If I Die

8

“What are they for?” Emma whispered, staring at the detention slips I was now using to mark chapter fifteen in my algebra book.

“Public display.”

“Both of them?”

I’d made Nash and Sabine promise not to tell Emma that I was days from death, in spite of our new “full disclosure” policy, because it seemed cruel to make her anticipate what was coming for days in advance. That was hard enough for me and Nash—Sabine didn’t seem to be suffering—and I wouldn’t put my best friend through it, if I could possibly spare her. And I have to admit, it felt good to talk to someone who didn’t get sad and overprotective the minute I walked into the room. So she didn’t understand my new cavalier approach to the school’s code of conduct.

I shrugged, grinning from ear to ear. “I guess we didn’t look sorry enough after the first one.”

Emma gaped at me, and I almost laughed out loud. Knowing I was going to die changed everything. Consequences no longer mattered, so long as they didn’t hurt anyone else—and Nash’s detentions didn’t count. There was no way they’d make him serve them while he was mourning the death of his girlfriend.

I could do whatever I wanted. And that incredible liberty—the only thing even approaching a bright side to the terrifying reality of my own death—left me feeling light-headed. And maybe a bit reckless.

I could stay up till four in the morning and eat pizza and ice cream for every meal. I could stay out all night. I could get drunk. I could have sex. I could get a piercing or a tattoo. I could stand up in the middle of sixth period and tell Mrs. Brown that the past perfect conjugation of irregular French verbs would never come in handy for me at all, and yes I did know that for a fact!

Next week, no one would care whether I’d gained weight or fallen asleep in class, or skipped school entirely. What did it matter if I failed French, or my piercing got infected, or I got pregnant?

But thinking of pregnancy killed my rebellion buzz with a single, gruesome mental image of Danica Sussman bleeding on the floor. Which reminded me of Mr. Beck, and when I looked up, he was walking down the aisle toward me and Emma, a stack of graded quizzes in hand.

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe, afraid that he’d take one look at me and know exactly what I was thinking. That was entirely possible; we still didn’t know what he was. So when he put a quiz facedown on my desk, then moved on to the next student, I exhaled with relief.

Okay, I guess some consequences still matter…

I flipped the paper over. Eighty-two. Normally, that would bother me. I was pulling a high B in algebra II and I’d hoped to push that into the low A range by the end of the term, mostly because Nash’s grades—at least, pre-frost addiction—made me look bad. But now, a low B was the last thing on my mind.

Mr. Beck came back up the next row and put a paper facedown on Emma’s desk, but instead of moving on, he leaned over and whispered something to her. Something I couldn’t hear. Emma nodded. And when he walked away, she was grinning from ear to ear.

“What’d he say?” I asked, leaning across the aisle as he headed toward the whiteboard at the front of the room. Something had gone wrong on a cosmic level if Em had aced a quiz I’d barely pulled a B on.

She turned up one corner of her paper so I could see her grade. Fifty-four.

“Since when is an F a good thing?”

“He wants to talk to me after class,” she explained, eyes bright with excitement that gave me chills. Em had failed the quiz.

And caught Mr. Beck’s attention.

“What’d he say?” I fell into step with Emma as she left Mr.

Beck’s room several minutes after class, acutely aware that though she had a late pass, I did not. Then I remembered that didn’t matter. Next week, instead of serving detention, I’d be taking the great dirt nap.

“The usual. I’m a smart girl, but I’m not applying myself. Math is relevant to my future….”

She kept talking, but her answer faded into the ambient hallway chatter when a familiar set of dark eyes caught my attention, and goose bumps popped up all over my body. Thane stood across the hall, leaning against a bank of lockers in black jeans and a plain black T-shirt, still and silent against the rush of traffic and noise. He watched me, smiling intimately about the secret we shared. The future I would not have. The last moments of my life, which he would no doubt savor.

“Kaylee?” Emma elbowed me in the ribs. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I made myself turn away from the reaper, confident no one else could see him. And absolutely certain that he was still watching me. “What were you saying?”

“Mr. Beck said that maybe I just need a little extra help to get all caught up.”

“That’s it?” If that was it, why was Em practically glowing, like she did at parties, when every head in the room turned to watch her dance?

Emma pushed open the door to the bathroom and I followed her inside as the second period late bell rang. “Yeah. He thinks I could bump my average up to a B with a little tutoring.”

