“I think we should throw a Halloween party here,” she announced.
I snorted and set down my milk glass. “No offense, but we’re not big into parties in this family.”
Mom’s whole face lit up. “I think it’s a wonderful idea, Marcie. We haven’t hosted a party here since Harrison passed. I could swing by the party store later today and see what they have for decorations.”
I looked to Scott for help, but he merely shrugged. “Could be cool.”
“You have a milk mustache,” I told him tartly in return.
He wiped it on the back of his hand . . . then wiped it on my arm.
“Eeew!” I shrieked, giving him a shove to the shoulder.
“I think we should have a theme. Like famous couples throughout history, and tell everyone to come in pairs,” Marcie said.
“Hasn’t that been done before,” I said, “like a million times?”
“The theme should be favorite character from the Halloween movies,” Scott said with a sadistic grin.
“Whoa. Back up. Everyone just . . . chill,” I said, holding my hands out in a Stop motion. “Mom, you realize we’d have to clean the whole house, right?”
Mom gave an insulted laugh. “The house isn’t that dirty, Nora.”
“Is it BYOB, or are we providing?” Scott asked.
“No beer,” my mom and I chimed in unison.
“Well, I like the famous couples idea,” said Marcie, clearly having made up her mind. “Scott, we should go together.”
Scott didn’t miss a beat. “Could I be Michael Myers and you be one of the babysitters I mutilate?”
“No,” Marcie said. “We’re going as Tristan and Isolde.”
I stuck my tongue out. “Way to be original.”
Scott kicked my leg playfully. “Well, hello there, Little Miss Cheerful.”
I think it’s pretty frivolous to be planning a Halloween party when we’re right in the middle of Cheshvan, I said critically to his thoughts. Fallen angels might be holding their breath, but not for long. We both know war is brewing, and everyone is expecting me to do something about it. So forgive me if I seem a little cranky!
Fair enough, Scott returned. But maybe the party will help take your mind off things.
Are you seriously considering going with Marcie?
A smile surfaced on his lips. You think I should go with you instead?
I think you should go with Vee.
Before I could gauge Scott’s reaction, Marcie said, “Let’s go to the party store together, Mrs. Grey. And we can stop by the stationery store afterward so I can look for invitations. I want something spooky and festive, but cutesy, too.” She bobbed her shoulders and gave a squeal. “This is going to be so much fun!”
“Who are you going to ask to the party, Nora?” my mom asked.
I pursed my lips, unable to come up with the right answer. Scott was taken, Dante wouldn’t do—it would help fuel our relationship rumor, but I wasn’t in the mood—and my mom detested Patch. Worse, I was supposed to hate his guts. We were immortal enemies as far as the outside world was concerned.
I didn’t want to be included in this party. I had bigger problems. I had a vengeful archangel after me; I was the leader of an army, but lacked direction—despite my pact with the archangels, I was starting to feel like war might not only be inevitable, it just might be the right move; my best friend was keeping secrets, and speculating about their nature was keeping me up at night; and now this. A Halloween party. In my own home. Where I’d be expected to play hostess.
Marcie smirked. “Anthony Amowitz has a crush on you.”
“Ooh, tell me more about Anthony,” Mom prodded.
Marcie loved a good story, and she launched right into this one. “He was in our PE class last year. Every time we played softball, he played catcher and would gawk at Nora’s legs the whole time she was at bat. He couldn’t catch a single pitch, he was so distracted.”
“Nora does have lovely legs,” Mom teased me.
I hitched my thumb at the stairs. “I’m going to my room to bang my head against the wall a few thousand times. Anything has to be better than this.”
“You and Anthony could be Scarlett and Rhett,” Marcie called after me. “Or Buffy and Angel. What about Tarzan and Jane?”
That night I left my window cracked, and just after midnight, Patch crawled inside. He smelled earthy, like the woods, as he slid quietly into bed beside me. Even though I would have preferred to meet him in the open, there was something undeniably sexy about our secret rendezvous.
