The Complete Hush, Hush Saga

by Becca Fitzpatrick

  Without a word I walked inside, forcing myself not to hurry or glance back. Not that I needed to. I could feel Hank’s perceptive frown follow me all the way through the door.

  A week passed without any word from Patch. I didn’t know if he’d found Dabria, or if he was any closer to uncovering Hank’s motivation for hanging around my family. More than once I’d had to stop myself from driving to Delphic and using trial and error to track my way back to his granite studio. I’d agreed to wait for him to contact me, but I was beginning to kick myself for doing so. I’d made Patch promise not to abandon me to the sidelines while he went after Hank, but his promise was starting to look awfully flimsy. Even if he’d hit nothing but dead ends, I wanted him to call because he missed me the way I was missing him. Couldn’t he be bothered to pick up the phone? Scott also hadn’t resurfaced, and in keeping with his request, I hadn’t gone looking for him. But if one or both didn’t reach out soon, all bets were off.

  The only thing distracting me from Patch was school, but even it wasn’t doing a commendable job. I’d always considered myself a top-notch student, though I was starting to wonder why I bothered. Compared to the immediate need to deal with Hank, getting into college felt like a secondary concern.

  “Congratulations,” Cheri Deerborn said as we strolled into second-hour English together.

  I couldn’t figure out why she was smiling so widely. “For what?”

  “Homecoming nominations were posted this morning. You’re up for junior class attendant.”

  I just stared at her.

  “Junior class attendant,” she repeated, stressing each word individually.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Your name’s on the list. Can’t be a misprint.”

  “Who would nominate me?”

  She eyed me oddly. “Anyone can nominate you, but they have to get at least fifty other people to sign the nomination form. Like a petition. The more signatures the better.”

  “I’m going to kill Vee,” I muttered, as the only logical explanation presented itself. I’d taken Patch’s advice and hadn’t called her out on lying to me, but this was inexcusable. Homecoming royalty? Even Patch couldn’t protect her now. Seated at my desk, I hid my cell phone beneath the desktop since our teacher, Mr. Sarraf, had a strict no-phone policy.

  HOMECOMING ATTENDANT? I texted to Vee.

  Fortunately, the bell hadn’t rung yet, and she gave me a prompt reply.

  JUST HEARD. UM … CONGRATS?

  UR SO DEAD, I punched in.

  EXCUSE MOI? U THINK I DID THIS?

  “Better put that away,” said a cheerful voice. “Sarraf is squinting at you.”

  Marcie Millar dropped into the next desk over. I knew we had English together, but she always sat in the back row with Jon Gala and Addyson Hales. It was no secret Mr. Sarraf was practically blind, and they could do just about anything back there short of lighting up.

  “If he squints any harder, he’s going to give himself a brain hemorrhoid,” Marcie said.

  “Brilliant,” I said. “How do you come up with this stuff?”

  Missing my sarcasm, she sat taller with self-satisfaction.

  “I saw you made the homecoming ballot,” she said.

  I said nothing. The lilt of her voice didn’t appear to be making fun, but eleven years’ worth of history between us implied differently.

  “Who do you think will win male junior attendant?” she kept on. “My bet’s on Cameron Ferria. Hopefully they’ve dry-cleaned the royalty robes since last year. I have it on good authority that Kara Darling left armpit sweat marks inside her robe. What if you had to wear her old robe?” She wrinkled her nose. “If she did that to her robe, I’d hate to see what she did to the tiara.”

  My mind unwillingly traveled back to the only homecoming I’d attended. Vee and I had gone as freshmen. We’d been newly anointed high schoolers, and it only seemed appropriate to see what all the fuss was about. At halftime, the booster club marched onto the field and announced the royalty, starting with the freshman attendants and ending with the senior class queen and king. Each member of the royalty had a robe in school colors placed on their shoulders and a crown or tiara shoved on their head. Then they took a victory lap around the track in golf carts. High class, I know. Marcie won freshman attendant and soured any desire I had to attend another coronation.

