If I Die

“The nurses say she’s twenty-eight weeks. Why?” Lydia asked, her focus shifting between me and Tod. “What’s wrong with the baby? And who’s Danica?”

“She’s a senior at my school. I think her baby and Farrah’s baby had the same father.” And I was really starting to wish I’d printed the faculty picture of “Mr. Allan.”

Wait a minute… I turned to Tod, acutely aware that we’d now been holding hands for at least twenty minutes. “Does your phone get internet?” Mine didn’t.

He nodded, already digging it from his pocket with his free hand. “I splurged—I don’t have many bills.” He handed it over, and it took me a minute to find the site I wanted, typing with only my left thumb.

“Farrah,” I said, when I’d found the faculty images on the Crestwood website. She didn’t even look up, so I tugged Tod closer so I could kneel by her bed again. “Farrah, is this your baby’s father?” I zoomed in on Allan’s face and held the phone in front of her book. Farrah tried to shove my hand out of her way, but I just pushed back. “Look at him! Is this him?” I demanded, and finally she looked.

And her brown eyes watered. “David,” she whispered, and my short thrill of triumph was swallowed by anger on her behalf.

“It’s him.” I stood, already turning back to Tod, but Farrah grabbed my hand, holding the phone firmly in front of her face.

“Who is he?” Lydia asked, while I stood hunched over, so Farrah could get another look.

“I don’t know his real name.” I dropped onto my knees again to get more comfortable. “But he’s an incubus in heat. He taught at Farrah’s school just long enough to get her pregnant, and now he’s at my school. And since Danica just miscarried his demon seed, I’m pretty sure he’s set his sights on my best friend. But I’m not sure why, since Farrah’s pregnancy seems to be progressing in spite of…everything.”

“Insurance,” Tod said, kneeling next to me. “Most human women can’t carry an incubus baby to term, so he’s increasing his chances of a successful harvest by planting as many seeds as he can.”

My rage knew no limits. “And with each one, he’s damaging a teenage girl, or abandoning his own newborn daughter, or both at once, with no guarantee that he’s even spawning a son.”

“My baby’s a boy,” Farrah insisted, still staring at Tod’s phone, and my arm was starting to cramp from holding it out. “Not a real boy, though.”

What, was she carrying Pinocchio?

“Did the doctor tell you that?” I asked, gently pulling the phone from her grip. I stood and handed Tod’s cell back to him, and her gaze followed it until it disappeared into his pocket. But then she went back to her book, dismissing us as “unreal” once again.

“She’s right,” Tod said. “She wouldn’t be in here if she was carrying a girl. Girls are born human, from normal pregnancies. Boys are incubi, and if the pregnancy doesn’t kill the baby, it usually kills the mother slowly, both body and mind.” He shrugged when I just stared at him. “I thought you knew that.”

“I didn’t.” And I was starting to think that ignorance was at least somewhere in the neighborhood of bliss because the more I knew, the angrier I got.

“Me, neither,” Lydia said, and after a long, awkward moment of silence, I looked up at Tod.

“Well, I guess I have what I came for,” I mumbled, trying to swallow the sick feeling I got every time I looked at Farrah, knowing what was going to happen to both her and her baby.

“Wait, you’re leaving?” Lydia stood, eyes wide in panic. “Take me with you,” she insisted, when I stared at her in surprise. “Or at least get me out of here.”

I glanced at Tod, but he only shrugged. “Your call.”

Why was it my call? “Lydia, I can’t. What about your parents?”

“They put me in here. Please, Kaylee.” She stood, eyeing me desperately. “I’m a syphon. Do you know what that means?”

I shook my head, fairly certain she wasn’t offering to steal gas for my car in exchange for orchestrating her escape from a mental institution. ’Cause that would be…crazy.

“I take things from other people. Anything. My body has an innate need to maintain balance between what I’m feeling and what’s being experienced around me, and when there’s an imbalance, I get the urge to take some of whatever there’s too much of, to even things out. I’ve spent my whole life fighting that need for balance to keep from poisoning myself with other people’s problems, and this is where it landed me.” She spread her arms to take in all of Lakeside.

I could certainly sympathize.

“I took your pain, and I’ve been taking some of Farrah’s illness,” she continued, as sympathy for her swelled inside me. “I can syphon some things on purpose, to help, like I did with you, but I don’t always have a choice. When there’s too much, resisting it is like trying to swim with your hands tied. I can’t do it.” She grabbed my free hand and held on tight, like I could somehow pull her above that brutal tide. “Farrah’s going to die, and if I’m still here when that happens, she’ll drag me down with her.”

“It wouldn’t matter if we got you out,” I said, heartbroken that she and I might be facing parallel ends. “If it’s your time to go, you’ll go, no matter where you are.”

“Maybe not,” Tod interrupted, and I turned to him in confusion while Lydia’s eyes shined with hope. “And not for her, either,” he added, glancing at Farrah. “An incubus pregnancy is…well, it’s a sort of supernatural intervention, like Doug dying from a frost overdose. It trumps the natural order of things. Same thing for Lydia, if she becomes collateral damage. This probably isn’t when or how they’re supposed to die. Either of them.”

Ohh. I glanced at Lydia in growing horror. “So, leaving her here is like murder?” I asked, and Tod shrugged.

“You’re not pulling the trigger. But you’re not taking the gun away, either.”

“Please, Kaylee,” Lydia begged. “Get me out of here. I did it for you. You owe me.”

She was right, and I was rapidly running out of time in which to repay my debts. “Will you do it?” I asked Tod, and he nodded. “I can’t take you both at once, though, so I’ll have to come back for her.”

“No, take her first,” I insisted. “I have a couple more questions for Farrah, and I still want to check on Scott. I’ll wait here for you.”

“You sure?” Tod knew how much I hated Lakeside, and that the thought of getting caught there terrified me.

“Yeah. Just make sure you come back for me.”

“Nothing could keep me from it,” he said, and I believed him.

I let go of his hand, and mine suddenly felt cold. And empty. And when he reached for Lydia, I had a sudden mad urge to slap her hand away and reclaim his for myself, in spite of what I owed Lydia, and my genuine need to help her.

“You ready?” Tod said, and she nodded, taking his hand.

“What are you gonna do?” I asked, trying not to see where they touched each other, or wonder what it meant that I cared. “You can’t go home, can you?”

She shook her head. “They’d just send me back. But I’ll be fine. It can hardly get worse than dying in here, right?” she said, glancing around the space she shared with another mental patient in a secure facility. I knew how she felt, but I also knew that starving—or being attacked—on the street wouldn’t be any better.

I glanced around the room until I found a pencil on her desk, then pulled the twenty-dollar bill from my pocket. “This is all I have,” I said, scribbling my number on a scrap of paper from my pocket. I wrapped the money around it and handed it to her. “Call me if there’s anything I can do to help. I gotta warn you, though, this offer expires on Thursday.”

She frowned in confusion, but took the twenty and my number and shoved them in her pocket. “Thanks.”

I nodded, and Tod met my gaze. “Be right back.” Then they both disappeared, and sudden panic nearly overwhelmed me. Anyone who walked in would see me. I could be arrested, or even mistaken for a resident by some eager new staff member. Neither of those catastrophes would last once Tod came back for me, but that knowledge did nothing to calm me.

So I focused on Farrah, who didn’t seem to know Tod and Lydia were gone.

I sank onto the end of her bed, facing her. “Farrah?” She didn’t look up. “I’m real, remember? You can talk to me.”