“I brought you something,” he said, setting a brown paper sack on my tummy.
I sat up and peeked inside. “A caramel apple from Delphic Beach!” I grinned. “No one makes them better. And you even got one dipped in coconut flakes—my favorite.”
“It’s a get-well present. How’s the wound doing?”
I lifted my nightshirt, showing him the good news myself. “All better.” The last of the blue discoloration had vanished a few hours ago, and as soon as it had, the wound had healed almost instantly. Only the palest ribbon of a scar remained.
Patch kissed me. “That is good news.”
“Any sign of Blakely?”
“No, but it’s only a matter of time.”
“Have you sensed him following you?”
“No.” An edge of frustration crept into his tone. “But I’m sure he’s keeping tabs on me. He needs the knife back.”
“Devilcraft is changing all the rules, isn’t it?”
“It’s forcing me to be inventive, I’ll give it that.”
“Did you bring Blakely’s knife with you?” I eyed his pockets, which looked empty.
He lifted his shirt just high enough to reveal the handle sticking out of his leather belt. “Never let it out of my sight.”
“Are you sure he’ll come for it? Maybe he’s calling your bluff. Maybe he knows the archangels aren’t as straitlaced as we all thought they were, and he knows he can get away with devilcraft.”
“It’s a possibility, but I don’t think so. The archangels are good at hiding things, particularly from Nephilim. I think Blakely is scared, and I think he’s going to make a move soon.”
“What if he brings backup? What if it’s you and me against twenty of them?”
“He’ll come alone,” Patch said confidently. “He screwed up, and he’s going to try to salvage this mess privately. Knowing how valuable he is to the Nephilim, there’s no way he was allowed to attend a football game by himself. I’m betting Blakely sneaked out. Worse, he left behind a knife enchanted with devilcraft. He’s sweating this, and he knows he has to fix it before anyone finds out. I’m going to use his fear and desperation to our advantage. He knows we’re still together. I’ll make him swear an oath not to breathe a word of our relationship, and I’ll tell him he won’t get the knife back until he does.”
I loosened a presliced wedge from the caramel apple and bit it in half. Might as well fake calm.
“Anything else?” Patch asked.
“Hmm . . . yeah. During training this morning, Dante and I were interrupted by a few fallen angel thugs.” I shrugged. “We hid until they went away, but you can tell Cheshvan has everyone’s blood heated up. You wouldn’t happen to know a skinny fallen angel with markings all over his chest, would you? This made the second time I’ve seen him.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. But I’ll keep my eyes sharp. You sure you’re all right?”
“Positive. In other news, Marcie’s throwing a Halloween party here at the farmhouse.”
Patch smiled. “Grey-Millar family dramar fo;m?”
“The theme is famous couples from history. Could she be any less original? Worse, she’s roped my mom into this. They went shopping for decorations today. For three whole hours. It’s like they’re suddenly best friends.” I picked up another apple slice and made a face at it. “Marcie is ruining everything. I wanted Scott to go with Vee, but Marcie already convinced him to go with her.”
Patch’s smile widened.
I aimed my best sulky look at him. “This isn’t funny. Marcie is destroying my life. Whose side are you on anyway?”
Patch raised his hands in surrender. “I’m staying out of this.”
“I need a date for the stupid thing. I need to upstage Marcie,” I added on a spark of inspiration. “I want a hotter guy on my arm, and I want a better costume. I’m going to come up with something a million times better than Tristan and Isolde.” I gazed at Patch hopefully.
He merely looked at me. “We can’t be seen together.”
“You’d be in costume. Think of it as a challenge to be really sneaky. You have to admit, all this sneaking around is kind of hot.”
“I don’t do costume parties.”
“Pretty please with a cherry on top?” I batted my lashes.
“You’re killing me.”
“I know of only one guy who is better-looking than Scott. . . .” I let the idea tempt his ego.
“Your mom isn’t going to let me step foot inside this place. I’ve seen the gun she keeps on the top shelf of the pantry.”
