Brielle’s nightmare was far too detailed to be just a nightmare. Too specific. Too terrible.
Jake has very little experience with visions and prophetic dreams. He’s heard stories, of course, read accounts in Scripture, but such things are less prolific now, it seems, less common than they used to be. He needs to talk to Canaan, but he’s been gone all night. So Jake sits up, hoping to catch him before the barbecue, hoping they have some time to discuss Brielle’s dream.
And Marco. Jake didn’t realize just how much Marco remembered about the night at the warehouse. It seems doubt didn’t shroud everything.
“I see him every night,” Marco said. “I see him laughing and clapping. Mocking the children he came to purchase. And then, right before I have the chance to show him what it’s like to be victimized, he disappears. Just like he did that night. You remember that, don’t you? Him disappearing. You remember that?”
He and Brielle sat in silence while Marco ranted. They dodged questions. They didn’t dare look at one another. But Jake’s certain Marco won’t let this go. As yet, he hasn’t been able to locate a last name for Henry, but it’s not for lack of trying. Jake stares into the darkness and wonders just how big a mission this has become.
If Brielle’s dream holds any truth, Javan’s out there somewhere. In Portland, most likely. Just hours away, reunited with Henry and terrorizing a young girl. Which means Canaan’s intel is faulty. And if his intel on Javan is faulty, who’s to say Damien is still suffering the pit?
Suddenly the dagger is so much more significant than the missing ring.
12
Brielle
I have mixed feelings about the Fourth of July. Both Dad and Olivia are going to be there, and that can’t mean good things for Jake and me, but I don’t want to deal with them alone, so I drag Jake along.
And Canaan.
And since Olivia is going, Helene decides she’ll get some sun as well. The first time I met Helene, she was yanking me out of a warehouse full of abducted children and tucking me beneath her wings. Like Canaan, she’s assigned to Stratus. Assigned to me.
Marco’s also a reluctant participant in the Independence Day festivities.
“I’m not really a sunshine kind of guy,” he says.
Cue every vampire joke I can come up with—and I’ve read all the books, seen all the movies. Eventually I shame Marco into getting some sun.
Jake hauls him down to Main Street to grab some sunblock and a pair of shorts—something that takes them far longer than is reasonable in any city, big or small. I wait outside, sitting on Slugger’s hood in a pair of shorts and a Bohemian-looking swimsuit cover-up. I’ve also got the halo on my wrist. It’s a ridiculous-looking thing to wear to the lake, and I fully expect Dad to give me grief, but I’m determined to nap in the sun today, and I’ll do whatever it takes to stave off those nightmares.
It’s another fifteen minutes before Jake and Marco make their way to the car. I’m tempted to make fun of them—call them girls or something—but they look like they’re bonding, and Marco needs that. I huddle them into the car and drive up a block to Jelly’s to meet the rest of our party.
Jelly’s is an old diner of the greasy spoon variety. A giant grape jelly jar sitting atop its stainless steel structure is the first thing you see when driving onto Main Street. Neon purple lights spell out Jelly’s on the jar and run like racing stripes around the center of the building. When Kaylee’s not at the community center, she’s here helping her Aunt Delia, who owns the place.
I pull Slugger up to the curb, just feet away from Canaan and Helene. The two Shields sit side by side on a weathered wooden bench outside the diner. Canaan, with his broad shoulders and chiseled jaw, one leg crossed over the other; Helene, a lovely heart-shaped face framed by auburn hair, her hands resting gently on her knees. So different, but with so much in common. There’s the obvious, those striking silver eyes, but it’s more than that. It’s the look on their faces as they converse. It’s that incorrigible interest they have in every single interaction. I watch as they talk, their heads bent close, their lips moving intently. It’s like they understand the gravity of the present. That every moment has meaning.
Jake opens my door and offers his hand. “You all right there?”
“Just daydreaming.”
Our flip-flops smack the pavement, pulling the angels from their counsel.
“Marco, this is Helene,” Jake says. “She and Canaan go way back.”
