CHAPTER TWENTY

AVEDA AND I stumbled home when the marine layer moved in, casting a sheen of gray sludge over everything. It looked like it was going to rain. The chill didn’t invade our bones as it usually would, however, thanks to the warming glow of the alcohol we’d both consumed. Aveda was wobbly on her crutches, but I managed to sling her arm around my shoulder and drag her back to her room.

“That was fun,” she murmured, as I flopped her into bed and tucked her under the covers. I smiled and made sure to prop her crutches where she could reach them.

I stumbled upstairs and teetered down the hall, swaying back and forth, my hand jutting out to steady myself against the wall. I stared at my hand, watching it blur in and out of focus.

Okay. So maybe I was a leetle bit drunk.

Go back to your room, I told myself sternly, using my best inner schoolmarm voice. I sounded like I was scolding Bea. Go back to your room and pass out and . . . and . . .

No. I shook my head, as if the stern, schoolmarmish Evie was standing in front of me, glaring through fussy librarian glasses. No. Nonono. I shook a defiant finger at Invisible Schoolmarm Evie. I had much betterer . . . better ideas. Better, funner, sex ideas that involved showing Nate he didn’t need to be going after any demon princess tail. No matter how cute and blond that tail might be. I pushed off from the wall and staggered down the hall to rap on his bedroom door.

Was this, like, a booty call? I hadn’t made an actual call or anything. My call was right down the hall.

Ha! I thought. Rhyming!

I giggled out loud and clapped a hand over my mouth. Didn’t want to be getting in trouble with Schoolmarm Evie.

Nate answered the door, confusion passing over his face as he scanned my swaying form. He was adorably disheveled: hair all messed up, glasses sliding down his nose. And wearing nothing but pristine black pajama pants.

I hazily realized I’d never encountered his pajamas. Our recreational time together was usually unencumbered by clothing. But of course his pajamas were black. I giggled again. Then clapped a hand over my mouth. Again.

“Oh!” I said, way too loudly. “Were you sleeping?”

“No.” He opened the door wider so I could come in. “Are you drunk?”

Instead of stepping inside, I pitched forward, landing with both hands on his chest. Which was totally beautiful and totally naked. Totally ready for my better, funner SEX PLANS.

“I’m just a little tipsy.” I held my thumb and forefinger a centimeter apart, indicating my level of tipsiness. “How was your meeting?”

“Awful.” His mouth tipped up into an amused grin. He took me by the shoulders and guided me over to the bed. “Sit. I’ll be right back.”

What? Where was he going?! We hadn’t done my SEX PLANS yet.

I sat on his bed. I’d never been in here. His room was spartan, bare. Not much in the way of decoration, unless you counted the clothes-drying rack in the corner, which contained a few carefully hung black T-shirts.

Ha! I thought. Of course he line dries.

I glanced down at the bed I was sitting on. Well, sort of . . . swaying on. It was a narrow twin with a plain gray cover and it was perfectly made. I poked a wobbly finger at one of the hospital corners.

The creak of the door announced Nate’s return and I jumped, as if I’d been caught doing something illicit. He padded over to the bed and handed me a bowl of something. I squinted at it.

Oh! Lucky Charms. My favorite. And good, fortifying pre-SEX food.

“Eat this.” He indicated the bowl. “Drink this.” He set a glass of water on a rickety chair sitting next to his bed, which seemed to be serving as a makeshift nightstand. “And take this.” He put a couple of Advils next to the glass.

I picked through the bowl, ferreting out the purple horseshoes and tossing them to the side. “Did you know these are called ‘marbits’? Like, marshmallow bits. Lucky Charms has a patent on that.”

Nate’s eyes followed my horseshoe excavation. “Let me guess: you wrote a paper in grad school about it.”

“Did not!” I jabbed him in the arm with my marbit-sticky finger. “Some things, I just know.” I giggled at my obvious mental superiority and dug into the bowl.

Nate swept the purple bits into a wastebasket next to the bed and sat down beside me.

“And are the purple marbits dangerous in some fashion?” he asked.