“Again, you’ll be in disguise, silly. She won’t know it’s you.”
“You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”
“Nope. What do you think of John Lennon and Yoko Ono? Or Samson and Delilah? Robin Hood and Maid Marian?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Ever consider Patch and Nora?”
I laced my fingers over my stomach and eyed the ceiling deviously. “Marcie is going down.”
Patch’s cell phone rang, and he looked at the readout. “Unknown number,” he murmured, and my blood chilled.
“Do you think it’s Blakely?”
“One way to find out.” He answered the phone, his voice calm but not inviting. Right away, I felt Patch’s body tense beside mine, and I knew it had to be Blakely. The call lasted only a handful of seconds.
“It’s our guy,” Patch told me. “He wants to meet. Now.”
“That’s it? It almost feels too easy.”
Patch locked eyes with me, and I knew there was more. I couldn’t quite interpret his expression, but the way he watched me made anxiety bubble up inside me. “If we give him the knife, he’ll give us the antidote.”
“What antidote?” I asked.
“When he stabbed you, he infected you. He didn’t say with what. He only said if you don’t get the antidote soon—” He broke off, swallowing. “He said you’re going to regret it. We both are.”
CHAPTER 17
HE’S BLUFFING. IT’S A TRAP. HE’S TRYING TO make us panic so we’ll be too busy concentrating on whatever fictitious disease he put inside me to play this smart.” I jumped out of bed and paced my room. “Oh, he’s good. Real good. I say we call him back and tell him he’ll get the knife after he swears an oath to stop using devilcraft. That’s a trade I’ll agree to.”
“And if he’s not lying?” Patch asked quietly.
I didn’t want to think about that. If I did, I’d play right into Blakely’s hands. “He is,” I said with more conviction. “He was Hank’s protégé, and if Hank was good at one thing, it was lying. I’m sure the vice rubbed off. Call him back. Tell him there’s no deal. Tell him my wound has healed, and if there was anything wrong with me, we’d know by now.”
“This is devilcraft we’re talking about. It doesn’t play by the rules.” There was both worry and frustration behind Patch’s words. “I don’t think we can make assumptions, and I don’t think we can risk underestimating him. If he did anything to hurt you, Angel . . .” A muscle in Patch’s jaw contracted with emotion, and I feared he was doing exactly what Blakely wanted. Thinking with his anger and not with his head.
“Let’s wait this out. If we’re wrong, and I don’t think we are, but if that’s the case, Blakely is still going to want the knife back two, four, six days from now. We’re holding the cards. If we begin to suspect that he really did infect me with something, we’ll call him. He’ll still meet us, because he needs the knife. We have nothing to lose.”
Patch didn’t look sold. “He said you’d need the antidote soon.”
“Notice how vague soon sounds. If he was telling the truth, he’d have a more specific time frame.” My bravery wasn’t an act. Not one part of me believed Blakely was being forthright. My wound had healed, and I’d never felt better. He hadn’t injected me with a disease. I wasn’t going to fall for that. And it frustrated me that Patch was being so cautious, so gullible. I wanted to stick to our original plan: drag Blakely in and curtail the production of devilcraft. “Did he set up a meeting place? Where did he want to make the switch?”
“I’m not going to tell you,” Patch answered in a calm, measured tone.
I flinched in confusion. “Sorry. What did you just say?”
Patch walked over and cupped his hands around the back of my neck. His expression was immovable. He was serious—he intended to hold out on wopeuo; me. He might as well have slapped me, the betrayal stung that bad. I couldn’t believe he was going against me on this. I started to turn away, too enraged to speak, but he caught me by the wrist.
“I respect your opinion, but I’ve been doing this a lot longer,” he said, his voice low and serious and heartfelt.
“Don’t patronize me.”
“Blakely isn’t a nice guy.”
“Thanks for the tip,” I said bitingly.
