Before I Wake (23 page)

The hellion was drinking up Sophie’s trauma, but Meredith’s
eyes narrowed on me when she saw the blade, and she spread her arms. “This is my
favorite part,” Avari said with Meredith’s voice. “Until next time…”

I drove the dagger through her stomach and up into her
chest.

14

“SOPHIE.” I
KNELT
in front of my cousin and Luca on the spring grass, but she
wouldn’t look at me. She wouldn’t look at anything. She just clung to Luca,
staring at the letter jacket that had remained after Meredith disappeared. Her
name was on the back and several dance-themed pins were attached to the green
letter
E.
“Sophie, I need you to focus.”

Finally she blinked and started to look up. But then her gaze
snagged on the bloody dagger still in my hand—I couldn’t put it in my backpack
until I’d cleaned it—and she turned away from me and buried her face in Luca’s
shoulder.

“Was that him?” she said, her words muffled by the material of
his shirt. “Was that the hellion we saw in the Netherworld?”

I thought I’d heard her wrong until Luca answered, stroking her
hair with one hand. “I couldn’t swear to it, but my guess would be yes.”

“What? When were you two in the Netherworld?” I asked, and Luca
shrugged.

“The day we met. That’s kind of…how we got together. She’s
stronger than you think she is, you know.”

I certainly hoped he was right. “I’m gonna want to hear that
story when things calm down. But for now, Sophie, Sabine’s going to take you to
Nash’s house and I want you to stay there with her. We’ll tell the school you
went home sick.” Nash could make them believe it without question, at least long
enough to excuse her absence, and Avari would be less likely to look for her at
his house than at mine. “I’ll drive your car home later. Okay?”

Sophie shook her head sluggishly, but her eyes were clearer.
“I’m not going anywhere with her.” Her gaze flicked up to where Sabine watched
her over my shoulder.

“You’re not my idea of a good time, either,” Sabine snapped.
Then she glared at the rest of us. “You guys need me here.”

“No, I need you to stay with Sophie in case Avari goes after
her.” I needed someone who could fight, if necessary. Luca had volunteered for
the job, but we needed him to take us to the corpse in the parking lot.

“If she makes one snotty comment, you won’t have to worry about
the hellion killing her. I’ll save him the trouble.”

“Sabine!” I stood and turned on her, but she only shrugged and
held her ground, not the least bit intimidated by the bloody dagger in my hand
or the fact that I’d just killed Avari. Again.

“I’m a Nightmare, Kaylee. You want me to scare someone to
death? I’m your girl. But I’m not cut out to be a babysitter.”

“Just don’t let anyone kill her. It’s not that complicated,” I
snapped, and Sabine scowled at me. “Look, lunch will be over in a few minutes,
and I need to get her out of here. Just take her to Nash’s, and I’ll be there as
soon as I can. If you’re really my friend, you’ll do this.”

The
mara
’s scowl deepened. “You
know, you were much less work as a nemesis.” Then she stomped off toward her car
with my cousin in tow, and too late I realized I should have specified that she
wasn’t allowed to feed on my traumatized cousin’s fears.

While Nash went to the office to influence the attendance
secretary into signing Sophie out, I blinked into the teachers’ restroom and
locked the door, then cleaned the dagger and put on the letter jacket Nash had
lent me to cover the blood on my shirt.

At my current rate of consumption, I wouldn’t have a shirt left
in my closet by the end of the next week.

When I was fit to be seen again—just in case—I met Nash in the
parking lot and Luca led us to a dusty blue compact car, where Brant Williams
was slumped behind the wheel.

“No!” Nash reached for the door handle, but I stepped in front
of him and refused to move when he tried to reach around me. “Kaylee, get the
hell out of my way!” He and Brant had been teammates in both football and
baseball since Nash transferred to Eastlake. There were tears in his eyes, and
even more half-choking his voice, but I stood my ground.

“No fingerprints, Nash.”

“I’ll say I found him,” he insisted. “They’d expect me to try
to help him.”

“You can’t be the one to find him.” I waited for understanding
to surface among the agonized twists of brown and green in his eyes, and when it
didn’t, I said what I’d been trying to avoid. “You were arrested as a suspect in
a double homicide a month ago. You don’t need to pop up on the police
department’s radar again this soon. The line between witness and suspect can get
really thin.”

