Before I Wake

hips and tossed short brown hair over one shoulder. “Sabine, I specifically forbade you from coming here today,” she said, and Sabine stopped walking so suddenly I almost plowed into her.

“Kaylee, please tell me you brought that magic knife,” she whispered, throwing one arm around my waist like we were good friends.

“It’s a hellion-forged steel dagger,” I said, squinting at the woman now glaring across the grass at us. Beneath the pavilion, my dad handed his spatula to Harmony, took off his apron, and started across the grass toward the new arrival, obviously ready to make introductions.

“Whatever it’s called, go get it. Now,” Sabine whispered fiercely.

I couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten, but my stomach seemed intent on tossing the food back up. “Why?” I asked, sliding Tod’s address into my pocket, but I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.

“That’s not Tina.”

“Not again…” I groaned. We’d had too much death already. Too much vicious, personal, life-wrecking death. “Not on my birthday.”

“Are you sure?” Nash asked.

Sabine nodded. “Beyond sure. Get the damn knife.”

I let go of Tod’s hand and shrugged out from under Sabine’s arm, then headed for my car. When my father reached Tina and offered her a hand to shake, she turned to look at him and I blinked across the grass and into the driver’s seat of my car, where I pulled the dagger from its sheath on the passenger’s side floorboard. I hadn’t touched it since Alec’s apartment. I didn’t want to touch it now. But I wanted to lose another friend even less, so I blinked back into step between Tod and Sabine, the dagger at my side, hidden from sight by my leg.

We were feet from my dad and Tina when Sabine tried to take the knife from me. “No,” I said, so that only she and Tod could hear me. “We have to be sure.” What happened to Alec couldn’t happen to anyone else. I couldn’t let it.

“I am sure,” the mara hissed as we stopped feet from my dad and her foster mother.

“Sure about what?” My dad frowned with one look at our faces.

Before any of us could come up with an answer, Tina pulled something from her pocket and swung low at my dad. He backpedaled, but her fist connected with his thigh, and he screamed and collapsed to the ground.

Nash tried to tackle Tina, but she dodged him, then laughed when he hit the ground rolling. I raced for my father, still clutching the dagger, and dropped to my knees at his side, staring in shock at the pocket knife sticking out of his thigh.

Harmony screamed and her footsteps pounded toward us. My dad grabbed my hand. “Run,” he said as Sabine pulled the dagger from my other hand. When I only shook my head, he looked past me to Tod. “Get her out of here.”

But when Tod reached for me, I shot him a warning look. “Help me with him.” I wasn’t leaving my father, or the rest of our group. So we each took one of my dad’s arms and pulled him away from the demon in the foster- mom suit.

Tina laughed as the mara faced off against her, feet spread wide, double-bladed dagger held ready. “One down,” the imposter said, glancing at my dad. “One to go.” Her gaze flicked up to focus on Harmony, who’d almost reached us. “I find the adults just get in the way, don’t you?”

“Nash!” Tod tossed his head toward his mother as we pulled my dad toward the nearest car, in spite of his protests. Nash rolled onto his feet and ran to intercept Harmony.

“How did you know?” Tina asked as Tod joined Sabine and they herded the hellion away from me and my father, who was still bleeding on the ground.

Sabine shrugged. “You knew stuff Tina would never know. Like my name and whereabouts. Also, FYI, very few twenty-first-century foster parents use the word forbade.”

The demon nodded, like she was actually interested. “I shall keep that in mind.”

“Tod!” Harmony shouted, and I twisted to see Nash physically holding his mother back from the action, while she watched her other son help confront a hellion who’d already stabbed my dad.

My father pushed me back and started to get to his feet, knife and all. I could see where this was headed— more blood loss and heroics—so I grabbed his hand and blinked us both to the other side of the pavilion, then blinked myself back to Tod and Sabine before my dad could even wrap his head around what had happened.

“Kaylee!” he shouted, but we all ignored him.

Sabine rushed the imposter, and fake Tina kicked her in the chest, with more strength and speed than any normal foster mother would have. Sabine flew backward—her feet actually left the ground—and crashed to the earth several feet away. A grunt of pain exploded from her throat with the impact and the dagger fell from her hand.

“Bitch broke my arm!” she shouted.

I grabbed the dagger and blinked onto the grass at Tina’s back while Tod held her attention in the other direction. On my periphery, Harmony knelt next to Sabine to examine her arm and Nash raced to a halt at my side, irises twisting with fear and fury. Before I realized what he meant to do, he took the knife from me and grabbed Tina’s left shoulder from behind. Then he shoved my dagger into her right side.

Tina collapsed to the ground and rolled awkwardly onto her back, her eyes wide with shock, one hand hovering uselessly over the knife still protruding from her side. Nash dropped onto her legs and shoved the heel of his palm against the hilt of the dagger, driving it deeper, and I realized that with the hellion-forged steel still inside her, she couldn’t just disappear. She was trapped with us, until her borrowed form died. “Who are you?” he demanded through clenched teeth, while I watched in shock.

Tod pulled him off Tina and the imposter’s mouth widened in a cruel smile when Sabine stopped at her side. The mara clutched her left arm to her chest as foggy wisps of her foster mother’s soul curled around the hilt of the knife still in the monster’s side. “You’re a clever one…” the demon said. Then her body melted into nothing, leaving my bloody dagger on the ground.

On the grass where Tina’s head had been a moment earlier lay the eighties’ vintage banana clip that had secured her thick hair on one side of her skull.

“What the hell just happened?” Harmony demanded, one arm around my dad, who was limping toward us from the pavilion, a stack of paper napkins pressed to the wound in his leg.

“Hellion sneak attack,” Tod said.

“Who do you think it was?” Nash asked, studying Sabine’s injured arm, and she shrugged, her jaw clenched in pain.

“Has to be someone who knows a little about me. Avari or Invidia.”

“Or anyone they’re working with,” Tod said.

My father limped to a stop next to me, one arm around Harmony’s shoulders. “I assume you all know what this means.”

“Other than the fact that my foster mother is dead and I’m homeless?” Sabine handed me the bloody dagger, and I took it between my thumb and forefinger, reluctant to get yet more blood on my hands.

“She was trying to get rid of the adults,” I said, staring at the place where the demon had died on the ground. “That means Avari’s finally finished setting up whatever game this has all been leading to. Now he’s ready to play.”

20

“OKAY.” I TOOK a deep breath, trying to gather my thoughts, and sank onto a picnic bench beneath the pavilion. “Whoever that was impersonating Tina, he’s down now, but not out. He’ll be back, and there’s no telling what he’ll look like.” Or she. The hellion could have been female.

“So, what’s the plan?” Sabine asked, her face lined in pain as she laid her injured arm on the picnic table in front of her.

“Well…” my father said from the opposite side of the table. He was naked from the waist up, his leg stretched out straight on the bench beneath him, pressing his shirt to the wound, like Harmony had shown him. “I’m