“What? No. I just don’t like them.”

He grinned at me, now fully amused, and a tiny flutter bloomed in my chest. Maybe I could make him laugh. I loooooved making him laugh. It wasn’t a gimme like it was with, say, Lucy. You had to work for that shit.

All lingering thoughts of the pictures of him and Maisy and my nerves about the Big Maisy Takedown Plan dropped out of my head. She didn’t matter. All that mattered was this neat-as-a-pin room containing me and him and my attempts to make him laugh.

“They’re all the same, though.” He nodded at the marbits. “All equally terrible for you. Just with different food coloring.”

I made the “wrong” buzzer sound through my mouthful of magical deliciousness and then he did laugh and it was the best thing ever. I drank in that deep, rumbly sound, giddy pride washing over me.

Then suddenly my head was too heavy and my eyes seemed like they were being dragged closed by invisible weights.

“Guuuuhhh.” I set my empty bowl on the chair-nightstand and popped the Advil in my mouth. I listed to the side and managed to flop onto my back in the middle of the bed. My limbs felt like they were filled with warm sand.

“Mmm,” I sighed, my eyes fluttering closed. “Sex.”

He laughed again, and I felt the bedspread being maneuvered from its tucked-in position so he could pull it over me.

“Go to sleep,” he said, brushing his lips against my cheek.

“Wait.” I grabbed his arm. “Stay with me.”

“You’re right in the middle of the mattress. And taking up every available inch of space.” I could hear the smile in his voice.

I scooted over, tugging at his arm. He allowed himself to be pulled into bed. I ran my fingertips over his gorgeous shoulders, tracing those mysterious threads of scar tissue. “When are you going to tell me about this?” I slurred. “Like, were you an international superspy with a penchant for bar brawls or did you just fall off your bike or something? ’Cause if someone hurt you, I will totally kick . . . their . . . ass . . .”

“Go to sleep,” he repeated, mock sternly. He pulled me close, fitting my body against his. My head drooped onto his shoulder. As my breathing started to deepen, his clean, soapy scent settled around me like a blanket.

I drifted off, cradled in the warmth of him, my sugary breakfast treat soaking up the alcohol in my stomach.

And I thought, Right now is perfect.

I woke up with a headache. But thanks to Nate’s Advil and cereal cocktail, it was a mild one.

“How do you feel?” Nate murmured. We were entwined on his narrow bed, both of us still half-asleep. The room was very warm and I could hear the pitter-pat of rain against the window. I sat up slowly, my sluggish brain kicking into gear.

“Not bad,” I said. I suddenly felt self-conscious. “Um. Sorry for barging in on you last night.”

“I don’t mind.” He gave me a half-smile. “Barge in any time.” He surveyed our cramped formation. “I should probably get a bigger bed.”

I smiled back, but my self-consciousness flared. I was still clad in yesterday’s rumpled drinking ensemble. My skin felt sticky and I instinctively knew my hair was a mess.

I shifted and allowed my gaze to drift over to his chair-nightstand. My empty cereal bowl was still there, but now I noticed something sitting next to it. Something small and gray and familiar. “Is that one of the stones?” I asked.

“Yes.” He plucked it from its spot and handed it to me. It was the You Need stone. Those two words stared back at me ominously. I wondered if Maisy had ever received this mysterious directive. “I wanted to show you this yesterday when Lucy and I returned to HQ, but you were otherwise occupied with Aveda. And then last night you were . . .” He smiled. “ . . . not exactly coherent.” He nodded at the stone. “Turn it over.”

I did. And despite the uncomfortable warmth of the room, my blood ran cold. The number, that creepy 3, was no longer there. It had been replaced by a 1. Somehow, this tiny shard from the Otherworld had changed. Possibly overnight.

“When did this happen?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. I only noticed it yesterday.”

I ran my thumb over the stone’s smooth surface. “You should show Scott. He can figure out if there’s a magical explanation. Like if it’s enchanted or something. And Lucy—she might be able to connect it to something we’ve seen in the field. And obviously Bea since she’s been cataloging the stones.”

