LITMIR.BIZ

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I’m really dead, but as soon as my mom started talking to you, I just lost it.”

      That was true. She’d been staring at her mother and sisters for two straight days, at the viewing the day before, the funeral today, then the actual burial, and she hadn’t lost it once. Not until her mother was within arm’s reach.

      “Don’t worry about it. You’ve been through hell this year, Em. I’d be worried about you if you weren’t upset.” Though actually, I was worried about her. Very worried.

      Emma sat on the edge of her bed to pull on a pair of sneakers, and if I’d reached out from the end of my bed, I could have touched her. We’d given up nearly all the floor space in my room for the extra twin bed, and I’d had to get rid of my beanbag chair, which was a real shame, considering we didn’t actually need a second bed. Emma could have had mine—I hadn’t slept in it once in the nearly two weeks since my birthday/her death-day, in part because I no longer needed sleep, though I’d discovered that I did need rest.

      But telling my father that I was spending most of my nights at Tod’s place, whether or not my reaper boyfriend was actually at home, would have been…

      Well, that wouldn’t have been a pleasant conversation. Even if my dad had his suspicions about how physical our relationship had become, I was in no hurry to confirm them. I may have been practically grown—and technically dead—but I would always be his little girl. He’d made that more than clear.

      And I loved him for it.

      More comfortable in our regular clothes, Em and I met everyone else in the front of the house, where Sabine had helped herself to a soda without getting one for anyone else. “All I’m saying is that Emily and Emma are practically the same name. No offense, Em,” she added when we walked past my father’s chair, where the mara was perched on the arm, hopelessly wrinkling the black slacks she only wore to funerals. And, truthfully, she only wore those because Nash had insisted black jeans weren’t good enough.

      “None taken.” Em headed into the kitchen and took a seat at the bar, where she rested her forehead on her folded arms.

      “At least she wasn’t named after a can of soup,” Tod said, and Sabine shot him a scowl. Her last name—Campbell—had come from a hungry worker at the church where she’d been abandoned as a toddler.

      “Emma and Emily are pretty similar.” Nash sank into my dad’s armchair and wrapped one arm around the mara’s waist. “Wouldn’t you rather pick something different? I mean, you could be anyone you want. It could be fun. None of the rest of us got to pick our names.”

      Em didn’t even look up.

      “We called her Cynthia for three days.” Tod shoved a pillow over so I could sit with him on the couch. “She couldn’t remember to answer. Calling her Emily is just easier.”

      “Who cares what you call her? Emma is still Emma, and that’s all that matters, right? That she survived.” Sophie shrugged in her spaghetti strap dress, leaning against the wall by the door like she wanted to stay but needed to be near an exit, just in case.

      I could tell she was trying to say the right thing. To be useful and insightful. She’d been doing that a lot since she and Luca got together, which seemed to show her that she had more in common with me and my “freak” friends than she would ever again have in common with her fellow dancers and teen socialites. But when filtered through the lens of narcissism through which my cousin viewed the world “useful and insightful” usually came out sounding more like “pointless and trite.”

      Sophie had come a long way, but the journey was far from over.

      “Yeah, I survived.” Em sat up and glared at her over the half wall separating the kitchen from the living room. “Unless you count the part where my neck was snapped by a hellion who wanted to wear me like a perpetual Halloween costume. And the fact that my permanent address is now plot number 436 at the Grandview Cemetery. You think Zappos delivers to burial plots? If so, you must be right! Nothing’s changed! So what if I’m now a brunette, and a B-cup, and an Emily? At least I survived, right?”

      “I was just trying to help.” Sophie blinked back tears that probably had more to do with her own frustration than with sympathy for Em. “I almost died, too, you know. We all did.”

      “Almost only counts in beauty pageants.” Emma slid off her bar stool and pulled a can of soda from the fridge, then took down a tall glass and the bottle of whiskey my dad had confiscated from Nash a couple of weeks earlier. No one said anything when she poured generous helpings of both into the glass.

      “We’re going to get him,” I said through clenched teeth, struggling to hide my anger on her behalf while she drained a quarter of the glass. “We’re going to get them all.”

      She didn’t deserve this. It was my fault Emma had lost everything she’d ever had, except for a best friend who’d failed to protect her. It was my fault, and it was Avari’s, and he was going to pay for what happened to Em and to everyone else he’d hurt.

      “Sure we are.” Emma rolled her eyes and took another drink. “We’re going to sock it to the immortal hellions capable of squashing us like ants on the sidewalk. So what if they can’t be killed, or caught, or even hurt, as far as we know. Maybe we can kill them with kindness. Or maybe they’ll see us wearing our big-boy pants, all ready to take them down, and they’ll die laughing. That’s the only way we’re going to get them. I know nothing about the Netherworld, but I know that.”

      “I have a plan, Em. A good one.”

      “I know you do. I’m sorry.” She shoved limp brown hair back from her face and sat, still holding her glass. “I just…I attended my own funeral today. There’s just no way to improve a day that started with throwing clods of dirt on your own coffin.”

      “I know.” My hand tightened around Tod’s. I hadn’t seen myself buried, but I had been…well…murdered. Sacrificed, in fact. As a virgin.

      Cliché? Sure. Painful? Hell, yes.

      Reversible?

      Nope.

      “Well, at least you’re compatible roommates,” Sabine said as Luca headed into the kitchen. “Kaylee’s dead, but pretending to live in her own body, and Emma’s alive in someone else’s body, but faking death. Your living situation was meant to be. Unlike mine.” The mara threw an angry glance at my cousin.

      Since her foster mother’s death, Sabine had been staying with Sophie and my uncle Brendon, who’d officially applied to be her new foster parent, to keep her within the fold. Because in spite of obvious attitude…issues, she’d proved useful.

      Also because if we tried to get rid of her, she’d only claw her way back into Nash’s life, stepping on everyone in her way. She’d certainly done it before.

      Sabine had a unique perspective on boundaries—she refused to recognize them.

      Sophie stepped away from the wall she’d been holding up and adjusted her black silk dress. “Hey, Luca, I told my dad we’d put in an appearance at the reception,” she said, but we all saw through that—she looked more comfortable in her three-inch stiletto heels than in my house. “Are you ready?”

      “Yeah. Just a sec.” Luca looked up from the kitchen peninsula, where he was talking softly to Emma with his back to the rest of us. He said something, and she actually chuckled. When he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear—Lydia’s ear—the look Sophie gave them should have boiled the blood in their veins.

      Em and I were supposed to go to the reception, too, but when I’d told my dad how she’d reacted to her mother at the funeral, he’d agreed that we should probably forgo any more close contact with Ms. Marshall until they’d both had a little time to adjust to Emma’s death.

      “Luca?” my cousin repeated.

      He stood and gave Emma

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