If I Die

My dad had been trying to protect me from the Netherworld ever since he’d come back from Ireland, and I’d sidestepped every effort he’d made, because my own safety—hell, my own life—didn’t seem worth protecting if I wasn’t willing to risk it for something important. If Em felt the same, who was I to stand in her way?

“But I’m sure as hell not going to leave you alone with him.” She had no resistance to his lascivious charm, and her intentions would melt into memory once he unleashed the onslaught of lust she wasn’t prepared to resist, no matter how hard she dug her heels into the dirt. In fact, he may already have started. Was that why she was insisting on playing bait? To stay close to him? “So I don’t have time for a nap.”

“Thanks.” Em looked relieved, in spite of her bravado. “You three aren’t the only ones pissed off about what he did to Danica, and I may not be able to cross into the Netherworld or make people do whatever I say, but I do know a thing or two about fending off wandering hands. But I do have one question before I totally commit to this, my first supersecret spy mission,” Em said, her eyes sparkling with good humor. “Did we ever find out for sure about the possible forked penis?”

I stared at the clock for most of last period, waiting for the hands to move, but they seemed sluggish at best, and by the time class ended, I’d had as much French as I could take. When the bell finally rang, Emma stood so fast her chair skidded on the floor and she was in the hall before the ringing echo faded from my ears. She was definitely eager to get to Mr. Beck’s room, and her unbridled enthusiasm made me very, very nervous. I tried to follow her, but Mrs. Brown stepped in front of me before I made it to the end of the aisle.

“Miss Cavanaugh, this is the second day in a row you haven’t had your homework.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” I glanced into the hall and could just see Emma’s blond ponytail bouncing out of sight. “Can we talk about this later? I’m kind of in a hurry.”

“We can talk about this now.” Mrs. Brown reached for the door like she’d close it, trapping me. “You know I have a zero-tolerance policy for missing assignments, and I don’t think you’ve missed one all year until this week. Is something wrong, Kaylee?”

“No, everything’s great. Really. It’ll never happen again, but I have to go now. I’m late for…something.” Mrs. Brown called my name, but I was already out the door, clutching the shoulder strap of my bag, forcing my way against the flow of traffic toward the parking lot. I dodged every familiar face for fear of another delay, and when the hall finally cleared, I jogged left around the corner—just as Mr. Beck pulled his door closed.

Crap. I’d hoped to beat him there, so I could hide in the storage closet and keep an eye on Emma. The plan felt a little juvenile, but Nash and Sabine knew where we were, just in case something went wrong.

But now the door was closed, and I couldn’t get in without being seen. Unless…

I set my bag on the floor in the hall and dug my phone from my pocket to text Tod.

@ SCHOOL. NEED UR HELP

Tod always answered instantly, probably because unless he was reaping a soul or actually delivering a pizza, he had nothing else to do. But this time, when Emma needed us both, he was out of reach.

I stood on my toes to peek through the window in Beck’s classroom door just in time to see him gesture toward the rolling chair behind his desk. Emma smiled up at him, then sat, and he pushed the chair forward. Then he leaned over her shoulder, pointing at something in the textbook open on his desk.

I wanted to vomit. He hadn’t done anything overtly evil, but just being alone in a closed classroom with a female student was borderline inappropriate, and out of character, based on what Farrah had told us about his determination to maintain the appearance of propriety.

Beck was getting desperate. He was rushing things. And based on the stoned-out-of-her-mind expression on Emma’s face—she was watching him, not the book—she was falling for it. Falling for him. Even knowing what he’d done to Danica and Farrah, and countless other girls our age.

Beck looked up, and I ducked beneath the window, heart pounding, fingers crossed that he hadn’t seen me. The hallway was empty, but it probably wouldn’t be for long, and Tod still hadn’t responded. Sabine and Nash were in the quad, waiting for word from me. Not that they could help. I needed to borrow reaper abilities, and in the absence of those, my own were the next best thing.

