“I don’t believe this,” Grace cries. Her voice is scratchy and her face is full of snot and ruddy blotches. For once she doesn’t look like Little Miss Perfect.
“Shouldn’t you be sobbing on your boyfriend’s shoulder?” I ask, driving in the knife.
Grace gasps like she felt the blade go in. “This has nothing to do with Josh.”
“Really? Because usually the two of you are inseparable. I assumed it would be the same in Heaven. Or is it just a desperate case that you crave?”
“Noah,” she says, trying to ignore me, “come with me. We’ll find a way to make things right.”
“Don’t bother, Grace. In fact, don’t waste your time coming around here again. We’re busy.” Noah’s grip is almost painful.
“I will never give up on you.”
“You’re going to have to. Now get the fuck out of here before I make you leave.” Noah’s like a gear, wound so tight it’s about to break.
With one last pained look, Grace vanishes in a ball of light. Noah turns to me, slowly. But it’s not the loving face I expect. His eyes are hard and I nearly gasp because they remind me of Lucifer’s. “You knew my sister before we met.” It’s a statement, not a question.
“I had some business with her a few months back.” I admit.
“So you’ve been playing me?” he asks, stepping into my personal space.
“First of all, Noah, playing is fun and we’ve been doing a lot of it. Second, I’m here because Lucifer asked me to be, but I thought I already explained that I’m sticking around because I want to. And third, I could crush your windpipe with one tap of my finger, so you might want to think before you act.”
Noah swallows, eyes darting around like he doesn’t recognize his own room. “It’s always about her. Even when she’s dead, she controls my life. Just tell me one thing, Keira. And tell me the truth. I want the truth. You said you had business with her. Did Lucifer make a deal with me because of my sister?”
I can’t bring myself to tell him anything but the truth.
“I don’t know Lucifer’s plan,” I say softly, “but I suspect the answer to that question is yes. Because he wants revenge for something she did and he wants her distracted from other Angel things. He knows she’s obsessed with you and your parents and fixing everything, so…”
Noah nods, moving his mouth like he’s having a private conversation in his head. He runs a hand back through his hair, leaving it mussed and completing his madman look. It’s hard to see him broken like this. For once I’m not enjoying someone else’s misery.
“Like I said, I’m still here because I want to be.” I sit on the edge of his bed and pat the spot next to me, but he stays put.
“I need some air,” he mutters, and grabs a jacket from his floor.
“I hate her, too,” I say, stopping him before he leaves. His back straightens at the door, but he doesn’t turn around.
“So you screwed me to get back at her?” he asks. His knuckles turn white on the doorknob.
“No. I screwed you because I wanted to. And because you wanted me to. But I can’t pretend I’m not happy about her getting a little comeuppance. Stupid Angels always get the happily ever after. Well, not this time.”
Instead of agreeing and turning back to me, Noah crashes the door open so hard it’s partially torn from its hinges as it bounces against the wall like rubber. Noah runs and I’m left alone in his room, wondering what I said wrong and why I care so much what he thinks.
Chapter 24
Noah
My life is one long, fucking lie. First my parents ignore me. Was I a mistake? Or just not as good as Grace? Then there was Emily, who treated me so nicely until Grace was gone and then her real feelings came through loud and clear. But I thought it finally didn’t matter anymore. Keira made me feel something I’ve never felt before: important.
I must’ve been pretty desperate to believe a Demon.
I shove my hands farther into my jacket and keep walking, fighting against the bite of cold raindrops and bitter wind, yet one more thing trying to control me by pushing me the way it wants me to go.
“Just the guy I’m looking for.” Hale’s voice brings me back to reality and I realize I’ve walked to the park. No one else is here. Who would be in weather like this?
“Guess you got lucky,” I say, in no mood to talk. “I thought I told you I was done with you guys.”
Hale glances around, manipulating his tongue piercing with his teeth. “See, that’s not cool, bro,” he says finally. “I need at least one more bag so I have time to find another dealer.”
