“Well, isn’t this interesting….”
Though I hadn’t seen him in a month, I’d know that voice anywhere.
Avari.
21
“MS. CAVANAUGH, how delightful to find you here.” The hellion paused, glancing around the room again through Emma’s eyes. “Wherever here is.”
I shuddered beneath a bolt of near-paralyzing terror, then exhaled silently in relief. If he didn’t know where he was, he probably didn’t know who he was in. Which surely meant it would be hard for him to ever take Emma over again.
But then Em’s eyes narrowed as Avari stared through them at a framed photo on the dresser: a shot of me and Emma standing in front of my new-to-me car, on the day I’d gotten it. “Well, isn’t my proxy clever?” Avari crossed the room in Emma’s bare feet, hips swinging in the exaggerated motion of a man who isn’t used to wielding them. His gaze flicked to the mirror behind the picture and his eyes widened in lecherous appreciation. “And doesn’t he have the most exquisite taste?”
Seeing Avari in her was a thousand times worse than watching Alec interact through Emma’s body. I couldn’t stand it. How was I ever going to look her in the face again?
“Get out!” I whispered through clenched teeth, my hands curling into powerless fists at my sides. Avari ignored me and reached for the picture with one of Emma’s delicate, graceful hands. “Don’t touch that!”
His gaze flicked my way in surprise and I choked on my next breath, shocked and disturbed by how unlike Emma her own eyes could look. “What would you rather I touch?” Avari asked, his smooth, sinister words violating her throat just as brutally as his presence desecrated her existence. “This?” The thin hand changed directions and Emma’s fingers splayed across her flat stomach, thumb brushing her sternum, pinkie tucking beneath the elastic waistband of her pj pants.
“Or this?” Avari’s voice deepened suggestively, and the hand slid up Emma’s torso to lift her left breast through the thin cotton of her nightshirt.
My pulse pounded so fast and hard my vision started to go dark. “Get out of her, now!” When Avari turned back to the mirror, unbothered by my powerless protest, I glanced at Tod for help, but he could only shrug and press one finger against his lips in a “shhhh” gesture, reminding me not to give away his presence. He couldn’t control Avari any more than I could, but if the hellion found out the reaper was helping me, he would take his anger out on Nash, and on Addison’s soul.
“Oh, nooo…” Avari ran Emma’s hand down her side and over the generous curve of her hip, cocking it to one side for a better view in the mirror. “I like this one. Truly lovely. She is definitely worth the effort of exploration.”
My jaws ached from being clenched, but I forced my feet to remain still. There was nothing I could do to hurt Avari without hurting Emma, and I wasn’t sure what abilities, if any, Avari brought with him to the body he possessed. Knowing my luck, if I tried to throw a punch—not that I even knew how—he’d freeze me where I stood, or do something worse than groping with Emma’s borrowed hands.
“How could I not have noticed her before? She feels familiar….” Both of Emma’s hands slid around her hips to cup her backside as Avari’s gaze traveled down in the mirror. “But not obviously so. How did Alec ever find her…?” Avari blinked, then turned from the mirror to meet my furious gaze through narrowed eyes. “I do love a resourceful proxy.” But the hard, angry line of Emma’s jaw said that wasn’t entirely true. Alec had been up to something without Avari’s knowledge, and the hellion was pissed. “And Alec has always been exactly that.”
“How long have you…had him?” I asked, stalling for time as my brain whirred almost audibly, grinding in search of some way to get rid of the hellion.
Avari tilted Emma’s head to one side, as if surprised by my interest. And suspicious of it. “Oh, two or three decades,” he finally said. “And he has proven most useful.” Yet that little twitch of irritation was back. “Even when he doesn’t intend to.” Emma’s body stepped closer to me, one hip cocked, one side of her mouth curved up in a lewd grin. “For instance, you are a hard child to get in touch with. Though I must say you aren’t particularly difficult to get inside of…”
Rage and horror battled within me as Emma’s borrowed gaze swept the length of my form before finally returning to my eyes. I had the sudden urge to cover what little flesh my clothes didn’t hide, and couldn’t help wondering what the hellion had done with my body when he’d occupied it. And how often that had been.
If I actually got Nash back alive, he was going to tell me every single thing that happened while I was literally out of my own mind—or I’d kill him myself. And based on Tod’s angry, narrowed eyes, he was thinking something very similar.
Emma stepped forward again, and I answered with another step back, my pulse racing, my jaws clenched so hard I was half-afraid my teeth would crack. “How many times?” I whispered, trying to showcase my anger while hiding my terror.
He took another slinky step toward me, wearing my best friend’s body like a slut wears spandex. And this time when I backed away, my thighs hit the edge of the desk. I had nowhere left to go, unless I was willing to let him follow me through the rest of Emma’s house. Which I was not.
“How many times have I been in you?” Avari asked, leering at me with Emma’s wide, brown eyes, and I flinched over his phrasing. My skin crawled just thinking about him being on the inside of my flesh, breaching the most sacred of my boundaries: that which defined my soul.
“Several,” the hellion answered at last, and his next step put him—put them—less than a foot away. “And I must say it’s a genuine pleasure.” Emma’s body leaned forward and her cheek skimmed mine, my pulse roaring in my ears.
“Each…” Her lips brushed my jaw, and I swallowed thickly.
“…and every…” Her hot, damp breath puffed against my earlobe, and I closed my eyes, trying not to breathe.
“…time.” Avari’s last word stirred the sensitive hairs on my neck, just below my ear, and I swallowed the whimper caught in my throat.
I opened my eyes, and over Emma’s shoulder I saw Tod standing with his fists clenched, his face flushed in fury, jaw bulging as he silently ground his teeth.
Then the hellion stepped back, smiling through Emma’s pouty mouth, and her eyes took on a lecherous glint so disturbing and disorienting that my whole body shuddered. “But as much fun as I’ve had playing teenage bean sidhe—once when your boyfriend didn’t even realize you’d stepped out of your body…”
Rage raced through my veins so fast and hot I thought I would combust. What the hell had he done! What had he made me do? And did Nash really think it was me doing…whatever Avari had done with my body?
“…I have yet to find a good way to communicate with you. Though we came so close with your classmate the other day.” Confusion must have shown through my mounting fury, because as Avari turned, running one of Emma’s slim fingers over the desktop, he lifted one of her artfully arched brows and continued. “How is your arm, by the way?” Her loaded gaze traveled to the bandaged bulge beneath my right sleeve.
Understanding slammed into me like a hammer to my skull. It all came back to Avari. All of it.
Nash was right. Avari was Scott’s shadow man. He was the hallucination Doug had seen in his passenger’s seat. He was the hellion selling its breath to Nash. Avari had possession of Addison’s soul. He’d bribed Tod and Everett into delivering and disseminating his toxic byproduct. He was holding Nash captive in the Netherworld. And Avari was organizing the Liminal Celebration, which would conveniently coincide with our Winter Carnival.
How could I not have seen it earlier? All roads led back to Avari. And for some reason, he’d been trying to get in touch with me.