“Can I…? Will you let me help?” He stepped in front of me, blocking my view of the hall through the glass door, but I shook my head again. He couldn’t help without using his Influence, and I couldn’t let him do that to me again. Even with the best of intentions.

And anyway, I didn’t need any help. I’d been handling it on my own just fine.

But when he pulled me close and silently wrapped his arms around me, I let him hold me. He felt so good. So warm and strong, as I battled the dark need trying to fight its way free from my body. So long as he didn’t talk, holding me was fine. Holding me was good. It reminded me of the way things used to be between us, and that gave me something to think about, other than the fact that Mrs. Bennigan sat alone in her empty classroom, dying. And no one else had any idea.

The bell rang while Nash still held me, and for a moment, the shrill sound of it battled the ruthless screech still ringing inside my head. He pulled me to one side, out of sight from the hall, and I twisted in his grip to peek through the door.

The hall filled quickly, but I saw no faces. I couldn’t tear my focus from that open doorway, waiting for someone to go inside and find her. And finally, as the excruciating pain began to fade in my throat and my jaw began to loosen, someone did. A freshman girl I knew only by sight stepped into the classroom.

I opened my mouth and inhaled. Nash’s grip on me tightened from behind, offering wordless comfort. And maybe taking a little for himself.

And only seconds after she’d entered the room, the girl raced back into the hall. Her shout was muted by the glass between us and was only a fraction of the shrill sound I could have produced, but the crowd in the hallway froze. The dull static of gossip went silent. Everyone turned to look.

Nash pulled me away from the door as the first teacher came running, and I slid down the brick wall, my jacket catching on the rough edges. For the first time, I noticed the cold, and that my nose was running. “Are you okay?” he asked again, dropping to the ground in front of me, and that time I could answer.

“No. And neither is Mrs. Bennigan.”

“What are the chances that this is a coincidence?” he asked, and I sucked in a deep breath, as if I’d actually emptied my lungs on the unvoiced scream.

“I don’t believe in coincidence.” Not anymore. “And even if I did, this is too much. Two teachers in one day? Something’s wrong.” I looked up to find a steady, tense swirl of green snaking through his irises. “Any idea what?”

He shook his head. “And I’m not sure I want to know. We’ve had enough to deal with this year, and I’m not…” His voiced faded into pained silence and he blinked, then started over. “Besides, this has nothing to do with us. Something’s obviously going on, but it could be bad bean dip in the teachers’ lounge, for all we know. Or someweird virus Wesner passed to Bennigan. Don’t they sing in the same church choir, or something?”

I nodded slowly, trying to convince myself. Just because we’d lost four classmates to Netherworld interference didn’t mean Mr. Wesner’s and Mrs. Bennigan’s deaths involved any extrahuman elements, right? Surely I was just letting my own fears and past experiences color my perception.

Please, please let me be overreacting….

But what if I wasn’t?

“We better go in,” Nash said, shoving himself to his feet.

“Yeah.” Still half-stunned, we started around the building toward the cafeteria doors, which were kept unlocked during all lunch periods. And it wasn’t until nearly an hour later, as I sat in my English class, that I remembered what Nash and I had been discussing when my bean sidhe heritage got in the way. Sabine’s species.

We’d been interrupted again.

AFTER SCHOOL, I STOOD in the parking lot next to my car with my keys in my hand, dialing up my courage as I waited for Nash to come out of the building. Most of my afternoon teachers had been reeling from the death of two colleagues in one day, and they’d made no attempt to actually involve students in their lesson plans. Which gave me plenty of time to avoid thinking about Mrs. Bennigan by planning my first move in Sabine’s sadistic little game of love and war.

She’d laid down the challenge, and I could either rise to it or slink home alone and call Nash later for the scoop on his ex’s inhuman specifics. And after the day I’d had, I just didn’t feel like slinking anywhere.

I knew I’d made the right decision when they came through the double glass doors together. Sabine was laughing and Nash was watching her, and even from across the lot, I recognized the light in his expression.

That was the way he used to look at me.

I got into my car—newly made over by the local body shop, after Doug Fuller had totaled it a week before his death—and dropped my books onto the rear floorboard. Then I cranked the engine and took off across the lot as fast as I dared, one eye on potential pedestrian casualties, the other on Nash and Sabine, as he said something I couldn’t hear. Something that made her laugh harder and made him watch her even more closely.

My car squealed to a stop in front of them as they hit the end of the sidewalk, two feet away. Nash looked surprised, but Sabine actually jumped back, and a tiny granule of bitter satisfaction formed in the pit of my stomach, like a grain of sand in an oyster. If I nourished it properly, would it grow into a pearl?

I didn’t have automatic windows, so I had to shift into Park and lean across the passenger seat to shove the door open. The awkward movement dulled the sharp edge of my dramatic gesture, but I made up for that when Nash leaned down to see me beneath the roof of the car.