If I Die

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