Conspiracy Boy (Angel Academy)

by Cecily White

  It tugged at my gut to see her in her Guardian garb, weapons belt at her hip and Kevlar shielding along her swollen torso. Even the Enforcement marks up the sides of her wrist stood out in shocking black contrast to her pale skin.

  She pressed the boy’s head to her chest as I scampered to my feet, the ground hard and sticky under my hands. I didn’t even want to look at what coated my palms.

  This whole thing just felt off. Too accurate to be a lie, but too strange to be true. And I really didn’t like the look on Akira’s face.

  I screamed as the air began to swirl, my mother’s body stretching into an unnatural twist. My fingers ripped at the stupid white robes and I ran toward her. Or tried, anyway. In the way of dreams, my feet felt coated in molasses and the robes clung to my body like wet toilet paper.

  “No,” I yelled. “I want to wake up. Now!”

  And that was it.

  Like a book slamming closed, the room went dark. The heavy clothes I’d been ripping at seemed to dissolve on my skin. I wasn’t even aware of my eyes popping open, my breath catching in my chest. Yet somehow, without taking a step, I had crossed the bridge back to wakefulness.

  I screamed, “Mom. Luc.”

  “Amelie, calm down. It’s just a dream.” Luc’s voice rushed over me, his hands pressed firm and cool against my shoulders, pinning me to the bed. It took me a moment to register that I’d been thrashing at my own clothes, fighting against nothing.

  Breathless and gasping, I blinked at the ceiling.

  Rough-hewn beams lined my vision in long, reassuring planks, with stacked piles of pale stones at the edges. They looked solid. Not mist. Just to be sure, I dug my fingers into Luc’s chest and pinched hard.

  “Ow.” He flopped back against the headboard, hands sliding off me with just a trace of pearlized light. His eyes held an indignant yet nervous look that made me think of a trapped wolf.

  “Don’t people usually pinch themselves to wake up?”

  “I bruise easily.”

  Luc rubbed his pectoral in protest as I lifted my palms to my forehead. The dream had left a rip-roaring headache in its wake. And as much as I valued the conscious world right now, I didn’t relish getting vertical.

  “How long was I out?”

  “A few hours, I’d guess. Your snoring woke me up.”

  “I don’t snore,” I said. “Do I?”

  Luc pulled a pillow off the pile and gently pushed it at me. “Snoring would be preferable to screaming. So, what was that all about?”

  “The dream, you mean?”

  “If you want to call it that.”

  I sat up as he pushed himself sideways on the bed, legs tucked under him in a lanky ball. It took me a second to work myself upright, then another to get why he was looking at me funny.

  Somewhere in the space between sleep hell and wakey hell, I’d managed to shred both my shirt and the bedsheets into about twelve ratty pieces. Buttons lay in random scatter patterns on the sliced-up covers, and strips of cloth clung to my skin, barely covering the ancient sports bra Annabelle had begged me to replace. Not especially slutty, but when you coupled it with the fact that I was in bed with a shirtless Luc Montaigne, things got shady fast.

  Or in this case swirly.

  I clutched the pillow tighter. “Luc, we need to talk.”

  “You realize those are a man’s least favorite words in the English language.” He leveled me with a significant look. “Followed closely by, ‘Does this dress make me look fat?’”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “How could I change the subject? We haven’t settled on one yet. For example, the topic of deforestation in South America is completely untouched.”

  “You kissed me.”

  “How about sea lion mating patterns?”

  “And I healed you. Using a bond link.”

  He snapped his fingers. “Sociopolitical unrest in the Middle East and feminist oppression.”

  I tried to smack him, but he ducked out of the way. “You kissed me, Luc. With tongue,” I repeated. “I have to tell Jack.”

  “Yes, you do,” he said, as he seized his fuzzy blanket and tromped down the stairs. “Have fun with that.”

  Bottom line, I understood exactly why he and Jack loved each other so much. Trying to deal with either of them was like relating to a well-mannered brick wall. No wonder they got along.