But that wasn’t saying much.

Throat tight with dread, I stepped into the middle of the hall, glancing back and forth to make sure I was alone. So far so good.

I didn’t want to cross into the Netherworld. And I especially didn’t want to cross over in my school, which I knew for a fact to be Avari’s new base of operations, unless something had changed in the past six weeks. But I wasn’t going to hang Emma out to dry, even knowing that crossing into the Netherworld could mean forfeiting my last two days of life.

Fortunately, with no mental patient yelling at me and no hospital aide shouting for security, I might just be calm enough to put aside fears of my own demise long enough to focus on one from my past.

Sucking in a deep breath, I closed my eyes and thought back to the last death I’d seen—the last soul I’d sung for. Other than Danica’s baby, that was Mrs. Bennigan, who’d died in her classroom the day after Mr. Beck’s predecessor had died at his desk. While she’d breathed her last, I’d hidden outside with Nash, trying to hold back the song my body demanded I sing for her. The song that now echoed inside of me, in memory of her.

The clawing pain in my throat was both familiar and welcome, because with it came the first thin tendrils of sound—a muffled version of the fabled bean sidhe wail—which wanted to burst forth full- strength from my mouth. But this occasion called for stealth on both sides of the world barrier, so I swallowed all but a soft, high-pitched whine which resonated in the windowpane in the door to my left. It was a sound no human could have made, but it was quiet enough to go unnoticed.

A second after my wail began, the gray fog rolled in out of nowhere. The Nether-fog was liminal—a visual representation of the barrier between worlds—and while I stood in it, I wasn’t fully present in either the human world or the Nether. I was caught between, kept company by only the slithering, skittering creatures crawling through that fog, their very presence a constant warning to move on, in one direction or the other.

I took one step away from the wall, and with a single thought of clear intent echoing in my head— I intend to cross over—the fog around me dissipated and the Netherworld came into startling, horrifying focus.

The first glimpse is always the worst—until you blink, and see it all for a second time, and you realize it’s not going to go away with just a click of your heels.

The building around me hadn’t changed. Because it was heavily populated during the school year, Eastlake High bled through into the Netherworld almost exactly as it existed in the human world. The real difference lay in what the Nether did with that building.

In the Netherworld version of Eastlake’s math hall, the walls were crawling with Crimson Creeper, a mass of slithering, dark green vines sprouting red-edged variegated leaves every couple of inches. The vines were carnivorous, of course, and they’d snatch anything edible within reach, which was why I’d crossed over in the middle of the hall. But the real danger was the thousands of needle-thin, titanium strong thorns. One prick would inject a predigestive poison to begin dissolving the victim’s organs from the inside out. And all the vine had to do then was coil around the body and wait for its liquefying meal to soak in like plant fertilizer.

I’d been stuck by an infant vine once, and the pinprick scars around my ankle were a lasting reminder never to tangle with it again.

Unfortunately, lengths of the vine crisscrossed the open doorway, blocking the Netherworld version of Beck’s classroom, beginning a couple of inches from the ground. I couldn’t get to the closet, where I’d planned to cross back over, without getting rid of the vines. And every minute I wasted in the Netherworld was a minute Emma was alone with Mr. Beck and his incubus charm.

For one long moment, I stood still, listening for evidence of any Nether-life. When I heard nothing immediately threatening, I jogged down the hall, careful to avoid twisting vine feelers and to peek into open classrooms before I passed by them. I turned right at the corner and ran past the foreign language labs and into the science wing, and only released the nervous breath I’d been holding when I saw that one of the three chemistry labs was open and free of Creeper vines, except for one stretching across the top corner of the doorway.

The usual stools were missing from the lab, but the high, black-topped lab stations were still there, and so far unmolested by the Netherworld population and plant life. I opened several drawers and pawed through piles of useless pencils, erasers, pens, rulers and the occasional stirrer without finding anything useful. All the good stuff was locked in the cabinets at the back of the room.