“I wouldn’t put it past him to infect you with something. He’s been messing around with devilcraft far too long to have any sense of decency or humanity left. It has hardened his heart and put ideas into his mind—crafty, malicious, dishonorable ideas. I don’t think he’s making blind threats. He sounded sincere. He sounded dead set on carrying out every threat he spoke. If I don’t meet him tonight, he’ll throw away the antidote. He’s not afraid of showing us what kind of man he is.”
“Then let’s show him who we are. Tell me where he wants to meet. Let’s grab him and bring him in for questioning,” I challenged. I glanced at the clock. Five minutes had passed since Patch ended the call. Blakely wouldn’t wait all night. We had to get going—we were wasting time.
“You’re not meeting Blakely tonight, end of story,” Patch said.
I hated how infuriatingly alpha he was being about this. I deserved an equal say, and he was brushing me aside. He didn’t care about my opinion—that was just a thinly veiled platitude. “We’re going to miss our chance to catch him!” I argued.
“I’m going to make the trade, and you’re staying here.”
“How can you say that? You’re letting him call the shots! What has happened to you?”
His eyes locked with mine. “I thought it was quite obvious, Angel. Your health is more important than getting answers. There will be another time to get Blakely.”
My mouth hung open, and I shook my head from side to side. “If you walk out of here without me, I’ll never forgive you.” A strong threat, but I believed I meant it. Patch had promised we were a team from now on. If he cut me out now, I’d view it as a betrayal. We’d been through too much for him to coddle me now.
“Blakely is already on edge. If anything feels off, he’ll run, and there goes our antidote. He said he wanted to meet me alone, and I’m going to honor his request.”
I shook my head fiercely. “Don’t make this about Blakely. This is about you and me. You said we’d be a team from now on. This is about what we want—not what he wants.”
There was a knock at my bedroom door, and I snapped, “What?”
Marcie pushed the door open and stood in the entrance, arms folded snugly over her chest. She was wearing a baggy old tee and boxer shorts. Not what I pictured Marcie wearing to bed. I would have expected more pink, more lace, more skin.
“Who are you talking to?” she wanted to know, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. “I can hear you yapping all the way down the hall.”
I swiveled my attention back to Patch, but it was just Marcie and me left in my bedroom. Patch had va
nished.
I snatched a pillow off my bed and flung it against the wall.
Sunday morning I woke with a strange, insatiable hunger clawing at my belly. I pushed myself out of bed, skipped the bathroom, and headed straight to the kitchen. I opened the fridge, eyeing the shelves greedily. Milk, fruit, leftover beef stroganoff. Salad, cheese slices, Jell-O salad. None of it looked remotely appealing, and yet my stomach twisted with hunger pangs. I stuck my head in the pantry, raked my eyes up and down the shelves, but every last item had the appeal of chewing polyester. My unaccountable cravings intensified at the lack of food, and I started to feel nauseated.
It was still dark out, a few minutes before five, and I lugged myself back to bed. If I couldn’t eat my pains away, I’d sleep them off. Trouble was, my head felt perched on a Tilt-A-Whirl, vertigo reeling me up in its madness. My tongue was dry and swollen with thirst, but the thought of sipping something even as bland as water made my insides threaten to heave in revolt. I briefly wondered if this could be an aftereffect of the stabbing, but I was too uncomfortable to do much thinking.
I spent the next several minutes rolling around, trying to find the coolest part of my sheets for relief, when a silky voice whispered in my ear, “Guess what time it is?”
I let out a genuine groan. “I can’t train today, Dante. I’m sick.”
“Oldest excuse in the book. Now get out of bed,” he said, swatting my leg.
My head hung over the side of the mattress, and I eyed his shoes. “If I throw up on your feet, will you believe me?”
“I’m not that squeamish. I want you outside in five. If you’re late, you’ll make it up to me. An extra five miles for every tardy minute sounds about fair.”
He left, and it took all my motivation and then some to drag myself out of bed. I laced up my shoes slowly, locked in a battle with raging hunger attacking me from one side, and sharp vertigo from the other.
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