“I plan to,” he said. “But I wanted to see if you had any theories first. You always see things differently than I do; it makes for a balanced perspective.”

“It does?” My voice somehow sounded both squeaky and raspy and my throat was dry. I needed water.

“Yes. I tend to see hard facts with no shading. You see nuance, how those facts might be affected by real life experiences, by people’s impressions—in other words, a more human side. These two elements work very well together. We work well together.” He smiled and I felt self-conscious again. What was wrong with me? I’d been gleefully naked with him countless times at this point. Yet now, fully clothed and discussing actual meaningful topics, I couldn’t seem to get even a little bit comfortable. Maybe I was more hungover than I’d initially thought.

I forced myself to concentrate on the stone.

“One from three,” I said. “We’ve speculated that this is a directive. And Bea theorized that Maisy had already created the three she needed to take over: herself, Stu, and Tommy. But say Maisy doesn’t count herself in that number. She’s the princess, the leader. And we still don’t know her exact origin: maybe she’s always been a demon. So maybe she’s only created two hybrids. Which means . . .”

“She still needs one more,” Nate said.

“And if the stone is counting down like this, which we’ve never seen a stone do before?” I looked at him for confirmation. He nodded. “Then that last one is probably important. When she gets that last one . . . that’s when something really horrible happens.” My headache pounded against my temples, no longer mild. “Maybe she’s planning on getting this final person at the karaoke thing, turning them into a hybrid on the spot. That seems like a place where she could do it in as show-offy a manner as possible.”

I curled my fingers around the stone. The tension I’d managed to brush to the side the day before returned with a vengeance, causing my chest to seize. I forced a breath out. Maisy was, in theory, more dangerous than anything I’d taken on yet. Whatever powers she possessed were likely to be way more impressive than the grabby claws of the Tommy demon or the cold fingers of Stu’s disembodied hand. I could get seriously hurt. I could die, probably. Or if I fucked up, other people could die. I—

No. Stop. I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood and thought back to Aveda’s words at the bar. I get my strength from thinking about what I’m protecting. All the things I’d miss if the world suddenly weren’t there.

“Hey.” Nate took the stone from me and set it back on the chair-nightstand. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I smiled weakly, but nausea spiraled through my stomach. “Wow, look at the time.” I wasn’t wearing a watch. “I should go. Bea wants to discuss the song list for my big karaoke debut. And you probably want to talk to everyone else about that, huh?” I gestured to the stone.

His hand slid under the covers to take mine. The room seemed to be growing warmer, and not in a sexy “it’s gettin’ hot in here” kind of way. More like an oppressive, walls closing in kind of way. And his bed was so narrow, so small. It was impossible to get comfortable. The nausea settled in, taking up permanent residence in the pit of my gut. I tried to follow Aveda’s advice, to build strength by thinking of things I’d miss.

Lucky Charms. Spam musubi. Lucy’s high-pitched giggle. Orgasms. Neon underwear. Bea’s purple boots. Nate . . . Nate’s . . .

“It’s six in the morning. No one else is awake yet,” Nate said. He released my hand and wrapped an arm around my waist. “And you look like you could use some distraction.” He leaned in and brushed his lips against my collarbone. “Stay here. We’ll have . . .” He lifted a suggestive eyebrow. “ . . . breakfast. And you can help me shop for a new bed online.”

I laughed, but it sounded false. “Not right now. Bea’s an early riser and I need to talk to her. And anyway, I look disgusting.” I gestured to my unkempt appearance. My voice, like my laugh, sounded weird. Like it was coming from someone else’s body.

“I think you look perfect.” He brushed a curl off my face.

“Well, I feel disgusting,” I countered, pulling away. I awkwardly maneuvered myself out of bed by scooting down to the foot of the mattress and hopping to the floor.

“Wait.” He stood and faced me. “Seriously. What’s wrong?”

“I told you: nothing.” My voice was harsher than I intended. The nausea-anxiety mix was swirling around like crazy.

