by Lisa M Basso
I mopped, replaced the broken coffee pot with an extra from the back, and served table fifteen their burgers when Jose put them out. I used the time to collect myself. At first all I could think about was running. Then I thought about Allison. Tony. Luke. If Cam was right, whoever was taking the lives of my classmates wasn’t done. Still, it wasn’t my fight. Just because I could see their wings didn’t mean I was somehow going to save the world. The thought of that was not only ridiculous, but absurd. I was only a girl; a tired, confused girl who could barely keep herself out of a mental hospital.
I looked down at the mop bucket. The water was red. I jerked back, blinked. The mucky water in the bucket was a dirty brown. Not blood. Not Allison’s blood spilled across the bathroom floor.
My mind worked, wondering if Kade had cut Allison’s wrists so many days ago. If he came to Tony DiMeeko’s house and fashioned him a noose. If he would soon track down Luke.
No. If I got involved, I would be so far beyond screwed. One way or another, it would be the nail in my coffin. Either I would be sent back, or I’d end up dead, too.
I had to stay out of this. I had to. Absolutely had to.
Unless …
I shook my head and wrung the mop out, refusing another look at Kade as I rolled the entire contraption into the back to dump the bucket and rinse the mop in clean water.
I could tell Cam that I saw the Fallen again. No one would know, so long as I stayed out of it beyond that. It would be between him and me. If I was feeling brave, I could question Kade while he was here, among so many other people. I could use his own trick against him. Then I could report back to Cam.
But I’d have to catch him off guard.
I tucked the mop and bucket away in the kitchen corner beside the swinging doors. Nothing would catch him more off guard than if I stitched myself together and interrogated him right now.
I pushed through the doors and returned to the counter. Before Kade could find another way to rattle me, or I could talk myself out of this, I said, “Cam told me you and your kind are responsible for the suicides at Stratford Independence High School.” My heart pounded between each word.
His lip curled up in a sneer at Cam’s name, much the same reaction Cam had had when I’d mentioned Kade’s name to him. Flat black filled the whites of his eyes, swallowing the once rich brown of his irises. “Aren’t you full of surprises?”
“So it is true.”
“Camael’s partly right. But I’m staying out of their mess. I’ve got enough problems without adding all the shit I’m sure is following your precious Cam around these days.”
Holy crap. Cam was right. The dark-winged angels were responsible. Maybe, if I kept him talking, I could find out who was behind Allison and Tony’s murders. I’d spent enough time making friends with unstable people, and Kade didn’t seem too different from them—both required the need to watch my back.
Kade leaned forward on the counter. “I’m not here for all that. I’m here for you.”
“For me?” I glanced around the diner, glad for the patrons still at their tables.
He smirked, his fingers tapping a staccato on his empty coffee mug. “Yep. All for you.”
“Heh.” I breathed out a nervous laugh. He had to be pushing my buttons on purpose, messing with me to see how far he could push me before I snapped. The joke was on him, because I’d snapped a long time ago.
I couldn’t believe a word he said, I reminded myself. Except for my mother’s name. That, I had to know about. “The other night. You called me Kay.”
Something flickered across his face, gone before I could categorize it. Hurt, maybe. Yikes. This was getting weirder by the second. “Yeah, and?” he snipped.
“Kay was my mother’s name.” I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “Did you … know my mother?”
Stop it! He didn’t know Mom. He couldn’t have. She was too good to have anything to do with him.
“Oh, I knew her all right.”
His answer crashed into me. I reached back for the counter, suddenly afraid my legs would give out.
He’s lying.
I took my best shot at nonchalance. And failed. “Yeah. Sure you did.”
His dark eyes narrowed at me, and his lips pressed together. Silence filled the space between us, stretching out like the tall shadows I had imagined following me last night.
“That’s what I thought,” I spat.
“You want me to prove I knew her? You were too young to know her half as well as I did. She wasn’t the saint you remember.”
His words were venom, pushing into my veins.
I didn’t even notice the two larger groups leaving the diner until the bell chimed. The third table, burger with cheese and burger without, waved a credit card in the air.
Without feeling my feet moving, I printed out their bill and returned with their card, running it through the machine, never once looking at Kade.
“I’ll never believe that. You’ve got the wrong person.” I snapped in a low voice, tearing the credit card slip from the machine. I snatched a pen from beside the register and brought a handful of peppermint candies to table fifteen.
Please stick around, I begged silently, not wanting to be left alone with Kade and his lies.
Kade stood and called across the diner, “Oh, and Ray?”
Table fifteen stood and walked around me to leave. Only one table left.
“Keep your voice down.” I could hear the desperation in my own, the trembling beneath my words.
“She was Kayleigh Ardenell when we met.”
Ardenell was my mother’s maiden name.
Everything in me would have crawled at his feet to know more about my mother. No one talked about her at home. It was like her name was forbidden. Her death never made sense to law enforcement, family members, anyone—no one drowns in Arizona off the side of the highway in the middle of summer. If there was a sliver of a chance he knew anything at all—about her life, or her death—I had to jump.