  “You okay?” I heard Alec ask when Luc flopped onto the couch downstairs. “Hey, did I just hear Amelie say—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Alec chuckled, clearly amused. “I know the feeling.”

  While the TV blared to life, I slammed the pillow down over my face. The whole night had shaken me. I couldn’t even tell which event won the award for most disturbing—the portal-jumping business in my closet, the interdimensional hell tour, or Luc Montaigne’s tongue down my throat. And that assumed the dream I’d just had wasn’t real. Because if it was, my disturb-o-meter was about to go ballistic.

  “Ami?” Lisa’s steps echoed on the staircase as I peeled the shirt scraps off my chest. “Wow, nice.”

  “It’s not what it looks like,” I said.

  She grinned, dumping a load of laundry onto the bed. “Nightmare?”

  “Okay, maybe it is.”

  “Here.” She tossed me a T-shirt. “It may be a little tight, but given your options, I’m thinking the locals might find this less distracting. Now, tell me about your dream.”

  I pulled on the shirt, trying to look regal. Not easy in a too-small baby tee with a glittery kitten on it. If there was any truth to the dream, then I didn’t want to tell her about it. Maybe she was all nicey-nice now, but I had no idea how long it would last. And I still didn’t know what the dream meant, so it was probably safer to just keep it quiet.

  “Got any jeans?” I asked.

  She flicked a pair of denims at my face. “They’ll be more like capris on you, but whatever. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

  I pulled on the jeans and buckled them before stripping off my skirt. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen me change clothes before. After three and a half years of combat class and about a gazillion slumber parties, there wasn’t much we hadn’t shared. But it felt weird being exposed in front of her now, knowing what she was. And what she’d done.

  “You’re welcome, by the way,” she said, sinking onto the foot of the bed. “So, are you going to tell me which one?”

  I frowned. “Which one?”

  “Which dream.” She paused to fold a few washcloths and pile them in squares on the coverlet. “Was Mom there?”

  I must have reacted, because she sat up straighter.

  “Intense, right?” She smiled. “Kind of makes you think about Dominic and Petra differently, huh?”

  “It’s probably not even true.”

  “Of course it is.” Lisa looked up from the dishtowel she was folding. “Parts of it, anyway. Dominic told me some, though his memory’s patchy. Petra filled in the gaps.”

  I frowned. “What was she doing at a Council meeting, anyway? And what about Mom?”

  “Before Petra defected with Dominic, she was a Guardian assassin, so the Council used to bring her in for interrogations and whatnot. That’s why she’s got the Elders’ mark.” Lisa made a quick scrawly motion over her wrist at the spot where Petra’s glyph mark had been.

  “So Petra’s an Elder?”

  “Not really. I mean, she’s old, yeah. But more like the Elders’ attack dog,” Lisa said. “After she took Dominic that night, she became one of their most wanted. There’s been a price on her head since before we were born.”

  It wasn’t that the news struck me as especially odd, that a political group might have employed a semi-Immortal, quasi-evil assassin. But the idea that the Guardians would have tried to use one to annihilate an entire species seemed wrong in so many ways, I couldn’t begin to count.

  “So that was all true? The Elders wanted to murder Luc’s family?”

>   Before I could start messing with the clump of unfolded laundry I’d grabbed, Lisa yanked a few pairs of Alec’s boxers off the top.

  “I’ll do those. And no, not Luc’s family. All the Immortals,” she said. “For the longest time, we thought they were like vampires—you know, humans that had been demon infected. Once the Peace Tenets were proposed—which Luc’s grandfather played a big role in, by the way—it came out that Immortals weren’t like other Inferni. They actually have angelblood in their veins. Which means they’ve been around at least as long as we have and could probably channel just as much Crossworlds power if they ever decided to turn on us.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Nope. Creepy, huh?”

  Beyond creepy, actually. I couldn’t speak.

  “Anyway, the huge cluster mess didn’t start until the Council of Elders found out about Dominic’s Society for Unaffiliated Crossworlders. He started that with the idea that every Inferni should be able to defend him or herself against demonkind so they wouldn’t be so dependent on the Guardians.”

