“Fine,” I said, and my cousin gave me a grim smile of thanks. “You can come with me, but not until you learn how to control that wail of yours. You don’t have to unleash it at full volume, you know.” Saying that reminded me that Harmony wasn’t there to teach Sophie like she’d taught me. I wasn’t entirely sure I could do her lessons justice.
“You can come with me, too,” Sabine said. “But the first time you do something stupid or put either of us in danger, I’m dragging you back here.”
“That won’t happen.” Sophie looked slightly less thankful for Sabine’s concession than she had for mine.
After that, we took up a collection and Emma ordered dinner for those who needed it while Sabine took a shift searching in the Netherworld and I tried to teach Sophie what I knew about the one bean sidhe ability she’d inherited.
Turns out my cousin’s big mouth was more practical than I’d ever given it credit for.
Chapter Fifteen
Sabine’s shift took longer than it should have, because she couldn’t blink from place to place in the human world, nor could she become invisible to humans like Tod and I could. Which meant that she had to actually drive partway to the hospital to pick up the search where Tod had left off, and she had to be away from onlookers when she crossed over, so no one would see her disappear.
She was still gone when the Chinese food delivery arrived, and Sophie and I took a break so she could eat.
I left my cousin at the kitchen table with Luca and Emma scooping rice and chicken from cartons onto paper plates. Then I headed into the back of our small house in search of Tod and Nash.
Halfway down the hall, I heard them, one whispered masculine voice, then the other in answer, coming from my room. I stopped breathing so I could hear them better, torn between the knowledge that I shouldn’t be eavesdropping and the relief that for the first time since Nash and I had broken up, the Hudson brothers were alone in the same room and they weren’t fighting.
It was a moment I wanted to treasure. Definitely a moment I didn’t want to spoil. So I listened, just for a minute.
“The truth, Tod. You think she’s still alive?” Nash’s voice was low and strained. He was worried.
“Yeah, I do. I think Brendon would do just about anything to protect her.”
“He’s just one man.”
“Yeah, but he’s a smart man, and a big man, and a man who’s been around for more than a century and a half. He’s also a man who has every reason in the world to want to get both himself and our mom back here as soon as possible.” Tod paused, and I pictured him shrugging, though all I could see was my mostly closed door. “Anyway, if she were dead—if either of them were—Avari would want us to know. He’d want to feed from our suffering.”
“We’re suffering just from not knowing where they are. Or how they are.”
“But not like we would if we knew they were dead. Not knowing allows room for hope, and Avari can’t feed from worry and hope like he can feed from true pain.”
I snuck closer until I could see Nash through the gap between my door and its frame. He sat on the end of Emma’s bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, the toes of his shoes resting on the ground.
“Maybe they’re dead and he just doesn’t know it.” Nash’s gaze followed Tod as the reaper paced the rug in front of him, like he had energy to burn. Worried, angry energy. “Maybe one of those man-eating freaks killed them and ate them, and Avari hasn’t told us because he doesn’t know.”
Tod stopped pacing and sat on the edge of my desk. “I think it’s dangerous to assume there’s anything Avari doesn’t know.”
“He doesn’t know what we’d be willing to do to get our mom back.”
“Of course he does. Anything. The same thing Kaylee and Sophie would be willing to do to get their dads back. That’s what Avari’s counting on.”
“He’ll use our parents against us.”
“Yup.” Tod nodded. “He’ll use us all against one another if he gets the chance.”
“Do you think he’s found them?”
“No.” Tod didn’t hesitate. “But he wants to find them almost as badly as we do.”
Nash exhaled slowly. “What do you think he’ll do with them?”
“There are too many possibilities to even guess at.”
Tod was perfectly capable of an educated guess, but listing all the horrible ways our parents could die—or suffer for eternity—wouldn’t help anything.
“Think he’ll kill them?”
“Maybe.”
“Worse?”
“Maybe.”
For a moment—a very long moment—Nash was silent. Then he looked up, and his next words sounded fractured with pain. “We’re never going to see her again. You know that, right? She’s gone. She’s dead, or she’s wishing she were dead, and she’ll never be back.”
Wood creaked as Tod lifted his very corporeal weight from my desk, and a second later he sat next to Nash on Em’s bed. “I’m not going to let that happen.”
Nash laughed, a harsh sound that carried disbelief but no real hostility. “I get that you think you’re all badass, with the undead thing you’ve got going on, but it’s been nearly three years. The mystique has worn off, and we all know the truth. Reapers don’t save people—they kill people. Besides, if she dies in the Netherworld, there’s nothing you can do.” Nash stood, headed for the hall, walking backward, and I scurried away from the door. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’m not the little brother anymore. You don’t need to coddle me. The truth is that if Avari wants Mom dead, there’s nothing either of us can do to stop that. Especially you. No offense, but you couldn’t even save Kaylee, and she was in the human world. Hell, she was in your reaping zone.”
A lump formed in my throat, and I pushed my bedroom door open. “Food’s here.” Nash turned, eyes wide with surprise, but Tod looked like he’d known I was there the whole time. He studied me, and I realized he was trying to figure out if I agreed with Nash. If I thought he’d failed me when I’d died. “Sabine’s not back yet,” I said. “Do you think you could go check on her?”
Tod nodded, almost reluctantly, then stood and slid one hand behind my head and into my hair. The goodbye kiss he gave me lingered, and it tasted like sorrow. “Be back in a few.” Then he disappeared.
When he was gone, I closed the door at my back, then leaned against it. Nash’s brows rose. “What are you doing?”
“We need to talk.”
He frowned. “Is it opposite day? ’Cause I think that’s my line.”
“I wish you could trust him as much as I trust him.” I let go of the doorknob and sat on the edge of my desk, where Tod had been moments earlier. “It would mean the world to him to look at you just once and not see contempt and suspicion.”
“Wow, seriously? I kinda thought he was lucky that I’m speaking to him at all, considering...what you two did behind my back. That’s not exactly the kind of thing that inspires trust.”
Granted. And we were obviously never going to be done paying for that. “But you trust me?”
Nash sat on my bed and thought in silence for a minute. “Yeah, actually, I do.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “We were together for so long....”
“Six months. We were together for six months, about a quarter of which I spent grounded.” Since neither of us had to sleep, I’d actually spent more time with Tod in the month and a half we’d been together than I’d spent with Nash during our entire half year as a couple. “But you and Tod have been brothers your whole lives. Why would you trust me but not him? Especially considering that I’m responsible for everything you blame him for. I kissed him, Nash. Not the other way around. I kissed him.”