Dark Halo (An Angel Eyes Novel)

by Dittemore, Shannon

  “Not at all,” Jake says. “I believe you.”

  “Do you?” She moves closer now. “He never shut up. He told me whom to befriend, what to dream. He told me which classes to take and which men would pay big for favors. His sick, twisted voice taught me how to seal a deal. And you don’t walk away from situations like that . . . unscathed.”

  “Unscathed?”

  She wraps her arms across her chest. “I wasn’t quite twenty when Henry’s business associate took advantage.”

  There are a lot of things Jake can help with. A lot of things he can fix, but this isn’t one of them. “Oh man, Liv. I’m sorry. So sorry.”

  “Javan showed up, beat the guy senseless, but it was too late.”

  “But you survived, and sometimes that’s—”

  “I’ll never have babies, Jake. And it’s probably the only thing I ever really wanted. My mom was an obstetric nurse. I used to stare at all those little babies in the nursery and dream of the day I’d have my own was made by the Creatornt1A. Of the perfect life we’d have.” She unfolds herself, the flickering light casting a glow on the silver-blue lines cut into her forearm. “All these scars on my body, and the one that caused the most damage is hidden. Most people will never know how broken I am.”

  “There’s always hope, Liv,” Jake says, his heart hurting worse than his arm.

  Her smile is slanted. “Who’s dreaming now?”

  Somewhere close, pipes squeal, and the rush of water quiets them both. Doors open and close on the main floor above them.

  “If we’re going to do this, we need to hurry,” Jake says. “I just want to help Marco.”

  She stares at him for a long time. “If you leave, he’ll hurt me.”

  “He’s already hurt you, Liv. Look at your legs.” Jake works hard to keep the exasperation from his voice, but it’s not easy. They’ve got to move.

  “No,” she says, turning so Jake can see the wounds on the backs of her legs. “These, I’ve had these for years.”

  “But they’d healed.”

  She shrugs. “Sort of. A gift from Javan. I worked hard to have these scars removed, but in the end it didn’t matter.”

  The sentence confuses Jake. She was scar-free. How can that not matter? But it’s Marco who voices the question.

  “Why?” he asks, his head lifted, his face a torrent of emotion. “Why didn’t it matter?”

  She turns to face them, tears falling like stars from her lashes.

  “I could still feel the burns. Not when I ran my fingers over the skin, but beneath. Deep inside I felt the pull of damaged flesh. I felt the stinging chill of an open wound. Sometimes I thought I could smell them burning.” She shakes her head. “Having them look healed was worse than when they were gaudy white scars. Far worse. I never should have let Javan fix me. So this,” she says, “this is nothing. You can just see what I’ve always felt. Wounds that never stop hurting.”

  “What about your arm? What is that?” Marco again. His voice is thin, desperate.

  And now Jake remembers. Marco’s seen a drawing of this, of Liv’s arm. In Ali’s journal. He must be all kinds of confused.

  “Javan gave me these. As a reminder, he said.”

  “A reminder of what?” Marco asks.

  “He used me. He broke me, but he also kept Henry away. And that was all I ever wanted. I saw what Henry did. I would have let Javan drag all ten of his razor-sharp nails down my back to avoid that fate.” the mirrorowp0

  Jake can’t help the repulsion he feels at that statement. She knew what Henry was? Saw what he did? And she just let it happen?

  “Liv . . . ,” Marco says, his voice catching. “I would’ve helped. You know I would have.”

  “I had help. I had Javan.”

  Jake weighs his next words carefully. Marco can’t take much more, but perhaps honesty will help him see through the chaos. “Javan’s worse than Henry, Liv. He’s a demon.”

  Marco’s head whips toward Jake. “And Henry’s not?”

  “Javan is an actual demon, Marco,” Jake clarifies.

  Marco’s face loses what little color it had left.

  “I know what Javan is,” Olivia says. “I’ve known for a long time. We had no pretenses between us. There was no reason. My eyes were wide open when I chose what he offered.”

  “You were a child,” Jake says.

  “Don’t kid yourself. Henry was never far. I chose Javan every day of the week. If I hadn’t, he’d have hand-delivered me to the old man.”

