If I Die (10 page)

Uh-oh. That sounded like Emma already.

“It’l be strongest with those who are already attracted to him, but it could have a light effect on just about any human,” Alec continued. “But when he finds someone he wants, either to impregnate or to feed from, he’l turn it on ful -strength, and the lucky girl will… Well, she’ll need him. Desperately. Like a craving she can’t control.”

“But it’s like some kind of spell, right?” I said, uncomfortably reminded of the strength of Nash’s Influence, when he lost control of it. “She doesn’t really want him, she just thinks she does, because of this charm crap. Right?” I said, thinking back to Danica’s physical obsession with her baby’s father.

“I don’t know, Kay,” Alec said, obviously reluctant to voice whatever was coming next. “I think it’s less like a spell and more like primal physical attraction. It’s hormonal, and it’s very strong.”

“Do they actually fall in love with him?” Sabine asked, her nose wrinkled in disgust, and I was relieved to realize we were on the same page for once.

“No,” Alec said. “And most of them have no delusions about that—at least, the older, more experienced women. They know they don’t love him.

They may not even like him. But they physically have to have him, like they have to have food and air.”

“So…sleeping with him is consensual?” Sabine asked.

“No,” I said, just as Alec said, “Yeah.”

I turned on him in surprise. “No, it’s not. It can’t be. This ‘charm’ of his is like a…a drug. They’re not in their right minds. Right?”

“I don’t know, Kaylee. I think they really want him. In fact, some young incubi have been mobbed, like celebrities.”

“Do they have a choice?” Sabine asked. “Can girls fight his charm?”

“Yeah. It takes a lot of willpower, but yes,” Alec said. “Definitely.”

“They shouldn’t have to fight,” I insisted, struggling with a squirming discomfort the entire discussion dredged up in me. “The fact that they have to proves that it’s not consensual. Not really. And you’re not going to change my mind.”

Alec nodded. “I’m not even gonna try.”

“So…any idea how to stop him?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know how to get rid of an incubus, other than giving him a son. Ask your dad for help?”

I shook my head. “Can’t. He has his hands full trying to save my life right now.”

Alec frowned. “How can he…?”

“He can’t. But telling him that does no good. I’ve tried, and so have Tod and Harmony. Feel free to add your voice to the chorus.”

“So anyway, we’ve only got four days to take this murdering, daughter-abandoning bastard down.” Sabine hesitated, then shrugged. “Well, you only have four days. I have as long as it takes.”

The truth of her statement hit me like a brick to the forehead, and the room swam around me. I set Styx on the couch and stood, staring straight into the mara’s eyes. “Sabine, I think he’s going after Emma. You have to promise me you’ll watch out for her if I die before we get rid of him. Don’t let her wind up like Danica. Please.”

Sabine frowned, staring up at me. “At this point, I think you actually owe me another favor, bean sidhe…”

“Promise me!” I grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet, almost as surprised as she was by my strength. “She’s human, and she’s defenseless, and she’s my best friend, which has already gotten her killed, and possessed, and on the radar of two different hellions. You’re not leaving this house until you promise me you’ll protect her when I’m gone. You can inherit her just like you will Nash. You need a real friend anyway.”

Sabine stared at me like I’d lost my mind. “Emma doesn’t even like me.”

“I don’t care! I swear if you let her get hurt, I’l haunt your ass for eternity. I’ll turn up in the room every time you’re alone with Nash, and you’ll never get another taste of him. Ever.”

Her pierced right brow rose in interest. “How are you gonna do that?”

“I’ll find a way…”

“Jeez, settle down, Mama Bear, I’m not gonna let Emma get hurt.”

Sabine pulled her arm from my grasp and dropped back into my dad’s chair, grinning up at me. “I just wanted to see how good your threat would be.”

I had to concentrate to unclench my jaw. “How’d I do?”

Her head bobbed, almost respectful y. “Not bad.”

“Not bad, nothin’, that was badass!” Alec said, and I turned to see him watching me, already on his feet, ready to come to my rescue if Sabine had decided to bite back. “That was great, how your voice got all deep and scary.”

“It did?” ’Bout time my voice did something helpful for a change.

