I hold back the nervous laugh ready to bubble from my throat. God knows Darla can make breakfast sound like a dirty sexual encounter that somehow involves bacon. I shoot a glance to Gage. For some strange reason, bacon plus sex has always equaled Gage Oliver to me. He looks over at me, and my insides light up like a flare.
“Is this like 4-H?” Mom touches her hand to her chest. “I used to love 4-H! We had an entire petting zoo by the time I was through.” She chortles into her coffee.
Oh, they’ll have a petting zoo all right, one brimming with unsupervised children that no one with any hygienic desire will ever want to lay their hands on. Only it won’t be in Darla’s backyard. And instead of a pigpen, there will be a playpen right here, smack in Mom and Tad’s living room. I can see it now, an entire exhibit of screaming babies in caskets. Social services is going to have a field day when they discover what 4-H stands for in this house—hooking up, horny, home run, and half-witted.
“No, no,” Drake raises his voice in annoyance. “A kid. She’s squeezing out a kid at prom like Brielle did last year.”
Well, at least he hasn’t forgotten about Brielle entirely.
Bree’s cheeks grow a severe shade of pink, and, for a minute, I think she’s going to cry or shove the entire leftover pie up Drake’s nose. I would so help her do that.
Tad sprays his coffee in the vicinity, pegging Isis in the double D decollete. He’s quick to pick up his napkin and dab her bouncy porcelain skin until she’s giggled herself into a Tadgasm. Gah! Note to self: scour brain out with icepick for even thinking such things, let alone witnessing them.
“A human baby?” Mom asks, unbelieving that Drake would have the gall to utilize his weapon of mass insemination upon the world and so soon after the last misguided missile.
I have a feeling Drake is just at the starting line of the baby mamas he’ll amass in a lifetime.
Tad gags. “What kind of job are you going to get to support two kids while hitting the books in college?”
Ethan lets out a whoop of a laugh. “Drake’s not going to college. He’s going to be a pipe layer. He’s just interning right now.”
Suddenly everyone that’s not a Landon has the pressing urge to leave.
I bite down on my thumb and stare at Logan as the guests quickly disband. He goes over and offers Drake and Em a congratulatory hug that looks more sympathetic than joyous. No one will ever congratulate Logan for having a child. My heart breaks for him—it selfishly breaks for me.
Logan Oliver will not stay dead. I won’t let him.
I want Logan. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to have him.
Gage comes up, and I shiver back to reality.
I look from Logan to Gage, and my heart breaks all over again.
36
Fall of the Mighty
The sky above Paragon breaks out into pustules—large black carbuncles that beg the hand of God to lacerate them, so they can rain down their fury like an infection, covering us with the disease of heartbreak like it already has a thousand times before.
A week sifts by, and I’m no closer to saving Marshall or Logan, and yet, ironically, the only one I feel I’m truly losing is Gage.
I lie on the grassy field of West long after practice is over and give Cerberus the stink eye as he appears and disappears between the cotton stretched fog. I’m really sick of cheer. Every muscle in my body aches, and for what? The only thing we’ve left to practice for is tomorrow night’s senior rally.
The football team catches my eye in the distance. They’re just finishing up a sprint around campus with an entire train of lean, mean legs traversing their way into the boys’ gym. I spot Logan and Gage holding up the rear, the blond Adonis and the dark-haired knight. The world spins haphazardly as I track them into the open mouth of the gym. It swallows them whole without reservation, sort of the way death swallowed Logan.
A hard kick to my shin startles me to attention.
Chloe drops my backpack next to me and gives another kick to my shoe.
“Get the hell up. It’s time to pay my supervising spirit a little visit.”
***
Chloe insists I drive, so I do.
The sky shakes out its wrath on us by the time we hit the Paragon Estates. It looks sexual, erotic as it gushes over us in bursts. A thin violet bruise lies over a silent patch in the sky where the sun is supposed to be.
“I liked you in the beginning,” I volunteer the odd fact as the guard waves the Mustang through. “Of course, I was insanely jealous that you slept with Logan. I wanted to sleep with Logan.” Still do but I keep that part to myself because I want Gage just as bad.
