LITMIR.BIZ

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soon as you can.”

      “Do you have a plan, or are you just throwing us all into the deep end?” Nash’s finger traced lazy figure eights on my lower back, and I wanted to lean into his touch. Or better yet, pick up where we’d left off.

      Tod sank wearily into my desk chair, arms crossed over the back. “Well, obviously we need to know which hellion she sold her soul to.”

      “Yeah, good luck with that.” I pointed at the computer screen behind him, and the reaper twisted in his seat to look. When he met my gaze again, a cocky smile had turned up one side of his mouth, and his blue eyes glinted in shadowed mirth.

      “You thought you could figure that out online? Somehow I don’t think hellions are much into social networking.”

      “You got a better plan?” Nash pulled me closer, and my heart beat a little faster in response to his.

      “Yeah. I thought we’d ask her.”

      “You can do that on your own,” Nash snapped.

      Tod shook his head. “I need Kaylee. Addy likes her.”

      “And Addy always gets what she wants?”

      I could practically hear the scowl in Nash’s voice, and I twisted to look at him in amusement. “Like you’re one to talk!”

      His brows rose, and his steamy gaze traveled south of my face. “I don’t have everything I want. Yet.” I flushed, and turned back to Tod in time to see his eyes roll. “Well, you guys aren’t going without me.” Nash stretched one leg out on my rumpled comforter. “But do you honestly think she’ll know this hellion’s name?”

      Tod shrugged again. “I think it’s worth a shot—”

      Before he could finish, my door creaked open and my dad appeared in the gap. His gaze hardened when it landed on me and Nash, now reclined together on the bed, and I knew that if he had less control over his emotions, my father’s irises would be churning furiously.

      “Kaylee, I know I’m new at this, but I’m not that new. This door stays open when you two are alone in here.”

      I glanced at Tod, who smirked at me from my own desk chair. “We’re not—” And that’s when I realized my father couldn’t see the reaper, and that I probably shouldn’t remedy that. I’d rather my father think Nash and I were breaking the normal human rules than the weird bean sidhe ones. “Doing anything,” I finished lamely.

      “We were just talking, Mr. Cavanaugh.” Nash didn’t even glance at his brother, who was now making obscene gestures and rolling his eyes madly.

      Unconvinced, my dad nodded curtly, then disappeared into the hall, just as the doorbell rang. “Kaylee, can you get that? I’m burning the bread.”

      “Eat fast.” Tod leaned back to cross both arms over his chest as I stood. Then he was gone before I could reply. At least, I thought he was gone, but it was hard to tell with Tod.

      Nash followed me to the door, behind which my cousin’s voice rang out loud and clear. “… don’t see why we can’t do this at our house. There’s barely room to turn around in their kitchen, and Uncle Aiden’s place smells funny.”

      “It does not smell funny, and we hosted last week.” Uncle Brendon sounded exhausted, but much more patient with his only daughter than I would have been. Especially considering how much he’d suffered from his wife’s loss, in spite of what she’d cost us all. But Sophie seemed oblivious to her father’s pain. “It’s their turn.”

      I shot Nash a resigned smile, then pulled the door open, bracing myself for Sophie’s acidic presence. “Hey, guys, come on in.”

      My cousin brushed past us into the house as if she hadn’t heard my greeting, mumbling beneath her breath about how she’d rather spend a Sunday night. She left us to choke on a cloud of her perfume, overwhelming in our small, dark entry.

      “I’m sorry about that.” Uncle Brendon pushed the front door shut as he stepped inside. “She’s … still suffering.”

      And making sure her misery has plenty of company.

      Half an hour later, all five of us sat around the square card table in our eat-in kitchen, me straddling the corner between Nash and Sophie. There wasn’t enough room to actually put the food on the table, so if anyone wanted seconds, he’d have to get up and refill his plate from the dishes on the counter. But that didn’t seem to be much of a worry, considering that the rim of Sophie’s plate was ringed with small bits of marinara-stained waxed paper, which my dad had forgotten to remove from the slices of cheese he’d layered into the lasagna.

      If it hadn’t embarrassed my father to no end, it would have been almost funny to watch her face twist with fresh horror each time she pulled a limp bit of paper from her food. Not that it mattered. She didn’t eat enough to keep a squirrel alive, anyway, and had lost several pounds in the weeks since her mother’s death.

      There wasn’t much conversation over dinner, but every now and then, my uncle would look across the table at his brother and chuckle as he pulled a piece of cheese paper from his pasta and folded it into his napkin, breaking the tension for another few moments. For which I was profoundly grateful.

      Nash and I excused ourselves immediately after dinner, nodding at my father’s reminder to be home by ten-thirty, and I drove, because Nash’s mom had their car. I’d rarely driven in downtown Dallas and had never been to Addison’s hotel, so I counted us lucky to get there in one piece.

      The lobby of the Adolphus was full of dark, ornate furniture and fancy chandeliers, and I felt underdressed clomping through the lobby in jeans and sneakers. Fortunately, before I could work up the nerve to ask the snooty clerk behind an oversize desk which room “Lisa Hawthorne” was in, Tod appeared from around a corner, wearing respectably clean and intact jeans and an unwrinkled button-up shirt open over his usual dark tee. He jerked his head toward a cluster of elevators on one end of the lobby, and we followed him gratefully into the first one to open.

      “She’s pretty nervous, so go easy on her,” Tod said, eyeing Nash as soon as the mirrored doors closed and the elevator slid into motion.

      “She’s not the only one.” I ran one shaky hand over my ponytail, wondering if I should have worn my hair down. Or wiped my feet before walking through the lobby. But the overpriced hotel wasn’t really the cause of my nerves.

      I’d peeked into the Netherworld that afternoon, and wasn’t anxious to do it again anytime soon. But as badly as the prospect of actually walking into that shadow-world scared me, my horror was much greater at the thought of condemning Addison Page to an eternity there. Even if she had signed away her own soul.

      Tod was right. She didn’t know what she was getting into. She couldn’t have.

      The elevator binged in warning and slowed to a smooth stop, then the doors slid open almost silently. Tod got off first, and Nash and I followed him down a thickly carpeted hallway past at least a dozen doors before he stopped in front of the very last one, nearest the emergency staircase.

      “Hang on a minute,” he said, then popped out of sight before we could protest, leaving me and Nash standing in the hall like idiots, hoping no one came out to ask if we’d lost our key. Or to call Security.

      Who me? Paranoid?

      Absolutely.

      Several seconds later, the door opened from the inside, and for the second time in as many days, we walked into the private rooms of Addison Page, rock star. I had a fleeting moment of panicked certainty that once again, she wasn’t expecting us. That Tod had made the whole meeting up. But Addison stood in the middle of the sitting room, watching us through red-rimmed eyes, and she didn’t look surprised to see us. Thank goodness.

      “Thanks for coming,” she said as we made our way to a collection of couches gathered around yet another flat-screen television. “I know you guys probably think I don’t deserve your

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