“It’s not.”
She steps out of the elevator, letting her eyes run over the rest of my outfit, which costs enough to save the penguins. For the first time, her mouth quirks upward. “I’m seventeen, Dante.”
Following behind Aspen, I decide she definitely doesn’t seem important. I also find myself wondering why I’m always sent to collect girls who are seventeen. Can’t someone mix it up? Assign me to a granny or a kid? I also wonder why Aspen’s adopted me so quickly. But as a personal policy, I try not to question when a good thing lands in my lap, so I just seal my mouth shut and keep up.
Aspen raps once on door 917 and lets herself in. The condo is made of light: bright stone floors, cream-colored walls, white furniture, and floor-to-ceiling windows along the back wall, and in the corner, sits the one of the most emo-looking kids I’ve ever seen.
My assignment clicks across the stone floors in her high-heeled boots and plops down on a white leather couch. The guy in the corner watches every move I make, which isn’t hard. I mostly stand near the sprawling kitchen and try to look casual.
Aspen flips her wrist back and forth between me and the guy. “Lincoln, this is Dante. Dante, Lincoln.”
Emo kid Lincoln rises from his chair like a panther and crosses the room. He gets right up in my face and looks at me with one open eye. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I’m going to know if you’re lying.”
“Calm down, Lincoln,” Aspen says, even though she hasn’t moved and sounds unconcerned.
Lincoln steps closer, and the copper rings in his eyebrow twitch. “Can I trust you?”
I laugh because I don’t know what else to do. “Yeah, man. You can trust me.”
“Liar!” Lincoln yells. “He’s lying.”
“Lincoln,” Aspen barks, her voice raised. “He’s with me. He’s cool.”
The guy pushes his greasy black hair behind his ears. Then he looks down, his eyes still wide and crazy. “Sorry, dude,” he says when his head pops back up. “Gotta be careful.” His camo jacket swooshes as he makes his way back to his chair.
I raise an eyebrow at Aspen.
“His dad is up there in the government.” She holds her cigarette above her head, and I notice her nails are painted yellow. “No one knows what he does exactly, but he’s, like, in defense or something. The guy’s never here, and Lincoln’s sister and mom live in South Dakota. So we get this pad to ourselves mostly.”
I glance at Lincoln, who’s staring out the window like he’s looking for a sniper. The back of one of his hands is covered with a tattoo that spells out “jackrabbit”—whatever that means—and he’s got more ink peeking out from the front of his shirt, almost like it’s trying to crawl up his neck.
Aspen finishes her cigarette and snubs it out. Then she stares at me until I meet her gaze. “So, D-Dub,” she says. “You like to party?”
8
Firefly
Aspen makes a phone call. Half an hour later, she announces it’s time to go. I’m already starting to feel a bit restless. When Lucille gave me my assignment to collect Charlie, there was a deadline. And Valery insinuated the same was true for this one. So far, I’ve blown two days stalling and traveling. Now that I’m finally here, I’m not sure how to proceed. This girl’s obviously got some issues, and I guess my job is to reel her in and show her how to live right. I have no idea how to do that when I can’t figure out how to do that myself.
Still, I’ll have to work something out if I want to keep my cuff and return to Charlie.
“You ready to roll?” Aspen asks. “They’re downstairs.”
I don’t know who they are, but I know for now, my best plan is to just observe Aspen. To see what’s going wrong in her life, and then somehow work through that. So I nod. “Let’s do it.”
Aspen gives a quasi-smile as Lincoln rushes forward like he’s guarding us from some unseen enemy.
When we get outside, my heart cries. It weeps. In front of me is a car so beautiful it deserves tears. It’s a black-as-death BMW 760i complete with 535 horsepower, night vision, and a TwinPower Turbo V-12 engine. Pow! I consider taking it from behind, but decide to treat her with respect just this one time.