“Who’s the tutor?” Please, please say it’s a senior with mad math skills…

“That’s the best part. He’s gonna tutor me himself. After school.” She grinned at me in the mirror, pulling a tube of lip gloss from her purse. “And I suspect it just might take me a while to pick up on the more complicated concepts.” Her eyes glittered with excitement, and my stomach churned. Something was wrong.

I leaned against the wall, clutching my books. Sabine was supposed to draw a foul, not Emma. Sabine could take care of herself, but Emma had no defensive abilities whatsoever, beyond a blinding distraction of cleavage, and she had no concept of how dangerous the world really was, even knowing that humans weren’t alone in it.

“Em, this is a bad idea,” I said, squatting to peek beneath the row of stalls to make sure we were alone. All good, unless someone at Eastlake had developed powers of invisibility. “Why don’t you just go hit on someone in honors calculus?”

“Because there’s no one hot in honors calculus,” she said without moving her lips, as she dabbed clear gloss on over her lipstick. Then she eyed me in the mirror, screwing the lid back on the tube. “What’s the big deal, Kay? It’s an hour after school, twice a week. In a classroom. If I have to learn function notation, shouldn’t I at least have something pretty to look at until my brain self-destructs?”

I dropped my backpack and leaned with both hands on the edge of the sink, staring at her reflection in disbelief. “Em, he could be dangerous. He’s not human!”

“Neither are you!”

“Yeah, and I’m dangerous! How many times have you almost died because of me?”

She dropped her gloss into her purse, then set her purse on the stack of books balanced on the edge of the next sink. “Why do you have to be the storm cloud, always raining on my parade? Why can’t you let me pretend—just this once—that someone smart, and hot, and thoroughly post-pubescent could possibly be interested in me?”

“Because you don’t need to pretend. He could totally be interested in you, and that’s the problem.”

“It’s just tutoring, Kaylee.”

“The last girl he tutored nearly bled out on the classroom floor,” I said, and Emma blinked, like she wanted to say something, but couldn’t quite put it into words. “Sabine’s going to figure out what he is and I’m going to find out whether or not he knocked up Danica Sussman.” And Emma was going to stay away from him, whether she liked it or not.

“Okay, don’t take this the wrong way, Kay, but how is it any of your business who Danica sleeps with?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “What are you now, the monogamy police?”

“Emma, he’s a teacher!”

“I know, and normally that’d be really creepy. But he’s twenty-two, and she’s eighteen. They’re only four years apart, and she’s a legal adult. If this were June and she was out of high school, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

“But it’s barely March, and she’s still in school. And he’s an authority figure,” I pointed out, frustrated and beyond bewildered by her argument. Was it really so hard to understand that a teacher sleeping with a student was bad, no matter how old either of them was? “At the very least, this could get him fired.”

“Assuming it’s true. And at this point, it’s just a theory, right?” she asked, and I nodded reluctantly. “So how ’bout this…” Emma turned from the mirror to face me directly. “I promise not to sleep with the hottest teacher on the face of the planet—math facts and harmless fantasies only—and you promise to tell me if he turns out to have horns or a forked penis. Deal?”

“No! No deal!” I snapped, gaping at her now. “You’ve seen the Netherworld. How can you not be freaked out by even the possibility that he could be some kind of monster? That forked penis thing could be true, you know.”

“Just because he’s not human doesn’t mean he’s a monster, Kaylee. You, of all people, should know that.” She shrugged and continued before I could argue. “Besides, Avari and Invidia were scary as hell, but hellions can’t cross into the human world. And Mr. Beck isn’t scary. He’s just…hot.”

I knew that look. That was the look Emma got every time her mom told her to be home by midnight. Every time her sister forbade her from borrowing her clothes. Hell, every time our fifth grade teacher told her to stop charging the boys in our class a dollar apiece for a peek at her training bra.

I exhaled, long and slow. “You’re gonna do whatever you wanna do anyway…”

“How well you know me…” She smiled and slid her purse strap over one arm, then picked up her books. “Hey, have you noticed you’re ten minutes late to chemistry?”

“Yeah. I don’t care,” I said, pushing the door open.

Emma frowned and studied me closer. “Since when do you not care about being late to class?”

“My priorities have recently undergone realignment.”

Her frown deepened. “What does that mean?”

“I’m tired of playing by the rules.”

“So?” I said, as Sabine slid onto the bench seat across the table from me and next to Emma. School had been out for half an hour, so the food court across the street from our campus was packed. I would have been happier in the quad or the parking lot, but Sabine was hungry. And thirsty. And in possession of information I wanted.

