?
But I couldn’t get Tod’s expression out of my head. There’d been just a flash of motion in his irises—a swirl of blue too quick to interpret.
I closed my eyes and tried to clear my head. Tried to get back to the place Nash and I had been an hour before, alone, in my room, where thoughts didn’t matter—it was all about feeling. But when I met Nash’s gaze, I knew the moment was over. He was still mad at Tod, and hurt by the reminder of things we’d put behind us. And maybe I was, too.
“He did this on purpose.” Nash let his head fall against the back of the couch. “He dredged up old problems to start new trouble.” And this time I couldn’t argue.
As it turns out, there’s no greater impediment to la petite mort—the little death—than a visit from the real thing.
7
I blinked in the dark, confusion covering me like a blanket over my head. Why was I awake? Then Styx growled, and I realized two things at once: I was in my room, and I wasn’t alone.
I sat up, heart pounding, pulse whooshing in my ears. Light from the hall painted a strip of color over one corner of my desk and the end of my bed, while the rest of the room stood shrouded in shadow. Styx lay near my footboard, curled up like she was still asleep, except for her raised head, shining black eyes, and sharp teeth, exposed as she growled in warning.
Avari. Harmony had said Styx would wake up if a hellion came anywhere near me, even from the other side of the world barrier, and though I’d managed to piss off two other hellions—Belphagore and Invidia—in the six months since I’d learned I was a bean sidhe, Avari would always be my default guess. My go-to bad guy, a title awarded on the basis of persistence alone.
It creeped me out to know that Avari was wandering around the Netherworld version of my house—a field of razor wheat—with nothing separating us except for the world barrier. Was he trying to possess me again? He couldn’t take over my body while I was conscious, which is why Styx’s job—half guard dog, half security alarm—was so important. And that was also why I was under orders to wake my dad up if Styx so much as growled in her sleep.
I crawled out from under the covers and stretched to reach her fur, stroking her in reward for a job well done on my way out of bed.
“Well, look who’s all grown up.”
I jumped at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, then sat up slowly, skin crawling as I reached for my bedside lamp. It wasn’t Avari. It couldn’t be—unless he’d possessed someone else and broken into my house.
Shit, shit, shit! I flipped the lamp switch and every dark silhouette in my room was thrown into full color, the sudden light blinding me for one long moment. I blinked rapidly, fighting off panic as I waited for my vision to adjust, but when it did, it brought no answers—only more questions.
A man sat in my desk chair, watching me silently, arms crossed over the front of a white button-up shirt. His dark eyes glittered with some perverse version of anticipation or amusement, as if he knew me and was waiting for a familiar reaction. But I’d never even seen him before—I would have remembered that face. Smooth and young, with a strong chin and wide forehead. If I’d seen him at a party, I would have watched him—or watched Emma fawn over him. But in my room, in the middle of the night …?
“Get out.” I slid off the mattress on the opposite side, and squatted to pull an aluminum baseball bat—one of Nash’s spares—from beneath the bed. I was no stranger to late-night unwanted company.
“Do you even know who I am?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.” Unscheduled visitors rarely brought good news—just ask Jacob Marley. “Get out now, or I’ll yell for my dad.”
The stranger settled farther into my chair, getting comfortable. “How is your dad?” he asked, still watching me eagerly, like he’d rather read my thoughts than hear me speak. “I haven’t seen him in, what? Thirteen years?”
No, no, no … I shook my head, but I couldn’t deny the swift understanding and terror colliding within me. “Thane?” I whispered, suddenly cold all over.
He was early.
“No. You can’t be here yet.” I glanced into the hall and started to yell for my dad—until I remembered what Tod had said. If my dad got in Thane’s way, Thane would kill him. That would give us proof enough to get Thane fired, but my dad would still be dead.
Instead of shouting, I backed slowly away from the bed, tightening my grip on the bat, for all the good it would do. I could handle this myself. “I still have four days, and you’re not gonna—”
“Relax.” Thane smiled, and no matter how pretty he was, I couldn’t shake the certainty that kittens everywhere were suddenly screeching in pain from the mockery of joy that had just settled onto his face. “I just thought we should formally meet, since I’m going to be the last thing you ever see.”
I took a deep breath, trying desperately to focus on the fact that he hadn’t come to kill me—yet—instead of on the fact that he’d come at all. “Do you always show up early to taunt your victims?”
“You’re not a victim, you’re an assignment,” Thane said, watching as I made myself climb back onto the bed and lay the bat at my side on the comforter, as if I wasn’t terrified and in shock. “Do you always act like having a reaper in your bedroom is a matter of course?”
Show no fear.
I shrugged and tucked my legs beneath me, glad I’d slept in pajama bottoms. “I know interesting people.”
“Of course. Because you’re a bean sidhe, right?” the reaper said, as if he’d just remembered. “And that makes me one very lucky worker bee. The average reaper will go his entire afterlife without ever encountering a nonhuman soul, and here I’ve got the opportunity to reap yours for a second time. It doesn’t get much better than this …” Thane rolled the chair close enough that his knees touched my mattress, still eyeing me boldly, studying me. “Except for reaping your mother.”
My
