If I Die

9

Emma had to leave for work straight from the food court, but Sabine insisted on following me home in her car so we could start researching incubi in general, and Mr. Beck in particular. She claimed dedication to the mission, and I’m sure that was part of it—she typically cured boredom with chaos—but I wasn’t fooled; we could have researched separately and combined info later. Sabine was coming over so that when Nash arrived after practice, we wouldn’t be alone.

And honestly, I couldn’t blame her.

I pushed the front door open and was surprised to find Alec sitting on the couch, obviously waiting for me.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” I held the door for Sabine, then closed it behind her. “And how’d you get in?” As happy as I was to see him, I couldn’t help being suspicious. It turned out that about half the time I’d spent with Alec when he was staying with us had actually been spent in the company of Avari, the hellion of greed who’d been possessing him and using him to kill my teachers.

But then I noticed Styx curled up asleep on the couch next to him, and both my suspicion and fear slipped away. She would never sleep through a hellion possession.

Alec stood and held his arms out for me. “Your dad dropped by my place on his way to work this morning with a key and a strongly worded request that I come keep you company tonight. He’s not gonna make it for dinner.” I let him fold me into a hug, and I knew by his tight grip and reluctance to let go that my dad had filled him in completely—and that he was now off looking for some way to save my life. “Four days, Kay? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Before I could answer, Styx’s head popped up and a low growl rumbled from her throat. Sabine stiffened and I backed out of Alec’s brotherly grip, all three of us instantly on alert.

“Yeah, why didn’t you tell him, Kay?” Thane said, and I whirled around to see the reaper standing in the kitchen doorway, eyeing me in mock concern. “Don’t you think your friends should know you’re about to leave them?”

“What’s wrong?” Sabine had noticed me staring toward the kitchen, and Alec was just watching me, waiting.

“Nothing,” I said, hyperaware of Tod’s warning about putting our friends in danger. “Styx is probably just mad that we interrupted her nap.”

“Yeah, that’s it….” Thane said from behind me. I actually heard his clothes rustle as he came closer and because I didn’t trust him at my back, it took every bit of self-control I had to keep ignoring him. “Where’d you get that thing, anyway? I’ve never seen one of those yappy little monsters on this side of the barrier.”

“I didn’t tell you because there’s nothing you can do,” I said to Alec, struggling to concentrate on the conversation I was actually having, rather than the one I was boycotting.

“Damn right…” Thane sat on the arm of the couch, and Styx stood on the cushion to growl at him.

“There’s nothing anyone can do,” I continued, determined to ignore him. “So I’m just kind of…trying not to think about it.” And thanks to Thane, I was failing miserably, in spite of the scary new distraction Mr. Beck had provided. Knowing my death was coming was like tumbling into a deep, dark pit in slow motion. The world above me narrowed into an ever-smaller point of light as I fell further and further from its influence.

And I fell faster every time Thane showed up.

Sabine dropped into my father’s recliner like she owned it, eyeing Alec. “So you’re, like, the babysitter? What, Kaylee can’t even be trusted to die on her own?”

Thane laughed. “I like her!”

Completely oblivious to the reaper sitting feet away, Alec sank onto the couch and pulled me down next to him, brows raised at Sabine. “Wow, you’re about as warm as a frostbitten toe.”

I leaned back with my feet on the battered coffee table, hands folded over my stomach. “Sabine has frostbite of the heart. Unfortunately, her mouth is perfectly functional.”

“As is my brain. Let’s get started.”

She was right—time was my enemy. Well, time and Thane. I twisted to look up at Alec, who towered over me even when we sat side by side. “My dad’s just being overprotective. You can go if you want,” I said, in spite of the voice in my head insisting that I not be left alone with Thane. “Obviously I won’t be wasting away here by myself…” I glanced pointedly at Sabine. “And Nash is coming over after dinner, so I’ll be in good hands.”

Sabine gave a harsh laugh. “She’ll be in more than just his hands, if you leave them alone together. So feel free to hang out and keep them from getting naked.” Since she’d promised not to stand in our way.

“Oh, goody, a show!” the reaper cried, and because I couldn’t yell at him, I had to take my frustration out on the mara. Who probably deserved it anyway.

“Sabine!” I snapped, before I realized that rising to her bait was as good as admitting my intentions.

