Seth and Aliah jumped after Seven at exactly the same time.
“Seven!” Seth yelled.
“Sweet, you know that is not allowed,” Aliah reminded her more gently. “You cannot watch the Star. You shouldn’t even leave my side. I don’t like it when you go over there, she only makes you worse. I lose you for days and I cannot stand to lose you, Pet.” Aliah sounded desperate to get Seven to see things his way.
And I couldn’t say I blamed him.
Seven was watching me?
Gosh, that was so very creepy. I hated it. I hated every part of it so strongly I almost winced. Seth hadn’t been anywhere near me but Seven had…
How messed up was that?
“Sev, you have to stop stalking Stella. It’s not a good idea. You know that.” Seth sounded more reasonable than he had all night and I was actually grateful for his point of view.
Seven let out a petulant sigh. “She’s Light. She’s Light like the sun. She’s Light like the sky. She’s Light, she’s Light, she’s Light, she’s Light! And she haunts me! She always haunts me!” By the end, her voice had pitched into a scream of fury. I shut my eyes tight again and tried not to freak out.
I heard movement and shuffling around and Aliah murmuring reassuring sentiments to Seven. I imagined he’d brought her against him and held her tightly to him while trying to comfort her.
There was a little bit of sick satisfaction that she felt more disturbed than me. At least I was doing something right.
“I’m taking her home,” Aliah finally announced. “Clean this place up before you leave. And Jude, remember what I said about the child.”
“Yeah, got it,” Jude snapped.
“I’ll go with you,” Seth volunteered.
Aliah was fast with his response. “No. Stay here and help Jude. I’ll take care of Seven.”
“I should go with her,” Seth argued.
“No, you should listen to me. Your sister is not your concern. Only my will is your concern. Do as I say.”
There was not another verbal response but I knew that it had to kill Seth not to try to assert his dominance. He wasn’t one for lying down and taking orders, but apparently he didn’t have a choice with Aliah.
The door to the bedroom opened and did not shut again. A few moments later I heard the door to the apartment slam shut behind them. Utter stillness settled over the apartment and I started debating with myself how much longer I would have to stay hidden in this closet.
The only thing good about tonight was that if I could get out of here without being detected, I could take the child with me. My parents could return her to the Lower Realm this very night and her nightmare would be over.
Then they could warn the Council about the traitor and that he planned to take another child. He. The traitor was a he. That narrowed it down by five.
It wasn’t much but it was something.
That small fact felt like a huge victory after everything else I’d been forced to sit through tonight. I wasn’t Seven’s biggest fan by any means but I always felt sorry for her when Aliah was thrown into the mix.
She was clearly mentally unstable and he fostered the crazy in her in an attempt to control her. Meanwhile, her sanity slipped further and further out of her reach while the Darkness seemed to claim more of her confused soul by the second.
After several long minutes, Seth finally spoke, or rather shouted, “Are you out of your goddamn mind?”
“What the hell!” Jude shouted back.
“You brought her here? Here? You’re as crazy as my sister, you stupid bastard! Get her out of here and do it now, before I change my mind and call Aliah back in here and show him how you’ve compromised the entire agenda!”
Jude tried one last time, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. If anyone’s lost his mind, it’s-”
Seth threw the closet door open and poked his head in. “Get out,” he growled at me.
“Hi,” I whispered.
Swiftly a sword was at my throat and I didn’t feel like whispering anymore. “Get out, Stella. I’m not joking around. Get out of this apartment and forget you were ever here.” He withdrew the sword a couple inches and I took a tentative step forward.
“I’m going,” I assured him. “I’ll just take the girl and be on my way.”
The tip of the blade was back to my jugular. “Not a chance. You should know better.”
“You should know me better,” I countered. “And why didn’t you turn me into Aliah? I thought you were over me?”
He let out an annoyed puff of breath. “I am over you. But I also sold my soul for you. I’m trying not to throw everything away.”
Hope flared in my belly for a moment before I realized he meant his soul. He didn’t want to lose his soul for getting me killed when he’d gotten into this whole mess so I’d stay alive.
He supposed he had a point.
“I’m taking the girl, Seth. Try to stop me.”
“I’ve already stopped you. Now I’m giving you mercy. You owe me a lot for today; a whole lot more than ice cream.”
“You say ice cream like it’s not the greatest thing you can win.”
“Can we be done with this now? I have work to do.” Jude looked absolutely exasperated by this exchange. But I had to believe that he might also be exhausted by his time with Aliah.
Something was not adding up with him. He was Fallen. He was a bad guy. He was the third soul, in a third-party soul contract. And he was a smoker.
Okay, being a smoker didn’t really have anything to do with anything. I just wanted to point that out.
Still, he was all those supposedly horrible things and yet he protected little girls that were kidnapped and kept my cover when really, he should have handed me over to Aliah on a silver platter. Aliah wouldn’t have been able to kill me. And I was pretty sure Seth would have protected me from Seven.
So why then?
Why keep me a secret?
And why let me hear all of Aliah’s pep talk and introduce me to Zia?
