“Kaylee, do you believe in déjà vu?” Harmony smiled amiably and pulled a carton of milk from the fridge. “Because the sight of you lying injured on that couch is starting to look awfully familiar.”
“I don’t go looking for trouble,” I insisted, a little miffed.
Nash set the keys to the rental on the half wall between the entry and the living room, then dropped onto the couch next to me with his head thrown back like it weighed a ton. We’d stopped by the Carters’ house on the way home so Nash could follow us in the loaner. Scott’s parents had been called back from Cancún early, but they wouldn’t get in until the next day, so his house was completely dark and looked oddly deserted, even in the middle of a sunny winter day.
It was creepy, to say the least.
Harmony set a tub of margarine on the counter, then pulled half-full bags of flour and sugar from the depths of a cabinet I’d rarely peeked into. “Yet trouble manages to find you, whether you’re looking for it or not.”
“In this case, I think ‘trouble’ is a bit of an understatement,” I mumbled, twisting carefully to lean on Nash as he wrapped one arm around me. “Don’t you want to know what happened?” I asked, watching her through the wide kitchen doorway.
“Not yet.” Her voice echoed from inside another cabinet.
“You’ll have to explain it all over again when your father gets here, so I’ll just wait for that.”
“Well, I won’t,” Tod snapped, and I glanced up to find him leaning against the kitchen door frame. He’d shown up in my room in the E.R. right after the detective left, demanding answers we couldn’t give him while the nurse was still there. Then he’d blinked out to find his mother, only to discover her already on the way to the hospital. One of her fellow nurses had called her when she recognized Nash.
“Yes, you will.” Harmony finally stood and faced her older, mostly dead son, a box of baking soda in one hand. “Making her repeat herself won’t make her feel any better.”
“Not that there’s any chance of that, anyway…” My dad was going to go apocalyptic when he heard about the Demon’s Breath. And I wasn’t entirely convinced Harmony wouldn’t join him, once she knew the whole story.
Tod grumbled and dropped into my father’s recliner, apparently willing to physically wait with the rest of us for once.
I sat up and shrugged out from under Nash’s arm so I could see his face, but he wouldn’t look at me. His eyes were closed, one wave of brown hair fallen over his eyebrow. I might have thought he was asleep, if not for the tense lines of his shoulders and jaw. Nash was just as upset as I was, and probably suffering an even heavier burden of guilt, because Scott was his friend.
Metal clanged against the faded Formica as Harmony set our good mixing bowl on the counter.
A labored engine roared down the street out front, then rumbled to a stop in the driveway. My father was home, and considering how quickly he’d arrived, I was surprised not to hear police sirens following him.
Moments later, the front door flew open and smashed against the half wall. My dad’s keys dangled from his hand and his chest heaved as if he’d just run all the way from work. His breathing didn’t slow until his gaze found mine. “Are you okay?”
I scooted forward on the couch as Nash sat up straight next to me. “Yeah. I’m good.” Thanks to twenty-eight stitches and a strong local anesthetic. But I wasn’t looking forward to the next hour of my life. The nurse who’d bandaged my arm had given me two Tylenol tablets. Because once the local anesthetic wore off, she’d said, I’d feel like someone sliced my arm open.
I think that was her idea of a joke.
“What the hell happened?” my dad demanded, still standing in the open doorway as a cold draft swirled across the room, fluttering the opened bills on one end table and raising chill bumps on my legs. “Don’t they have teachers at that school? Why wasn’t anyone there to stop this?”
Well, crap. I guess there’s no way to avoid the whole truancy aspect….
“We weren’t actually at school.” I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping I looked pathetic enough to thwart the bulk of his temper.
The front door slammed and I opened my eyes to see anger and concern warring behind my father’s pained expression. “I don’t even know where to start, Kaylee. I’ve only been back for three months, and you’ve nearly been killed twice. What do I have to do to keep you safe? Are you out looking for trouble?”
In spite of the growing pain in my arm and my general state of guilt and grief, I managed a wry grin, trying to lighten the mood. “You missed that part of the discussion.” When his worried scowl deepened, the smile died on my face.
My father sighed and pulled his coat off as he clomped across the living room, bringing with him the scents of sweat and metal from the factory where he worked. He’d had to leave early—giving up part of his paycheck—thanks to me. “How’s your arm?”
“Fine.” I held out my hand when he reached for it, and he studied my arm, as if he could actually see through the long, thick bandage. “The doctor said there’s no permanent damage. It’s just a few stitches, Dad.”
Tod huffed and propped his feet on the footrest of my father’s recliner. “Try twenty-eight,” he said, and my dad actually jerked in surprise. I was almost amused to realize that, though he could clearly hear the reaper, my father couldn’t see him.
“Damn it, Tod!” He glared in the reaper’s general direction.
“Do not sneak up on me in my own house—I don’t care how dead you are! Show yourself or get out.”
Harmony and I shared a small smile, but my father didn’t notice.
The reaper shrugged and grinned at me, then blinked out of the chair and onto the carpet at my father’s back, now fully corporeal. “Fine,” he said, inches from my dad’s ear, and my father nearly jumped out of his shirt. “Your house, your rules.”
My dad spun around, his flush deepening until I thought his face would explode. “I changed my mind. Get out!”
Tod shrugged again and a single blond curl fell over his forehead. “I’ll get the scoop from Kaylee later. My break’s over, anyway.” Then he winked silently out of existence, leaving my father still fuming, his fists clenched at his sides in anger that had no outlet.
I looked up at the clock in the kitchen. It was 2:05 p.m. Tod’s shift had only started at noon. If he didn’t watch it, he was going to get fired.
“Is he really gone?” My dad glanced first at me, then at Harmony, who shrugged, clearly trying to hide a grin as she shoved several fallen ringlets back from her face.
“As far as I can tell.”
Tod didn’t torment his mother or me much because he couldn’t get such a rise out of us. My father and Nash were his favorite targets, because they took themselves so seriously.
My dad closed his eyes and sucked in a long, hopefully calming breath, then refocused his attention on me. “Where were we?”
“I was telling you I’m fine. No permanent damage.” No need to mention the twenty-eight stitches again…
“But you could have been killed,” he insisted, and I couldn’t argue with that, so I kept my mouth shut. “Come in here where I can get a better look at you.” He stomped into the kitchen and gestured for me to take a seat at the table, beneath the brightest light in the house.
I sat, and he sank into the chair next to mine, studying my face as if it now held foreign planes and angles. “Who did this?” He took my chin in one hand and carefully turned my head for a better look at the short, shallow cut on my neck, which the nurse had cleaned and left unbandaged. It hadn’t even required stitches.
I sighed and pulled away from his gentle grip, already dreading the explanation I was about to launch. “Scott Carter.”