Chapter 20

"No!" Addison shouted, her voice strong and shrill, powered by a singer's trained lungs. Which I could have used in that moment, as my muffled keening thinned. But her protest meant nothing to Avari.

"This is my offer," he said, softer than before, yet still his words sent cold, ethereal fingers over my flesh, making my goose-pimpled skin crawl. "The choice is yours."

"Nooo." Addison moaned that time. "No. Take me. You said you'd take my soul."

Avari shook his head slowly, a cruel teacher scolding a naive student. "You misinterpreted my words. That happens more than you might think."

As my wail wavered, my mind raced while I tried to remember everything the hellion had said. Had he actually said he'd trade Regan's soul for Bana's? Or just a soul? I couldn't remember….

"Choose." Avari clucked his tongue at Addison. "Your friends cannot hold your soul forever. Not with this one near death." The demon's gaze met mine, and suddenly his cruel truth sank in. I was dying. The poison had spread to my right hand, and now flowed over my left side on its way to my heart. I couldn't hold Addy's soul for long.

My gaze pleaded with her as I struggled to keep the sound steady in my throat.

Addison's eyes watered and she glanced from me to Regan, who stood frozen in terror, clenching her sister's hand so hard it had turned purple. Then her gaze swung my way, and she focused on something over my shoulder. And I thought I saw some glimmer of hope in her grotesquely blank eyes.

Was that possible? Had she thought of something?

Addy turned to Tod and mouthed something I couldn't interpret.

I was next, and what she said silently to me was "One more minute. Please." I closed my eyes briefly, then opened them and nodded. I would hold on, for just a little longer.

Addison smiled her thanks, then she nodded decisively, again looking over my shoulder.

An instant later, Addy collapsed. Her legs simply folded under her and her head smacked the frosted marble floor. Not that it mattered. She was dead before she hit the ground.

"No!" Regan shouted, tears pouring down her cheeks. She lurched toward her sister, but Tod held her back, wrapping his arms around her shoulders to keep her still.

Surprise dried up the trickle of sound flowing from my throat, and Addy's soul bobbed, until I keened again a second later. Then things got even weirder.

A figure stepped forward from behind me and to my right, her mouth open, already sucking in a long, thick stream of Demon's Breath from Addy's still form.

Libby. My heart ached as I realized Addison had seen her over my shoulder. She'd nodded to Libby, not to me.

Then Tod spoke, Regan now sobbing on his shoulder, and I began to put the pieces together. "The deal has changed, Avari. If you want Bana's soul, you take Addison's with it and return her sister's. Or else, we'll leave with both of the souls in our possession, and you'll keep only the one you have now."

Damn. Shock wound through me, blending with the pain now arcing across every nerve ending in my body. Somehow, Addison had known who Libby was and why she'd come. Had Tod told her, or did understanding simply come in the last moments of her life?

Either way, with a single nod of her head, Addison had asked Libby to end her life, to force the hellion into trading her soul for Regan's. Because Addison's was ready to reap now, and Regan's wouldn't truly be his until she died, likely decades later.

Avari's face paled with rage, and the void in his eyes seemed to churn, though I could detect no motion when I looked directly into those dark spheres.

"Five seconds, or you're out of luck," Tod said as Nash continued to sweat, and my voice warbled. "We're in a bit of a rush." He gestured to me, and I realized he planned to get me home before I died. He was trying to save me, since he couldn't save Addison.

All I could do was sing. And watch Libby claim the Demon's Breath. And wait.

"Five…Four…" Tod taunted as Regan heaved with silent sobs and Avari bellowed in rage. The floor grew slick with ice beneath my feet, and my breath puffed visibly into the frigid air.

Then, just when I thought it was over—thought Addison's death had been for nothing—the hellion spat one short, powerful exhalation into the room, and Regan's soul bobbed near the ceiling.

At Nash's signal, I let go of Addison's soul and sang for her sister's. Libby swallowed the last of the Demon's Breath and popped out of existence without so much as a glance at the rest of us. Avari slurped up Addy's soul in a fraction of the time it took Nash to guide Regan's home. And only then did Tod release Bana's soul into the room.