“Is that mine?” She reached for the paper bowl of frozen yogurt in the middle of the table and scooped a spoonful of nuts and berries off the top.

“Extra large, double raspberries.” I scowled into my own kid-size helping. “I make minimum wage, you know. You’re gonna break the bank.”

“Can’t take it with you,” she pointed out, and my frown deepened at the reminder of my own impending death.

“Where’s Nash?” The mara glanced around like he’d simply materialize in front of her.

“Baseball.” Nash was the starting pitcher. He’d offered to skip practice, determined to spend all of what time I had left with me, but I’d told him to go on. Sabine and I—and now Emma—had work to do anyway. “What’cha got?”

“Well…no luck scoring private time with Beck.” Sabine shrugged. “Evidently I’m not believable as a remedial math student.”

“That can’t be right,” I said, and the mara scowled while Em laughed, a spoonful of chocolate yogurt halfway to her mouth. “What’s your average?”

“Eighty-nine. I’m not stupid,” Sabine snapped, and Emma bristled, no doubt thinking about her own seventy-eight average. “My only problem with math is that the very concept of homework violates one of my most strongly held beliefs.”

“What belief?” Emma said. “That you’re too special to work like the rest of us?” Like she did homework.

“The belief that homework should be optional for those of us who already understand the concepts.”

“I like it,” Emma said. “You should run for student council.”

“No,” Sabine muttered, around another bite of yogurt. “I really shouldn’t.”

“Okay, so he won’t tutor you…” I said, redirecting the conversation. “We can work around that. You can still flirt with him, and try to read—”

“No way!” Emma slapped her palms flat on the tile-top table, and I flinched, hoping she hadn’t drawn attention from the crowd all around us. “You’ll let her hit on Mr. Beck, but you don’t even want me to be tutored by him?”

“I’m not letting her do anything,” I insisted, but Sabine spoke over me.

“Kaylee’s not the boss of me. Hell, she’s not even her own boss most of the time.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks for yet another unsolicited amateur psychoanalysis.” Then I turned to my best friend. “I’m sorry, Em, but Sabine can hold her own against…well, pretty much whatever’s out there. And if I can’t stop her from throwing herself at Nash, how am I supposed to stop her from hitting on Mr. Beck?”

“You can’t, on either count,” Sabine said, and Emma shrugged in concession, still pouting. We both knew there was no taming this particular shrew. “Doesn’t matter anyway. I already tried and failed to flirt my way in. I don’t think he knows what I am, but he was definitely creeped out when I read his fears.” The dissimulatus bracelets we wore would disguise our psychic signatures, but if we used our abilities and they were recognized…we were screwed. And we couldn’t chance letting Beck stumble over our secrets before we’d uncovered his.

“You read him? In class?” I snapped. Was she trying to get caught?

“Yeah, and I probably won’t get another chance.” She shrugged, and a sly grin blossomed. “So I guess it’s a good thing I got what I needed on the first try, huh?”

Em stuck her spoon into her yogurt, where it stood straight up. “You know what he is?”

“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” I demanded, crossing my arms over my chest.

Sabine huffed. “Because this is a favor, not a charity. Nothing’s ever really free, Kaylee.”

“You’re a credit to capitalism. Now spill it.”

Sabine leaned over the table, and I scooted closer to hear her when she lowered her voice. “Okay, I’m about eighty-percent sure—”

“Eighty percent?” I bit back a groan.

“Reading fear isn’t an exact science, Kay,” Sabine snapped. Then she frowned and seemed to reconsider. “Okay, it kinda is, but it’s fear reading, not mind reading. The only things I know for sure are what he’s afraid of.”

Em waved her hand in a “get on with it” gesture. “And that would be…”

“Failing to procreate.”

“What?” Emma and I said in unison.

“He wants a baby. Specifically, a son.”

“Okay, I think he’s a little young to be so desperate for kids, but reproduction isn’t exactly the most dastardly of deeds,” Emma said.

But my stomach had started to pitch and a chill was crawling up my spine. Mr. Beck wasn’t human and he wanted a baby, but he was afraid he wouldn’t get one. Danica Sussman had just suffered the gruesome miscarriage of a baby that wasn’t her boyfriend’s, leaving her insides permanently damaged.

“He’s not young,” Sabine said, but I could barely hear her over the horrible conclusion building to a crescendo in my head. Beck—whatever he was—was preying on teenage girls. “In fact, he’s afraid he’s waited too long, and that he won’t live to see another fertile period.”