  “I nominated you.” Marcie flipped her hair off her shoulders, giving me the full wattage of her smile. “I was going to keep it a secret, but anonymity isn’t my thing.”

  Her words whipped me out of my reflection. “You did what?”

  She tried on a sympathetic face. “I know you’re going through a rough period. I mean, first the whole amnesia thing and”—she dropped her voice to a whisper—“I know about the hallucinations. My dad told me. He said I should be extra nice to you. Only I wasn’t sure how. I thought and thought. And then I saw the announcement about nominating this year’s homecoming royalty. Obviously everyone wanted to nominate me, but I told my friends we should nominate you instead. I might have mentioned the hallucinations, and I might have exaggerated their severity. You gotta play dirty to win. Good news is, we got over two hundred signatures, more than any other nominee!”

  My mind reeled, tottering between incredulity and disgust. “You made me your charity project?”

  “Yes!” she squealed, clapping her hands daintily.

  I bent across the aisle, pinning her with my most hardened and severe look. “Go to the office and retract it. I don’t want my name on the ballot.”

  Instead of looking wounded, Marcie put her hands on her hips. “That would mess up everything. They’ve already printed the ballots. I peeked at the stack in the front office this morning. Do you want to be a paper waster? Think of the trees that sacrificed their lives for those reams of paper. And what’s more, screw the paper. What about me? I went out of my way to do something nice, and you can’t just reject that.”

  I tipped my neck back, glowering at the water stains on the ceiling. Why me?

  CHAPTER

  23

  AFTER SCHOOL I FOUND A NOTE TACKED TO THE front door: Barn. I stuffed the note into my pocket and headed to the backyard. The split-rail fence at the edge of our property opened to a sprawling field. A whitewashed barn was plunked down in the middle of it. To this day, I wasn’t sure who the barn belonged to. Years ago Vee and I had dreamed of turning it into a secret clubhouse. Our ambitions quickly died the first time we hauled open the doors to find a bat hanging from the rafters.

  I hadn’t tried to enter the barn since, and even though I hoped I could say I was no longer terrified of small flying mammals, I found myself opening the door with great hesitation.

  “Hello?” I called in.

  Scott was stretched out on a weathered bench at the back of the barn. Upon my entrance, he pulled himself up to sitting.

  “You still mad at me?” he asked, chewing a piece of wild grass. If it weren’t for the Metallica T-shirt and frayed jeans, he might have looked like he belonged seated behind the wheel of a tractor.

  I skimmed the rafters. “Did you see any bats when you came in?”

  Scott grinned. “Scared of bats, Grey?”

  I dropped down on the bench beside him. “Quit calling me Grey. It makes me sound like I’m a boy. Like Dorian Gray.”

  “Dorian who?”

  I sighed. “Just think up something else. Plain old Nora works too, you know.”

  “Sure thing, Gumdrop.”

  I grimaced. “I take that back. Let’s stick with Grey.”

  “I came by to see if you have anything for me. Information on Hank would be good. Do you think he knows it was us spying on his building that night?”

  I was pretty sure Hank didn’t suspect us. He hadn’t acted any creepier than usual, which, in retrospect, wasn’t saying much. “No, I think we’re clear.”

  “That’s good, real good,” Scott said, twisting the Black Hand’s ring around his finger. I was glad to
see he hadn’t taken it off. “Maybe I can come out of hiding earlier than I thought.”

  “Looks to me like you’re out of hiding now. How did you know I’d find your note on the front door before Hank?”

  “Hank’s at his dealership. And I know when you get home from school. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve been checking up on you now and then. I needed to know the best times to contact you. By the way, your social life is pathetic.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  Scott laughed, but when I didn’t join in, he nudged my shoulder. “You seem down, Grey.”

  I heaved a sigh. “Marcie Millar nominated me for homecoming royalty. Voting happens this Friday.”

  He gave me one of those complex handshakes that college fraternities use on TV. “Well done, champ.”

  I gave him a look of pure disgust.

  “Hey, now. I thought girls loved this stuff. Shopping for a dress, getting your hair done, wearing the little crown thing on your head.”

  “Tiara.”

