I shrugged. “Fair enough. I’m going, though.” I wasn’t going to let Avari drive me out of my own school, in part because it was my school. And in part because if he possessed anyone else, someone would need to be there to exorcize him from the stolen body.
But I was already planning several long bathroom breaks so I could keep up the search for those still trapped in that scary alternate dimension.
“I’m going, too.” Sabine threw back the covers and started to swing her legs out of bed, but Nash put one hand on her knee to stop her.
“You should rest.”
“I’ve been unconscious for, what, five hours?” She glanced at my alarm clock and frowned. “That’s more rest than any mara needs in one night.”
“Being unconscious isn’t the same as sleeping,” Nash insisted. “And anyway, you were poisoned.” He lifted her good arm to show her the ring of tiny red dots now permanently encircling her wrist. Just like the ones around her ankles. Just like the one around my ankle. “You need to rest, so your body can fight what’s left of the poison.”
“Bullshit. Just because it took Kaylee days to recover doesn’t mean it’ll take me that long. I’m a Nightmare. We’re kinda badass.”
I laughed, but Nash only crossed his arms over his chest. “If you don’t rest, I don’t rest. We’ll both be exhausted and vulnerable together at school tomorrow.”
Sabine rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll lie here and stare at the ceiling if you’ll go to sleep.”
“Deal.” Nash finally smiled, and I could see exhaustion warring with relief in his eyes.
“You can have my bed.” Em followed him into the hall. “I’m fine in the living room, in the recliner.”
“Thanks.” He ducked into the bathroom. When Em joined Sophie and Luca in the living room, I sat in the chair Nash had vacated next to my bed.
“He was here the entire time, you know,” I said softly, and Sabine looked like she didn’t know whether or not to believe me. “Seriously. He sat right here the whole time you were out. And he gave you two antivenom injections. And I doubt he ate a bite of his dinner.”
I’d rarely seen Sabine speechless. It looked kind of like a fish gasping for air.
“You should have seen him when Tod brought you back, unconscious and poisoned. I haven’t seen Nash that focused in a long time. He knew exactly what to do, and he did it well. But he was terrified that you’d die anyway. That he’d lose you.”
“Thank you,” she said, finally. “I know you didn’t have to tell me that.”
“Yeah, I did. I just...” I’d been thinking about what she’d said to Sophie, and what Nash had told me about the mara. “I want you to know that you’re one of us. You’re a total pain in the butt, and I may never forget that you tried to sell me to a demon, but I do forgive you for that. And you need to know that you belong here. With us. This place wouldn’t be the same without you here to throw the truth around like a weapon and call us on our own bullshit. So, try not to get yourself killed, okay?”
I could swear that her black eyes looked a little more damp than usual, but then she blinked, and that was gone. “Look who’s talking, living dead girl.”
“I know. I’m a total hypocrite.” The toilet flushed across the hall, then water ran in the bathroom sink behind the closed door. Nash was getting ready for bed, and my time alone with Sabine was running out. “Can you tell me what happened? What you remember, anyway? How did Avari catch you?”
Sabine’s expression darkened from something resembling contentment into anger blazing hot enough to singe my eyebrows. “It wasn’t Avari,” she said. “It was someone new. A hellion. Tall, with long red hair so dark it almost looked black. His tongue was the same color—like dried blood. His eyes were solid black like a hellion’s, but they had red veins running through them. I’m going to be working those details into my next nightmare, FYI. If they scared me, they’ll scare anyone.”
“That’s Ira.” My voice sounded sharp. Angry.
“The wrath hellion?” Sabine looked more intrigued than scared now, which worried me.
“Yeah. What did he do? What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I don’t remember much. I was sneaking around some bushes in front of a building about a mile south of the hospital when I started hearing things. Weird sounds. Wet, heavy breathing, like a giant with a sinus infection. And scratching sounds, like something digging in dry dirt. Then there was this weird hiss.... So I ducked as close to the building as I could and waited to see if I needed to cross over, or if they’d lose my scent and wander off. Then the hellion was just there. Out of nowhere. He was just standing in front of me, backlit by that weird-ass red moon. He had those weird eyes, and they were kind of glowing, and for a second, I couldn’t look away from him. Then the light from his eyes seemed to kind of flare, and he reached for me.”
Spitting sounds came from the bathroom as Nash brushed his teeth, drawing me out of the nightmare she was painting for me, this time with words. “Then what?”
Sabine shrugged. “He grabbed my arm, and I tried to cross back over, but I couldn’t concentrate enough to make it happen. All these thoughts kept spinning around in my head. All kinds of stuff. People who’ve pissed me off. The juvenile court judge who set me up for vandalism. You.” She shifted beneath the covers, like she was uncomfortable with whatever she was about to confess. “No offense, but when I first met you, I hated you like I’ve never hated anything before, and when Ira touched me, I couldn’t get you out of my head. You kissing Nash. Him touching you. The two of you dancing at some lame high school party to a song no one with actual ears has ever enjoyed. Stuff like that. Crap I never even saw but used to imagine during the worst days this past winter.”
“Yeah.” I tucked one leg beneath me in the rolling chair. “Ira’s M.O. seems to be fictionalized flashbacks designed to thoroughly piss you off, so he can feed from your anger.”
“Well, it musta worked. I couldn’t think with all that shit in my head, and then everything went dark.” She shrugged again and tugged the covers higher. “The next thing I saw was this.” Sabine spread her arms to take in my whole room. “I didn’t know how I got here until Nash told me how Tod found me. Crimson creeper? Seriously?”
“Yeah. Tod said you were tied to the ground with four vines of it. Baby vines. And you must not have been there very long, or you couldn’t have recovered this fast, even with Harmony’s antivenom. Especially with three sets of pinpricks.”
“Speaking of which...” Sabine held up her wrist, and I saw that the swelling was almost completely gone. Either maras healed faster than bean sidhes or Harmony had really perfected that antivenom. “Any way to get rid of the marks?”
“Not that I know of.” I propped my foot on the edge of the bed and pulled up the hem of my jeans to show her my own double row of red dots.
She dropped her arm into her lap. “Maybe people will think it’s some kind of obscure tattoo. Something tribal.”
“Maybe.” It was good to see her looking on the bright side.
Across the hall, the bathroom door opened. A second later, Nash stepped into the bedroom. “Did you and Tod have any luck?” he asked, sinking onto Emma’s bed as I vacated the desk chair.
“Nothing since the bandages we found at the hospital. But the good news is that Avari has evidently promised a whole horde of fiends that whoever turns them in wins the grand prize—Demon’s Breath, of course. Which means—”
“Avari doesn’t have them,” Nash finished for me.