Alec’s surprise slid quickly into amusement. “That’s why your dad really sent me…?”

“No.” Probably. I could feel my face burn, and I could have killed Sabine for giving the reaper that little glimpse into my life—even though she had no idea what she’d done. “And my sex life is none of anyone else’s business.”

Sabine laughed out loud. “Your sex life is fictional.”

“Okay, get out.” I stood and gestured toward the door on my way into the kitchen, talking to her, but glancing pointedly at Thane. “If you aren’t going to help, then just go home.”

“Oh, calm down,” Sabine called from the living room. “And let Alec stay, too. We could use him.”

“Use me for what?” Alec asked, as I dug in the fridge for three cold sodas.

“Nothing like what you’re probably thinking,” Sabine said. “Though I do have four more days as a free woman, so long as you’re just lookin’ for a little fun….”

I tossed a soda at her, secretly aiming for her head, and the mara caught it one-handed, shooting me a challenging grin. I brushed past the reaper no one else could see and Alec frowned as I handed him a can and sank onto the couch again, this time facing both him and Sabine. “Does that mean what it sounds like it means?” he asked.

“Yes.” I could only shrug and pop open my drink. “In one sentence, she managed to proposition you, call dibs on my boyfriend, and remind us all—again—that I’m going to die.”

Sabine grinned. “I’m an acquired taste.”

“Well, my tastes run more toward comfort food, but thanks for the offer,” Alec said, and Sabine shrugged off the dismissal while he turned back to me. “I hesitate to ask—I’m not sure I want to know what put the two of you on the same side of an issue—but what’s going on? What were you going to use me for?”

“Yes, what are you up to, little bean sidhe…?” Thane taunted, leaning back to watch the show, like he was our own live studio audience.

“I had no plans to drag you into this, but since you’re here…what do you know about incubi?”

Alec stared at me for a moment, his brown eyes wide with surprise. Then narrowed in concern. “Do you ever ask for help with anything normal?”

I lifted one brow at him. “There’s a Netherworld guard dog curled up in my lap and I’m going to die in four days,” I said, my stomach pitching at the very thought. And I’m being stalked by the reaper assigned to kill me. “I don’t even remember what normal looks like, Alec.”

“You’re taking this death thing pretty calmly,” he said, his voice soft, his gaze searching mine for signs of a crack in my composed facade.

“I believe he’s right.” Thane leaned in closer, staring at me in imitation of Alec, and the urge to punch him was almost as strong as the fluttering panic his presence—another reminder of my own impending death—spawned deep in my chest. “Can’t have that, now can we? Hmm…” Then he disappeared, and I sighed in relief, in spite of his ominous exit.

Styx put her head down on my knee and went to sleep while I refocused on the conversation, determined to push my own problems aside for just a little while longer, a luxury that was rapidly expiring, along with my lifeline.

“I’m only calm on the outside. What can you tell us about incubi?”

Alec frowned over my reply, but didn’t push the issue.

“What do you already know?”

I set my soda on the coffee table and began ticking points off on my fingers. “They’re always male. They feed from lust. They go into some kind of weird fertile period every century or so. And…there’s one teaching math at my school.”

“Whoa…” Alec sat up straight, glancing from me to Sabine and back. “One of your teachers is an incubus? How are you just now figuring this out?”

“Because he doesn’t stand at the front of the classroom chanting ‘I’m a sex demon, please come vanquish me,’” Sabine said, popping the tab on her soda.

“He’s only been there six weeks,” I added, still stroking Styx’s fur while she slept. “He’s Mr. Wesner’s replacement. Sabine knew he wasn’t human, but we didn’t know anything was wrong until Danica Sussman had a miscarriage in the middle of first period on Friday, and it turns out the baby wasn’t her boyfriend’s,” I said, trying not to remember her on the floor, bleeding…

“Uh-oh.” Alec scuffed one hand over his tight, dark curls. “Okay, let’s start with the facts.” He popped his can open and took the first sip, then set it on an end table. “Incubi are all male, and they do feed from lust, either indirectly—kind of like sunbathing on a bright day—or directly, which involves…pretty much exactly what you’re thinking.”

“Ew!” I tried and failed to purge the visual of Mr. Beck feeding during sex, but Sabine only shrugged.