“That’s nice.” She averts her gaze out the window, perturbed as if I were trying to get on her good side in order to get that pendant. “I wanted to like you, too. But I came with too much knowledge, too much premeditated angst and now here we are, one of us ready to die and the other willing to lie. I’m sure Gage could write an encyclopedia of poetry on the subject.”
“You sure think a lot about Gage.” I’m not sure I like Chloe accepting the fact she’s going to die. I straighten in my seat. Maybe Chloe’s the liar, and I’m the one who’s going to eat some fresh Paragon soil before midnight? Now that wouldn’t surprise me. Maybe that’s how Logan and I will live to a ripe old age—on the other side.
“Gage is worthy of my thoughts.” She closes her eyes a moment, and her beauty magnifies tenfold. In any universe, on any planet Chloe could have whoever the hell she wanted, but not Gage—he swore himself to me. My stomach pinches with grief as I revert my focus back to the road.
I park close to the stairs that lead to Demetri’s haunted estate and pluck a jacket from the backseat to use as shelter as I run up to the door.
Chloe lets us in without knocking, and I half expect her to belt out, Honey I’m home.
A swarm of male voices emit from the palatial sitting room to the right. Our tennis shoes squeak in turn as we head on over to the home of all things gilded.
Marshall glances our way, speaking to the infamous Fem himself. I give a little wave as they finish up their heated tete-a-tete.
“Ladies.” Demetri plasters on a smile. It would have been more convincing if he drew it on with lipstick. “So glad you could make it. Mr. Dudley and I were just finishing up our conversation.”
I so can’t wait until Marshall fills me in on all the dirty deets.
“What’s with the visit?” Marshall pulls back his cheek disapproving of the fact his spirit wife is in enemy territory, no doubt.
“Demetri was kind enough to give me a belated birthday present.” It takes all my willpower not to roll my eyes.
“A gift?” Marshall’s chest expands as he glares over at his nemesis.
“A shared treasure for the girls to enjoy equally.” Demetri squints into his words.
“The two of them?” Marshall is suddenly amused by Demetri’s apparent philanthropic faux pas. “How very clever of you.” His features sharpen. “I look forward to hearing a full report.” He takes a few steps in my direction. “Ms. Messenger, may I see you a moment?”
I dutifully follow Marshall to the door.
“Insane, right?” I whisper. “As if I would share anything with that flea bag.” I shoot Chloe a dirty look.
“I’m sure you’ll hold your own.” He strokes his finger down the side of my face, and my entire body enlivens for Marshall. “Not to be outdone, I’ve a belated gift for you as well.” And with that he evaporates to nothing.
Huh. I’m not sure I should be so enthralled by the idea of both a Sector and a Fem gifting me with anything at all let alone, on this, the very same day.
“Shall we?” Demetri leads us up the opulent marbled staircase and onto the second floor, which expands in girth with creamy limestone flooring, the walls covered in the same dull vanilla. It’s as if the Acropolis had vomited, and out came Demetri’s house.
“This way.” He holds out a hand and Chloe enters the arched doorway
that leads to the decapitation station of all things Fem.
“No way, I hate that room.”
He presses out a dissatisfied frown, and, for the first time, I think I managed to invoke some sort of emotion out of him.
“I promise”—his lips twitch unnaturally over his face—“this bids you well.”
“Are you trying to help me?” I say it so low I’m not sure he heard.
His black eyes meet with mine, and he holds my gaze hostage for a solid minute.
“We’ll see.” He nods into the room.
I step in gingerly as though each footstep has the power to crack one of the massive stones beneath my feet.
A complete row of mounted creatures span the periphery of the colossal viewing room—the severed heads of beasts, of hideous creatures, the bears, the lions with their mouths locked in a silent roar. I spin around taking it all in and jump when I see the one just above the entry, the one I had just a moment ago walked beneath so freely.
“Shit!” I jump next to Chloe as if she wouldn’t voluntarily feed me to the thing.