“Are you acting strangely because you’re worried about the karaoke contest?” he asked. “Because you don’t have to go through with this Maisy thing. We can come up with another plan.”

I stiffened. Why was he bringing up Maisy? I mean, of course I was thinking about her. I was getting ready to battle her and the fate of the entire city hung in the balance and it was freaking me the fuck out. I idly wondered if she’d been trying to freak me out further by draping herself all over him yesterday. She knew he was Aveda Jupiter’s “escort,” that Aveda might have special mushy feelings for him . . .

Fuck it. I didn’t want to think about any of this. I just wanted to go back to my own room.

“I’m not worried,” I said, trying to project confidence. “I want to take her down.”

He hesitated. “I’ve been thinking about it. And I’m not sure I want you to.”

“Why not? Because you have such a deep, personal connection to Maisy Kane after your big meeting?”

“What?” He looked confused.

“Because it was so fun to sensuously eat strawberries off the perfectly manicured fingertips of a demon princess? Who, in case you’ve forgotten, is totally evil and totally our enemy?” I knew I sounded ridiculous, but I couldn’t seem to stop the words from spilling out of my mouth. Why wouldn’t he just let me leave?

“No, of course not. The whole experience could best be described as pure torture.”

“Then how come you looked like you were having fun?”

“I was merely trying not to antagonize her. Why are you acting this way?”

“I’m not acting any way. I—”

“Are you jealous?”

“Yes.” The word shot out of my mouth before I could stop it. I forced myself to relax my shoulders. “Which is stupid since we have much bigger concerns right now. And anyway, we’re not even together. Not like that.”

He looked confused again. “Yes, we are.”

“No. We’re just using each other for orgasms. We agreed on that.”

His face darkened. “And clearly things have changed.”

“No, they haven’t!”

“Evie—”

“We agreed! And we’ve never discussed changing that agreement.”

“We spend every night together.” His voice was low and controlled, but I could hear the anger percolating there. “We have intellectually stimulating conversations. I have observed details about you that are intimate but not sexual: the fact that you eat cereal at all hours of the day, for example. The evidence suggests that we—”

“Evidence?!” I gaped at him. “You can’t use ‘evidence’ to determine dating status! That may work for tracking demons and tracking fire powers, but it doesn’t work for this!”

“You’re jealous because I was seen in close contact with another woman,” he pressed. His eyes were locked on me with such intensity, I had to take a step back. “And I’m jealous of your longstanding friendship with Scott because he is another heterosexual male who—”

“Scott? How can you be jealous of Scott? We only slept together that one time—”

“You slept together?” His face darkened further. “Recently?”

“No, at prom, and . . . you know what, it doesn’t matter!” I snapped. “None of this matters. This is just sex and you can’t use some scientific algorithm to make it into something else!”

“It’s already something else!” He grabbed my hand and pulled it to his chest. His heartbeat slammed against my palm. “And I don’t understand why you’re so dead-set on insisting it’s not. You are the most stubborn, pigheaded, infuriating—” He stopped, trying to get ahold of himself. He squeezed my hand and I felt his heartbeat speed up. “I don’t want you to participate in the karaoke contest because I’m worried Maisy has something big planned for that night. That something terrible is going to happen to you.” He squeezed my hand again and there were so many emotions swirling in the dark depths of his eyes, his gaze pierced me like a physical shock. “And I can’t bear that thought, Evie. I can’t.”

His voice cracked on that last word. My heart smacked against my breastbone over and over and over again. I was still anxious and nauseous and I felt like I was going to throw up all over him and my brain was screaming at me to run, run, run.

“It doesn’t matter what you can or can’t bear,” I said, trying to hold myself together. “You don’t get to make this decision for me.”

“I know that—”

“And anyway, I can’t be distracted by all this . . . stuff right now.” I wrenched my hand away. “I have to focus. If Maisy does have something planned for that night, I need to be ready. This stupid fucking karaoke battle is important.”

“It is important. That’s why we should talk about—”

“No, we shouldn’t!” I stomped toward the door. “There’s no ‘we’!”

