And Nash damn well knew that.
“Kay, no one’s saying you’re crazy.” My father stood, too, and when he reached out for me, I let him pull me close. “You’ve had a traumatic day, and he was just trying to calm you down, though admittedly he’s going about it the wrong way.” He shot a pointed scowl at Nash, who had the decency to look horrified by what he’d done. So why the hell had he done it?
“I’m sorry, Kaylee.” Nash let me see the swirl of regret in his eyes. But I couldn’t forgive him. Not for this. Not yet.
“Stay out of my head, Nash.” I stepped back when he reached for me, and he looked like I’d punched him in the gut. Some small part of me felt bad about that, but the rest of me was pissed. I had more to say about this, but not in front of our parents.
So I sat at the table again and ground my teeth when he sat in the chair next to mine.
“I assume people noticed Scott acting strange?” my dad asked as he crossed the kitchen, obviously eager to pull the discussion back on track.
“Um, yeah.” Nash fought to catch my gaze, and when I refused to look at him, he fingered a crack in the weathered kitchen table. “But they all think he was high on something…normal.” He glanced at his mother, who’d just finished cleaning up the egg slime. “Is there anything we can do for him?”
Harmony shook her head slowly. “The damage to his brain is permanent. And withdrawal will be very hard on him in a human hospital, because all they can do is restrain him to keep him from hurting himself. The only medications I know of that can make him feel better come from the Netherworld.”
“Can you get him any of those?” I asked. “Assuming they keep him at Arlington Memorial?”
She leaned with one hip on the counter, drying her hands on a damp dishrag. “I don’t work in mental health, but I can probably get in to see him once or twice. And if I can’t, Tod can.”
“What about Doug?” I asked. “He’s not as bad off as Scott is, but the night he hit my car, he said he saw someone in his passenger’s seat.”
“That’s easy enough,” Nash shrugged, looking optimistic for the first time since we’d left school. “Next time we hang out, I’ll just slip whatever weird medication he needs into his drink.” He glanced at Harmony again, eyes shining in either hope or desperation. “You can get whatever he needs, right?”
“I think so. But it won’t do any good until the Demon’s Breath is completely out of his system…”
“And we still don’t know how to cut off the supply,” I finished.
“You let us worry about that,” my father said with a note of finality he’d probably perfected kicking drunks out of his parents’ pub in Ireland. “Let’s get you something to eat, then I want you to take a nap while I’m here to make sure you wake up in your own bed.”
I didn’t even try to argue. I was exhausted, and I wouldn’t be any help to Emma or Doug until I could think straight.
My dad and Harmony messed around in the kitchen, trying to put together a decent meal and discuss the situation without saying anything that would upset me. Because apparently exhaustion and blood loss had combined to make me look about as sturdy as a blown-glass vase.
After several minutes spent listening to them whisper, I plodded to my room without even a glance in Nash’s direction.
He followed me.
I collapsed stomach-down on my bed while he stood in the doorway. “Go away.”
He took that as an invitation to sit at my desk.
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be.” I turned to face the window, fluffing my pillow under one cheek, and my desk chair creaked as he stood. A moment later, he knelt on the opposite side of the bed, inches from my face. “What the hell is wrong with you lately?” I was worried about the frost invasion too, but it hadn’t turned me into a controlling bitch.
“Kaylee, please…”
“That was messed up, Nash. That was…slimy.” I sat up and scooted back on the bed to put distance between us. “You make me think I want things I don’t really want to do, and it’s like losing control of myself. It’s worse than being strapped to a hospital bed because it’s not some stranger who has to let me up when I stop fighting. It’s you, and I shouldn’t have to fight you.” I blinked back tears, almost as mad at myself for crying as I was at him for invading my mind. “I don’t want your voice in my head anymore. Not even to help me.”
Nash nodded slowly, his eyes churning with too many emotions for me to interpret. “I’m so sorry, Kaylee. I swear it’ll never happen again.” He swallowed and glanced at his hands, where they gripped the edge of my mattress. “It’s just that everything is so messed up, and it’s all my fault. Scott could have killed you, and I…I’m just not thinking straight right now.”
“I know.” I wasn’t, either. I was running on caffeine and adrenaline, both of which were fading fast.
But before he could say anything else, my phone dinged, and I leaned to one side to dig it from my front pocket.
There was a text from Emma. R U OK? LB said you narced on Scott.
Crap. I’d forgotten that Laura Bell—LB—had been home sick all day. She’d obviously seen them load me and Scott into ambulances—his under police escort—and had reported her version of the event.
It was probably all over school. And since I couldn’t tell anyone the truth, Laura’s version—which evidently blamed me for getting the quarterback arrested on drug charges—would stand on the record.
Great.
I tried to text her back, but I couldn’t type very well without my right hand, so after two failed attempts, Nash held out his hand for my phone, watching my face closely. Letting him help would mean I’d forgiven him.
I sighed and gave him my phone. “Tell her I’m fine, and I’ll explain later,” I said, and he nodded, typing almost as fast with two thumbs as I could. “And that I did not rat on Scott.”
The part about Scott trying to kill me could wait for another day.
13
EMMA EYED ME in concern when I collapsed into my chair beside her in chemistry on Friday morning. She’d been preoccupied with Doug for most of yesterday and hadn’t noticed my exhaustion, but evidently my zombie impersonation was now too obvious to be overlooked.
“Wow, Kaylee, you look like crap,” she whispered as the girl in front of me passed a stapled test packet over her shoulder.
“Thanks.” I shot Emma a good-humored smile. At least, I hoped it looked good-humored. “I haven’t been getting much sleep.”
After Nash and Harmony left the night before, I’d collapsed on the couch—again in my homemade protective gear—but got very little rest, because this time my father refused to sleep and I could feel him watching me. I had two death dreams in a four-hour span, and my dad woke me up from both of them the moment the first note of a soul song erupted from my mouth.
Each time, he sat on the coffee table with a spiral-bound notebook, pen ready to go, but I had no new details to offer. Same dark figure. Same falling through the Nether-smog. Same panic welling inside my dream throat. Same featureless face I couldn’t identify.
Between the dream-screaming, the butchered forearm, and my near-death experience, peaceful sleep was a fond and somewhat distant memory. Yet, thanks to Scott’s absence and Laura Bell’s sensational but inaccurate gossip, the last school day of the semester was even worse than the sleepless night it followed.
I could feel them staring at me as I flipped open my test booklet. They’d been watching me all morning. Ogling the bandage my right sleeve wouldn’t cover, which made it obvious that something big had gone down the day before, but left the details tantalizingly vague.
I pretended not to hear the whispers in the hall, rumors linking my name with Scott’s. Wondering if he and I had been cheating on Nash and Sophie, which was easily the most ridiculous speculation I’d ever heard.