“Yeah, we’ve met, haven’t we?” Marco steps onto the curb and takes her hand, his eyes lingering on the connection. “When I was here before? Or wait. No . . .”
Helene slides her dainty hand away, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re from Portland, right?”
“Born and raised,” Marco says.
“I’ve spent some time there. We could have run into one another.”
“Huh.” Marco tilts his head, blinking at her like she’s too bright, or like he’s got something stuck in his eye.
She turns to me, unfazed by the awkwardness. “Where’s your dad?”
“Picking up Olivia.” I don’t make a face or growl when I say her name. In fact, I do my very best to keep my irritation to myself. “They’ll meet us there.”
“And you know where we’re going?” Canaan asks.
“Not the foggiest. We’re following these guys,” I say, gesturing to the comedy act making their way onto Main.
Kaylee has tugged Delia out of the diner and locked the door behind her. “Don’t even think about it!”
“This might be one of them times when waving a white flag is your best option,” Delia says, screwing her sunhat in place.
“Not a chance,” Kaylee says. “You’re going.”
“Humph. You think I’m a difficult boss, you just wait. I’m going to make one needy sunbather.”
“Fine. Be needy, but you’re coming.” Kaylee gets behind her and pushes Delia toward our circle.
“Oh, you unleashed it now, girl. I’m talking little umbrella drinks and foot rubs and . . .”
Jake makes the introductions.
“I know who this boy is,” Delia says, tugging Marco toward her large chest and squeezing him tight. “I watch the news. I’ve been praying for you, boy.”
“She doesn’t pray,” Kaylee whispers.
“I do. Sometimes.”
“Well, thank you,” Marco says, pulling away and straightening his shirt. “I’ve done some praying myself of late.”
“You’re riding with us,” Delia says, grabbing his elbow. “He’s riding with us, Jake-y boy. You just follow. Kaylee knows where we’re going. Right? You know where we’re going? Yes. She does. We’ll get you there.”
Marco is hauled away, looking amused and slightly panicked. We should have helped him, or at least prepared him for the cataclysmic event that is Delia.
“Think he’ll survive?” I ask.
Helene pulls her hair into a ponytail. “He’s survived worse.”
Dad and Olivia are already at the lake when we arrive. They’ve managed to avoid the crowds gathered for the annual fireworks display and still found a picnic area not far from the water. A couple tables positioned on the hard-packed dirt and flanked on three sides by a shaded wood. It’s kind of perfect.
Canaan and Helene duck into the trees. “Just checking things out,” Canaan says. “Be back in a sec.”
I throw a towel over my shoulder. “He’s been ‘checking things out’ a lot lately.”
“You just used air quotes,” Jake says, closing my door.
“Kaylee doesn’t own them.”
Marco joins us. “That is one heck of a woman,” he says.
“Sorry, we should have—”
“Let me sulk away the holiday in a darkened room? Na. Delia—that’s her name, right?—Delia, she’s crazy, but she’s a good audience. I got this.”
Dad’s already grilling, a plate of hot dogs at his elbow, tongs in one hand and a beer in the other. I can’
t help but notice the three empty bottles at his feet. I resist the urge to check my phone for the time, but I know it’s not yet noon.
“Hey, Dad,” I say, kissing his cheek.
Jake steers clear. He and Marco walk down to the water while Kaylee does whatever she can to make Delia comfortable, which apparently includes some sort of plastic pool float positioned precariously close to the water on the lava rock that surrounds the lake.
I can’t imagine that ending well.
I step away from the barbecue, shielding my eyes from the sun. The lake is smooth, like glass, like a mirror reflecting the periwinkle sky. It’s strange to see Marco out of place. He’s so at ease in the city, surrounded by cement and brick and grungy coffeehouses. But the lake seems to truly freak him out. He places a foot in the water and then yanks it out. With all the snow runoff, I know it’s freezing, but Jake’s having none of that. He wraps his arms around Marco’s chest and hauls him out into the water. Marco’s a few inches taller, but there’s no doubt who’d dominate a wrestling match. With a testosterone-fueled grunt, Jake throws him. Marco lands with a water explosion that has Delia protesting. She waves her arms, demanding Kaylee move her farther from the water. Marco comes up sputtering and laughing and promising revenge.