  “Yeah, tiara. I knew that. So what’s to hate?”

  “I feel stupid having my name on a ballot with four other girls who are actually popular. I’m not going to win. I’m just going to look stupid. People are already asking if it was a misprint. And I don’t have a date. I guess I could take Vee. Marcie will come up with a hundred lesbian jokes, but worse things could happen.”

  Scott spread his arms wide, as though the solution was obvious. “Problem solved. Go with me.”

  I rolled my eyes, suddenly regretting bringing up the topic. It was the last thing I wanted to talk about. Right now, denial seemed the only way to go. “You don’t even go to school,” I reminded him.

  “Is there a rule about that? Girls at my old school in Portland were always dragging their college boyfriends back to dances.”

  “There’s not a rule, per se.”

  He considered briefly. “If you’re worried about the Black Hand, last time I checked, Nephilim dictators don’t consider human high school dances a top priority. He’ll never know I was there.”

  At the image of Hank trolling the school gym, I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “You laugh, but you haven’t seen me in a tux. Or maybe you don’t like broad-shouldered guys with muscular chests and washboard abs?”

  I bit my lip to conquer another, harder laugh. “Quit intimidating me. You’re starting to make this sound like a role reversal of Beauty and the Beast. We all know you’re beautiful, Scott.”

  Scott gave my knee an affectionate squeeze. “You’ll never hear me admit this again, so listen up. You look good, Grey. On a scale from one to ten, you’re definitely in the top half.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “You’re not the kind of girl I would have chased after when I was in Portland, but I’m not the same guy I was back then either. You’re a little too good for me, and let’s face it, a little too smart.”

  “You’ve got street smarts,” I pointed out.

  “Stop interrupting. You’re going to make me lose my place.”

  “You’ve got this speech memorized?”

  A smirk. “I’ve got a lot of time on my hands. As I was saying—hell. I forgot where I was.”

  “You were telling me I can rest assured that I’m better-looking than half the girls at my school.”

  “That was a figure of speech. If you want to get technical, you’re better-looking than ninety percent. Give or take.”

  I laid a hand over my heart. “I’m speechless.”

  Scott got down on his knee and clasped my hand dramatically. “Yes, Nora. Yes, I’ll go to the homecoming dance with you.”

  I snorted down at him. “You are so full of yourself. I never asked.”

  “See? Too smart. Anyway, what’s the big deal? You need a date, and while I might not be your number one choice, I’ll do.”

  A clear image of Patch appeared in my thoughts, but I swept it aside. Logically, I knew there was no way Scott could read my mind, but that didn’t ease my guilt. I wasn’t ready to tell him just yet that I was no longer working exclusively with him to bring down Hank; I’d enrolled the help of my ex-boyfriend, who just so happened to be twice as resourceful, twice as dangerous, the embodiment of masculine perfection … and a fallen angel. Hurting Scott was the last thing I wanted. Quite unexpectedly, he’d grown on me.

  And while I found it odd that Scott had suddenly decided complacency was the way to go with Hank, I didn’t have the heart to tell him he wasn’t allowed one night of fun. As he’d said, the home-coming dance would be the last thing on Hank’s radar.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, giving him a playful jab to the shoulder. “It’s a date.” I put on a serious face. “But you’d better not be exaggerating about how fine you look in a tux.”

  It wasn’t until later that night that I realized I’d failed to tell Scott about Hank’s decoy building and the real Nephilim safe house. Who would’ve thought homecoming would weigh on my thoughts more heavily than stumbling inside a barracks of armed Nephilim? It was times like this when having Scott’s cell phone number would have come in really useful. On second thought, I wasn’t sure Scott had a cell. Phones were traceable.

  At six I sat down to dinner with Mom.

  “How was your day?” she asked.

  “I can tell you it was absolutely fantastic, if you want,” I said, chewing a bite of baked ziti.

  “Oh dear. Did the Volkswagen break down again? I thought it was very generous of Hank to fix it, and I’m sure he’d offer to help out again, if you asked.”