“Yes, there is!” he bellowed.

I stomped back to my bedroom and pushed open the door to find Bea arranging a series of large spreadsheets on an easel, all of them displaying rubrics of data on which karaoke songs should and should not find a place in my performance.

“There you are,” she said, clapping her hands together. “So first we have to talk about how Maisy owns the boy band repertoire. Don’t attempt anything in that wheelhouse.”

Anger was still churning through me. “Not even One Direction?” I said.

Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “Especially not One Direction. She’ll annihilate you. The songs you choose matter. This isn’t just about you taking down Maisy the Demon Princess. It’s about how you take her down. That’s the story that will spread far and wide and be documented on every form of social media. Aveda Jupiter has been gaining an international audience ever since ‘she’ got a fire power. That means you’re essentially performing on an international stage. You’ve got to have a sense of showmanship. And that means . . .” She trailed off, frowning. “Evie. Are you crying?”

“No,” I said automatically. I lifted a hand to my face. It was wet. “Oh, shit.”

I crossed the room and slumped onto my bed. “Keep talking. I seem to be having some kind of allergic reaction. Maybe it’s the rain.”

She left her spreadsheets behind and sat down next to me, then laid a tentative hand on my arm. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, my voice robotic. “Let’s just keep going with this karaoke discussion.”

“No.”

“No?”

“You’re my sister,” she said. “We’re supposed to talk about stuff, even when it’s stuff you don’t think is appropriate for my supposedly innocent ears.”

I couldn’t seem to process anything she was saying. My anger was dissipating, but I still felt sick. She jabbed me in the arm.

“Talk to meeeeeeeeee.”

Any confessional resistance I might’ve once possessed had been thoroughly destroyed in the last two weeks. So that was all it took to get me to start yammering.

“I had a fight with Nate. But I was feeling weird before that. Kind of sick. Anxious. Possibly hungover.” I scrubbed a hand across my face. “Maybe I need to throw up.”

Bea chewed her lower lip. “What was the fight with Nate about?”

“Nothing. Everything. You’re too young for me to talk about this.”

She gave me her best Tanaka Glare. “I’ll be seventeen in a few days. And don’t forget about my birthday breakfast. I still haven’t heard back from Dad, but you have no excuse for not being there. Now. Answer the question.”

I bit my nail off. “It was about whether we’re dating or just, um . . .”

“Having sex?”

I nodded. It sounded pretty dumb when you said it out loud like that.

“But you said you started feeling gross before that?” Her expression was so deadly serious, I had the deranged urge to laugh. Beatrice Tanaka, Feelings Detective. “What were you talking about when the weird feelings started?”

I thought about it. I’d woken up feeling a little gross. And despite my best efforts, I’d managed to totally freak out about the Big Maisy Takedown Plan. But my cocktail of bizarre emotions had taken off sometime between those two things. Right before he’d shown me the stone.

What on Earth had we been talking about?

“His bed,” I said, replaying our inane conversation. “He wants to get a new bed. I have no idea why that would make me anxious.”

Bea smiled smugly. “Sounds intimate.”

“Talking about furniture while fully clothed? Doesn’t seem as intimate as some of the other things we’ve done.”

“Oh em gee, that is way more intimate!” She gave me a look. “Nate is a creature of extreme routine, Evie. Just look at his wardrobe. And he’s talking about buying a whole new piece of furniture?”

“His bed is really small . . .”

“And he wants a bigger one so you can fit in it!” she crowed. “Like, fit in it all the time. That’s what freaked you out. And that stoked the fires of your whole dating-slash-not dating fight.” She clapped her hands on my shoulders and gave me an intense look. “I knew this would happen. He looks exactly like the guy in that movie you and Aveda used to watch.”

“The scientist? In The Heroic Trio?”

“Yes.”

He did. How had I never noticed it before?

Oh, God.