I laugh into the roar of the rain. Even the ducks have retreated. “Have you been wandering the neighborhood waiting to find me? That’s pathetic.” I remember what Keira said about using the anger, which only makes the feeling worse because I can’t seem to stop thinking about her.
I move to walk by him, but he shoves me in the chest. I’m not expecting it, so I stumble and nearly fall in the mud.
“Rethink that, Noah.” He pulls his switchblade and glances around once again to make sure we’re alone.
I focus all the rage still burning inside of me and I’m surprised how easily it latches on to the nearest target. I don’t care. There’s no secret that Hale’s yet another person who’s been using me since I got to high school. He surrounds himself with big, tough guys and clever guys—guys that have what he’s lacking—but he treats us like shit. Using us for drugs or homework or whatever he needs.
“No,” I say and pull back my shoulders. I’m sick of being pushed around. I’m sick of being used.
“You think you’re tough shit now just because you got laid by a hooker?” he asks, moving closer, flashing his knife to make up for his lack of muscle.
Keira again. Pain seizes my chest, but I focus on the fury instead. “You wish she’d pay attention to you. But you’re just a drug-addicted loser. Let me show you how weak and pathetic you are.”
He swings at me, but I sidestep it easily, expecting it this time. Each insult I spit his way throws him a little more off and builds my confidence. It feels…good to hurt someone else for a change.
“Go home,” I say. “Lift some weights. Maybe you’ll find a girl willing to have sex with you without being drugged.”
His face tightens into a ball of hate, and I feel alive. He’s losing it, which means I’m finally in control.
He lunges again, and this time I kick the knife out his hand. It lands a few feet away in a patch of crab grass.
“Damn it, Noah!” he screams, “Stop being a prick and get me some drugs. What, my money’s not enough for you? I’ll up it.”
Lightening strikes and Lucifer appears behind Hale, at a distance. But I can see his face. He’s smirking. The damned asshole has the gall to smirk when he’s been using me to get to my sister all along. Well, I’ll wipe that smirk from his face when he realizes what I’m really capable of.
“Fuck off,” I say, shoving Hale down into the mud. He reaches for the knife and I kick it far out of reach, laughing. It feels good to laugh at someone else for a change. To watch someone else be stepped on.
Hale rolls onto his back like prey giving in to the stronger animal. “Y-y-you’ve never hit someone in your life. You don’t have the balls.”
My vision goes red and I freeze as still as a statue. “Shut up.” My voice comes out even and cold.
He works his way to his feet, growing more confident as he does. He thinks he’s bested me, but he doesn’t know what’s happening inside of me. He doesn’t feel the hatred boiling and building like lava.
“You’re a nobody, Noah. Just the guy people use, but there’s always someone else. Someone better.” He turns to walk away.
I let my wrath feed me as I grab for his shoulder and all I see is a merry-go-round of faces. Grace, disappointed; Emily, disgusted; my father, ambivalent. I attack each one, punching harder and wilder with each new image. Lucifer, Kevin, Hale.
“Shut up,” I say, over a
nd over to each one of the faces. A growl rumbles low from my chest as I strike blindly, connecting again and again with flesh. Hands swipe at my face in a feeble attempt to stop me. But I’m not stopping. I’m not letting it go.
I work my hands down Hale’s neck—my mother’s neck, Lucifer’s neck, Grace’s neck—where I squeeze with all my might. The contradiction of the soft skin and the crunch of the hard bones blend together and become a sensation of enormous power.
The hands stop grasping at me and the world comes into focus. Hale is on the ground, his face mashed into pulp, one eye bulging open but blank. I straddle him, fingers still locked around his neck, and when I lift my hands his head flops back like there’s nothing left inside to hold it up.
The feeling of immense power dissipates and I’m left with a sense of calm like I’ve never felt before. I rock back on my heels, releasing him. “Hale?”
“He’s dead.” Lucifer stands behind me, one hand on my shoulder. “I do believe you actually pulverized his spine. Quite impressive for a human, Noah.”