“Fine.” I fought off a tremor. “If you think you knew her, then tell me more.”
“Really? You’re not what I expected at all.” He tapped his finger over the counter, as if deciding whether or not to say more. Strange, considering the way he’d tried to push it in my face before. “Why should I tell you anything?”
He was offering up something I never thought I could have, something I’d never get anywhere else: information about Mom. He had to know what he was doing in baiting me. On the other hand, this topic had stirred him up, too. For the first time, he was something less than pulled together.
“I have no idea,” I said. “Maybe because, deep down somewhere, you have a shred of decency in you.”
“Don’t kid yourself about that.” He smirked, and I clenched my teeth. I should have known better. “But maybe this time I’ll throw you a bone. Let’s start at the beginning.” He shifted in his stool, settling in, and leaned his forearms on the counter. “My kind—Warriors, different from Cam, who’s a Protector—were created to fight the demons who merged with humans. We were made more like men, to think like men, and to outthink them. Our urges were stronger than any of our brothers before us. But did anyone up high care when we started faltering? Falling? Did they bend any of the rules for us? No. They didn’t give two shits that most of us never returned. Those who did weren’t allowed out again.”
There was a certain sense of familiarity in his story. I knew what it was like to be shunned by those you thought loved you, banished away and forgotten.
“How …” I swallowed, bringing my voice as soft as I could get it. “How does an angel Fall?”
“When they break the rules and submit to … certain human emotions.” His voice was gasoline, soaking into my pink uniform.
“What emotions?” I pressed.
“Silly romantic ones. I’m sure I don’t have to specify.” He took one last sip of his coffee. Another smirk quirked his lips. “What you’ll really want to know is, I Fell
for her.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
His words struck me like lightning. I drew back, my breath faltering. Waves of shock rolled up my stomach. This is all to get a rise out of you. Don’t believe one word.
“You mean …” I couldn’t finish. My memories—of my mother … I couldn’t let him tarnish them. They were all I had left. The nights she read to us, the dinners we helped with, Sunday mornings when she’d make fruit pancakes from whatever she had in the greenhouse and would shape them like our favorite cartoon characters. None of those moments could change. I refused to believe my mother would read us stories and then sneak off into the night with him. That while we cleaned up dinner, she was looking out the window wondering what if. Or that, on her way to gather fruit from the greenhouse, she stopped for a quick affair. …
Something inside me withered.
No. Kade had said he’d known Mom by her maiden name. She never would have cheated on Dad. Never.
I buried my fingertips into the napkin in my right hand. The pain eased the panic enough to allow for a clear moment to think. As intact as I wanted to keep her memory, I realized I knew very little about who my mother really was. Dad refused to talk about her; he put his feelings in the grave the day we lowered her in.
I swallowed the instinct to plead for him to tell me everything about her and asked something marginally less intimate. “Could my mother see you—as you are?”
“No.” His answer was short, clipped. “As far as I know, you’re the first cursed with that particular gift.”
Nope, didn’t like that answer. “You called me Kay. Why? She’s dead.” I channeled my anger, flinging it at him in the hopes the dagger in my heart would somehow find purchase in his chest as well.
He lowered his gaze to his empty cup. “When you found me feeding, and I saw you standing under that yellow light above the back door—” he looked up, and the darkness in his eyes melted me, though I wished it hadn’t. “—you looked like her. Exactly like her.”
Lies, lies! I looked nothing like Mom.
He was like all the others, avoiding her death, skipping over it like it was a chapter he didn’t agree with in a book. I would get more from him later. No matter what it took.
He thought I looked like her. No telling what he’d do if he saw Laylah. The thought left me cold.
Another person I’d have to protect. He’d never get anywhere near my sister.
“You have her eyes.”
Slivers of ice cut into my bones, rendering them useless. If it weren’t for my hold beneath the counter, I might have puddled onto the lemon-scented floor. My mother’s eyes. If only he was right, if only I could look into the mirror and see even the smallest piece of her. But I couldn’t.
“Ray-na.” The terrifying sing-song way he said my name helped pull me back together.
I hadn’t prepared for such a personal battle, and he was undoing me. I’d thought to erect protective walls in front of me, not behind. And now there was a metaphorical knife in my back. Pull yourself together. Change the subject and calm down. This time, I obeyed. “More coffee?” I turned toward the new, empty carafe, fighting to keep the ire from seeping into my voice. “I’ll make a fresh pot.”
“Sounds good.”
His movements softened, became less sharp. The hard line of his jaw didn’t seem so much like steel. And he’d finally stopped that incessant tapping on his coffee mug.
I could do this.
I threw in a few scoops of coffee and filled the water—up to the proper line this time. The bell over the door chimed. The sound threw me back into the real world. I grabbed three menus from beside the cash register and sat the new customers at a table by the window, as far away from Kade as possible.
As I took their drink orders, I watched Kade from behind. His wings were still, but not statue-still. Like Cam’s, they rose and fell with each breath. But while Cam’s wings would be glimmering even in the diffused light of the dreary afternoon, Kade’s glossy black wings looked nothing like when he drained the blonde Friday night. Then, the sparkles had overpowered even the moon. I’d never forget the sight, beautifully haunting in the most terrifying way, much like he was.