Nash flinched like I’d slapped him, and he couldn’t quite hide
the twist of resentment in his eyes. It was my fault he was on their radar in
the first place. “How long am I going to be paying for the fact that I didn’t
kill you, Kaylee?”

Before I could even make sense of what he was asking, the bell
rang, and all three of us jumped, and when I tried to make Nash go to class, he
refused. I couldn’t really blame him.

A glance into Brant’s car told me the doors were locked and he
wasn’t breathing, but I blinked into the car to check his pulse just in case,
careful not to touch anything else.

He was dead. And I wanted to throw up. We’d never been close,
but I’d known Brant since the third grade. He was one of the basketball team
captains and one of few Eastlake baseball players other than Nash that I’d ever
spoken to outside of school. He was a nice guy. And now he was dead. Because of
me.

My hands were shaking when I rejoined Luca and Nash next to the
car. “I’m sorry, Luca, but you have to find the body.” I couldn’t do it. My
shirt was covered in blood.

Luca looked sick. But he nodded. “What do I say about why I was
in the parking lot?”

“Do you have a license?” I asked, and he nodded again. “Tell
them you told Sophie you’d drive her car home, and you found Brant just like
this.”

“Okay.” He pulled his phone from his pocket, ready to call
either 9-1-1 or the front office. I didn’t ask which.

“You sure you’re good with this?” Nash asked, his voice grim,
his forehead deeply furrowed.

“Yeah.” Luca started pressing buttons. “You two get out of
here. And call my aunt.”

I promised him I would, then I took my backpack in one hand and
Nash’s hand in the other and blinked us into his living room, after a stop
behind a convenience store about halfway between.

Sophie sat on the couch in tears, and she nearly jumped out of
her own skin when we appeared right in front of her. “Where’s Luca?” she said,
frowning when he didn’t appear with us.

“At school discovering Brant’s body.”

“Brant Williams?” More tears filled her eyes. “Brant’s dead?
How? What happened?”

“That hellion you saw? That’s Avari. He tortures and kills
people for fun. Which is why he pretended to be Meredith—to hurt you.” I
couldn’t tell how much of that she’d actually heard over her own sniffling, but
she had enough to process already. “Where’s Sabine?” I asked when a cursory
glance into the kitchen revealed no disgruntled
mara.

“Back there somewhere.” Sophie gave a tearful glance down the
hall, and I turned to look just as Sabine stepped out of Nash’s room with a
half-full bottle of tequila.

“Hell, no.” I grabbed for the bottle as she stepped into the
living room, but she pulled it out of my reach. “The last thing we need right
now is a drunk Nightmare.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, your cousin’s a bit of a delicate
flower.” Sabine gestured toward Sophie, who still sat curled up on one end of
the couch, in spite of Nash’s best efforts to comfort her. “So you can give her
a shot, and hope that makes her a little easier for me to stomach, or you can
give
me
a shot and hope
that
makes her a little easier for me to stomach. Otherwise, I’m
outta here.” The
mara
shrugged. “Your call.”

I sighed, digging my phone out of my pocket. “Fine. Give her a
shot.
One.
” Was that really any worse than the pills
her mother had given her when Meredith died the first time? At least you don’t
need a prescription for tequila.

Sabine produced a shot glass from her pocket, and while I
texted Tod, I tried not to worry about the fact that Nash had a bottle of
tequila in his room and Sabine carried a shot glass in her pocket.

@ Nash’s. Can u come?

Tod appeared in front of the television just as Sabine handed
the full shot glass to Sophie. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing new,” Sabine said as my cousin took a sip from the
shot glass, then grimaced. “Just getting a cheerleader drunk.”

“She’s not a cheerleader. She’s a dancer,” I said, sliding my
phone into my pocket.

“Wow. Look how much of a damn I don’t give.” Sabine pushed the
shot glass back at Sophie. “What, you’re too precious to drink it straight?” She
twisted to glance around the room. “Anybody got some lime and a cute little
paper umbrella?”

“I’ll get her a chaser.” Nash headed for the kitchen without a
word to his brother.

Tod glanced at me with one brow raised, and I sighed. “Avari
showed up at school as Meredith Cole, another one of the girls Marg killed for
Belphegore. Meredith was on Sophie’s dance team, and we all saw her die last
September.”