“At least you’d die happy.” Her brows rose. “Hey, maybe that’s how you’re gonna go, Kaylee….”

I shook my head, firmly denying the unease crawling slowly up my spine. “No way. No.” But I couldn’t deny the coincidence. Our new math teacher was a psychic leach and I was scheduled to die in four days. Please, please, please don’t let those two things be connected…

“Don’t worry.” Alec leaned forward to scratch behind Styx’s ears. “I doubt his charm would have much of an effect on either of you, considering you’re not human.”

“Charm?”

“It’s like sexual charisma, or some kind of strong, supernatural pheromone. He can direct it, to a certain extent, but a little bit of it is always going to leak out and draw people to him. And he, in return, can feed indirectly off the lust those people feel for him.”

“So, every time some poor student gets a crush on her math teacher, he has a little snack?” I said, horrified by the very concept.

“Yeah. Only he’s not limited to students. Or girls.”

“Lucky bastard!” Sabine set her can on the floor. “He doesn’t even have to wait for anyone to fall asleep.”

“Yeah. That’s the part of this that’s messed up.” I turned to Alec, trying to forget how much Sabine had in common with Mr. Beck, at least on the surface. “Any other incubus facts?”

“Well, you’re right about the breeding. The incubus fertility cycle lasts a hundred to one hundred twenty years, but they’re only actually fertile for twelve to fourteen months of that. The exact length of time varies, like a woman’s menstrual cycle.”

“That is nothing like a menstrual cycle,” Sabine said, and for once, I had to agree with her.

“So, what you’re saying is that Mr. Beck is ready to have kids for the first time in roughly a century, and he picked Danica Sussman to be the mother?”

“Well, I doubt she was the only one,” Alec said. “Incubi can breed with human women, but it takes a lot of work to produce just one little baby incubus.”

“What does that mean?”

Alec shrugged. “I don’t have concrete numbers, but from what I’ve heard—” and because he’d spent a quarter of a century in the Netherworld, Alec’s information was the best we’d have access to “—for every dozen or so girls he gets pregnant, only one will give birth to a healthy baby boy. The rest will either miscarry or give birth to a girl.”

“So then Danica was just the first, right?” I asked. “There will be more like her?”

“Yeah, or there may already have been. He could have a whole string of miscarriages and pregnant girls behind him, but based on the fact that he’s still trying, I’m guessing he doesn’t have a son yet.”

“Who cares if it’s a boy?” Sabine asked. “What, he’s a sexist lust-demon?”

Alec actually laughed. “Only the boy babies are incubi. Girls share their mothers’ species and are usually considered worthless.”

“So, you can’t put an incubus and a human girl together and get a succubus?” I asked, sorting through the details in my head.

“Nope.” Alec shook his head. “They’re two completely different species. And consider yourself lucky you’re dealing with an incubus, because the only thing scarier than a succubus trying to get pregnant is a succubus who’s already pregnant. Talk about hormonal…”

“What did you mean about the girl babies being worthless?” Sabine asked, her eyes going dark again, and I realized he’d hit one of her hot buttons. As a toddler, Sabine was abandoned by her parents on a Dallas church doorstep, and after that, she’d bounced from one foster family to the next, for most of her life.

Alec shrugged. “They’re almost always abandoned by the incubus. As recently as a few decades ago, it was difficult for a mother to raise an illegitimate child alone, so the baby might have been abandoned by the mother, too. That’s not much of an issue today, though.” The mara didn’t answer, but I could see anger simmering quietly in the dark depths of her eyes.

“So, how does this charm work?” I asked, trying to redirect the discussion.

Alec shrugged. “I’ve never actually met an incubus, and I’m not sure his charm would work on me even if I liked guys, because I’m half-hypnos.” His father was a minor Netherworld creature who fed on the energy from sleeping humans, as it bled through the barrier between worlds. “But from what I understand, just being around him makes people…well, want him. If he’s reining it in, which he probably is in a public place, it’ll exaggerate the symptoms of physical attraction. Students may start competing for his attention. They’ll flirt and try to impress him. They’ll touch him and try to get him to touch them. They’ll become infatuated with him very quickly and personally offended by criticism of him.”

Uh-oh. That sounded like Emma already.