“Jude, I’ll finish up here,” Seth volunteered. He slid just the very tip of the blade right along the line of my throat and I felt it slice through my skin as easily as it would have through Jell-O. “You take Stella home.”
“I don’t want to,” Jude replied mutinously.
“Then I’ll take her home. Except we probably won’t make it that far before I slit her open from spleen to small intestines and let her guts drip down over the city.”
“Good god! Do you have any idea how psychotic that sounds? You’re out of your head.”
“If you want her to live, you need to take her now!” Seth bellowed.
“Geez, fine. Fine. I’ll go. We’ll go.”
“And fly fast. Get back here even faster and help me with this shit.”
Jude groaned. “Fine! While I’m out, did you need anything else your Royal Highness? An extra pillow? A drink perhaps? A foot massage?”
“Just go!” Seth roared. “I don’t have the patience for your sarcasm.”
Jude pulled himself together and stomped over to me. He wrapped his big hand around my comparatively little bicep and tugged me after him. I recognized the opportunity and didn’t put a fight.
We walked through the living area and Jude squatted down to say something serious to Zia. She wiggled and fidgeted but eventually met his invasive stare.
“Be good until I get back,” he told her. “I brought you some snacks and some more shampoo. Just behave until I get here and you can be bad for ten whole minutes.”
She cracked a small smile but whispered, “Promise?”
“Promise,” he told her sweetly.
Add that to the growing list of things that didn’t make sense about Jude.
Then I had to include his polite professionalism when we met my parents in the air. They were scouring the sky in hopes of finding me and Jude saw them immediately once we were up in the clouds. He handed me over to my dad with a curt nod and a brief explanation that he caught me in a
precarious circumstance.
Nate, Jupiter, Serena and my parents had come after me when they couldn’t get ahold of me. And even though everyone had a blade extended toward Jude, he did not seem at all afraid. He simply let go of me and dropped back down to the ground.
Serena raised an eyebrow at me. “Well?”
“We won’t be able to get in,” I told them. “The place is blessed in a way that keeps us out. But the traitor is coming by soon. They have the stolen child and there is supposed to be another one soon. The traitor is bringing the child himself. And they kept calling him a he, so I’m assuming he’s male.”
My mom sounded extremely alarmed when she asked, “Male? Does he already have the child in his possession or is there still time?”
“I think there’s still time, but I don’t know for sure.”
My dad made a move forward and turned around to face us. “Celina and I will go to the Lower Realm and warn them. If he hasn’t left yet, we should be able to catch him. Maybe we can figure out who the traitor is before the child is taken.”
“I’ll stay here and watch the apartment. They won’t sense me and I can call for backup if I need it,” Jupiter offered.
I looked between Jupiter and my parents. I would be alone for a while. I wondered if they were okay with that and trusted me or if they had overlooked it altogether.
“Will you be alright, Stella?” Serena asked intuitively. “We could stay with you, if you needed us to.”
I shook my head immediately, not wanting to bother them. “No, it’s fine. I’ll be fine.”
My dad reached out for me and pulled me to him with two hands on my head. He pressed a kiss to my forehead. My mom was next. She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed tightly.
“We love you, Stella,” she promised over the rushing wind from hovering so high up. “We’ll be back before you know it.”
“I love you, too.” I hugged her extra tightly, hating how childish I felt about their sudden departure. I’d grown up familiar with their long missions away from planet, but this felt different. They’d always scheduled their time away. This was an emergency and more dangerous than anything I’d realized they were doing before.
Although, I had no doubt that they were always in danger when they left Earth, this time I knew what was going on.
My dad gave me one more meaningful look and then my parents were gone, off into the wild, blue yonder.
Serena and Nate stuck around as long as I did, just long enough to watch the bright light disappear into the atmosphere above and then disappear in the light of the Sun. We said goodbye to each other with promises to call if we needed anything and we went our separate ways while Jupiter stayed behind.
I picked up my stolen car and drove back to Mead. Alone.
I returned the car without anyone noticing and I got in my Malibu and drove home. Alone.
Alone.
I had never been more alone.
And I hated every minute of it.
Except instinct told me to get used to it. Something internal and forbidding whispered that this was a feeling I needed to become friends with, learn to be familiar with.
Something unwelcome promised that this was a feeling I would have to experience a lot in my future.
Which didn’t exactly bode well for Seth.
Chapter Nine
I pulled into the student lot and found a parking space in the middle row. A truck twice the size of my relatively small Malibu roared in next to me and not thirty seconds later the driver had already jumped from the cab and slammed his door shut.
The first day of senior year started in three minutes but I couldn’t make myself get out of the sanctuary of my car and go inside.
I didn’t even know what I was feeling, or why I suddenly had the urge to race back home and lock myself in my bedroom for the rest of the day. Spending the rest of the year, curled up in my bed, buried under Annabelle’s homemade quilts and vegging out on fluffy chick flicks sounded awesome compared to facing today.
Seth was full of evil these days. My parents had been gone for two weeks. Jupiter hadn’t checked in for three days and Jude was the only consistent person in my life.
