“She won’t tell me how to summon a hellion,” Nash explained.
“Good for her.” Tod smiled at me, but I couldn’t smile back. He hadn’t heard the whole thing yet. “I fully support any efforts to keep you and hellions on separate planes of existence.”
“So, she can do it, but I can’t? That’s bullshit! Did she tell you she saw Ira today?” Nash demanded. Tod blinked. The colors in his irises betrayed none of what he was feeling, but I could tell he was hurt, and I felt like the world’s biggest jerk. “She said she wanted everyone to go to school for strength in numbers, but when Emma was possessed and Avari was demanding to talk to Kaylee, she was gone. She was off summoning a demon, without telling anyone what she was up to or that she might need help. But when I want to contact Ira to find out where our mother is, with full knowledge of the entire group, she won’t even tell me how to get in touch with him.”
Tod blinked again, and I would have given anything to know what he was thinking. What he was feeling. He leaned against the doorway into the kitchen and crossed both arms over his chest, then met his brother’s gaze. “Is that really what you’re mad about? That you’re not getting quality time with a hellion?”
“No! And yes. But only because she didn’t even get the information she went to him for. I’m pissed off that she would put herself in that kind of danger, then walk away with nothing to show for it. That means she could have died or worse—we all could have lost her—for nothing. I’m pissed off that she wasn’t willing to do for our mother what she did for her father. I’m pissed off that Mom’s gone and there’s nothing I can do about it. You can all cross over whenever you want. You can all search and sacrifice and bleed to try to save her, but all I can do is sit here and wait.”
“I can’t,” Em whispered, tears in her brown eyes. “I’m pretty useless, too....”
I took her hand and squeezed it, but Nash didn’t seem to hear her.
“I’ve never felt so worthless in my entire life, and every time I try to do something about that, one of you cuts me off at the kneecaps. I’m pissed at you all for standing in my way. For letting my mom suffer in the Netherworld when I could be helping get her back. I’m pissed at her for going to the Netherworld in the first place. I’m pissed at Avari for...relentless existence and nefarious consistency. So I’ve made a decision.”
Tod’s pale brow arched high over one blue eye. “I think we’re all listening.”
Nash ignored him with obvious effort. “You guys have a choice. Either you can include me in all aspects of the planning and execution of any and all rescue efforts or I’m going my own way. I still know people, you know,” he added, when Tod looked skeptical. “No one I really want to see again, now that I’m clean, but I can find Mom on my own if I have to.”
His eye contact with me was steady and determined. He meant it, and the thought that he might actually rekindle old unhealthy relationships because I wouldn’t let him take risks alongside me made me...it made me sick to my stomach with fear for him.
“I can get myself to the Netherworld,” Nash continued. “And I can get both of us back out again. All three of us—I’m not leaving Brendon there, either. So what’s it going to be? Are you going to let me contribute to the group effort, or are you going to shut me out again ‘for my own protection’?”
Everyone looked at me, not because I was in charge, but because I’d messed up, and she who messes up, cleans up.
“I’m sorry,” I said, not just to Nash but to the whole room. “He’s right, and I’m so sorry, Nash. I never meant to cut you out of...anything. Everything. And I shouldn’t have summoned Ira again without telling anyone what I was up to.”
“Or at all...” Em said, and I nodded in acknowledgment, avoiding Tod’s gaze because I wasn’t ready to see whatever I might find in it.
“Of course we want you to stay.” I did meet Nash’s gaze, because I owed him that much, at the very least. “And of course you’re included in everything. I didn’t mean to be taking liberties that aren’t available to everyone else. I meant to be taking risks. So no one else would have to. I couldn’t live with myself if any of you got hurt again. You’ve all been through so much because of me. Our parents are still missing because of their connection to me. I just... I was looking for a way to fix that without getting anyone else hurt. I’m sorry.”
“Promise,” Nash said, and his voice cracked on that one word. “Promise you won’t do it again. That you won’t put yourself at risk like that again with no one to back you up.”
I looked at him.
I looked hard and deep, and he let me see what he was feeling. He let his eyes swirl so I could understand, and guilt overwhelmed me like heat in the middle of a Texas summer. Relentless. Overpowering. Too much to think through.
He was mad about everything he’d listed. That was all true. But the truest part—the core of an anger that had many heads, like a hydra—was the thought that I could have died in one horrible moment of my own recklessness. I could have died—again—and he’d never know how it happened, or why, or even what happened to my body.
Fear. The root of his anger was fear of losing me, not as his girlfriend—that part of our lives was over, and he loved Sabine; we could all see that—but as his friend. As his more-than-a-friend. As a confidante. As one of the people who’d been with him through life, and death, and addiction, and relapse, and countless moments of imminent threat from untold forms of evil.
And now he wanted to know that I’d never do it again. That I’d never put him through the fear of losing me again.
“Don’t make her do it, Nash.” Tod’s voice was so soft and deep I had to concentrate to understand what I was hearing. “She will if you ask her to, but I’m asking you not to make her promise something she can’t keep. That’s not a promise any of us could keep. Like it or not, we’re not going to get our parents back without putting ourselves in danger, and Kaylee knows that. She knew it before any of the rest of us came to that conclusion.”
But that wasn’t true. Tod had known before I’d ever met him. Before I’d met Avari or Invidia or Belphegore. Before I even knew I wasn’t human. He’d known what you have to be willing to sacrifice for the people you love long before I’d truly understood the meaning of the words risk and sacrifice.
He’d known since the moment he’d given up his life so Nash could live.
“What Kaylee doesn’t understand is that she’s not alone in this.” Tod stepped forward and held his hand out to me, and I reached for it like a plant reaches for the sun. Like I couldn’t bloom without him there to shine on me. He pulled me up, then he pulled me close, and when he looked into my eyes, I couldn’t look away.
“What Kaylee needs to understand is that we all feel just like she does. Like if we make the sacrifice or take the risk, the others won’t have to. Ira, Avari, and all the rest of them, they want each of us to believe that because they know we’ll make that sacrifice if we think that’s the only way to save the people we love. But it’s a lie. This is too big for any one of us alone. We can only do this as a team—if we have one another’s backs.”
His eyes were all for me again then, and I could see how hurt he really was. Beneath that, I could see his fear.