A Slither of Hope

by Lisa M Basso

  Cam slid in beside me, his sleeve brushing mine. “Tom Evans. What’s his condition?”

  The white-blue light emanating from his eyes bounced off the nurse’s. His influence was switching on. She fished a clipboard from a stack alongside her and flipped to the first page. “He’s being prepped for surgery. He has cerebral edema, bruising of the brain. They have to remove part of his skull. The hope is this will relieve some of the pressure. There are risks. With this type of injury, many complications can arise.” She blinked blankly, waiting for further instructions.

  “Good, thank you,” Cam said. “The instant you hear something, we’ll be in the waiting room.”

  The woman’s nod was as flat as the look on her face.

  Surgery. Part of his skull. I took in the information, processing it with a deep breath.

  “Come with me.” Cam slid his fingers into my palm and I noticed the lights from his eyes were gone. We exited the spaceship doors and rounded the corner away from the waiting room and into the stairwell.

  The eggshell-colored door clicked closed behind us. The industrial-style stairs were cold, tight. In order for Cam and I to both fit on the landing, we had to be close. So close the back of our hands touched, and my knee bumped his while I was trying to avoid looking up at him.

  “What is it?” I asked, straightening my shoulders, showing him he could not only trust me, but that I could handle whatever he had to say. Even if I probably couldn’t.

  “Your father wasn’t in an accident.”

  I rocked back. Good thing we were forced so close together that my back was already against the wall. “My superiors believe there was malicious intent behind his injury.”

  “What kind of malicious intent?” My voice didn’t sound like my own. It sounded stronger.

  “The kind brought on by pure evil.”

  “My dad was attacked?”

  Cam’s eyes lowered, just for an instant before he forced them back up to meet mine. “Yes. We strongly believe the Fallen are behind this.”

  A tidal wave crashed over the command I had left over my emotions. “You were supposed to be keeping an eye on him. How could you have let this happen?” The boy—angel—I thought could do no wrong had failed me. Water blurred my vision, making Cam and his glorious white wings look like they were swimming, or, more appropriately, drowning.

  “I’m so, so sorry, Rayna.” His face resembled a sad puppy. “I tried. I won’t give you any excuses, you know that. But know it won’t happen again.”

  “How can you say that?” And how could I believe it?

  “I’m here to make sure of it. I’m here to protect him.”

  There could have been ears anywhere in the hospital, even in this stairway, especially if Dad was attacked. My hands shook. It took everything I had not to punch him the way I’d wanted to deck Kade so many times before. I never thought Cam could ever elicit that emotion from me. “Protect him? In an official capacity?”

  I kept my eyes on a gouge in the wall beside Cam’s head. His nod was so brief I almost missed it. “We can talk about this later, now—”

  White-hot anger burned through my earlier insistence that we keep quiet. If he thought he was going to placate me by postponing my reaction, he had another thing coming. “This is your fault. If you had kept your promise—if you’d let me… do what I needed to do in the first place my dad wouldn’t be lying on an operating table fighting for his life.” If he and Kade hadn’t stopped me from willingly going into Hell with Azriel to protect my family, my dad would be safe. Everyone else would be fine. In that scenario, I guess it would have been me needing the help. Not that that meant squat now.

  His eyes tightened, the small gesture changing his face so much, turning it hard and unyielding. His voice was low when he spoke, each word wound tightly like a coiled snake. “Getting out of Hell isn’t exactly easy, and even if we somehow managed to get to you, you may not have survived the escape. Everything outside the world you know is dangerous and teeming with rules you wouldn’t understand.”

  I pressed the flats of my palms into the wall behind me. Hearing him talk like that made me want to turn my head away and close my eyes to block out the words. Once I was sure all the sweat had transferred to the wall, I shifted, pushing off Cam’s chest. “It doesn’t matter if I didn’t survive. The people I care about would have been safe. Because now they’re not, right? Now even Laylah could be in danger?” I didn’t intend for it to come out as a question.

