“Well, people are wrong,” he snapped, and Emma froze, obviously embarrassed, then turned to face him slowly.

“I’m sorry, Max. I didn’t mean…”

Max stood without letting her finish, towering over our entire table. “They’re all wrong.” He didn’t raise his voice, but made no special effort to lower it either, so half the quad heard him when he continued. “Danica couldn’t have been pregnant. We’ve never even done it. So find someone else to talk about. Or better yet, why don’t you all just shut the hell up.”

We stared after him as he stomped off toward the cafeteria doors, and one look at Emma told me she felt just as bad for him as I did.

“Poor fool,” Sabine said, one of Nash’s cheese-covered chips halfway to her mouth. “I think he really believes that.” As a mara, Sabine could read people’s fears and feed from the nightmares she wove for them while they slept. But even beyond her mara abilities, she had an uncanny ability to read people’s expressions and body language. To my constant irritation.

“Of course he believes it.” Emma would have taken any excuse to argue with the mara—Sabine had dragged her into the Netherworld six weeks earlier and almost sold her to a hellion, body and soul. But this time her anger was obviously about more than that; Em felt guilty for passing along what she’d heard in front of Max. “Just ’cause people are saying something doesn’t make it true. My aunt had a miscarriage last year, and it looked nothing like that. There was hardly any blood. Mostly just some cramping.”

Sabine shrugged, unfazed. “I’m no doctor, but if you ask me, she was pregnant, and the baby didn’t belong to good ol’ Max. But he obviously hasn’t figured that out yet.”

“Well, no one asked you,” Emma insisted. “So mind your own business.” The mara frowned. “It’s not like I was going to tell him!”

“Sabine…” Nash half groaned.

Normally, I like it when he’s irritated with her. Sabine was my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, and she wasn’t too happy about the “ex” part.

“She’s right,” I said, as softly as I could speak and still be heard at my own table.

“How do you…?” Emma asked, and I met her gaze reluctantly.

“Because I felt the baby die.”

The silence at our table was almost heavy enough to feel. Then Emma breathed a soft, “Ohhh,” of understanding. “That’s why you needed to scream. I didn’t even think about it, after Danica fell out of her chair. I guess I thought she’d die once she got to the hospital.”

“No, she’ll be fine, as far as I know,” I said, glad to have at least that bit of good news to report. “But she definitely lost a baby, right there in firstperiod. And Max obviously wasn’t the father.”

“I wonder who knocked her up?” Sabine bit into another of Nash’s chips, staring off into the clouds, like she could actually puzzle that one out on her own.

Nash pulled his cardboard tray away from her. “That’s none of our business.”

“Maybe it is,” Sabine insisted. “I bet it was Mr. Beck’s.”

“You are so full of shit!” Emma snapped, even angrier at having her favorite teacher’s name dragged through the mud by her least favorite person.

Sabine rolled black eyes. “It’s just a theory. And it’s not even that far-fetched. I mean, if he’s hiding his species, there’s no telling what else he’s hiding.”

My spoon slipped from my grip and plopped into my own untouched bowl of soup. “Beck isn’t human?” I demanded, as Emma’s brown eyes widened. Even Nash looked surprised.

Sabine shrugged again. “I thought you knew.”

“Hell no, we didn’t know!” Nash stared at her over the table. “Are you sure?”

“As sure as I am that Kaylee dreams about some very interesting things she’d never even consider when she’s awake.”

Nash pushed aside his lunch and leaned over the table, lowering his voice even further. “How do you know?” The mara’s focus tightened on me and her eyes darkened, like a cloud had just passed over the sun. Only the day was still bright and warm, for mid-March. “I played around in her slumbering subconscious a couple of months ago, remember? And in her dreams, Miss Prim-n-Proper doesn’t have all those stifling control issues and that pesky trust deficit.”

“How do you know about Beck,” Nash clarified through clenched teeth, while I tried to redirect the heat in my cheeks into a death ray aimed right at Sabine.

She frowned, like the answer should have been obvious. “I read his fears. He knows this is a hotbed of Netherworld activity and he’s afraid of being caught fishing in the communal pond by something bigger and badder before he has what he came for.”

“And what’s that?” Emma asked, obviously stunned.

“How the hell should I know?” Sabine snatched another chip from Nash’s carton. “I’m a mara, not a psychic. Not that mind reading would help anyway. It’s not like people go around thinking, ‘I’m a monster from another world, hell-bent on wreaking havoc. Gee, I hope no one hears my thoughts…’”

“You could have just said, ‘I don’t know,’” I snapped.

Sabine raised one eyebrow in silent challenge. “I don’t know,” she said, managing to make her own ignorance sound smug. “But as usual, I know more than you do.”