If I Die (15 page)

“So, we’re okay?” he asked, and I realized I’d control ed the telltale swirling in my eyes, possibly for the first time in my life.

“Yes, we’re fine.”

“Well then,” Nash said, brows arched in challenge, like he wasn’t sure he completely believed me. “I can’t help noticing that we’re all alone here.” He squeezed me tighter and whispered into my ear, though there was no one else to hear him. “I say we go to your room and start granting wishes…”

A couple of hours earlier, I would have led him to my room with my head spinning, the rest of me on fire with anticipation. But now, it didn’t feel right. Tod was right—I did want to sleep with Nash just to say I’d done it. To know what it felt like. But Nash would think it meant more than that.

Lying to avoid hurting him felt bad enough, and I was only doing it because I’d be gone in a few days, but Tod wouldn’t, and three hundred years was a long time to hate your own brother.

But sleeping with Nash for the wrong reason was something else entirely. I couldn’t use him like that. So I lied again.

“It’s been a really long day, and I’m kind of starving. Why don’t we order Chinese and watch a movie? Your choice.”

Nash frowned. “I thought you wanted to.”

“I did. I do. Just…not tonight.” Not that there were many nights left, but I’d deal with those as they came.

“Are you still mad because I asked about Tod?”

“No. Nash, this has nothing to do with Tod, and I’m not mad at you.

Everything’s fine.” Surely the biggest lie I’d ever told.

He looked unconvinced, but dropped a kiss on my forehead anyway and tried to hide his disappointment. “You order the food, I’ll find a movie. It doesn’t matter what we do. Just being with you is enough for me.”

My guilt was like the ocean, swallowing me whole.

“When you were little, you used to call those ‘pop hearts,’” my dad said, and I looked up from my blueberry toaster pastry to find him standing in the kitchen doorway.

“Hey. Where were you last night?” He looked like hell. Bloodshot eyes, dark circles, pale skin.

“Out looking for a miracle.” My dad sighed and trudged toward the coffeepot.

“Okay then,” I said as he poured. “Where were you all day yesterday?

Mr. Ryan left a message on the machine. He says if you don’t come in today, you’re fired. Have you even been to work this week?”

He took the first sip of black coffee without bothering to replace the pot. “I have more important things to worry about right now, Kaylee. But the universe seems adamant that you are the only miracle I’m going to get.”

I nodded slowly, fighting to keep my eyes from watering. “The universe is always right, Dad. There’s nothing you can do.”

He just looked at me over his steaming mug, refusing to admit defeat.

Then, finally, he sighed and leaned against the counter. “You wanna skip school today and hang out? Just the two of us? There’s an Alien marathon on all day, al the way through Alien vs Predator: Requiem. We could order pizza and revel in the carnage.”

I wanted to cry. He wouldn’t admit he couldn’t save me, but an offer to play hooky for father-daughter time spoke volumes. And I really wanted to say yes. To stay in my pjs and watch TV with my dad al day, for the last time in my life. But… “Can’t,” I said around the last bite of blueberry filling. “You have to go to work.” And I had to go to school and plot the destruction of a Netherworld monster posing as my math teacher.

“Tonight, then?” He tried to hide his disappointment, but the rare swirl of color in his eyes spoke the truth. “I can set it to record.”

“No you can’t.” We’d had the DVR on the living room TV for a month, and he still hadn’t figured out how to change the channel. “But I can. Come home with pizza, and I’m all yours.” I wouldn’t be doing any more homework anyway. For the rest of my life.

“Deal.” My father smiled and looked a little less than exhausted for a couple of seconds. But then he sipped from his mug again and I could see how tired he was and how hard the past few days had been for him, and for the first time, it occurred to me that I may have gotten the good end of the deal. In a couple of days, my troubles would be over. But my dad would have to live with my death—with failing to save me—for the rest of his life.

I started to say something else—to try to put into words how much I loved him—but the doorbell rang before I could come up with the first word.

My dad frowned, his mouth already open to ask who was at the door, but I jogged past him to open it before he could speak. Nash and Sabine stood on the front porch, her car parked at the curb. I stepped back to let them in while my dad poured the rest of his coffee into a travel mug.

“Hey, Mr. Cavanaugh,” Sabine said, plopping next to Nash on the couch.