  His breath huffed out. “You’re being reckless. Your life—human life—is such a gift. It should be treasured, not thrown away.”

  There was more to what he was saying. The feeling he put into those two sentences almost made my eyes water again, but I kept my tear ducts in check, completely out-of-order. That he conveniently skipped over my question regarding my sister’s safety didn’t get past me.

  “This isn’t over, not by a long shot, but I have a sister to deliver bad news to.” Without missing a beat I threw open the stairwell door and stormed down the hallway.

  Laylah’s head popped up when I re-entered the waiting room, her hydrangea-blue eyes bright with hope—Dad’s hydrangea-blue eyes. Once she saw it was me she withered a little, not enough for most people to notice, but I remembered that look from our childhood. It had something to do with Mom, though what, I couldn’t place. She immediately returned to texting.

  I slid into the chair next to her, and fought every instinct to look over her shoulder and read her messages. Training my eyes forward, I reminded myself she had a right to her privacy, everyone did—Dad invading mine made me realize that.

  I repeated what the nurse had said. She nodded. And we sat there in silence.

  Cam returned not too long after with an apple in each hand. One green and one red. He chose the safer seat, next to Laylah, and handed her the green apple. The second he touched down, she pocketed her cell—the former phone Dad had forced on me—and smiled at him weakly. I hadn’t seen that broken smile since Mom’s funeral. Cam reached across my sister to offer me the red one. I kept my eyes forward and shook my head.

  An hour passed painfully slow. Laylah ate her apple. I stared at the wall. I had no clue what Cam did. Other people came and went, always invited back into their loved ones’ rooms once their dressings had been changed or they had been fed. Everyone but us. It must have been another twenty minutes when Laylah started asking Cam questions. Where he’d been, why he came back, how long he was staying.

  Cam told her he’d moved away, was going to another school, and came back for a visit when he heard about Dad’s accident. I wondered how different his answers would have been if I had asked. If we were alone.

  Then Cam artfully turned the tables. “How have things been around the house?”

  The house. Like he’d been there. Well I guess he had, the time he walked me home after dropping the angel/Fallen bombshell on me, and again the day they took me away, but he’d never been inside. That I knew of. He’d also walked Laylah home after I disappeared. He referred to the place I’d lived like he’d once lived there, too; like it was his to name. That only succeeded in ruffling my wings.

  “With Ray gone, things were weird at first. Dad was sad, spent more time alone than he used to.”

  More time alone? When I lived there he hardly ever left his office. Poor Laylah. She’d been abandoned by everyone. Mom, me, and now Dad. No wonder she hated me.

  “But then he got this big promotion, so he wasn’t, you know, avoiding life anymore, he was working, really working, on stuff he loved. His boss was someone new to the company, developing this huge tech center in San Jose. Today he was going for his first visit to the construction site when he was… hurt…” Tears dropped delicately from her eyes delicately onto her shirt.

  Cam leaned into her, winding his arm around her. She placed her head on his shoulder, turning into his chest. He and I exchanged glances. Maybe this new job had something to do with how—or why—Dad was hurt.

 
Chapter Seven

  Rayna

  The three of us spent the night in the waiting room with no improvement on Dad’s condition. Laylah and I took the loveseat in the far right corner of the room. She fell asleep in my lap sometime around two. She was going to be so pissed about that when she woke up. Cam took the chair beside me, his huge wings pressing against mine. We didn’t speak, even after Laylah fell asleep. I had plenty to say to him, but now wasn’t the time.

  Life had fallen apart. Dad might be dying. Laylah could be in danger, too. Cam most certainly had more bad news to bring. And… Kade might never speak to me again.

  Funny how in the middle of the world crashing down around me, I still managed to think of Kade. The time we’d spent living together had solidified him as an almost friend. Until the other night. I allowed my eyes to drift closed and remembered the night Kade and I returned to San Francisco. The first time I almost let him kiss me. Out in front of my school, standing in the rain, I’d wanted it then and I’d wanted it two nights ago.