  “So he was trying to help us.”

  “Sort of,” she said. “More like he thought we were idiots who would eventually get ourselves killed off and figured he should start prepping for that. Anyway, the Council found out and assumed Dominic was training an army. They sent Mom and Robert to bring him in.”

  “So they could torture him?”

  “Well, Mom and Robert didn’t know that. High Elder Speakman and Elder Akira had that as a private agenda. Horowitz found out about it and tapped Mom and Petra for the countermission to save Luc and Dominic.” She piled another stack of folded laundry to the side and started on the shirts. “And don’t worry. I killed Speakman years ago. He was a jerk.”

  “You killed him because he was a jerk?”

  “No, because he was Gabriel’s bloodline.”

  Right. That explained everything.

  “It’s possible I may be missing some subtleties here,” I noted. “How do you and I figure into all this?”

  “Ami, I don’t figure into anything anymore.” Lisa’s eyebrows drew together. “I wasn’t kidding before. Alec and I are out. Done. Retired.”

  “From demon fighting?”

  “From everything. Demons, prophecies, bloodthirsty Elders—you name it. We’re not interested in it.” Lisa snatched up another pair of Alec’s boxer briefs. “Every day, I have to find reasons not to hate myself for what I did last fall. Ami, I may sound like I’m over it, but I’m not. I cry every day. I pray every hour. Seriously, it almost destroyed me. The only reason I’m even bothering with this now is because of you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you.” She rolled the underpants into a Tootsie Roll–shaped tube and stacked them in a corner of the bed. “And don’t give me that look. I know what the Elders are saying, and I know Dane must have talked to you. Despite everything it cost us, Alec and I failed. The prophecy didn’t get fulfilled.”

  “But you killed Jack,” I argued.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “And he’s the last Gabrielite.”

  “That was the rumor.”

  “So? Maybe the prophecy was wrong. Maybe there’s no ‘end to the Guardian’s burden’ or whatever.” I’d been fiddling with one of Alec’s gym socks, which Lisa now matched to its pair.

  “Oh, there’s an end. The prophecy wasn’t wrong,” she said, “but it’s possible we were.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that if Immortals are angelblood, too, there’s a chance another Gabrielite could exist. We just wouldn’t know because whoever it is isn’t a Guardian.”

  A soft streak of nerves shot through my chest. The Great Books detailed all the Guardian bloodlines, which was how Lisa and Alec had gotten their original kill list—back when Thibault had recruited them to hunt down all the Gabrielites. Jack was the last of the Gabrielite warriors, which, in theory, meant the prophecy should have been done when he died. But that hadn’t happened.

  “You’re saying you think there’s an Immortal out there somewhere who needs to die before the prophecy gets triggered?”

  “I’m not saying I think that,” she told me. “I’m saying there is. And I’m saying unless you figure out who it is pronto and go spill some major blood, we’re all pretty much demon toast.”

  I nodded. Really, nodding seemed about the only thing to do at that moment, given the immense gravitas of what she’d just said.

  “I’m not going to prom this year, am I?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Never say never.”

  Chapter Fourteen:

  The Road to Nowhere

  It didn’t take long to finish the laundry and eat breakfast. Oh, and breakfast? Not just for mortals anymore. Luc’s first major foray into starchy, sweet foods proved rather shocking, since he put away—I’m not kidding—over a dozen pancakes. And not the little ones, either. Decent-sized things with a circumference bigger than my outstretched hand. With syrup. And bacon. Really undercooked bacon.

  “You done?” I asked once the second batch had been cleared and he was mopping up a glob of butter with his last squirmy bacon strip.

  He frowned but said nothing. Not that he could speak anyway with four pounds of pancakes in his mouth.

  The bus station—if you could call it that—huddled in disappointing ambiguity. More like a kiosk at the gas station lunch counter than an actual purveyor of transportation. Once we got there, Lisa waited until the boys got out of Alec’s car before she pulled me aside.

