“Anyway,” Maria went on. “I thought about coming to see you at Miss Molly’s, but I’ve been a tad busy and…” She winced, an expression that didn’t fit her usually serene face. “I figured you would come here eventually.”
“Do you know why I’m here? Why I’m really here, I mean.”
She fiddled with the rotary cord and sighed. “Yes.”
Anger blazed in the pit of my stomach. “You mind telling me? Is it the same reason I saw an escaped demon at school?”
She frowned but the kindness in her brown eyes didn’t fade. It softened some of my rage and made me feel like I could talk to her about anything. I missed that feeling.
“Candy?” She waved at a glass bowl on the corner of her desk filled with multi-colored balls.
“Sure. Thanks.” I shoved my hand into them as if they were to be blamed for all my problems and crammed as many as I could into my mouth. Mmm, chocolate. I felt better already, like maybe I’d just been drugged. Or maybe that was just the chocolate. Ah, who cared? I grabbed another handful, grinning as the candies clinked together at my touch, and popped more into my mouth.
“Let me give you some advice, Kiera. The girl you healed in Georgia. Remember? She’s from here. She spends some time at Johnson City Medical Center so they can try to figure out how she miraculously ridded herself of cancer.”
My stomach jumped around the candy. “How did you know about that?”
She shrugged her slender shoulders. “I just think…if your friend Zane saw her, it might be better proof of who you are than showing him the outline of Metatron’s ridiculous wings. He’s able to put those things away, you know.”
“Okay.” I chuckled. “Thanks for the tip.” I started to ask how she knew about Zane, but then I remembered she was a saint and left it at that. Saints gave out candy and just knew things, apparently.
“There’s something else, Kiera.” She sat back in her chair and steepled her fingers in front of her tight frown. “The Big Guy himself made an appearance in Jonesborough just a few days ago.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What big guy?”
“The Big Guy, Kiera. God. Your grandfather.”
“What?” He had no reason to go to Jonesborough since He’d been directing things just fine from Heaven for thousands of years. For something to bring Him here, well… It must’ve been huge.
“He was looking for something. Metatron and other angels are, too, as well as Mauve. Maybe you can help us.”
Help Grandpa, some angels, and a saint. Now that was a headscratcher. But if Mauve was helping… “I don’t have any magic.”
“That’s okay. Just say you’ll help us.” Her worried gaze searched my face. “We’ll take all the help we can get. We need all the help we can get.”
“Well, what are you looking for?”
“Kiera,” she said on an exhale and leaned forward. “You mentioned you saw a demon… Well, you might be seeing a lot more.” She pursed her lips in a pained grimace. “The Gates of Hell are unlocked because the key has gone missing.”
12
The key to the Gates of Hell was missing? But there was no way. Grandpa had given Mom the key when he’d outed her and sent her to rule over Hell. She kept it tucked away inside that black box of hers with upside down crosses all over it next to her throne. It was one of those nightmarish puzzle boxes no one could ever open except Mom. I’d tried hundreds of times when we’d held court instead of paying attention.
So who could steal it? Someone smarter than me, obviously, but who would dare the Devil with such an enormous slap to her face? Stealing the key was like stealing the throne. Someone wanted to make her look bad by freeing all the demons. But why? And what was she going to do about it?
Mom had a fiery temper. Even though I’d never seen it directed at me—excluding when she’d kicked me out of Hell. But her temper likely explained why she was kicked out of her home in Heaven, too. When she found out who did this… Well, Hell hath no fury like its queen.
Hell hath no fury like its princess, too.
I left Saint Maria’s attic in a daze, my solemn promise that I’d help find the key leaving a bitter taste of homesickness on my lips. And then I saw it. Not the key, but a low-cut, brick-red dress. Despite Mom’s wish to protect me from whatever was going on down there, hide me behind nothing but cat heads and rhinestones, that dress was me. That dress was who I was, the princess of Hell, the Devil’s daughter, like it or not. I scored it for five bucks, along with a box full of old cell phones. Those were for later.