  “Stop,” Marco says. “Just stop. What are you talking about? He’s a demon?”

  Jake looks to Olivia, wonders if she’d like to do the honors, but she just takes a small step back. Jake hates this part. Explaining the invisible and then waiting for the inevitable fallout.

  “He’s a fallen angel, Marco. Like Damien.”

  Incredulity crosses Marco’s face. “Damien’s a fallen angel?”

  “Yes.”

  Marco looks away, his eyes moving over the wall, over the floor. Eventually, he looks back at Jake. “Then the halo really is evil.”

  “No, Marco. The halo doesn’t belong to Damien, or Javan, for that matter. It never did. It belongs to—”

  “Canaan.” Marco’s incredulity is replaced with understanding.

  “Does it, now?” Olivia says. “I didn’t realize there were so many angels in Stratus.”

  Marco’s eyes settle somewhere near the staircase. He’s thinking. Hard, by the look on his face.

  “So it’s a halo,” Liv says. “That explains why it hates me so much.”

  Jake’s never seen a person so backward in their thinking. His eyes wander to the scars on her arm. you,” I say.inow“I can help you, Olivia.”

  “Like Javan helped me?”

  11

  Brielle

  We round the bend at the top of the mountain, my knuckles white on the steering wheel. It’s dark now, but I breathe a little easier when the seaside town of Beacon City comes into view. It’s nestled below us in a shallow valley surrounded by the coastal range here. Cliffs, like the one we’re navigating now, line the ocean west of town. There’s very little beach access here unless you’re willing to navigate the rocks.

  Slugger’s getting a little old for this kind of driving, and I’ve made Kaylee swear she’ll never tell Dad we drove her out here, but with Kaylee’s car on E, Slugger was the best choice. Stopping for gas was the last thing I wanted to do, and even my little Beetle can make it the three and a half hours to Bellwether on a full tank.

  The turns here are hairy, the drop-off steep, and I’m more than a little frayed by the time we reach the Sea Lion Caves. There’s a bathroom here, and Kaylee’s been crying for one for the past hour, so I pull over and we climb out.

  “Hurry,” I tell her the Prince’s halosow entirely, but she knows. She’s running to the small brown building.

  My eyes burn. I need to sleep, but it’s more than that. I feel a nightmare coming on. Right at the front of my mind sits its preview. An unfamiliar scene has been playing out in the shadows of my mind, but with my eyes on the road and my mind on Jake I’ve only been able to make out Olivia’s face, her pencil skirt, her arms crossed in defiance. Her mouth moves, but I hear nothing. And there’s sweet relief in that.

  What would I do with another nightmare right now?

  I’m walking into the worst kind there is: Jake in Damien’s care.

  But the cold air feels wonderful on my face. I’ve not changed. I’m still wearing my jean shorts and over my tank top, Jake’s sweatshirt. I force myself to uncross my arms, to let them hang. My fingertips brush the thin fringe of denim hanging below the sweatshirt, the wind off the sea whispering up my legs.

  “I can’t do this alone,” I say to the God of wind and rain. “I need help.”

  Fog has swept into the cove here, turning everything a milky gray. The wind picks up, pushing against my knees hard enough that I open my eyes. A drop of water lands on my cheek. Rain or sea spray
, I can’t tell, but it reminds me of Ali. Of a song she sang as Éponine in a production of Les Mis during our junior year at Austen.

  “A little fall of rain,” I whisper into the darkness, “can hardly hurt me now.” It’s a line from the show, from Éponine’s song with Marius. “You’re here, that’s all I need to know.”

  The wind grabs the fog and pulls it along, pushing it away, and for the first time I see the waves below. They’re calm. Calmer than they have any right to be on this terrifying night.

  “You’re here,” I pray. “That’s all I need to know.”

  “You owe me, Matthews. The door was locked, so I peed behind the ranger station.”

  “I’m sorry, Kay,” I say, turning my back on the ocean and running back to the car. “I just need to get there.”

  “I don’t think anyone has ever made it from Central Oregon to the coast this fast, girl, and considering we’re driving a wind-up toy, that’s saying something.”