“It’ll be strongest with those who are already attracted to him, but it could have a light effect on just about any human,” Alec continued. “But when he finds someone he wants, either to impregnate or to feed from, he’ll turn it on full-strength, and the lucky girl will… Well, she’ll need him. Desperately. Like a craving she can’t control.”

“But it’s like some kind of spell, right?” I said, uncomfortably reminded of the strength of Nash’s Influence, when he lost control of it. “She doesn’t really want him, she just thinks she does, because of this charm crap. Right?” I said, thinking back to Danica’s physical obsession with her baby’s father.

“I don’t know, Kay,” Alec said, obviously reluctant to voice whatever was coming next. “I think it’s less like a spell and more like primal physical attraction. It’s hormonal, and it’s very strong.”

“Do they actually fall in love with him?” Sabine asked, her nose wrinkled in disgust, and I was relieved to realize we were on the same page for once.

“No,” Alec said. “And most of them have no delusions about that—at least, the older, more experienced women. They know they don’t love him. They may not even like him. But they physically have to have him, like they have to have food and air.”

“So…sleeping with him is consensual?” Sabine asked.

“No,” I said, just as Alec said, “Yeah.”

I turned on him in surprise. “No, it’s not. It can’t be. This ‘charm’ of his is like a…a drug. They’re not in their right minds. Right?”

“I don’t know, Kaylee. I think they really want him. In fact, some young incubi have been mobbed, like celebrities.”

“Do they have a choice?” Sabine asked. “Can girls fight his charm?”

“Yeah. It takes a lot of willpower, but yes,” Alec said. “Definitely.”

“They shouldn’t have to fight,” I insisted, struggling with a squirming discomfort the entire discussion dredged up in me. “The fact that they have to proves that it’s not consensual. Not really. And you’re not going to change my mind.”

Alec nodded. “I’m not even gonna try.”

“So…any idea how to stop him?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know how to get rid of an incubus, other than giving him a son. Ask your dad for help?”

I shook my head. “Can’t. He has his hands full trying to save my life right now.”

Alec frowned. “How can he…?”

“He can’t. But telling him that does no good. I’ve tried, and so have Tod and Harmony. Feel free to add your voice to the chorus.”

“So anyway, we’ve only got four days to take this murdering, daughter-abandoning bastard down.” Sabine hesitated, then shrugged. “Well, you only have four days. I have as long as it takes.”

The truth of her statement hit me like a brick to the forehead, and the room swam around me. I set Styx on the couch and stood, staring straight into the mara’s eyes. “Sabine, I think he’s going after Emma. You have to promise me you’ll watch out for her if I die before we get rid of him. Don’t let her wind up like Danica. Please.”

Sabine frowned, staring up at me. “At this point, I think you actually owe me another favor, bean sidhe…”

“Promise me!” I grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet, almost as surprised as she was by my strength. “She’s human, and she’s defenseless, and she’s my best friend, which has already gotten her killed, and possessed, and on the radar of two different hellions. You’re not leaving this house until you promise me you’ll protect her when I’m gone. You can inherit her just like you will Nash. You need a real friend anyway.”

Sabine stared at me like I’d lost my mind. “Emma doesn’t even like me.”

“I don’t care! I swear if you let her get hurt, I’ll haunt your ass for eternity. I’ll turn up in the room every time you’re alone with Nash, and you’ll never get another taste of him. Ever.”

Her pierced right brow rose in interest. “How are you gonna do that?”

“I’ll find a way…”

“Jeez, settle down, Mama Bear, I’m not gonna let Emma get hurt.” Sabine pulled her arm from my grasp and dropped back into my dad’s chair, grinning up at me. “I just wanted to see how good your threat would be.”

I had to concentrate to unclench my jaw. “How’d I do?”

Her head bobbed, almost respectfully. “Not bad.”

“Not bad, nothin’, that was badass!” Alec said, and I turned to see him watching me, already on his feet, ready to come to my rescue if Sabine had decided to bite back. “That was great, how your voice got all deep and scary.”

“It did?” ’Bout time my voice did something helpful for a change.

I sank back onto the couch next to Styx, who yipped and watched me until she was convinced I was okay. Then she curled up in my lap and went back to sleep again. “Okay, so we know Beck’s hurting people, but we don’t know how to get rid of him…” I began, making a conscious effort to guide us all back onto the subject.