“You’re all up early today. What’s going on, guys?” My dad held his work gloves and keys in one hand, his mug in the other. He tolerated Sabine in spite of the creepy vibes she leaked when she got angry or upset because he didn’t know what she’d been willing to do to me to get to Nash. And be cause he felt sorry for her, stuck with a foster mother who only wanted to draw a government check. But what he didn’t know was that Sabine relished the freedom apathetic parenting afforded her.

What no one knew—except maybe Nash, and he wasn’t talking—was where she’d gotten her car, with no job and very little spending money.

“We’re working on something for school today,” I said. And technically, that wasn’t a lie. But if I told him the whole truth, he wouldn’t go to work, then he’d lose his job, and after I died he really would have nothing left to live for.

“Okay.” My dad watched me from the entry, one hand on the doorknob. “Now tell me what you’re really up to.”

I should have realized he knew me well enough now to recognize my half-truths. “You don’t want to know.”

“Tel me anyway.”

“Emancipated minor, remember?” I said, daring a grin he didn’t return.

“Besides, how much trouble could I possibly get into in the next two days?” But he didn’t seem very pleased by the reminder.

“If I recall, this emancipation expires in less than forty-eight hours. I expect to hear al about this over breakfast Friday morning.”

“Deal.”

None of us said what we were all thinking—that this time, I wouldn’t be around to ’fess up and get grounded.

Alec knocked on the door minutes after my dad’s car disappeared down the street, just like I’d planned. “Okay, I’m here,” he said, brushing past me into the living room. “What’s with the summons?”

I pushed the door closed behind him. “I talked to one of Beck’s other victims last night at Lakeside, and we were hoping you might have some more answers for us.”

Alec just looked at me. Then he looked at Sabine and Nash. Then back at me. “You’re not going to give this up, are you?” he asked, and I shook my head.

“Fine. But you’re gonna have to feed me. I haven’t even been to bed yet.” He worked third shift at the same factory where my father worked.

“Pancakes?” I offered.

“And lots of coffee.”

Nash made a fresh pot while I nuked an entire box of frozen chocolate chip pancakes, three at a time. “The girl I went to see last night is named Farrah Combs, and she’s very, very pregnant with Beck’s baby. According to Lydia, the nurses say the baby’s a boy. Which means it’s an incubus. Right?”

Alec nodded around his first bite, then licked a smear of chocolate from his lower lip.

“Who’s Lydia?” Nash asked, sliding into the chair between me and Sabine with a plate of his own.

“Farrah’s roommate. I met her when I was at Lakeside.”

“Okay, so Beck’s about to get his baby.” Alec shrugged and picked up his mug. “It sounds like this mess is about to clean itself up. Once he gets what he wants, you’l be rid of him, at least for the next century.”

“No way.” Sabine shook her head firmly. “He doesn’t get a happy ending. He has to pay for what he’s done.”

I refrained—barely—from pointing out that she hadn’t paid for what she’d done, which added a hollow note to her righteous anger, at least in my ears.

“He’s not getting a happy ending or a son,” I said. “According to Tod, incubi babies are really hard to carry to term. The few that aren’t miscarried either drive the mothers insane—literally—or kil them. Farrah got the worst of both worlds. The only reason she and her baby have both survived this long is because Lydia’s a syphon and she’s been kind of splitting the burden with Farrah. But now that she’s gone, Farrah and the baby are both going to die, and Beck will be back to square one. Which means he’s still dangerous, and we still have to get rid of him.”

“Wait, where did Lydia go?” Nash asked, absently cutting his pancakes into small triangles.

“Um…Tod and I kind of…broke her out.”

“You broke a psych patient out of the hospital?” Alec’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth, dripping syrup onto the edge of the table.

Sabine leaned back with her chair balanced on two legs. “Playin’ a little fast and loose with the rules lately, aren’t you?”

“She didn’t belong there any more than I did,” I insisted, and the mara’s brows rose.

“Interesting phrasing, Kay…”

I glared at her, but refused to be distracted. “The point is that Farrah can’t hold on to the baby without Lydia’s help, and as soon as Beck realizes he’s going to lose his son—if he hasn’t already—he’s going to step up his game.