I spent last Independence Day on a bus traveling from St. Tropez to Paris. It was hot and crowded and smelled like armpits. This beats that by miles and miles. I inhale the spicy woods and the musk of water deep into my chest. Today has potential.
And then I catch Dad glaring over my shoulder at the splashing, laughing boys, his face murderous. I wrap my arms around his waist, and he breathes a little easier, patting my back, splattering beer down my shirt.
“Dad!”
“Sorry, baby,” he says, mopping me with his apron.
I hate when he drinks like this. Hate it. He gets forgetful and clumsy and—his eyes are back on Jake—he gets vicious.
“It’s fine, Dad.” I push him away and back toward the barbecue. The back of my swimsuit cover-up is drenched, so I pull it off and readjust the suit underneath. “Where’s Olivia?”
“Round here somewhere,” he says, flipping a dog blistering on the grill. “Looking for cell reception.”
“Ah.”
I grab a soda from the ice chest and climb up on the picnic table.
“I wish you liked her,” Dad says, bringing me a hot dog.
I could say I’ll try, but I’m not going to lie to him.
Still, I’m not going to start a fight either.
“I do too, Dad.”
When Canaan and Helene return, I’m stretched out in a perfect patch of sunlight. Helene lays her towel next to mine. She’s humming. Always humming. Canaan splashes into the water, rescuing Marco. He sweeps Jake from his feet and throws him farther, much farther than any human I’ve ever met is capable of throwing a person.
Dad steps into my sun, shading my face. “Holy . . . Did you see that?”
Kaylee and Delia clap and cheer. Marco’s eyes are huge, like perfectly round, perfectly green planets. Jake emerges, shaking his head and paddling in.
“Yeah. Um.”
“He’s a circus freak, isn’t he?” Helene says, perched on her elbows. “I’ve always thought so.”
Dad stumbles back, dropping to his bum on the dirt. “Yeah. Circus freak.”
Olivia doesn’t return until Delia’s slicing up her famous apple pie. By then Dad’s so sloshed, sprawled across a lounge chair, he hardly notices her presence. Still, she sits next to him, her pretty face tense.
“You all right, Liv?” Kay asks, dishing up the pie.
“Oh sure,” she says, tucking her phone into her pocket. “People are a disappointment sometimes, but it’s nothing a little sun can’t cure.”
“Liv?” Marco’s sitting in a beach chair under a covering of trees on the opposite side of the picnic area from Dad and Olivia. Clothed in a dry shirt, he’s been reading, lost in Ali’s journal for the last half hour, but now he stands and crosses the picnic area. “Liv? Olivia Holt?”
She sits up, startled. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”
“It’s Marco. Marco James. Benson Elementary.”
Her face softens, and she looks almost childlike. “Marco? Oh my gosh!” She jumps from her chair and embraces him, laughing and . . . Is she crying?
“How long has it been?” she asks.
“A lifetime, I think.”
She squeals again, and suddenly it’s not hard to believe she’s younger than she looks.
“I didn’t see that coming,” Jake whispers. Dad’s started to snore, so he’s brave and takes a seat next to me. “Did you?”
“Not in a million billion years,” Kaylee answers, gape-mouthed, apple pie stuck to her cheek.
Kicking up a cloud of dirt, Marco drags his chair over to Olivia’s and they talk. And talk. Somehow Marco doesn’t look so out of place next to her, and she looks substantially less like Cruella de Vil. Engaged in conversation with an old friend, her plastic smile’s been replaced with something genuine, something wholesome. I run a finger over the halo on my wrist, unsure how to reconcile my bipolar impressions of her and the halo’s strange warning.
I lose track of them after that. We eat pie and play cards. Delia is remarkably good at rummy and Canaan is not, which is kind of hilarious. Jake’s not any better. Tired of losing, he takes my hand and drags me down to the water.