  “Be nice. Slugger’s been good to us,” I say, turning the key. “We’re almost there.”

  We turn out of the ranger station, and I push the gas to the floor. Slugger groans, but mile marker 177 comes into view and my heart stammers. One more mile. The curve here is wicked sharp, so I take my foot off the gas, and that’s when Bellwether rises in the distance.

  The lighthouse is a haze of Halloween colors against the night sky">

  Kay leans forward, her nose inches from the windshield. “Criminy. That’s spooky at night.”

  I’m silent, but I couldn’t agree more. And then the trees obstruct our view. Mile marker 178 flies by, and I swallow against the fear that’s stuck in my throat. I can’t . . . I can’t . . . I don’t even know how to pray.

  A gap in the trees opens up, and the keeper’s house comes into view. Like everything else, it’s swabbed in a haze of moist fog. The moonlight catches it, transforming the white house into something ghostly. A lawn and white picket fence surround it all, but shadowed as it is, the house is far less welcoming than it was on the website.

  And yet there’s no place on this planet I’d rather be.

  Jake’s here.

  I’m sure of it.

  The house is still several hundred yards up the road, but I pull off the freeway and park Slugger against the mountain.

  “You’ll have to climb out on my side, Kay.”

  I stand on a thin strip of dirt between my car and the freeway. All is quiet. The road beside me is empty. Beyond it is a cliff face where evergreens grow out from the rocks, jutting over the sea.

  “Hey, Elle?” Kay’s sitting in the driver’s seat now. “Before we storm the castle, what do you want me to do with these?”

  She’s holding the pages of Ali’s journal in her hands. It’s a good question. I don’t know what I’m going to find here, and I don’t want to carry in a bunch of cryptic and possibly incriminating evidence. “Put them in the glove compartment,” I say, kneeling down next to her, handing her the keys. “If this goes, you know, bad . . .”

  The moon has painted her face white, like the cliffs here, like the road, and with her eyes wide and her hair pulled into two high knots she looks like some sort of manga superhero.

  “Knock it off, Elle,” she says. “It’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”

  “Okay, but you have to figure out what those papers mean,” I say. “Get them to Canaan if you can, or Helene, but if you can’t—”

  “I promise to do my best Sherlock Holmes impersonation, okay? But let’s talk about now. I don’t think we should go in all guns blazing and stuff. We need to have a plan.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I thought about that.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I don’t have one I was hoping forinow. I mean, what do we know? Nothing. It’s really hard to come up with a plan for nothing.”

  “Okay, well. We don’t know anything, but what are you thinking? That he’s at the bakery here or up the road at the lighthouse?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, feeling very, very unprepared. “There’s no way to know.”

  “What about those eyes of yours? Can’t they help us out a bit?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Without the halo, I don’t have any control over what I do and don’t see, but . . .”

  “But you could try.”

  “Yes, I could try.”

  “Okay, then that sounds like a plan,” she says, stepping out of the car. “I’m good with plans.” She closes the door quietly, but when she steps away, her Snuggie tears. It’s gotten caught in the door. “You know, maybe I should leave the Snuggie here?”

  “You know, maybe you should.”

  She strips it off and leaves it on the driver’s seat, closing the door once again with as much silence as she can muster.

  “All right,” she says, taking my hand. “I’m ready.”

  We start up the road, staying off the freeway as much as possible. After fifty yards or so, the trees and rocks on our right give way to a grassy, unkempt stretch of land. We rush through it toward the picket fence lining the keeper’s house. Crouching there, my pulse leaps and jumps, my heart skipping to catch up with it. Blood pounds against my eyes, and my hands go cold. I’m scared. And hopeful.

  But mostly I’m scared.

  The house is larger than I remember it. Two sets of stairs service the porch, one on the right and another on the left. Six steps up either takes you to the front door. Over it hangs a wooden hand-painted sign that says Bell’s Baked Goods. Through the branches of trees and over the awning on the porch the lighthouse burns bright, its lens favoring us with its beam every few seconds. But the house itself is dark. No light in the windows or on the porch. The place looks empty. Abandoned. And suddenly I’m all doubt.