Lincoln, Aspen, and I climb into the car as the last of the sun disappears behind the snow-capped mountains. A tall girl in the passenger seat throws us a wave, and the guy behind the steering wheel turns and grins at me. “You a friend of Miss Lockhart’s?” he asks. His teeth are bird-shit white, and his blond hair spikes up around his head like a cartoon character’s. He’s got a Miami tan and an L.A.-sized ego, and I don’t like him one bit.
“I am,” I answer. “How fast this baby pick up?”
“Zero to sixty in four-point-five.” Blond dude turns back around in his seat and pulls away from the curb.
The engine growls like a damn lion.
And I totally get wood.
…
Music bumps from all corners of the room as the party rages. For the millionth time, I check my phone. I’ve texted Charlie repeatedly since we arrived, but she hasn’t answered a single one of them. I fight the panic attack building in my chest, telling myself that Valery and Max are with her, and I have nothing to worry about.
Across the room, Aspen is drinking fast and hard. It’s not like she’s doing it to have fun. It’s like she’s doing it to lose herself. Her dark hair falls in her eyes, and she leaves it there. A hoard of guys circles around and watches her every move. In this dark room—bodies pulsing to the music—Aspen is like a firefly, capturing people’s attention, then blinking out from view. She raises a long, thin arm into the air, and those around her join in a toast. She yells something I can’t make out.
Lincoln strides over and leans against the wall nearby. “It’s those two,” he says.
I lean closer, trying to hear him over the music. “Say what?”
He nods toward Aspen. “She’s always been a little like this. But ever since those two showed up, she’s gotten even worse.”
I follow his gaze and finally see who he’s talking about—the guy who drove us here with the white smile and spiky hair, and the girl who rode along. The chick stands tall, her brunette hair pulled into a ponytail that ends just above her rear. I hadn’t paid attention to her before, but now I do. As I eye the pair, my skin buzzes with alarm. The others, they stare at Aspen because they want to know her, want a piece of her. But these two, they watch her like she’s an experiment. Like they just put beer in a dog’s water dish, and now they’re sitting back to see what happens.
My brow furrows, and I survey them closer. There’s something off about their stature. I hadn’t noticed it when I was in the car—my mind was on the Beemer’s interior—but now that I’m watching the duo, I understand why Lincoln doesn’t like them.
“How long have they been hanging around?” I ask Lincoln.
He digs his hands into the pockets of his camo jacket, jingling something. God knows what he’s got in there. “Not too long. A few days. But you see the way she is. She picks up new friends like they’re strays in an alley. Most people, she just ignores.” He tips his chin toward the group around Aspen, the ones she looks right through. “But then with others, it’s like she swallows them into herself.” When I glance back at Lincoln, he’s staring at me. “Everyone takes something from her. Money. Sex. Happiness.” His hands ball into fists. “What will you take?”
I’m thrown off guard by Lincoln’s question, and I don’t know how to answer. So I don’t. I just look back at Aspen, my thoughts of the strange pair who drove us here forgotten. Aspen crawls onto a table and raises her gloved hands into the air. All around, people push in toward her. They want to be closer. They want to touch her, to be her. Someone else watching this might think she’s a girl who has everything: beauty, cash, an industrial-strength attitude. In her eyes, there’s a lust for life. It’s what seduces her onlookers. They note the way she does what she wants, says what she wants. But I see beyond her eyes, and I know the truth. I know that behind the green
irises and potent personality, there’s emptiness.
Aspen nods toward me with an even emptier smile. Then she wraps her arms around herself and lets her head fall back.
She dances on the table, high above everyone else.
Pulling in a breath, I flip on her soul light. Just as I suspected, the remaining glow is barely noticeable amidst the standard black sin seals, and even a few colored collector seals. I wonder how she got the latter. But with her resources, she’s probably traveled the world. And something tells me Aspen enjoys hitting locations where collectors do good business—places like Las Vegas and New Orleans and Miami.
Watching her, I have no idea how I will complete this assignment. What’s more, I’m afraid this girl could easily lure me into her lair. Because this life she’s living, I know it all too well.
She looks at me, and a shiver races down my spine.
How do I liberate a girl who is exactly like me?