  “Ami,” she whispered, “not to sound like a broken record, but you need to get on this soon. Petra says the cracks between the worlds are widening. We won’t be able to hold our boundary much longer.”

  “You think we’re holding it now?”

  “Touché,” she said. “Also, there’s something going on inside the Guardian Council. Horowitz didn’t say what it was, but I think Arianna’s involved.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Honestly, I was too distracted by the spectacle in front of me to listen. Children stopped sucking their thumbs to stare at Alec and Luc. Women dropped their wallets. Even a few dudes started adjusting their baseball caps.

  “Are you watching this?” I asked her. “It’s hilarious.”

  “Humans are funny,” she agreed. “You should see them when he goes to the farmers market. They line up to buy his produce, no matter how tiny and pathetic it is.”

  “I hope you don’t tell him his produce is tiny and pathetic.”

  “Only when he annoys me.”

  Alec had given Luc some Salvation Army fashion so he could blend, but that effort seemed more aspirational than realistic. Even in the faded jeans and the worn Megadeth T-shirt, Luc topped Hollister model standards.

  “I wonder if it’ll be the same after,” she said.

  “After?”

  “After the cracks close. You know, when the prophecy gets fulfilled.”

  I stared at her, somewhere between confused and thoroughly confused. “Say what?”

  “Amelie, that’s what we’re talking about.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me into a shady corner of the bus station. “This is the final prophecy. The end of days. Once you kill the last Gabrielite, the cracks between the worlds will seal, and the Guardians’ jobs will be done. No more Crossworlds draw, no more Nether travel, no more demons. All our powers, nullified. We’ll be functionally human.”

  Functionally human.

  Her words echoed through my brain in a weird wish-fear loop. For part of me, it held a sentimental desire. Log cabin snuggles and firelight. Home-cooked dinners and epic sunrises on the back porch. And Jack would die for the whole roughing-it-in-the-woods gig. I mean, look at his car—it was practically made of twigs anyway.

  “Can I keep my glyph-engraved throwing knives just in case? Those puppies slice through demon skin like butter.”

  Lisa sighed, quietly rolling her eyes. “You ignore a lot of what I say, don’t you?”

  “I try.
”

  “Babe?” Alec’s voice cut into the hubbub. “Next bus leaves at eleven thirty. Through Lake Charles then to Baton Rouge with an arrival at six fifteen. That circuitous enough?”

  “When’s sunset?”

  “Five forty-two.”

  Lisa shot me a quick glance then called back, “It’ll do.”

  They waited with me and Luc until the bus rolled in shortly after eleven fifteen and a few haggard men stumbled out. They all smelled like cigarette smoke and wore baseball caps identical to Luc’s except with sweat rings around the visors.

  “This should be fun,” Luc muttered, pulling his own cap low.

  “Try not to talk to anyone until you’ve gotten through the Baton Rouge terminal. Only pay cash, always sit in the back, and don’t tell anyone where you’ve been. This is a warded zone,” Lisa warned. “But if the Council traces you back here, it won’t matter how many wards I put up. They’ll kill me. Then you’ll die, too. Understand?”

  I did understand.

  The good news was, I had no idea what town we were in, and nobody on the bus floated a chat-me-up vibe. So the possibility of leaks seemed minimal.

  As Luc loaded into the back of the bus, I gave Lisa a giant hug. It was different than the last time we’d said good-bye, when I’d gone on the run with Jack—much more complicated. But one thing remained the same. I still knew, beyond all doubt, that she was on my side.

  She always would be.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, hugging me back. “You’ll see me again.”

  “I better.”

  “You will. Now go save the world, okay?”

  I hadn’t forgiven her for what she’d done—lying to me and killing all those people. Maybe it was a necessity, like she’d said. Maybe not. It didn’t matter. Bottom line, she was my sister and I loved her. Nothing would change that.

  We held each other for a minute longer before Alec pried us apart. He pressed a couple of twenties into my hand and pushed me on to the bus. “Watch your back, kiddo. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”