  Oh, what the hell was wrong with me? Now was the worst possible time to try wading through romantic feelings for anyone. Especially Kade.

  Not long before dawn, Laylah stirred on my lap, her eyes crusted shut and my jeans damp where she lay. I stopped thumbing through my favorite book, the one I was pretending to read, and shoved it back in my jacket pocket. She pushed off me when she realized who she was lying on and made a quick escape to the bathroom, rubbing fresh tears from her eyes. She stumbled on her way out. It took everything I had not to go after her. My sister was not the damsel in distress type, and treating her like one would only make her that much more insufferable.

  I looked at Cam for the first time in hours and said, “She’s exhausted. I need to get her home.” I straightened my aching back from the position Laylah had pushed me into halfway through the night.

  Cam’s gaze lingered above my shoulders. My wings. That’s right, I was still Rayna, King of the Freaks.

  I rolled my shoulders and pretended not to notice his fascinated stare. “Call me the second you hear anything.”

  I grabbed the pen I’d been staring at on the end table for the last two hours and scribbled my burner cell’s number on Cam’s hand. Touching him felt weird. A week ago I would have given anything to feel his skin on mine. Now though, much like everything else in my life, things had changed. “If you get a chance, see if you can dig up anything about this new boss my dad was working with. I’ll poke around the house and let you know if I find anything.”

  His hand was still palm up in mine. My heart stuttered and I pushed it away. When I stood, I dropped the pen back on the end table and watched it clatter to the floor. I didn’t bother to pick it up. Some things were beyond saving.

  Laylah stopped short in the doorway, her gaze burning holes in my feet. “I’m taking you home,” I said, leaving no room for argument.

  “What? No way. You go. I’m fine here.”

  “Neither of us is fine.” I smoothed a hand over my forehead, too emotionally wrung out for much more of this. “We’re going. Cam’s staying here; he’ll call us when he hears anything.” To my shock, she swallowed her next waiting protest.

  Instead, she ran to Cam. He stood and welcomed her with open arms. She pressed herself against him, treating him as fragile as I had to assume she was feeling. God, I hoped all the fight hadn’t left her yet, at least not permanently. Because I had a feeling she’d need it before all of this was over.

  ***

  The forest-green door looked the same as it always had. My potted plants leading up the steps, though, were now dull pots of dirt, sticks, and mud. I paid the cab driver and followed Laylah into the house. Again I was struck by how similar everything looked. It had been about a month since I’d stood on these creaky hardwood floors, but nothing had changed, nothing on the surface at least. Just like me. Minus my blond wig, on the outside I’d remained mostly the same. It was what lay beyond the surface that made a difference.

  Tension clawed at my stomach like hungry vultures. Being back here was such a bad idea.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked, picking through the kitchen cabinets like a mad woman, still knowing as little about cooking as I did a month ago, which was basically how to follow the instructions on the backs of mac and cheese, ramen noodles, and frozen dinners.

  Laylah dropped her gaze to the floor and shook her head, looking about as comfortable with me here as I felt being back.

  I beat my fists against the sides of my legs. “Then let’s get you to bed.”

  My sister again shook her head, this time more adamantly.

  “There’s nothing we can do for Dad right now. When he starts getting better—”

  “You mean if.”

  “No, I mean when. When he starts getting better he’s going to need a lot of help, so we have to be strong, and ready.”

  Her head jerked up as if pulled by a string. “We?” Confusion quirked her brow. Disbelief tightened her eyes. “You’re sticking around?”

  I thought about that. “It’s not exactly safe if anyone finds out, but as long as Dad doesn’t call the police or Sunflower Serenity on me, then yeah. I guess I’d like to.” Stupid, complicated answers. “For now, I’ll stay as long as I can.” I couldn’t leave Laylah alone at a time like this. “So, bed? Because I’m tired too.”

  My sister stubbornly stifled a yawn. “I guess.”

  I bit back a smile. Maybe she didn’t want me to leave. Then again, this was the bratty little sister that lived to make my life hell. She brushed her teeth and changed. I stood in her doorway and watched her crawl under her pink bedspread and shut her eyes.