High up above the door, the head of a clown stares back at me with his tuft of deep fried orange hair, his pasty face, its nose more like a snout, and the sharpened knives jetting from his opened mouth.
“You’ve gone too far.” It trembles from my lips. Barron and those weird clowns he thinks of, the one he keeps around in his car bounces through my mind.
Demetri yanks a tablecloth off a round table and flings it toward the horrific anomaly, covering it perfectly. The fabric pulsates in and out as if it were breathing and forces me to look away.
“What the hell do you want?” I’m ready to get out of Dodge. I can’t stand to be here with either Demetri or Chloe who amount to nothing more than demonic clowns themselves.
“This is for you.” He walks over to the shelves lining the walls and plucks one of the haunted trinkets from off the shelf. He presents us with a long-handled mirror, ornate and gilded like everything else in this tacky slaughterhouse.
“Perfect,” I smart. “I’ve got the life-size version, remember?”
I glance around until I spot the Realm of Possibilities—a giant looking glass perched on the gilded leg of a bird. Anything you desire could be created and lived within its borders. Unlike the piece of crap he gifted me last spring that now sits in Marshall’s living room, manufacturing seventeenth-century call girls. Although that defunct mirror did give me a leg up in the war, and it led Logan and me to the magical place of Ahava where he proposed. My heart beats faster as I relive the memory.
“This is a visual gateway.” He holds it up, and the tiny mirror darkens a deep shade of soot as a fog swirls inside, wet and sparkling, like sand. “Behold”—he turns it toward me—“the eye of Heaven.” A scene appears, a familiar stream, a row of trees so gloriously tall, healthy leaves as wide as your hand, fruit on every bough. “Wait,” he says. “The eye of Hades.” He gives the mirror a gentle shake and holds it out for us once again. This time the dark fog remains. The sound of thousands of voices screaming in terror spew out like acid. It terrifies me just to listen.
“Are these the tunnels?” I step in to see if I can recognize the landscape, but nothing looks remotely familiar. A figure appears, a giant Fem with the body of a man covered in fur, the head of a bull sitting on its neck. He roars and growls, unleashing a stream of fire from his mouth. The light of the flames illuminates the darkened cave-like dwelling.
“It’s you,” I marvel, taking the looking glass and holding it between us. Chloe stands next to the hideous creature, bouncing in terror like a child. Her face swollen from tears, her screams so prolifically viral, tainted with a fear that you can taste, metallic and caustic, each one an event all its own. It makes my gut clench just watching the scene. A part of me wants to reach in and hold her, tell her everything will be OK, but then I remember what put her there to begin with, Logan, my father, Stella, Ethan, and Emerson, the list of her grievances a mile long as it is wide.
“Enough.” Chloe yanks the mirror from my hands and slams it against the ground, shattering it to shards that sparkle like stardust at our feet.
“Great,” I muse. “Now we’ll never know if that poor demon trapped in there with you, survives.”
Chloe hardly moves. She’s so intently focused on the fractured glass she’s lost all wherewithal of her senses.
“Tsk, tsk,” Demetri chides. “Break a mirror, and you’ll have seven years of bad luck. Or, in your case, Ms. Bishop”—he connects his fingertips just like they taught him in evil 101—“less than seven months.”
“I’ll be taking off now.” It feels as though a boulder has been dislodged from my back. “It’s official. You’re going to hell, Chloe. Have your supervising spirit take you home. I’ve got someplace else to be.”
“Skyla,” her voice rasps low.
I look over at her careful, slow, in the event she breaks down and tries to soften my heart with her please-save-me shenanigans.
Her eyes plead with me. Her jaw clenches as she pulls her lips into a razor sharp line. Chloe Bishop is asking for help the only way she knows how, but I turn and run the hell downstairs.
“Mercy can have powerful rewards, Skyla,” Demetri calls after me.
“So can justice!” I fire back.
***
Since I’m already in Oliver territory, I drive over to their house like a habit, one I never plan on breaking. Emma and Barron’s sedan is gone, but Logan and Gage’s trucks are parked high near the house, each its own steed.