“Seeing a classmate return from the dead would freak anyone
out,” Tod said as we both watched Sabine try to get my cousin to drink.

“Yeah, but he made an effort to upset Sophie specifically. I’m
worried he’ll go after her next.”

“What’s with the jacket?” Tod asked as Nash crossed the room
with a glass of soda.

“Oh.” I’d forgotten I was wearing it. “I ruined another shirt.”
I unsnapped Nash’s letter jacket and pulled it off, then laid it over the arm of
the nearest chair.

“You know, there’s a much easier, simpler way to sedate her,”
Tod whispered as Sophie downed half the shot, then gulped the soda Nash handed
her.

I rolled my eyes. “No, you can’t knock her out. She’s
traumatized, but she’ll come around.” She’d evidently survived a trip to the
Netherworld, which told me that as upset as she was about Meredith, Luca was
right. She was stronger than she looked. She had to be. “I have to text
Madeline.” I sank into the chair, typing with both thumbs, and Tod sat on the
arm opposite Nash’s jacket.

“I get that that was a hellion.” Sophie leaned back on the
couch, clutching the glass of soda as she stared at the shot glass standing
empty on the coffee table. “But why did it look like Meredith? Why did it
sound
like Meredith?”

Sabine picked up the shot glass and refilled it. “It looked and
sounded like your dancing chick because it was wearing her soul like a
raincoat.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” I insisted as Sabine tossed the
shot back.

“Sure we do. But on the bright side, Kaylee freed her soul, so
she’s no longer being tortured in the Netherworld.”

“Tortured?” Sophie’s chin quivered, and Sabine nodded, pouring
another shot.

I stood and grabbed the bottle from her, and tequila splashed
onto the coffee table. “We can’t afford for you to be at less than your best
right now.”

“Kaylee, we just watched you stab the undead cheerleader who
threatened to drag your cousin into hell. I think we could all use a drink.”

“You just had one.”

Sophie was sniffling again. “Why would a demon want to torture
Meredith? Or send me to hell?”

“Can’t imagine,” Tod said. “Got any sins you wanna confess?
Something in the vein of narcissism and cruelty?”

“It’s not hell,” I said, elbowing him. “It’s the
Netherworld.”

“What’s the difference?” Sophie wiped her nose, glaring at
Tod.

Sophie’s question was rhetorical, but Sabine huffed in reply
anyway. “Hellions vacation in hell to cool off.”

“Not helping, Bina.” Nash sank onto the couch next to Sophie
and took her hand. “It has nothing to do with you, personally. This particular
hellion has been around for thousands of years and has been directly or
indirectly responsible for more deaths than any of us can even imagine. His
breath killed Doug Fuller. He killed Mr. Wesner, Mr. Wells, and Mrs. Bennigan at
school. This afternoon, he killed Brant Williams in his own car. And even if he
didn’t personally kill Scott, he’s ultimately responsible for his death.”

“Why?” Snot dripped from Sophie’s nose and she wiped it with
the back of one hand. “He tried to lock me up in the Netherworld and now he’s
killing everyone I know. Why is this happening to me?”

Sabine rolled her eyes. “Because you’re the beautiful fairy
princess and the evil Lord of Hell can’t secure his kingdom until he’s feasted
from your flesh and slaked his thirst with tea brewed from the ashes of your
incinerated bones.”

Nash groaned, and Tod laughed out loud.

Sophie hiccuped and turned to me, frowning. “Is she
serious?”

“This isn’t happening to
you,
princess,” Sabine snapped before I could do more than shake my head. “This is
happening to
us.
While you spent the past few months
prancing around in ignorant bliss, we were all being possessed, or kidnapped, or
stalked by this hellion. So dry your tears and take off the tiara, because this
is a call to arms, not a pity party. You’re not going to find any sympathy
here.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” I said. “She’s still new to the horror.”
And the truth was that she’d been involved in most of this from the very
beginning. She just hadn’t known it.

“I’m only showing her the bigger picture,” Sabine insisted.
“She needs to understand what’s really going on.”

“I understand.” Sophie reached for the shot glass and held it
out to me with one shaky hand. “So I’m gonna need one more of those.”

I hesitated, until I noticed that Sophie’s eyes were already
glazed with shock. “Fine.” I poured one more shot for her, then screwed the lid
on the bottle. “But that’s it. I’m not putting my life in the hands of a bunch
of drunks.”