I figure if Farrah’s seven months pregnant, assuming she was one of his first tries, he’s already more than halfway through his fertile period with no luck so far. That has to be making him kinda desperate, and possibly careless, and the last thing our school needs is a rash of demonic miscarriages.”

“Though miscarriage seems to be the lesser of several evils, considering how dangerous the pregnancies are,” Sabine said.

“I don’t know,” I said, thinking about what Danica had told me in the hospital. “Danica’s messed up so badly that she can’t have kids. Ever. And now I’m wondering whether her case is a rarity, or just another awful part of the pattern.” I turned to Alec as he swallowed another bite, and Sabine and Nash followed my gaze.

“That’s pretty typical of an incubus miscarriage, and it would have been worse a couple of centuries ago.” Alec shrugged without setting his fork down.

“Before modern medicine, your classmate would have bled to death. At least this way she’s stil alive.”

“Yeah. I’m sure Danica will be thrilled to hear how lucky she is.” I pushed my own plate away, untouched.

“Damn,” Sabine swore softly. “I have to feed to survive, but I never did anything that messed up. I swear.”

I tried not to remember how hard she’d tried to break up me and Nash, which I’d personally found pretty messed up.

“Is that how you think about me?” she demanded softly, like she might not real y want the answer. “Like some kind of monster?”

“No,” I said, and she pretended to believe what I pretended was true.

But she looked more wounded than I’d thought possible.

“The internal damage is an unfortunate side effect for women not strong enough to carry an incubus’s baby to term,” Alec said, obviously trying to draw us back on track. “That’s why they usually target younger, healthier women, who are more likely to survive the pregnancy.”

“Which is why he’s teaching high school,” Nash said. But that rationalization did nothing to soften my horror.

Alec shrugged. “The age thing probably doesn’t mean anything to him. A couple hundred years ago, girls in his target age range were considered marriageable.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Yeah, wel , now we’re jailbait.”

“That won’t matter unless he’s a complete idiot,” Sabine said. “And if he were an idiot, we’d have heard about him hitting on students before one of them miscarried in his class. And anyway, if Danica’s any indication, he’s picking juniors and seniors—girls at or past the age of consent. Which is seventeen, in Texas, in case you were wondering.”

I scowled at her. “I wasn’t wondering.”

“My point is that even if he was scared of the human justice system—

and he’s not. Hell, I’m not—he’s not doing anything illegal, technically. He could get fired, but I seriously doubt he gives a shit. He wants a son, not a pension.”

“Okay, so we agree that he’s going to try to spread his seed beyond just Emma,” I said, thinking aloud.

“And the next girl will probably be a junior or a senior,” Nash said, glancing at Sabine to acknowledge the age range she’d provided.

“She’ll be one of his own students,” the mara added. “Someone having enough trouble in math to warrant personal attention, which will make his interest in her look like legitimate academic concern.”

“And opportunity,” Nash said, pushing his empty plate away. “He’ll be looking for someone whose parents aren’t going to get in the way. You said Farrah’s dad’s a trucker, so he’s gone a lot, right? And didn’t you say her mother’s dead? And Danica’s mom’s been in the hospital for a while, so she wasn’t there to notice anything going on.”

“Yeah, but Mrs. Sussman’s only been in a coma for four weeks, and Danica said she spent one night with the baby’s father about a month ago,” I said. “So it’s entirely possible that Danica got pregnant before her mom got sick. Or at least right around that time…” My voice trailed off as another possibility clicked into place in my head.

“What?” Sabine cal ed when I pushed my chair back and headed for the living room, to grab my laptop from my bag.

I set the laptop on the table and turned it on as I pulled my chair closer.

“Danica’s mother’s brain-dead, according to the nurse, and Farrah’s mother is just plain dead.”

“You think that’s more than a coincidence?” Nash asked, scooting his chair closer so he could see the screen as I opened my web browser.

“What have we learned about coincidence, boys and girls?” I typed the keywords: Combs, Farrah, obituary and Crestwood, Texas into the search engine and hit Enter.

“There’s no such thing,” Nash mumbled as results began to fill the screen. The third link led to the Dallas Morning News online obituary page entry for Lynne Combs. “There.” Nash pointed and I clicked, and Sabine and Alex got up to look over my shoulder as I read aloud.