I don’t complain.
13
Brielle
The sun’s low in the sky now. It’s cut a yellow boulevard across the lake. So beautiful, so clear. I can imagine stepping out onto it. I can imagine walking on water.
But when my toes touch the rippling current, my feet sink into mud.
“Let’s walk,” Jake says.
I’ve still got my ratty jean shorts on over my suit, and the smell of sunblock is everywhere. Jake’s chest is golden in the evening sun, his hair ruffled and loose. It’s like a vacation being with him like this.
“You’re staring at me,” he says.
I’d blush, but we’re so far past that. “I am.”
“That could make a lesser man feel uncomfortable.”
I laugh. “But not you?”
“Definitely not me. Please stare away. In fact”—he stops and steps in front of me—“let me return the favor.”
An impromptu stare-off. Awesome. I am so not going to lose.
Jake keeps his gaze on me, but he moves it from my eyes to my lips and then to the hair tucked behind my ear. It isn’t until he bites his lip and waggles his eyebrows that I realize just how hard he’s flirting, how hard he’s trying to win. A laugh bubbles in my stomach, but I shut it down and set to examining his face further. Not at all an unpleasant task.
Sweat curls the hair around his face. Some of it catches in his sideburns, in the scruff he’s not shaven. Other strands tangle in his long black lashes—lashes that send shadows spilling across his cheekbones. His lips are wet, that lower one still stuck between his teeth. I let my eyes trail to the hollow at his throat. And that’s when he grabs my shoulders and pulls me to him. That’s when his lips crush mine. Electrified little bugs crawl from my bare toes to the crown of my head. I close my eyes and press closer, the luckiest girl on the planet.
It’s a solid minute before I realize my mistake.
“I win,” Jake says, his lips still touching mine.
My eyes snap open. Triumph gleams back at me from his.
“Cheater.”
My feet are still in the lake, the moon joining the sun overhead, a dock materializing out of the water in the distance. We head toward it, three hundred and thirteen steps without talking. I like that we can do that. I like that we don’t have to fill every silence. But the farther we walk, the heavier the silence seems to be.
“It bothers you that I know when you’re scared, doesn’t it? Bothers you that I can see your fear.”
The dock is before us now and Jake steps onto it, pulling me up after him. “It’s
not that I didn’t know you could see it, Elle. I just thought . . . I thought I was managing it better than I am, I guess.”
“You mean hiding it.”
We’re at the end of the dock now, the water sloshing gently against the wooden beams below. Crickets fill the air, but Jake is quiet.
“I wish you wouldn’t. Hide them, I mean. Your fears are the only ones I feel remotely equipped to handle.”
“See, that concerns me.”
“What?”
Jake drops to the dock and I sit with him, our feet dangling over.
“The other day you were talking about fear being everywhere and I just . . . I realized how little I’ve done to help you. To prepare you.”
“Jake . . .”
“You can do more than handle fear, Elle. You can destroy it.”
I almost laugh. Sitting here in my bathing suit, perched next to the water like a cattail, I couldn’t feel less like a warrior. But Jake continues.
“Think about the warehouse. Think about the child, Ali.”
His change of subject takes me by surprise.
“I think about her all the time,” I say. Of all the children locked away in Damien’s warehouse, she’s the one I find myself wondering about the most. Her name is a ghostly reminder of my Ali, my friend, killed by the same man who took her hostage. Something inside me warms at the thought of her, free and mending somewhere.
But when we first met the child, there was no guarantee. She was terrified, shaking, her dirty face smeared with fear. And then Jake spoke hope. He promised her a way out, and the fear dissolved, evaporating into the heat and light of the Celestial.
“It takes a word. A touch. A prayer. You were created to be a light. So be that to the scared and broken. Be that, and watch what happens to fear.”
Starlight appears in the water below. I watch as, one light at a time, the darkness of the glassy lake reflects the beauty overhead. “It’s overwhelming sometimes.”
Broken Wings (An Angel Eyes Novel) Page 8