…
As I’m walking back to my hotel room, I’m still trying to process this assignment. I expected Aspen to have some issues, but nothing this extreme. It’s like she’s gone from this world, like she’s already dead.
I could hardly get Aspen home tonight without incident, so I have no idea how I’ll get her to wake up from this self-destructive lifestyle. I wonder if Lincoln could be a comrade in this mission. He seems to care about her, which could help my cause, but he’s also wary of me.
My mind turns to the two people who drove the BMW, Gage and Lyra, when I unlock my hotel room and go inside.
Then I forget everything else. My room is trashed.
The bedside lamp is lying on the floor. The contents of my suitcase are spread across the room. Towels are hanging from the curtains. A wastebasket is upturned on the desk. And everywhere I look are tissues. My room looks like a practical joke between friends, but I don’t have any friends in Denver.
Walking into the bathroom—and stepping over my six-hundred-dollar Olga Berluti shoes—I spot something written on the mirror.
Can you hear me now, liberator?
I stumble back and nearly fall into the bathtub. Grabbing onto the towel rack, I right myself. Then starbursts of anger dance before my eyes. Someone is messing with me. I don’t sense anything now, but I know it’s a collector. How else would they know I’m a liberator?
The question is, which collector? Is it Patrick, the scrappy bastard always eager to find favor with Lucille? Or maybe Kincaid with his beady all-seeing eyes? I consider Anthony—a gorilla of a collector—and decide it couldn’t have been him. It wouldn’t be Zack, either; he doesn’t have it in him to harass me alone. There’s one other collector it could be, but even thinking his name causes my throat to tighten.
Rector, Rector, my mind taunts.
Racing from the room, I grab my cell phone and call Charlie’s number.
“Come on, pick up. Pick up,” I mutter.
Panic fires through my body when her voicemail kicks on.
As I listen to her recorded message, I pull the ivory horn from my pocket and concentrate on where she is. Not at home, but not far from there, either. I can’t get a read on her emotions and curse the horn for not giving me more. Since I’ve already left two messages tonight, I push end and glance at the clock: 1:28 a.m.
I pace the wrecked room, wondering how quickly I can get a flight back to Alabama. I punch Valery’s number into my phone and beat my fist against my thigh as it rings.
She picks up, and her voice is muffled with sleep. “What do you want?”
“A collector has been in my room,” I bellow. “Where’s Charlie?”
I hear a faint click and gather that Red is switching on a lamp. “Charlie is at a party,” she says. “Max is there. I just spoke with him. What do you mean, a collector has been in your room?”
I glance around the floor, at the clothing and socks and boxer-briefs strewn about. “Someone threw all my crap around and left a note on the bathroom mirror.”
“Well, what does it say?”
“It says, ‘Can you hear me now, liberator?’” I drop down onto my bed. “Are you sure Charlie is all right?”
“I’m positive,” she answers. “About the note…” Red trails off like she’s thinking. I expect to hear a note of alarm in her voice, but it isn’t there. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Come again?” I say. “I don’t think I caught that last bit. It sounded like you said, ‘Don’t worry about it,’ which I know isn’t right.”
Through the phone, I hear Red sigh. “Look, sometimes I’m going to tell you to take action. And other times I’m going to tell you not to worry about it. Right now, don’t worry. We’ll handle this.”
I look around for the hidden camera, because this has to be some kind of freaking joke. “So, you guys just want to slap some liberator dargon on me and dole out pointless assignments? Well, let me tell you something, princess. I don’t roll that way.”
“You didn’t roll that way when you were a collector,” Valery says evenly. “You work for Big Guy now, and there’s a certain rank among us, just like there was in hell.”
“And my rank is…?”
“Bottom feeder,” Red says. “I’m going to bed now.”
“How can you be so dismissive? There was a collector in my room. A collector. We haven’t seen these guys in over a month, and now they’re back. Above ground. They know where I am. And they’ve probably come to steal back Charlie’s soul. Is any of this registering?”
There’s a long silence on the other end of the line. “Charlie is safe. I assure you. Finish your assignment so we can discuss you returning to Peachville.”