  At my mom’s blind admiration of Hank, I had to exhale slowly to regain my composure. “Worse. Marcie nominated me for homecoming royalty. Worse yet, I made the ballot.”

  Mom lowered her fork. She looked stunned. “Are we talking about the same Marcie?”

  “She said Hank told her about the hallucinations, and she’s made me her new charity case. I didn’t tell Hank about the hallucinations.”

  “That would have been me,” she said, blinking in surprise. “I can’t believe he shared that information with Marcie. I distinctly remember telling him to keep it private.” She opened her mouth, then slowly closed it. “At least, I’m almost positive I did.” She set down her utensils with a clink. “I swear old age is getting the better of me. I can’t seem to remember anything anymore. Please don’t blame Hank. I take full responsibility.”

  I couldn’t bear to see my mom lost and bewildered. Old age had nothing to do with her inability to remember. I had no doubt in my mind that Patch was right; she was under Hank’s influence. I wondered if he was mind-tricking her day by day, or if he’d instilled in her a general sense of obedience and loyalty.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I murmured. I had a piece of ziti poised on my fork, but I’d lost my appetite. Patch had told me there wasn’t any use in trying to explain the truth to my mom—she wouldn’t believe me—but that didn’t keep me from wanting to scream out in frustration. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep up the charade: eating, sleeping, smiling, as if nothing were wrong.

  Mom said, “This must be why Hank suggested you and Marcie go dress shopping together. I told him I’d be very surprised if you had any desire to go to homecoming, but he must have known what Marcie was planning. Of course, you’re under no obligation to go anywhere with Marcie,” she corrected in a rush. “I think it would be very big of you, but clearly Hank doesn’t know how you feel about Marcie. I think he dreams of seeing our families get along.” She gave a miserable little laugh.

  Under the circumstances, I couldn’t bring myself to join her. I didn’t know how much of what she said was from the heart, and how much was dictated by Hank’s mind-tricks. But it was very clear that if she was thinking marriage, Patch and I needed to work faster.

  “Marcie cornered me after school and told me—yes, told me—we’re going dress shopping tonight. Like I had absolutely no say in the matter whatsoever. But it’s all good. Vee and I have a plan. I texted Marcie an
d told her I couldn’t go shopping because I’m out of money. Then I told her how sorry I was, because I was really looking forward to her input. She texted back and said Hank gave her his credit card and she was paying.”

  Mom groaned in disapproval, but her eyes crinkled with amusement. “Please tell me I raised you better than this.”

  “I already picked out the dress I want,” I said cheerfully. “I’ll get Marcie to pay for it, and then Vee will just happen to bump into us as we’re leaving the store. I’ll take the dress, ditch Marcie, and go out for doughnuts with Vee.”

  “What does the dress look like?”

  “Vee and I found it at Silk Garden. It’s an above-the-knee party dress.”

  “What color?”

  “You’ll have to wait and see.” I smiled devilishly. “It’s one hundred and fifty dollars.”

  Mom waved this off. “I’d be surprised if Hank even notices. You should see how he burns through cash.”

  I settled higher in my chair, pleased with myself. “Then I don’t suppose he’ll mind buying my shoes, too.”

  I was supposed to meet Marcie at Silk Garden at seven. Silk Garden was a boutique dress shop on the corner of Asher and Tenth. From the outside it resembled a château, with an oak-and-iron door and a cobblestone walk. The trees were wrapped in blue decorative lights. In the front windows, mannequins modeled dresses beautiful enough to eat. When I was little, my dreams of grandeur included becoming a princess and claiming Silk Garden as my castle.

  At twenty past seven, I paced the parking lot, scouting for Marcie’s car. Marcie drove a red Toyota 4Runner, fully loaded. Somehow I got the feeling her shifter never popped out of its socket. I doubted she’d ever had to smack her dashboard for ten minutes straight before the engine caught. And I was willing to bet her ride never broke down halfway to school. I cast a gloomy look in the direction of the Volkswagen and sighed.

  A red 4Runner swerved into the parking lot, and Marcie jumped out. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, throwing her handbag up her shoulder. “My dog didn’t want me to leave.”