I sank back onto the couch next to Styx, who yipped and watched me until she was convinced I was okay. Then she curled up in my lap and went back to sleep again. “Okay, so we know Beck’s hurting people, but we don’t know how to get rid of him…” I began, making a conscious effort to guide us al back onto the subject.

“Short of killing him? No,” Alec said, plopping onto his end of the couch again, soda in hand.

“Well, that’s a moot point anyway, ’cause I don’t think I could kill someone.” Except maybe in self-defense. Or Emma-defense.

Sabine shrugged. “I could.” I glanced at her in disbelief, but she only rol ed her eyes. “What? He’s a bad guy.”

“By whose definition of bad?” Alec asked, and Sabine and I shot him twin looks of disbelief. Alec sighed and sat up straighter. “Look, I’m not saying he’s a saint, but I’ve seen plenty of real bad guys in the last quarter century, ladies. Monsters who would do much worse than what Beck’s done, just to watch some poor girl suffer. But so far, it sounds like your math teacher’s just trying to feed himself and propagate his own species, both of which are rights the two of you take for granted.”

“Nuh-uh.” Sabine shook her head vehemently. “I’m a parasite, too. If I can control myself during a meal at seventeen years old, then he can damn well do it at…however old he is.”

Alec nodded, conceding the point, but his gaze held Sabine’s firmly.

“And you have no evidence that he hasn’t. Al you have is a teenager’s miscarriage. I’m not saying that’s not horrible, because it is. But he didn’t mean for that to happen. Your incubus wants that baby even worse than its mother probably did, yet you’re willing to kill a man because his lover had a miscarriage?”

Sabine leaned forward in her chair, and the lights in the room seemed to dim as her eyes grew darker. “You’re twisting it al around to make it sound innocent, but it’s not,” she insisted. “This is a very old man taking advantage of teenage girls, using some kind of supernatural charisma as a weapon. That’s messed up, no matter how you look at it.”

I frowned at Alec, turning on the couch to face him more directly. “You can’t seriously think what he’s doing is justified?”

“No. And I never said I did. I’m just saying that the punishment ought to fit the crime. You’re talking about killing this man, and you have no evidence he’s actually taken a life.”

Crap. “He’s right,” I said, and Sabine turned on me in surprise. I shrugged. “I’m not saying we should drop the issue. I’m not even saying you can’t kill him.” If he lay one hand on Emma, I’d be right there behind Sabine when she threw the first punch—or whatever. “But before we condemn a man to death, we need to know that he’s actual y taken a life. Otherwise…we’re going to have to find some other way to get rid of him.” Some way that wouldn’t just push him into the next school unlucky enough to have a midsemester job opening.

“Okay, so we find his victims,” Sabine conceded, obviously confident that there actual y were victims. “How do we do that? Look for other pregnant girls?”

“Wel , unless he’s a moron—and he’s isn’t, or someone would have caught up to him by now—he’s not going to feed from anyone carrying his child, ’cause that would drain the baby, too. Right?” I asked, and Alec nodded.

“So, basically, we’re looking for dead un-pregnant women.”

“Can’t think of any of those, recently,” Sabine said.

“Me, neither. So we stick with what we know, which is that Danica probably isn’t the first girl he’s knocked up during this fertility cycle. Maybe if we find the others, and search the obituaries in their towns, we’ll be able to put together a pattern.”

Sabine nodded, brows raised. “Not bad, bean sidhe!”

“Not bad at all,” Alec agreed. “And maybe I can narrow your search a bit… Incubi—and succubi, too, if memory serves—tend to return to the same breeding ground cycle after cycle. If he’s breeding here now, then this is his territory, and you’re probably going to find most of his other conquests in this general area.”

“Same breeding ground, cycle after cycle…” I said, thinking aloud. “And if he’s teaching now to get to teenage girls, maybe he taught somewhere else before Eastlake.”

“So, what are you gonna do?” Alec asked. “Go question every principal in the metroplex about former teachers?”

“Poor Alec, you’ve missed so much in the last quarter of a century.”

Grinning from ear to ear, I set Styx down and bent to pull my laptop from my bag on the floor. “Most schools don’t put students’ yearbook photos online, but lots of them have pictures of the faculty…” I set the laptop on the coffee table and turned it on, then sipped from my can while the system booted up.