I stare at the body, expecting guilt, horror, disgust with myself—but I can’t find any remorse inside of me. It isn’t just Hale—it’s all of the people who kept me down my entire life, finally beaten. I turn away. I don’t want anything to do with them anymore.
I follow Lucifer’s gaze as he looks up. The rain’s stopped, and so has the wind. But the sky’s turned a weird shade of purple that makes me think of Hale’s bruised face. Above us, a couple of big, black birds begin to circle, joined by more and more.
“What the—”
Lucifer laughs. “Oh, Michael,” he says. “Victory is finally mine.”
“That’s not my name,” I say. I’m irritated—despite the catharsis that came with killing Hale, the rage is still there, just etched deeper, like a tattoo, and I’m itching to release it somehow.
Lucifer ignores me, still talking to the air. “You ignored The One because you were too busy worrying about our dear, little Angel to see it happening.” He kneels next to me.
“Nice work. Go home, Noah. I’ll clean up over here. You should get some rest—we’ve got a world to take over.”
Chapter 25
Josh
“You can’t kill Ms. Alvarez,” I repeat for the tenth time in the past hour. We’re both sick of me saying it.
“Why not?” Lucy asks. Again. “She sucks. No one would miss her. Today I asked if she had any family and you know what she said? ‘The Lord is my family, Lucinda.’ I hate it when she calls me that. And really? The Lord? As if. She’s covered in shadows. All she wants to do is teach me about mass murders and stuff.”
I swallow my words. I can’t argue with that. Ms. A is a murderer. But even though I know Lucy can’t technically kill Alvarez since she’s already dead, it wouldn’t be helping my cause if she tried.
Unless—would it?
No—I can’t. It’s insane. I’m insane. This has to be the worst idea any Angel has ever had. I’d be banished from Heaven for sure for even entertaining the idea of letting Lucy go through with it, right?
Lucy cocks her head, her hair falling over her good eye while the weird one watches me. Either it’s getting less creepy or I’m getting used to it because it doesn’t make me shudder anymore. I consider her. She has to have some good in her, I just have to get to it. Wake it up so she doesn’t commit murder and lock in her status as the Antichrist.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asks.
“I’m thinking about what you said. Tell me more. Why do you want to kill her? I mean, besides the obnoxious thing and the shadows. Why kill? Why not scare her off, or fire her, or slash her tires or something?” I sit on the purple chair and push off the ground, rolling toward the bed so I can get as close to her as possible. I want her to think this through.
It’s easy to tell by her smile that she’s glad I’m taking her seriously. “Because it’s what I want. More than anything. I fantasize about it, Josh.” She says the last in a whisper and I can see the blush boiling beneath her shield of hair.
“It’s okay, Lucy,” I say. “You can’t help what you think, it’s what you do that matters.” Shit, I hope I’m not making that up. I’m so out of my league here.
She nods and takes a breath. “It feels good to talk about it. I can’t tell anyone else. They’d lock me up or something. I get excited when I study those spells. All those possibilities, things only a few people in this world can do. People like me.” She wriggles on the bed, clearly still uncomfortable admitting this out loud. I’m in agreement. I wish I could be anywhere but here talking about this.
She bites on her cuticle, glancing at the laptop open on her desk. “I have powers, Josh. I’ve tested other small spells in this book and they work.”
I clamp down on my initial urge to argue and follow her gaze to the screen where a black-and-red website is set on a page called “virgin sacrifice.” I shudder. I know there are Demons and Angels in the world, so why not magic and spells?
“Okay, well, I guess magic is cool,” I say, focusing on Lucy. “I mean, everyone imagines how great it would be to have powers.” It is cool to have powers. I remember what it felt like when Lucifer first gave them to me. “But you could do lots of stuff with them. Think of all the good you could do.”