“Fertile period?” Emma echoed, and the picture refusing to come into focus in my head grew a little darker.

“What is he?” I stared at the table beneath my hands, concentrating on the grout between the tiles to focus my thoughts.

Sabine exhaled and crossed her arms on the slick four-inch tiles. “My best guess is…incubus. Our new math teacher is a no-shit, in-the-flesh lust-demon. What are the chances?”

“Pretty damn good, considering Eastlake High makes Buffy’s hellmouth look like a crack in the sidewalk.” I shoved hair back from my face and met Sabine’s black-eyed gaze, which practically sparked with anticipation—the sure sign of an adrenaline junkie. “What exactly are you basing this assessment on?”

“Other than the fact that he’s not human, but he lives on this side of the barrier?” she asked, and I nodded. “Mostly the fertile period part. Incubi are only capable of breeding, like, once a century. Or something like that. And if he’s afraid he’s too old, I’m guessing that rumor about him being twenty-two is way off base.”

“Wait, incubus?” Emma said, glancing back and forth between us, desperately trying to keep up. “Like, the band?”

I was starting to really regret my promise of full disclosure. “No. Like the psychic parasite.”

“Psychic…parasite?” If Em frowned any harder, her face would cave in on itself. “So, what? They drink thoughts?”

Sabine rolled her eyes. “The only thing worse than working with one clueless do-gooder is working with two.” She twisted on the bench to face Emma, and I leaned closer to listen. My knowledge of incubi was limited to a couple of stories from our mythology unit in English the year before, and if those were as inaccurate as the stories about “banshees,” then I really knew next to nothing.

“Psychic parasites feed from human energy, in one form or another. An incubus, specifically, feeds from lust.”

“Please tell me this means you’ve come up against one before,” I said, hoping for a ray of sunshine in what was otherwise turning out to be a very cloudy day.

“As interesting a story as that would have been…no.” Sabine actually sounded disappointed. “I did meet a succubus once, though. That’s the female version of an incubus,” she added, glancing at Emma. “We did not get along.”

“Color me shocked.”

“Okay…” Emma frowned at Sabine. “Incubi and maras both feed from human energy, right?” she said, and Sabine nodded, already scowling in advance of Emma’s point. “So that makes you different from Mr. Beck how?”

“When I feed, I don’t kill people,” Sabine snapped.

“Well, neither has he,” Em insisted. “We don’t even know for a fact that Danica’s baby was his.”

“Like I said, I’m eighty-percent sure of his species, and if I’m right about that, the probability of that being his baby is closer to ninety-nine percent.”

And if he’d lost both the baby and the ability to have another with Danica, would he be looking for a new potential mother from among his remaining students? Maybe…students who needed help with math?

“Can we please forget the percentage points?” Em groaned. “This is already too much like school.”

“And if he’s as old as I think he is, he has killed,” Sabine continued, ignoring Em’s complaint. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have survived this long.”

“But he’s obviously not feeding where he…breeds, or else we’d have heard about the deaths.” I closed my eyes, far from relieved that my distraction had actually turned into something big enough to eclipse my own problems. “Any idea how often he has to eat?”

Sabine shook her head. “Sorry. I exhausted my incubus knowledge with that fertile period thing.”

“Well, you knew more than I did. What else did you get from reading him?” I asked, while Em listened with a frown, obviously reluctant to believe anything bad about Mr. Beck.

“Um…he’s afraid that the girls are too old, though I’m not sure I understand that, if he’s targeting his students.” Which seemed to be the case, if we were right about Danica. “And he’s afraid that even if he gets a baby, it won’t be a boy. He’s scared of a lot of things,” Sabine said, and when I looked up, I realized she was talking to me, not Em. “But do you know what he’s not afraid of?”

“Clowns?” Emma said, throwing her hands in the air in exasperation.

Sabine never even glanced at her, and I shook my head in reply. I had no idea.

“Getting caught.” The mara’s eyes gleamed with a dark malevolence I found oddly comforting, since she was on my side this time. “It hasn’t even crossed his mind that there might be a consequence in this for him, other than not getting what he wants. How do you feel about that, Kay?”

“Pissed off.” I was almost as surprised by the anger in my own voice as I was by the actual words I hadn’t intended to say. Until I realized they were true. I was pissed, on Danica’s behalf, and on behalf of anyone else who may have suffered like she did.

Sabine nodded sharply, and her earrings glinted in the sun from the skylight overhead. “I say we take the bastard down.”