With any luck, the face that had probably brought girls flocking to him for centuries would now lead us to his previous victims, along with the evidence we’d need to get rid of Beck for good.

Chapter Ten

Sabine didn’t have a laptop, and mine was a one computer household, so going through the local school districts took a while. And a lot of them didn’t post pictures of their teachers. But finally, after an hour and a half of searching and two bags of microwave popcorn—I’d sworn off everything but junk for what remained of my life—we found him.

During the fall semester, our Mr. Beck had taught advanced math at Crestwood High. Only the Crestwood students had called him Mr. David Allan.

“That’s him!” Sabine said, and I nodded while Alec leaned over my shoulder for a better look. “Does it say why he left?”

“I doubt they’d put that on the website. But…” Crestwood’s student newspaper was online, so I did a quick search for his alias, looking for some mention of why he left—or was fired.

I found it in the November 3 issue. Mr. Allan had left his position as a first-year math teacher after one semester to pursue a graduate degree, and he hoped to be back in a couple of years, better able to serve the students of Crestwood.

Yeah, right.

I was about to close the tab when a familiar—and horrifying—place name caught my attention from the short mention just below Allan’s article.

Our thoughts and prayers are with senior honor student Farrah Combs, who was admitted to Lakeside Hospital last week. Get well soon, Farrah!

What the editor of the Crestwood Observer obviously didn’t know—if she had, the mention probably never would have run in their paper—was that Lakeside wasn’t a regular hospital. It was a mental health facility, attached to Arlington Memorial. The very same mental health facility—psych ward, to the uninformed—where I’d spent a week of my life, a year and a half earlier.

Lakeside was only fifteen miles away. Maybe Farrah Combs—assuming she was still there, and marginally coherent—could tell me something about Mr. Allan. And whether or not any of her fellow students had gotten pregnant or died while he was teaching there.

But I couldn’t tell Sabine my idea, because she’d insist on tagging along, and I was not taking a living nightmare into a mental health facility.

I glanced at the onscreen clock before closing my laptop and was relieved to realize it was almost six o’clock. “Okay…” I stood and slid my computer back into the bag. “I’m gonna find something to eat and you’re going to go home.”

“Why?” Sabine said, physically resisting as I tried to guide her toward the door. “We’re on a tight schedule here, Kaylee. I thought you wanted to nail this bastard.”

“I do. Figuratively. But I can’t think when I’m hungry, so why don’t you go home and go online and see if you can find any more of Beck’s former employers.”

“I don’t have internet at home.”

“Then go to the library. Sometimes people fal asleep there—I’m sure that’s an untapped market for you. We can exchange information in the morning.”

“What information are you gonna have?” she demanded, as I pulled the front door open and pushed her half-empty soda can into her hand.

I scrambled for another wel -meaning lie until my gaze settled on an obviously amused Alec, and the answer slid into place. “Alec’s going to help me come up with a plan B for getting rid of Mr. Beck, in case murder starts to look a bit extreme.”

“That’s not gonna happen,” Sabine insisted, eyes narrowed at me now from the front porch.

“Well, just in case. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Then I closed the door in her face.

Alec laughed out loud. “What was that all about?”

“You have to take the direct approach with Sabine—she doesn’t understand subtlety.” I peeked through the blinds until her car drove away, then I turned to Alec. “Your turn. How’d you get here, anyway?”

He crossed both arms over his chest and suddenly embodied the immovable object. “I took the bus.”

“Good. I think there’s another one at six-fifteen. You need change?”

Alec frowned. “I’m gainfully employed, Kaylee. And I’m not leaving. I promised your dad I’d stay with you.”

“I don’t need a babysitter, Alec.”

“I know. But your dad’s afraid that whatever’s supposed to kill you could hit early and leave you lingering on the brink of death for the next few days. And he’s pretty determined not to let that happen.”

“Then he should be at home, not out chasing possibilities that don’t exist.”

“You can’t rationalize with grief and denial, Kaylee.”

“I’m trying to rationalize with you. I have something important to do, and I need you to go home.”