Yep, definitely losing it.
I returned to the counter and filled three cups halfway up with ice, then pushed them, one at a time, under the red Coke lever. Sprinkles of fizzled soda splashed over the clear cup’s rim and onto the bloody napkin still in my hand.
Gross.
I peeled the napkin off my palm and slapped the biggest Band-aid I could find beneath the cash register onto it. I looked up to find Kade watching me. “Coffee’s almost done.”
Yeah, like he couldn’t see that for himself. I needed something to keep him here, to keep the information coming, and sadly enough, that bitter mud seemed to be his weakness. I bit into the side of my cheek, torn.
Mom’s old adage of “you’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar” inspired me to try a different tactic. As much as it chapped my ass to be nice to him, I had to know more. About Mom. About the suicides. “You want anything to eat, slice of pie or something? I hear the Lemon Meringue’s heavenly.” I cringed at my choice of words.
His face filled with light. His gruff laughter tickled the hair on the back of my neck. “Just coffee.”
The light tone of his reaction disarmed me. Instead of thinking about his shift in attitude, I held one finger up and delivered the Cokes, too eager to return to Kade and our round of Twenty Questions to hurry the table’s order.
This time, I tried to keep my questions less accusing, more conversational—as conversational as discussing a demon angel and his practices could be. “So you don’t eat.” It was a guess, but since he didn’t correct me, I pushed forward and poured him a cup of his precious coffee. “And your,” I lowered my voice and glanced at the far table filled with tourists, still browsing their menus, “… wings. They don’t … cast light, the way Cam’s do.”
At the mention of Cam’s name, his feathers ruffled and his fingers stiffened. “That name again.” He drew up a terrifying smile. “If I didn’t know better, I’d tell you to be careful, or he’ll be the next to Fall.”
Kade’s words stopped me.
Until Friday night, I was afraid of Cam. Until Friday night, I thought I was dropping back into insanity every time I saw him and those beautiful, terrifying wings. But Friday night was different. I’d felt … something. Something I’d never felt before.
I looked at Kade then. His black wings marked him as different. I imagined an earthbound existence would turn Cam into something different, someone different.
No. That would never happen to Cam. He was too controlled, too focused.
I thought about Kade’s accusation and wondered again what my mother had done to him. I clenched my fists below the counter at the thought. Before today, before Kade’s arrival, I wanted so badly to be like my mother, to have her soft patience, her free-spirited laughter, her warm, fear-shattering hugs. I had none of those things. And now I didn’t know if I wanted them. Kade had made me question the last happy memories I had left.
“Hmm. I’m not far off, am I?” He leaned in, wings tipping back. “Can’t say I blame him.” His near-black gaze drank me in, head-to-waist, stopping at the counter. I dug my heels in to avoid squirming. He was goading me, getting off on flipping my switches. And I’d let him.
The tease in his gaze was almost gone. I parted my lips to say … something. Anything. But I had nothing. All I knew was no one had ever looked at me that way before. Not even Cam.
Kade sat back, breaking the moment apart like he’d swung a sledgehammer through it. He swallowed hard and reached for his full coffee cup, pulling it between us like armor. “Never thought I’d live to see Perfect Cam be tempted, but it happens to the best of us.” It sounded too bitter to be a lie. “You mentioned S.I., that independent place down the street. Your school?”
My lips twisted at his candor, but I decided against answering.
>
“Thought as much. So, suicides, huh? A few of them, I’m guessing.”
Keep him talking. “Friends of yours?” I asked, accusingly.
“Rayna, sweetheart.” His voice lacked concern. “I’m ostracized by my own kind. But it definitely wasn’t one of your friends with the golden wings.” The throaty way he growled the last two words rolled up my shoulders. He pretended not to notice. “Camael isn’t protecting you, you know. If he was, you wouldn’t know anything about us. What’d he tell you about me, anyway?” His forearms claimed the countertop as he leaned farther forward. An ominous, Cheshire grin brought my attention back to his teeth. “Wait, let me guess. I’m evil, right? Dangerous.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, “Sinful.”
Heat warmed my cheeks. I didn’t need to hear any of those things from Cam to know they were true—at least to an extent. I mean, look at him.
Kade sipped his coffee, not a line of worry marring his face. “I’m not the one your angel needs to worry about.” His gaze drifted away. “Too bad, too. I could use a good fight. It’s been too long. But, whatever’s turning your students suicidal sounds like more of a threat than even me. How many so far?”
“Two.”
He shrugged. “That doesn’t sound so bad. But if your boyfriend’s already there, then you really do have a problem.”
“He’s not my boyfriend, I never said he was there, and two deaths is two too many.”
He shot me a do-I-look-stupid face. “It’s been a while, but I do remember how these things work.” Thought shone through his eyes as he tapped a finger on the counter. “I may have an idea who it could be.”
I waited. He glanced inside his mug, which I noticed was, once again, empty. “Care to share?” I prompted.
“What’s in it for me?”