  Instead of shuffling off to my bed, which would have been pretty awesome after being up all night, I splashed cold water on my face and made my way downstairs, past the kitchen, and into Dad’s office. The smell of plastic, metal, and musty paper hit me when I opened the frosted-glass door. Three large towers of paperwork that resembled ivy climbing the walls were stacked beside his desktop. His chair, desk, file cabinet, box of spare computer parts, and the family safe filled the room almost to capacity. No laptop though. He never went anywhere without it. I just hoped he didn’t have it on him when… It was probably in his car. Which I had no idea where to find. Somewhere near the construction zone, I guessed, if it wasn’t destroyed in the….

  I pushed my wig’s bangs aside and took a deep breath before powering up his desktop and pulling out the drawer of the file cabinet, which was empty. Not unusual that he chose to stack his papers on top of the cabinet rather than inside. Organization had never been one of Dad’s best qualities—which usually drove me beyond nuts. Today, I had bigger problems.

  Every little creak and passing car sent me whirling for the back door, hovering there with my fingers inches from the brass knob, my wings instinctively out. I counted to ten then went back to work.

  After a few clicks on Dad’s mouse, I discovered his desktop didn’t hold anything recent except for his few latest computer game purchases. I shut the computer down and dug into the paperwork. One of the three stacks was nothing but bills. The second was receipts and several years’ worth of tax returns. The third stack was paperwork from his company, but nothing dated past September of this year. Maybe whatever was in the file cabinet had been moved.

  I turned my attention toward the safe and sighed. The combination was a closely guarded secret Dad never shared with me, probably because trusting important documents to a mental patient wasn’t smart on any planet, including Planet Dad. With a pen and sheet of paper, I lay down and jotted every number that might have significance to him. Dates, ages, addresses. I tried every combination I could think of, but the metal contraption wouldn’t budge.

  Hands on my hips, I stood, tapping my foot and wondering if there was a way to get in without the combination. Kade was the least follow-the-rules person I knew. If he could hotwire a car, maybe he could spin some of his thief magic and crack it. I slid my phone from my pocket. Again, my
finger stalled on the call button. Asking him for another favor after how we left things? There had to be other options to exhaust first.

  I abandoned the safe, pocketed my phone, and crept upstairs into Dad’s bedroom. The hinges squeaked and the scent of his oak dresser shrank me. My heart boomed in my chest. Every piece of furniture was arranged the same way as it was in Arizona, when Mom was still alive.

  The sight transported me back in time. As a six-year-old again, I watched Dad knot his tie while Mom lay in bed with a mountain of pillows over her head. “Headache,” he had said without looking away from the mirror. Headaches. Mom had been plagued with them for as long as I could remember. The worst of them occurred when she returned home from her business trips, though I couldn’t remember her ever having a job, just going on business trips. In a blink Mom’s lump beneath the covers withered and Dad’s reflection faded until the room once again stood empty.

  I scrubbed a hand over my face then went to work riffling through everything I could find. The room was nearly devoid of anything personal, only an old picture of him, Mom, Laylah, and me. Nothing that could help with the safe.

  Frustrated, I snuck back downstairs, tripping over the threshold to Dad’s office. I caught myself with my hands, turning my face toward the safe to avoid a bloody nose. A sliver of white beneath the safe’s short, stubby legs caught my eye. I crawled to it. The low gray metal bottom scraped my knuckles as I inched them under and pulled back a single piece of paper.

  Still on the floor, I flipped the paper over. Our Lady of Perpetual Help Hospital for the Mentally Ill Admittance Form was printed in bold lettering on the top. A mental hospital. But I’d been admitted to the Sunflower Serenity Mental Health Clinic. I read on. The date on the top was over ten years ago. A hot sweat formed on the back of my neck. Maybe I’d been crazy long before I realized. The name under the date stopped my heart. Kayleigh Ardenell-Evans.

  Mom.

  Chapter Eight