While Avari devoured it, Nash rushed toward me across the slick floor, tugging a shocked Regan by one hand. I had a moment to notice that her eyes were again beautiful, and blue, and normal. Then they converged on me, sliding so quickly they almost bowled me over.

"Now!" Nash whispered desperately, tugging me into an agonizing squat so that I touched both him, Regan, and Addison's limp arm. "Take us back now!"

That time, intent to cross was no problem, and I was already keening. Avari's roar of fury faded swiftly from my ears. An instant later I collapsed to the floor of a generic office full of cubicles and cheap industrial carpet. Addy lay at my side, and Nash and Regan stared down at me, a mixture of grief and relief coursing over their features.

A moment later, Tod popped into existence next to his brother.

"Are you okay?" Nash knelt at my side, but by then I could only shake my head. I'd lost my voice completely, and was in so much pain it hurt to draw a breath. "Call Mom," Nash ordered, sliding one hand behind my back, the other beneath my knees. He carried me out of the office and into the hall while Regan followed, crying and scrolling through the entries in Nash's phone for a name she wouldn't even recognize, because Tod carried her sister's body.

Each second we waited for the elevator was pure agony. I hurt all over, and worse wherever he touched me. But I was grateful for that touch.

"You'll be fine," Nash whispered. "Your expiration date is in full effect here, so you won't die. But you're going to hurt like hell until we get this fixed."

I'd guessed as much.

I'd just decided that Prime Life shut down their elevators after hours when the mirrored doors slid open with a soft ding. Downstairs, we crossed the eerily empty lobby and Nash set me on a burgundy couch while he kicked open the locked glass doors leading to the parking garage. It took him three tries, but I was still impressed.

Harmony answered her phone as Nash buckled me into the front seat, and Regan gave the phone to Tod as he closed the trunk, where he'd gently laid Addison. He explained the basics, demanding his mother meet us at my house with the necessary supplies. She said she'd be there in ten minutes.

It took us twenty, and once he'd dropped me and Nash off, Tod took the Page sisters home, where Regan would "find" her sister's body on the floor of her own room. Then he returned Emma's car.

My front door flew open before Nash and I even got to the porch, and my father took me from him without a word. His anger had momentarily been eclipsed by fear I hadn't seen since that long-ago day I barely remembered.

The day my mother had died to save me.

"Not again," he muttered, laying me on the couch. I moaned, and tears overflowed his eyes.

"She'll be fine." Harmony pushed him aside gently. I hadn't even known she was there, but suddenly she was at my side, her fingers cold on my arm, a filled syringe ready in her other hand. "Tod said it's crimson creeper."

"Where the hell did she find crim—" His eyes widened in horror, and some of that anger returned. "Kaylee, what did you do?"

"She can explain it later, Aiden," Harmony said firmly. The needle slid into my arm, and though it was blissfully cold, the medicine that invaded my body scalded like one of the original pinpricks from the creeper. "For now, let her sleep. She'll need another dose of this in four hours." She held a second syringe up for my father to see, and he nodded. "If the red webbing isn't gone four hours after that, call me."

But she'd be back to check on me before then. Nash would see to that.

"Come on, Nash," Harmony said, and the hard edge in her voice said he wouldn't get off easy, either.

"No…" I moaned, surprised when my voice actually produced the cracked, tortured sound. I grabbed his wrist with the last of my strength.

Harmony frowned at me, then at my father. "Can he stay, Aiden? She wants him to stay."

My father hedged, and I begged him with my eyes. I needed them both. I'd never hurt so badly in my life, but Nash's voice could help. I knew it could. "Fine," he said finally. "But you have to go to sleep, young lady."

We'd argue about the "young lady" part later. But I agreed with the rest of his statement.

The last thing I saw before sleep—blissful, pain-free sleep—claimed me were their faces, side by side, watching me with identical expressions of concern.