Alec dropped into my dad’s recliner, and I knew with one glance that he wasn’t going to be moved until he was damn well ready. “If this is about Nash…you’re as grown as you’re gonna get and it’s not my place to tell you what not to do with your boyfriend. You two can go back there and close the door and make the whole damn planet quake for all I care. I’ll even wear earplugs, if you think it’s gonna get loud, but—”

“No! This has nothing to do with Nash.” In fact, if I told him, he’d try to talk me out of it. I sighed and sat on the edge of the coffee table. “I swear, I’l kill you if you tell my dad, but…I’m going to sneak into Lakeside and talk to Farrah Combs. And I need to be back before Nash comes over, so you have to go!”

“You’re gonna sneak into Lakeside? I thought you hated that place.”

“I do.” With a fierce and glorious passion. “But that’s my best chance of finding the bodies in Beck’s closet, and I am not going to die without knowing he’s no threat to Emma, or anyone else at school.”

“Fine. I’ll go with you.”

“You can’t. It’ll be hard enough to get myself in, and bringing you will only double our chances of getting caught.”

He shifted in the chair and it groaned beneath his weight. “How are you going to get in?”

I stared at my hands in my lap, avoiding his gaze. “I have an idea, but it only works for one person. Me.”

“Please tel me you’re not going to get yourself committed.”

He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, trying to catch my gaze. “I’m pretty sure your dad would actually kill me if I let that happen.”

“No! How am I supposed to help anyone if I’m tied to a stretcher?”

“They really tied you down?”

“We have that in common,” I said, and he burst into laughter, no doubt remembering what was probably the most embarrassing moment of either of our lives.

I couldn’t quite decide why I was reluctant to admit the next part, but when I realized he wasn’t going to go without more information, I knew I had no choice. “I’m going to see if Tod can get me into Lakeside without being seen.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Alec asked softly, watching me closely, and I couldn’t tell if he meant breaking into the hospital, or asking Tod for help.

“I’m not sure about anything anymore, Alec. Except that I’m going to die. But not before I take Beck down.” I stood and gestured toward the front door. “Now please go home so I can be reckless and brave for possibly the last time in my tragically short life.”

Alec rolled beautiful brown eyes. “No fair playing the deathcard.”

“No fair having it to play,” I shot back, holding the front door open.

“Fine.” He stood and shoved his hands into his pockets.

“But if your dad finds out, tel him you overpowered me and left me for dead.”

“Got it.” I pushed all six-foot-two, one hundred eighty-plus pounds of him over the threshold with both hands.

“Be careful, Kaylee,” he said, and I nodded solemnly as I closed the door in his face. He hadn’t even made it to the sidewalk when I pulled my phone from my pocket and autodialed.

“Kaylee?” Tod answered on the first ring. “What’s wrong?”

I hesitated on my way to the kitchen with Alec’s empty soda can. “How do you know something’s wrong?”

“You only call me when you want something Nash can’t do for you.”

My face flamed, and I was suddenly glad he couldn’t see me. That I knew of. “That is not true.”

“Oh, yeah?” he teased, and I could hear the challenge in his voice.

“So…you don’t need anything?” Was it true? I had kind of come to count on him…

A smile snuck up on me, in spite of his valid point and the grave reason for my cal . “As a matter of fact, I was going to offer you something.”

For one long moment, the only sound over the line was the soft whisper of his next inhalation, then his voice sounded a little scratchier than usual.

“What did you have in mind?”

“A field trip. You interested in doing something dangerous, and possibly illegal?”

“Does it involve underage girls, broken curfews and assorted fruit toppings?”

I dropped the empty can into the recycling bin and leaned against the kitchen peninsula, grinning like an idiot. “Two of the three. And I could probably scrounge up some strawberry jam, if you’re desperate.”

“I’m never desperate,” Tod said, only his voice hadn’t come from my phone. I whirled around to see the reaper standing behind me, still holding his cell. “But for the record, I prefer apricot.”

“Yuck. Nobody likes apricot jam.”

Tod shrugged and pocketed his phone. “Sure, strawberry is the more obvious choice, but I submit that apricot has a more complex, unusual flavor, with just enough tang to keep things interesting…” He raised one brow, grinning more with his eyes than with his mouth, and I had the sudden inexplicable urge to look away, before I saw too much. Then Tod blinked, and whatever I’d almost seen was gone. “So…what illegal adventure will I be aiding and abetting today?”