On my way out of the store, I spotted Zane in front of a bookshelf, seated on a stool and flipping through what looked like a comic book. The last time I saw him, he clearly didn’t want to talk to me. I tiptoed through the racks of clothing toward the exit, attempting to stealth my way past him.
My foot tangled with a plastic train set on the floor. I fell over onto my back, my box of phones flying all over the place.
Zane peered over a rack of clothing. “Kasey? Is that you?”
I covered my face with my hands. “Maybe?”
Footsteps padded toward me. “Uh, you okay?”
“Yes.” My fingers muffled my voice. “Never better.”
“What are you doing on the floor?”
I uncovered my face, but peering up into his bluish purple eyes kicked my heartrate into the danger zone, so I covered it back up again. “Oh, you know. Just finishing my falling routine with a little embellishment.”
His mouth started to twitch into a smile, but then he stopped himself. “What are you doing here?” He said it like a king who had a lowly peasant in his path.
My jangled nerves gave way to annoyance. I turned on my side and pushed up onto my elbows, my cheeks likely flaming as much as my hair and the dress I miraculously still held. He picked up one of the spilled phones, which I snatched away from him.
“I didn’t ask for your help.” I grabbed the rest of the phones, stood up straight, and blew a stray hair off my forehead.
He folded his arms. “You here dealing again?”
“What?”
“Please stop the innocent act. You only come here to sell stolen goods.” He kicked the empty box into his hands like a badass soccer player. “I thought you stopped.”
“I bought these, thank you very little.” I released the phones in my arms into the box, then grabbed it away from him. “It’s none of your business anyway.”
He glowered. “Is what you did to Agatha my business?”
My mouth went desert dry, so I licked my bottom lip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, please.” He clenched his jaw. “I know you guys hate each other.”
I gripped a swell of anger in my fists. “Then you obviously don’t know me. I would never do that to anyone.”
“She had to be hospitalized.” He glared at me for several tense seconds and then turned away as if I disgusted him.
“Wait.” I readjusted the box in my arms. “Okay, maybe I knew something was going to go down, but I swear I thought it was supposed to be harmless.”
Ignoring me, he marched back to the nearby stool and then continued to page through his comic book. After a brief pause, he looked up with a frown. “Ignorance isn’t an excuse.”
“You’re right.” I shook my head at the bookshelf, a guilty knot forming in my stomach. “I should’ve tried to stop it.”
He looked down at the worn carpet, and we shared an awkward silence.
“So,” I said, tapping my foot against the killer train set on the floor. “What are you doing here?”
“I have van privileges. Some of us at Miss Molly’s are trying to stay out of trouble.” He glanced up. “Maybe you should look into that sometime.”
“I’ll get right on that.” Just as soon as I found the missing key to the Gates of Hell. “So a van, huh?” I rolled my lips together, tasting the words that perched just behind them in case they fell out wrong. “You…uh… You want to take me to see Agat
ha?”
He flicked his gaze up and pushed his glasses up his nose to assess if I was serious, I supposed. The heartrate-in-the-danger-zone feeling came rushing back. He was going to say no. He was going to say how disgusted he was of me and then turn his back.
Instead, he shrugged. “I was going to go anyway. Elia wanted me to drop off some cards or something.”
I gritted my teeth at the sound of Elia’s name, but I shook it off. “I want to take her something, too. Can we go back to Miss Molly’s first?”
* * *
When we arrived back at Miss Molly’s, I changed into my new-used dress and braided my hair into a fancy twist like Mauve used to. It was no Hell gown, but I liked the way the dress swept against my skin, and it made me feel a little more like myself—a princess and a Gates of Hell key finder.
Ignoring the strange looks and catcalls I got as I sauntered down the hall, I met Zane outside of Miss Molly’s office. He turned and his eyes almost bulged through the lenses on his glasses. An adorable blush bloomed across his cheeks as he scanned me up and down.