Bea’s grip on my shoulders tightened. “So first, once you let your emotions come out after shoving them down for so long, your body figured out it was attracted to him. And now your body’s taken the next step and figured out you really like him. For more than, like, sexual purposes. So your brain’s trying to catch up. That disconnect probably made you react to him in a super irrational way.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but she kept barreling on.

“And your anxiety over the Maisy battle is just adding to your stress on top of everything right now, all your emotional stuff. Which probably made your reaction even worse.”

“How do you know I have anxiety about—”

“Well, of course you do. The whole demon princess situation is super scary and you’re trying to deny it’s scary rather than just accepting that it’s okay to be freaked. That you should be freaked.”

I slumped over, resting my forehead on my knees. I couldn’t even begin to process the thought of Nate and I existing beyond our just orgasms arrangement.

Why couldn’t I do that?

“Evie.” I felt her hand on my back. A rush of warmth washed over me, making me feel momentarily soothed.

Unfortunately, then she started talking again.

“I know sometimes you think you can get rid of feelings you don’t think you should be having,” she said. “I know because I do it, too. Like with Mom. I still feel sad sometimes and it’s like, why? I shouldn’t still feel this sad. It’s been almost five years. I should be moving on. But just because I think that in the most logical part of my brain space, it doesn’t make me less sad.”

My heart clenched. “Bea . . .”

“You’re scared. If you let yourself care about someone too hard, they might go away. They might die or leave, like Mom and Dad.” She rubbed my back and I felt that rush of warmth again. “That’s not gonna stop you from caring, though. So you might as well give in.”

I lifted my head and looked at her. She was still ultra-serious, trying to gauge my reaction. “You sound so smart,” I blurted out.

She gave a long-suffering sigh. “I’ve always been brilliant. I got all As this semester without going to class once.”

I should have scolded her, but curiosity got the better of me. “How?”

“I homeschooled myself.” She grinned. “I called the school and pretended I was you and I informed them I have a very rare and contagious disorder and I needed to be quarantined all semester. They sent me my work, I sent it back. I aced all the tests and did extra credit in math. The end.”

“A generic and extremely sudden ‘disorder’? They bought that?”

She shrugged. “Schools have to be super-sensitive nowadays. Otherwise I could totes sue them for discrimination. Against my disorder.”

“But . . . but . . .” I spluttered, not sure what to address first. “Don’t you miss your friends?”

“I don’t have any friends. Well, not at school. Not anymore.” She looked down at the bedspread. “Aveda’s my friend. And Lucy. Scott and Nate.”

I scrutinized her. Even after everything that’d happened with Mom and Dad, I’d always assumed she’d stayed the same: popular and selfish, the tempestuous life of the party. But now I saw that she was nearly as lost as I was.

She was kind of a mess, too.

“Mom would be proud of you,” I said. “Balancing school with a real job and managing to kick ass at both? Pretty awesome.”

A small smile crept over her face. “Does that mean I can still have my disorder next semester?”

“We’ll see.” I squeezed her hand and left the rest of my thought unspoken.

If there is another semester. If I manage to keep Maisy from totally destroying the city and all.

“For now, why don’t we talk about that song list?” I said. “And my showmanship.”

She hopped up and trotted over to her spreadsheets. “So are you gonna go for it with Nate? ’Cause you should. Let him buy the bigger bed.”

That heady stew of feelings was still swirling around in my stomach. I wasn’t sure of anything and I especially wasn’t sure of that.

“I can’t believe I just talked to you about all that.” It was an artful dodge of her question, but it was also the truth: for the first time, we’d spoken as something other than enforcer and inmate. I’d acknowledged that she was growing up. And much as I hated to admit it, I was probably going to have to keep doing that.

“I can believe it,” she said. “So. Ready to get started?” She gestured to her spreadsheets and looked at me hopefully, purple-streaked cap of hair listing to the side.

This, I realized, was what I’d miss if the world suddenly weren’t there. Her looking at me like that, as if I was actually capable of fighting a demon princess and saving us all.

Maybe I was. In any case, I had to try.

I took a deep breath and felt something resembling strength take root in my veins.

“Okay,” I said, “tell me more about the boy bands.”