She snorts. “Good is no fun. Then you run around ‘helping’ people and you end up doing everything for everybody else like a pushover and you don’t get to enjoy it. Doing what you want no matter what others think, that’s the key. People have to fear you if you want real power.”
Her gray eye swivels and bounces in its socket while she grins like a madwoman. I resist the impulse to back away. Maybe it’s best Grace isn’t here. I wouldn’t want her to see this. “So you think no one’s going to care about you hurting Alvarez? It will get you thrown in jail.”
“I want to see if it’s what I’m meant to do. I can’t think about anything else lately. I’m not worried about jail. If I do get caught, I’ll be so powerful they won’t be able to hold me. Everything I’ve read says that if I do the killing spell, it’ll act as a sacrifice that will awaken all the power within me.”
“But you can’t take it back.” Now I’m getting to what I really want to say. “What if you get the power you want out of it, but then you feel sick about what you did? Because I can tell you that I will never make up for the bad thing I did. I’m tortured by it every day.” Even as an Angel.
Maybe I don’t deserve Grace’s love when I’m the one who hurt her so badly not just once, but twice, as Grace herself reminded me. I took away her choice. I made her fall because I withheld the truth.
“I get what you’re saying,” Lucy says carefully. “I’m not a complete monster.”
Yes!
“But I don’t care about lives that are awful anyway. The person you hurt was someone you loved. That’s what you said, right?”
“Yes…”
“Well that’s different. See? I’m not killing my sister. Not that I love her all that much, but she is my sister.”
Not all that much is still love. I’ll take it. So far so good.
“I sincerely doubt I’ll feel that bad.” She pats my hand like she’s soothing me.
She may not think she will, but I’m banking on her remorse to come through like it did with her dad. It has to. And no harm no foul, right? Worst-case scenario: she pisses off Alvarez by trying to kill her. Best? She gives up on this whole hurting other people thing.
I’m letting a twelve-year-old attempt murder. I must be insane.
Chapter 26
Grace
My heart is shattered, and there’s no gluing it back together. I’m once again near the gates, even though the only place in the world I want to be right now is in Josh’s arms. But I couldn’t stand it if I went to him and found him in someone else’s embrace, and I’m certain that’s exactly where he is.
Crying should help. It should bring me some kind of relief, but it doesn’t. I wonder if
I can physically run out of tears. I picture myself in Heaven for all of eternity, crying, Shona introducing me to souls as the ever-weeping Angel.
I sink down as low as possible into the swell of mist, wishing I could dissipate along with it, flow away to a place where I didn’t have to think. Because when I do think, I keep coming back to the same three people: Josh, Noah, and Kobe. Poor, sweet Kobe, who died because of me.
A new burst of sobs jerk out of me and I fall all the way to the spongy ground, determined to disappear.
“Grace?” Mr. Griffith’s deep voice surrounds me and threatens to lift some of the weight of the past few days.
I lie still, trying to blend in with the clouds and mill of lost souls and greeters. But I don’t expect it to actually work and it doesn’t. In a moment, his hands are on my arms, pulling me up to my feet.
“Grace. I’ve been looking for you.”
“Can’t it wait?” I try.
He does a double take, which I’ve never seen him do before. “I’m afraid we need to talk about what happened.”
“Oh.” I try to turn off the faucet that’s broken open in my eyes and nose, but give up as Mr. Griffith leads me through the glittering passage of night to his office where the same little café waits with two steaming cups of coffee.
I sit, but only because I don’t have the strength to keep standing.
“You’ve had a long day.” Mr. Griffith leans over the table, giving me his full attention.
I snort and examine my hands. I keep expecting to see Kobe’s blood on them even though it all disappeared when I reentered Heaven.
My head crashes forward onto the table and I’m vaguely aware of the coffee splashing but not actually spilling as I cry some more.
Mr. Griffith sets his hand on my head. It clears some of the weight, but I’m still a wreck.
“Kobe is safe,” Mr. Griffith offers the words tenderly.
“He’s dead,” I challenge, lifting my head to look at him.
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