“Nice boots.”
I opened my mouth to shout obscenities at him when his words finally penetrated my thick skull. Nice boots, not nice boobs. I glanced down at my duct-taped combat boots. Those were what he chose to compliment? I’d forgotten to buy matching shoes. So sue me.
“What are you all dressed up for?” His gaze snagged on my chest, but he blinked and seemed to force himself to speak to my face. “This isn’t like… This isn’t a date, Kasey.”
“It’s just a dress. Relax.” After shoving my backpack and the box of cell phones into his arms, I kneeled in front of the door, careful not to dirty myself. I placed a file at the bottom of the hole in the lock and a bent bobby pin just above it. “Now, be the lookout while I break in to Miss Molly’s office.”
“What? Why are you going in there?” he hissed. “And why not just use your key you stole?”
“Elia has it,” I said.
She had my key… So what was the likelihood that she had the key to the Gates of Hell, too? But she was just a human girl, a hateful one who did terrible things to people, who made my flesh slither down my bones in a mad dash to get away from her, and who probably snacked on babies.
“This is a bad, bad idea,” Zane mumbled.
“Just…keep an eye out.” I blew the hair from my face and got to work.
A minute or so later, to the tune of Zane’s squeaky-shoed pacing across the linoleum, the lock clicked and the door popped open. He stopped and stared. I grinned, grabbed the box of phones, and then pulled him inside after me.
“I was right to stop hanging out with you.” He shook his head, closing the door behind him.
“It’ll be worth it.” I opened Miss Molly’s bottom drawer on her desk and found our cell phones.
All of them were labeled with our names, so I searched through her desk, found the label gun, and made fast work of labeling the decoy phones. Then I dumped them in the drawer, took the real phones, and dropped them into my bag.
“There. Now Agatha can play Candy Crush.”
Zane watched me through narrowed eyes. “That was kind of a genius idea.”
“Only kind of?” I strode toward him and the door with a giant smile stuck to my face. “Let’s go see Agatha.”
A drive that should have only taken about fifteen minutes stretched out to infinity because Zane couldn’t push Miss Molly’s van above forty without the engine sounding like a hunk of metal with emphysema. I spent the first half of the drive staring out the window as rolling green hills and abandoned farms crawled by. Apparently, Jonesborough was too small to have its own hospital, hence the country drive.
As the van puttered along, Zane called the Johnson City Medical Center to get us on the visitor’s list. When he hung up, he slapped the dashboard. I jumped and turned toward him.
“Piece of crap,” he muttered, smacking it again.
The rattle that had become a persistent buzz in my ears ceased. Miss Molly’s van was actually an old, white church junker with an aging interior, a busted muffler, and a smell like burnt peanut butter. People shot us dirty looks as we puttered down the highway.
I glanced sidelong at Zane. His gaze seemed glued to the road. I eyed his inside-out blue shirt and how it molded to his shoulders and arms. He held the wheel with both hands in a casual, sexy way that made me wonder why he didn’t star in commercials. He had the kind of looks that made demons jealous, and demons were kind of made to be smoking hot.
I smiled at my dorky pun at the same moment he turned his head toward me.
“Pleased with yourself?” he asked.
“Yeah. It’s everyone else who isn’t.”
He snorted. “Yeah, okay…”
A few cars zoomed by, the people inside shooting us more get-out-of-the-way looks. The road really needed a super special, road rage-free lane for this piece of crap.
“So, what made you change your mind?” I asked.
“About what?”
“Talking to me.”
He glanced up at the rearview mirror and frowned. “What makes you think I have?”
“Um, because you’re talking to me?” I pushed stray hair back into my braid so I had a better view of him.
“Try not to read too much into that.”
Was I too beneath him to talk to because I’d wronged him one time, and that hadn’t even been me? I wanted to punch him in the throat. “You’re such an ass.”
“I’m an ass?” He snorted. “You put a girl in the hospital for a nervous breakdown, and I’m an ass.”