  What if I was wrong?

  What if we read the pages wrong?

  What if I misunderstood the Throne Room?

  Maybe I should have stayed.

  What if the Throne Room sent something else after we left, and we just drove to some abandoned lighthouse on the coast?

  “Elle!” Kaylee’s voice is a hiss coming at me from down the fence line. She’s sneaked to the back and is waving me over. Staying l only to be replaced by t for aow, though I’m not entirely sure why, I run to her side.

  “What is it?”

  “Olivia’s car,” she says with a nod of her head.

  “Oh.” Parked at the back of the property is a red BMW.

  “They’re here, Elle,” Kaylee says. “You were right.”

  “I was.” I kneel now and press my forehead to the fence. Between the slats I have a good view of the house and I focus. Hard.

  And then I pray.

  “God, help me see,” I say. Kaylee’s hand finds mine, and she squeezes. I focus harder.

  And then the wall before me thins away. It doesn’t change colors, it doesn’t glow, but I can see the dark room inside. Tables and chairs and a counter—everything wrapped in shadow.

  And empty.

  “Do you see anything?”

  I’m not used to seeing through walls without the celestial light. It’s weird. But maybe if I get closer. I throw my leg over the fence and make for the front door. If Jake’s in there we have to be sure.

  Kaylee follows, though with a smidge less grace. Her Tasmanian Devil slipper gets caught on a loose board and she barely catches herself before her face connects with the ground.

  I reach down and pull her up.

  “Sorry, sorry. I thought we decided not to march in,” she says. “What did you see?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “I mean, I saw inside, but it’s . . . Let me try from up here.” I walk to the foot of the nearest staircase and try again. “Please,” I pray. “Please.”

  The front wall disappears almost immediately, but all I see is that the entryway and seating area are empty. I turn my attention up, through the ceiling of the converted living room and into the bedrooms above. Gorgeous Victorian-style furnishings, but completely vacant.

&nbs
p; “I don’t think there’s anyone here, Kay.”

  And then a cruel chuckle shakes my insides. “Oh, but there is.”

  Kaylee screams, but I’m too shocked to make a sound. Before I can move, Damien’s hand knots in my hair. He lifts Kaylee, screaming and flailing, and tucks her under his arm like a football. He doesn’t bother keeping her quiet; he likes the fear. He yanks me by the hair, pushing me before him, up the stairs and through the front door.

  Despite the aged, Victorian feel the house gives from the outside, the inside is a mashup of cozy and modern. Crisp, square tables in oak are surrounded by bright yellow chairs and spaced evenly throughout the room."> index cards marking them for what they hold—as my mind flies through options stupid and implausible.

  I could run. Try to get away. He has Kaylee, and it would be hard for him to keep track of us both. Hard, but not impossible. Still, I could do it. I think I can. And if I can get away, I can come back with help. Unless the angels are too busy to answer their cell phones. Again.

  It’s entirely possible, even likely. Neither Canaan nor Helene has returned a single call or text Kaylee sent on the way here. There’s no guarantee they would be available now. And even then, I’m certain Damien sees more value in me than in Kaylee. He’s stupid like that.

  There has to be another way, but unlike Damien, I can’t think with Kaylee screaming. Her terror heightens mine, and it’s all I can do to keep moving. Damien knees me in the back, and I stumble forward.

  I can’t believe I let him catch me. If Canaan’s right, and he’s always right, my captive presence can only make things harder for Jake. Make his fight more painful, more costly. What would Damien do to me to make Jake cooperate? A tremor runs through my body, because I know exactly what he’d do. He’d do whatever it takes. Even now, with my hands trembling and anger at myself seeping from every pore, I wonder how much it would take to break me. Very little, I think. Any kind of pain inflicted on Kaylee or Jake, and I don’t know if I’m strong enough to allow that. Even for a higher call. Suddenly I’m willing to risk the fallout of trying to escape. Whatever the cost, I can’t be used against Jake. I won’t be an arrow in Damien’s quiver. And I won’t let them be used against me.