“Short of killing him? No,” Alec said, plopping onto his end of the couch again, soda in hand.

“Well, that’s a moot point anyway, ’cause I don’t think I could kill someone.” Except maybe in self-defense. Or Emma-defense.

Sabine shrugged. “I could.” I glanced at her in disbelief, but she only rolled her eyes. “What? He’s a bad guy.”

“By whose definition of bad?” Alec asked, and Sabine and I shot him twin looks of disbelief. Alec sighed and sat up straighter. “Look, I’m not saying he’s a saint, but I’ve seen plenty of real bad guys in the last quarter century, ladies. Monsters who would do much worse than what Beck’s done, just to watch some poor girl suffer. But so far, it sounds like your math teacher’s just trying to feed himself and propagate his own species, both of which are rights the two of you take for granted.”

“Nuh-uh.” Sabine shook her head vehemently. “I’m a parasite, too. If I can control myself during a meal at seventeen years old, then he can damn well do it at…however old he is.”

Alec nodded, conceding the point, but his gaze held Sabine’s firmly. “And you have no evidence that he hasn’t. All you have is a teenager’s miscarriage. I’m not saying that’s not horrible, because it is. But he didn’t mean for that to happen. Your incubus wants that baby even worse than its mother probably did, yet you’re willing to kill a man because his lover had a miscarriage?”

Sabine leaned forward in her chair, and the lights in the room seemed to dim as her eyes grew darker. “You’re twisting it all around to make it sound innocent, but it’s not,” she insisted. “This is a very old man taking advantage of teenage girls, using some kind of supernatural charisma as a weapon. That’s messed up, no matter how you look at it.”

I frowned at Alec, turning on the couch to face him more directly. “You can’t seriously think what he’s doing is justified?”

“No. And I never said I did. I’m just saying that the punishment ought to fit the crime. You’re talking about killing this man, and you have no evidence he’s actually taken a life.”

Crap. “He’s right,” I said, and Sabine turned on me in surprise. I shrugged. “I’m not saying we should drop the issue. I’m not even saying you can’t kill him.” If he lay one hand on Emma, I’d be right there behind Sabine when she threw the first punch—or whatever. “But before we condemn a man to death, we need to know that he’s actually taken a life. Otherwise…we’re going to have to find some other way to get rid of him.” Some way that wouldn’t just push him into the next school unlucky enough to have a midsemester job opening.

“Okay, so we find his victims,” Sabine conceded, obviously confident that there actually were victims. “How do we do that? Look for other pregnant girls?”

“Well, unless he’s a moron—and he’s isn’t, or someone would have caught up to him by now—he’s not going to feed from anyone carrying his child, ’cause that would drain the baby, too. Right?” I asked, and Alec nodded. “So, basically, we’re looking for dead un-pregnant women.”

“Can’t think of any of those, recently,” Sabine said.

“Me, neither. So we stick with what we know, which is that Danica probably isn’t the first girl he’s knocked up during this fertility cycle. Maybe if we find the others, and search the obituaries in their towns, we’ll be able to put together a pattern.”

Sabine nodded, brows raised. “Not bad, bean sidhe!”

“Not bad at all,” Alec agreed. “And maybe I can narrow your search a bit… Incubi—and succubi, too, if memory serves—tend to return to the same breeding ground cycle after cycle. If he’s breeding here now, then this is his territory, and you’re probably going to find most of his other conquests in this general area.”

“Same breeding ground, cycle after cycle…” I said, thinking aloud. “And if he’s teaching now to get to teenage girls, maybe he taught somewhere else before Eastlake.”

“So, what are you gonna do?” Alec asked. “Go question every principal in the metroplex about former teachers?”

“Poor Alec, you’ve missed so much in the last quarter of a century.” Grinning from ear to ear, I set Styx down and bent to pull my laptop from my bag on the floor. “Most schools don’t put students’ yearbook photos online, but lots of them have pictures of the faculty…” I set the laptop on the coffee table and turned it on, then sipped from my can while the system booted up.

With any luck, the face that had probably brought girls flocking to him for centuries would now lead us to his previous victims, along with the evidence we’d need to get rid of Beck for good.