Wasn’t an event like that supposed to make the world explode, or something?

The reaper glanced down in surprise, then reached through himself to grab my phone from the seat—which had to be one of the weirdest things I’d ever seen. Even weirder than killer plants and little bald fiends with tails and needle-teeth.

Tod’s body solidified, and he stared at me blankly. “What’s this for?”

“Well, most people use it as a form of communication, but it would probably work as a projectile, in a pinch.”

Tod frowned. “Funny. Who am I supposed to call?”

“Addy. Find out where she is. I have an idea.” While he dialed, I turned my attention to the thorny coil of vine still wrapped tightly around my ankle. Nash had cut it close to the ground to get me loose, but there was still enough of the weed left to encircle my leg twice, long, thin thorns piercing both the denim and my skin. At two-inch intervals, thin four-leaf clusters dangled, dark green at the centers, bleeding to red on the serrated edges.

“Be careful with that,” Nash warned, glancing from the road to my ankle, then back. “I think that’s crimson creeper, and if it is, the thorns are poisonous.”

Of course they were. Was anything in the Netherworld nontoxic?

“It’s a little late for that. The stupid thorns went all the way through my jeans.” I pinched the end of the creeper vine between my thumb and forefinger, completely horrified when thin red liquid dribbled from the severed tip, and gingerly pulled it away from my leg. Fortunately, now that the weird red vine was dead, it uncoiled easily. But each time a thorn pulled free from my skin, a fresh jolt of blazing pain shot through my ankle, as if I were being struck by tiny bolts of lightning. By the time I dropped the plant on the floorboard—the vine had to be eight inches long—a hot ache had settled into my ankle joint, throbbing with each beat of my heart.

I bit my bottom lip as I carefully rolled up the cuff of my jeans. Then I gasped in shock. My ankle was already swollen. Each of the dozen or so tiny holes was raised and puckered, and the wounds were almost as red as the vine itself.

“Shit!” Nash whistled through his teeth. “Definitely crimson creeper. My mom will know what to do for that, but if we tell her, she’ll call your dad.” Nash’s eyes found mine, and I wondered if I looked as conflicted as he did. “Do you think you can wait a couple of hours, or do we need to go now?”

To the hospital, of course. Where Harmony worked as a third-shift RN on the orthopedic ward, where the patients were least likely to die.

I pressed my foot against the dashboard experimentally. The pain was constant, and did not increase with pressure, which meant I could probably walk on it. “I can wait.” I closed my eyes briefly and exhaled, mourning the last of my hope that my dad might never discover what we were up to.Now that I was injured, full disclosure was unavoidable—hopefully after we’d reclaimed Addy’s and Regan’s souls.

When this was all over, I’d probably be spending a lot of time alone in my room.

“Hello, Addy?” Tod said from the backseat, and I loosened the chest strap of my seat belt so I could twist around to watch him, studying his face for any clue about Addison’s half of their conversation. “Did I wake you up?”

She laughed bitterly over the line, but I couldn’t make out her actual words.

“Yeah, I probably couldn’t, either.” Tod plucked a frayed thread from the thin layer of denim over his right knee. “Listen, where are you? I think we need to drop by for a minute….” He glanced at me to confirm, and I nodded while Addison said something else I couldn’t understand. “Good. Can you arrange for a few minutes of privacy?” Another pause. “We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Twenty,” I corrected him. “We have to make a stop first.”

Tod relayed the correction to Addison, then said goodbye, hung up, and tossed my phone back to me. “She’s at her mom’s house. It’s the only place she can avoid most of her entourage.”

“Good.” I slid my phone into my pocket and glanced out the windshield to read the passing highway signs. “Nash, we need an all-night Walmart, or grocery store. Or maybe a drugstore.”

He nodded and slid smoothly into the right-hand lane, barely pausing to flick on Emma’s blinker. “There’s a twenty-four-hour Walgreens a couple of miles from Addy’s house. Will that work?”

“With any luck. Do you think I should get something for this, while we’re there?” I raised my cuff to show him my ankle, and Tod sucked in a sharp breath from the backseat, then leaned forward, gripping my headrest.

“Damn, Kaylee, is that from the weed?”

“Yeah.” I poked gently at one of the swollen puncture marks, then hissed when a fresh jolt of pain shot through my tender flesh and into the core of the joint. A small bead of clear fluid oozed from the hole, and I dabbed at it with a tissue from the box on Emma’s center console. “Nash thinks it’s crimson creeper.”

“He’s right. Thank goodness it was a little one. Of course, if it was fully grown, you never would have stepped on it.”

“Fully grown? How big do they get?”

Tod raised both brows, surprised by my cluelessness. Though, he shouldn’t have been, considering that a couple of months ago I didn’t even know my own species. “Fifty feet or better. And a puncture from one that size will kill you in a couple of hours, if it doesn’t break your spine first. They’re like giant pythons with roots.”