I was lonely. I knew that. I could diagnose my own depression easily enough. But it wasn’t just that.
Ever since I was a child, I’d held onto my humanity with a vice-like grip. I had never been truly sold on the Protectorship. And why would I have been, when my human life was so quaintly perfect. I loved my town, I loved my friends and I even loved a human boy that would have rounded out my human life effortlessly.
But Seth showed up and brought my other life, my alien life, into sharp focus.
I wasn’t human. And no matter how deeply I wanted to believe that I belonged to this planet in some way, it just wasn’t true.
I was a Star. An Angel of the Lower Realm.
I was the Protector of Earth.
So why in the world had I even bothered to show up to school today?
That was the real issue.
I dropped my forehead to the steering wheel and groaned. Suddenly eight hours of high school sounded a million times worse than battling it out with Seven and Aliah in the Sahara, or standing side by side with Nate and Serena in the back alleys lining a busy souq in Marrakesh like last night.
We hadn’t fought Aliah, Seven or Seth, but the Fallen that we did meet had been a handful.
A knock on my window made my head lift and realize I needed to face this day. I had been the one to fight to stay in school. I had been the one that made such a big deal about staying rooted with the people I was born to save. I could get through today.
Besides, it wasn’t going to be that bad.
“Stella! Are you getting high in there? What’s taking you so long?” Jude’s muffled voice came through the closed window.
Okay, so maybe it was going to be that bad.
I opened my door as forcefully as I thought a human being could and shoved Jude out of the way. I reached back in and grabbed my backpack and my volleyball duffle. Two-a-days were over but we still had a week before our first game. That meant practice every day after school and twice on Saturday.
“Pushy this morning,” Jude grinned at me.
I could see Piper and Tristan closing ranks from opposite directions in the parking lot. They were smiling already and bouncing with energy.
Was I the only one dreading today?
Obviously, yes.
“I just didn’t think I’d have to deal with you first thing this morning.” Although, I had kind of hoped he would bring me another coffee from the closest Starbucks, thirty minutes away.
“Please, like you haven’t been dying to see me.”
“I just saw you,” I reminded him dryly. “Yesterday. When you stopped by my house uninvited.”
“I just wanted to borrow a cup of sugar,” he shrugged.
“You brought movies and Twizzlers!”
His eyes narrowed. “I’m protecting my investments.”
“If I kill you, you won’t have to protect anything anymore.” I turned around just at the right moment and pasted on a fake-but-bright-smile. “Hey, Pi!”
“Seniors!” she squealed.
“I know!” We hugged tightly and it was enough to pull me out of my funk. Or part way out. She was just so excited. It was hard not to feel that same enthusiasm.
Piper and I pulled apart and she immediately greeted Jude with a big smile on her face. I tried not to growl protectively for my best friend, but I’m not sure if I entirely succeeded by the amused quirk of Jude’s eyebrow.
I couldn’t understand what happened. One minute we all hated Jude with a mutual, fiery loathing. The next thing I knew, my best friends had somehow included him in our circle of trust and he actually thought he was welcome to hang out with us.
Even Tristan could be civil to him.
And Tristan was always supposed to be on my side no matter what!
Speaking of… he yanked me into a quick
hug next and laughed at my stiffness. “Piper can take care of herself,” he whispered against my hair.
“Not against the spawn of Satan,” I mumbled.
“Hmm?” Tristan pulled back but I wasn’t going to repeat that.
“You’re right,” I sighed. “I just find him extremely annoying.”
“It’s because I won’t make out with her,” Jude threw out. “She’s been begging me daily but I keep telling her no. No, Stella. I will not make out with you.”
I caught Tristan laughing and he quickly smashed his smile into an empathetic frown. Piper howled behind me.
I sighed again.
“Oh, before I forget.” We started walking toward the school building and Tristan kept me close to his side. “My parents invited your family over for dinner this Friday. Before the real season starts and I have games every week.”
“Oh, that’s so-”
“Stella’s parents are out of town,” Jude interjected.
“Good grief, interrupting c-”
“Moo.” Jude sounded so smug that when I reached out to smack him in the chest, I did not hold back at all. If he had been human, I would have knocked him across the parking lot. Unfortunately, he was not and barely grunted at all my otherworldly strength.
Instead, I was the one feeling the pain. Yeesh! I wanted to shake out my poor, crippled hand. God, was he made of stone? But I decided I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. So instead, I kept walking and pretending that I didn’t feel my bones still vibrating from phalanges to clavicle.
“Your parents are out of town again?” Tristan brought me back to the conversation at hand. I nodded. “Is Annabelle staying with you?”
I cocked my head back for a second and decided how honest to be with Tristan. “No, she’s not. I guess now that I’m seventeen, my parents finally trust me. Plus, Jupiter’s close by.” Annabelle had stopped staying with me when Jupiter and Seth showed up. My parents had stopped going on missions too, but now that Jupiter was just down the road, my parents felt as though I still had constant supervision.
Tristan looked a little dumbfounded for a second. “Wow,” he said. “Never tell my grandmother that she was replaced by Jupiter. She would die. On the spot.”