Ouch. I turned to stare out the side window, my fists clenched in my lap, a burning sensation crackling through my stomach.
“Oh, what? I hurt your feelings?”
“Just…” My voice broke slightly. I held up a hand between us. “Just shut up.”
“You’re not being fair,” Zane finally said, his voice softer.
I snapped around to face him. “Can we go back to not talking?”
He shook his head at the road. “Fine.”
“Good.” I crossed my arms and almost rolled my eyes at myself. At both of us. Apparently, being a teen in the Nest meant acting like a child, and it was contagious.
A few minutes passed with just the noise of the rumbling engine and the staticy radio.
“What did you mean when you said Elia had your key?” he asked.
I leaned my head against the window, trying to decide whether or not to ignore him, then sighed. “She took it, and I didn’t get it back.”
He turned into the crowded parking lot of Johnson City Medical Center and found a space near the far edge. He put the van into park and turned to me. “So, the whole Agatha thing was her idea? I don’t get it.”
“Neither do I.” I undid my seatbelt and nearly fell out of the van in my rush to be done with this conversation.
After cutting the engine—oh, blessed silence!—he grabbed Elia’s cards and signed get-well-soon poster, and we trekked across the parking lot to the hospital doors. A sterile, clean smell washed the van’s burnt peanut butter smell from my nose. I breathed in deep.
We stepped into an elevator with a large, balding man who was sweating profusely. He kept shooting me grins and looking me up and down while wriggling his eyebrows. With a frown, Zane blocked the guy’s roving eyes by moving between us. I twitched my lips to the side and fixed my gaze on the climbing digital numbers.
Finally, the elevator stopped on the sixth floor. The perv shot Zane a thumbs-up, wiped his forehead with a damp paper towel, and waddled out. The doors closed again with a ding.
Zane leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. “Creep.”
“I kind of liked him.” At Zane’s incredulous look, I hid a smile behind my hand.
The elevator stopped again on the eighth floor, and we stepped out into a bleached white hallway. A bubbly black woman sitting behind the desk with blue hair and superheroes on her scrubs directed us to room 802.<
br />
I curled my toes up and strolled with an awkward, slow gait as we searched for Agatha’s room. I probably looked like I belonged in the psych unit, but it was more from nerves than the state of my brain.
Zane paused by her door and knocked.
I wasn’t prepared for this. I didn’t want to do this anymore. Would she join the kick-me-out club when she saw me? My stomach shifted to my knees.
When no one answered, Zane slowly pushed the door open into a sunlit room.
Agatha lay awake in bed at the far end. She still wasn’t wearing a wig, and her bald spots practically screamed, This is your fault!
“Hey, Aggie,” Zane said, moving forward while I hung back by the door. “How’s it going?” He held up the cards and poster. “Brought you something.”
Her gaze brightened when it found him. “I hope it’s food. The grub here sucks.”
“’Fraid not. Some people got together and made you cards.” He placed the poster and the cards on the bedside table and sat down in a chair on the opposite side of the bed. “But Kasey brought you something you’ll love.”
Her eyebrows drew together, and her gaze locked onto me. Her skin paled to the color of frosted glass. “What the hell is she doing here?”
My hands trembled, so I shook them out, reached into my bag, and pulled out her cell phone. Then I inched across the room at a turtle’s pace, holding it out to her like a lifeline.
“What is that?” she asked, her voice gritty.
“It’s your phone, Aggie.” Zane reached across her bed to take it from me and handed it to her.
Her eyes widened as she held it in her hand. “How did you do this? Miss Molly has these locked up.”
“Actually…” He sat back in the chair. “Kasey did it, all in the name of Candy Crush.”
“Uh, enjoy.” I found the charger in my bag and handed it to Zane.
He lifted an eyebrow but didn’t take it.
I shot him a you’re-for-sure-going-to-Hell look and stepped closer to Agatha. “Here.”
Daring the Devil (Reigning Hell Book 1) Page 9