I closed my phone and slid it into my front pocket. “Remember when you snuck me into Nash’s room to watch him and Sabine?” At the time, he’d said it was so that I could better understand their friendship, but in retrospect, I think it was so that I could see for myself how connected they were. Tod had made no secret of the fact that he thought his brother and I were a bad match.

It was one of the few things he and Sabine had in common.

“Are we playing spy again? That’s my second favorite game.” Tod followed me down the hall and into my room, where I pretended I didn’t want to know what his first favorite game was while I dug in the bottom of my closet for a pair of laceless, slip-on canvas shoes. If I got caught, shoelaces would be a dead giveaway that I didn’t belong at Lakeside—strings of any kind were banned from the facility.

“More like detective. I need to get into a secure building.”

His brows rose in interest. “The police station? Did Sabine get arrested again?”

I stepped into the first shoe. “If she had, I’d be laughing from afar, not busting her out. We’re breaking into Lakeside.”

Tod dropped into my desk chair and it bobbed beneath his very corporeal weight. “Don’t most people try to break out of the psych ward?”

“I’m not most people.” I stepped into the other shoe and slid my ID and a twenty-dollar bill into my back pocket.

“That’s what I like best about you. So why are we breaking into the loony bin?”

“I need to talk to one of the patients. And I figured I should check on Scott while I’m there.”

“Scott’s at Lakeside?” Tod appeared in the living room ahead of me, and when I tried to grab my keys from the empty candy dish, I found them dangling from his index finger instead.

“Your mom said he was moved there for long-term care last month.”

Scott Carter was Nash’s best friend and fellow frost addict. But because he was human, the drug had affected him much faster and stronger than it affected Nash. Scott suffered a psychotic breakdown and irreparable brain damage from his addiction, and he now had a permanent, hardwired mental connection to Avari, the hellion of avarice, whose breath they’d both been huffing.

Nash had visited him several times in the hospital, always hoping for improvement that never came, but he couldn’t get in to see Scott at Lakeside, where visitors had to be approved individually by the attending physician.

“You wanna ride with me, or meet me in the parking lot?” I asked, plucking my key ring from his finger. Obviously, it’d be faster for him to just blink himself there, but he didn’t yet have the strength—or maybe the skill—to materialize that far away with a passenger, so I’d have to drive myself.

Tod crossed his arms over his uniform shirt, a blue polo with a stylized pizza embroidered on the left side of his chest. “I haven’t said I’ll do it yet.”

I frowned, one hand on the doorknob, trying to decide whether or not he was joking. “What if I said this is my dying wish? You know, one last request?”

“Your last request is to break into a psychiatric hospital?”

I shrugged. “I’m kind of operating under the assumption that I get one last request from everyone who gives a damn that I’m dying.” I shoved my hands into my pockets and stared straight at his eyes, demanding the truth from them in a sudden surge of reckless courage. “Do you fall into that category?”

“Don’t play that game, Kaylee. You already know the answer to that.”

There was just the slightest twist of emotion in his blue eyes, and my pulse spiked when his voice went deep, like his response meant more than the sum of the individual words.

“Then will you help me?”

“You know the answer to that, too,” he said, and I smiled in relief, then almost laughed out loud over the absurdity of that. You’d have to be crazy to break into a psychiatric hospital.

I held the front door for him, then locked it behind us, and when I looked up, Tod was already sitting in my passenger seat waiting for me, with al four doors locked. “You know, you’d make a great thief,” I said, sliding into the driver’s seat next to him.

“I’m a man of many talents.”

“Thanks for doing this,” I said as I backed down the driveway.

“I was bored at work anyway.” He shrugged as I shifted into Drive and took off toward the highway.

After several miles of me watching the road and him watching me, I finally huffed in exasperation. “What?”

“What’d you want from Nash, Kaylee?”

“Huh?” I glanced at Tod and found his irises holding steady in spite of clear tension in the line of his jaw.

“Your last request from my little brother. What did you ask him to do for you?”

My grip tightened around the steering wheel, and I could feel my face flush. “That’s none of your business, Tod.”