I park and head on up. The lights in the kitchen are on, and, oddly, the blinds are set in a half-moon as if someone didn’t shut them right.
I peer in the window and take in a quick breath.
Shit! The entire kitchen has been decimated. Pots and pans are lying on the floor. A trail of broken glass leads out to the entry, and the freezer door is hanging wide open.
“Logan? Gage?” I give the door several good wallops before knocking my shoulder into it a few good times. The wood splits as the lock buckles, and the door falls open.
“Crap,” I say, taking in the scene. Sofa cushions are scattered in the family room, the curtains are down with the rod hanging partially on the floor.
Angry voices shout from the backyard. The slider is already open as I make my way over to the patio. The scent of night jasmine fills the air with its sickly sweet perfume. The sound of someone taking a punch in the gut emits from the distal point of the lawn, so I speed around the pool and head on over.
“You don’t want to say anything because you’re a fucking pussy,” Gage roars it into the night before tackling Logan in the stomach and knocking him to the ground.
Fists fly—nothing but groans, the sound of flesh being viciously pummeled, just one grunt after another.
“Stop!” I drill it in the air like a siren.
Both Logan and Gage look up with nothing but the whites of their eyes reflecting in the shadows. Gage stands and helps Logan to his feet.
“I’d better go.” Logan starts for the house.
“Not so fast.” I pull him back and examine him under the anemic spray of moonlight. A seam of blood trickles down his lips, like a black, slithering snake in this world devoid of color. “What happened?”
Logan cuts a quick look to Gage.
“Nothing that concerns you,” he says it sharp, but he says it to Gage.
“You’re making one fucking huge mistake.” Gage limps his way over and gets in Logan’s face again. “Think about it.” He snatches Logan by the elbow. “Dude.” He’s imploring him with his eyes, begging him to reconsider whatever the hell he’s about to do.
Logan knots up his fists in Gage’s T-shirt and yanks him close.
“This is my business. You got that?” He grits it through his teeth. His eyes bite into Gage as if he were mentally ripping him a new one. “You fucking mind your own.” Logan launches Gage into the deep end, rousing the quiet of night with a giant splash. “Sky
la.” Logan winces as if he were in great pain. “Stay here. Take care of him.”
“Where are you going?”
He glances over his shoulder a moment.
“I’ve got a few things I need to do,” he whispers it tenderly.
Gage pops to the surface then dives under again and slicks his hair back.
“Take care.” He steps in and touches his lips to mine. “Remember I’ll always love you, no matter what happens.” Logan rubs his thumb over the ridge of my cheek. He presses out a hopeless smile, one I’ve never seen before, one I pray I never will again.
Logan takes off like a bullet. The front door slams like a gunshot, followed by the sound of his engine revving.
“What the hell happened?”
“Water’s warm.” Gage offers one of his signature killer grins and flicks his fingers in my direction.
“It can’t be. It’s freezing out.”
“I left the heater on. It’s like a Roman bathtub.” Gage glows like an onyx stone among the baby blue of the water. “All right, you can help me out.” He reaches up, and I clasp on, but Gage gives a gentle laugh before pulling me face first into the water.
Lucky for Gage it’s warm. I spring to the surface like a cork and let out a sharp cry.
“You are so in trouble.” I give a few rapid blinks before diving on top of him.
“Oh yeah?” His dimples press in, and my thighs electrify as if they were begging for a kiss all their own. Gage pulls me close until our bodies align as one. “Come here.” He presses me in by the back of the neck. “Breathe, Skyla.” He covers his mouth over mine and pulls us under. Gage doesn’t kiss me, doesn’t let a single thought sail through his brain. Instead he focuses in on the art of respiration. It’s a challenging ballet, as Gage sinks us to the bottom, my body wrapped around his like a coil. We take turns breathing, in and out, as he pins me so efficiently to the bottom of the pool.
This is it, the perfect analogy of our love. Gage and I needing one another to survive, sinking low and fast like lead weights with only the breath in our bodies and love to keep us alive. Then, in a fit of charged determination, he speeds us back to the surface, and we surge, rising to a colorless world where we can thrive together.