“Discuss me returning?” I roar. “Oh, I’m returning, Red. I’m coming back, and when I do there’s—”
“Dante, stop,” she interrupts, her voice suddenly authoritative. “I want you to listen to me very carefully. It’s crucial that you liberate this girl. Do you think Big Guy would ask you to take on this assignment after everything that happened to Charlie, and to the human, if it weren’t important?”
So she was talking about Aspen when she was on the phone at the airport. “That human that died helping us,” I say. “His name was Blue.”
“I’m going to bed,” Valery answers. “I’ve said too much.”
“You haven’t said anything useful whatsoever. Tell me why Aspen is important!” I wait for an answer before realizing—
Valery’s hung up.
Shaking with fury, I throw the phone across the room. Then I tear the blankets from my bead and hurl them toward the wall. Next, I grab the heavy overturned lamp and fling it at the television set. The shattering sound it makes upon impact sends a wave of satisfaction rolling over me.
I kick a shoe into the glass window.
I tear a fugly painting from the wall.
I yank the mattress from its frame and overturn it.
My girlfriend, who is thousands of miles away, isn’t answering my calls. I have no idea how to get a girl like Aspen to come to Jesus or why she even matters. And now Valery tells me not to worry about the collector who’s been. In. My. Room.
I send the desk onto its side, then look for something else to throw. But there’s nothing left. And though my dead heart is pounding with rage, I know this isn’t helping. I rip my shirt over my head and stride back and forth across the room bare chested.
A thought snaps into my head. I stare forward, but my eyes don’t focus on anything in particular. I’m thinking…thinking.
Or maybe it’s more like remembering.
Remembering the way Rector’s black, leathery wings sprouted from his back. And the way Kraven’s white, glowing ones hung in the air behind him. I don’t know why I visualize their wings now. Max and I have pondered them a million times over the last several weeks, and though the issue of wings didn’t seem to surprise Valery, I suspect she doesn’t know how they work.
I’ve tried in the past to conjure my own set of wings, deciding if Kraven and Rector had t
hem, maybe I did, too. I was never successful, though. But then again, I never tried while I was like this, while every nerve ending felt like it was on fire.
Growling like an earthquake, I throw my arms open wide and call out for wings. I roar, my entire body quivering. Sweat drips down my chest. Dark hair falls into my eyes. My muscles scream in pain. A burning smell fills my nose. But still I summon what I believe must be there.
And suddenly, two things happen.
My phone starts ringing, and a loud sound thunders through the room.
9
Charlie’s New Dress
Cocking my head, I realize the booming sound is someone knocking on my hotel door. But I don’t care about that. All I see is Charlie’s name lit up on my phone display. Racing across the room, I grab my cell and accept the call.
“What’s up?” I try to come off as chill, but instead sound like someone crotch-kicked me. “I’ve been calling.”
Smooth, ass clown, I think. Real smooth.
I’m new to this whole caring thing. I quickly realize that I’m not that good at it, that I’ve kind of skipped over affection and jumped right into Lifetime-movie-stalker.
“Heeeey, Mr. Walker,” she sings.
One hundred percent drunk. That’s Charlie. I know because I’m sober. How is this happening?
Some persistent bastard keeps knocking on my door, so I cross the distance and swing it open. A woman stands on the other side, her face Bloody Mary–red. She points a finger the size of a cornhusk in my face. “You need to be quiet,” she hisses.
“Oh-kay,” I snap back. Then I slam the door before she can add anything else and go sit on the overturned mattress. “Charlie,” I say into the phone, “are you all right?”
She laughs. “I’m doing real good. Annabelle and I went to a Christmas party.”
I have no idea why, but I get a sinking sensation in my stomach. “Oh, yeah? Have fun?” is what I actually say, but what I really want to ask her is, “Why are you going out? Shouldn’t you be missing me? Also, since when did you start liking parties? Thought you preferred movies at home and shit?” Because honestly, it was always me dragging her to parties, so what changed?
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