“Well, she was … nice.” I winced at that last word, trying not to sound nasty, but it was hard. I wanted to slap myself out of this funk. Maybe I was cranky because I was tired and a little hungry.
“Liar.”
I blinked in surprise. Either my disdain was painfully obvious or he just knew me that well. “She didn’t seem to like me.”
“She’s not the friendliest,” he admitted. “But I think you’ll at least respect her once you get to know her. I think tomorrow night will be good for you. You haven’t met many angelic reapers.”
“And it’ll be nice to spend time with Marcus again.”
He smiled. Anything that proved my amnesia was waning made him happy, and that made me try harder to remember things. “I agree,” he said. “It’s been a few years since I’ve seen him myself. We might end up needing his help. His and Ava’s.”
“Are they … together?” I asked.
“What?” He looked genuinely confused.
“I mean, are they dating?”
“What? No.”
“Did you ever date her?” There. I said it. I held my breath.
“What are you talking about?”
I regretted asking, but I had to know. “It’s just a question.”
“Why would you ask me that?”
“Curiosity.” He was six hundred years old. I shouldn’t have had to spell out my concern to him. He should be able to read girls by now, especially me.
“Well, it’s not what you think,” he said at last, his gaze lingering on me until he had to look back to the road. “We never … dated.”
My stomach turned over. His response was so dodgy that, no matter how desperately I wanted to believe his every word, something deep inside of me wasn’t so unquestioning. It was clear he didn’t want to talk about it anymore, and in truth, I didn’t either. I chewed on my lip, thinking about the nycterid who’d tried to fly off with me. I tried not to think about falling a thousand feet through the air, very nearly to my death. “Do you really think the reapers wanted to take me somewhere alive?”
“It’s a possibility,” he said. “But we don’t know enough to make serious assumptions. We’ll just carry on as usual. If we see the nycterids again, we’ll destroy the rest of them.”
A terrible thought clawed its way to the surface of my mind, and I shivered. “Do you think it has something to do with the Enshi?”
“It’s gone,” Will said with a sternness that made me flinch.
“But Michael said—”
“Michael was wrong. There’s no way Bastian could’ve dragged that sarcophagus up from the bottom of the ocean. The Enshi was destroyed.”
I exhaled, doubt pulsing through me. We’d managed to drop the sarcophagus containing the creature called the Enshi off a boat only miles from the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean, but the archangel Michael had appeared to me and warned me that Bastian would retrieve it and I was to prevent that.
Bastian was a demonic reaper of unimaginable strength, so powerful that even I couldn’t get anywhere near him. His power brushed me off as if I were a fly. I wouldn’t be excited to have to face him again, and I’d be even less excited if Michael ended up being right and Bastian managed to get the Enshi out of the ocean.
“Everything will be okay,” Will said in that way of his that turned my insides to jelly.
I forced a smile and paused to study his face. He was gorgeous, undoubtedly so, and as soon I acknowledged that, the memory of his lips on my skin made heat rush into my cheeks and spin through my insides. I zipped my head around to look out the passenger window because, thanks to my light complexion, my cheeks turned into tomatoes whenever I was embarrassed, and nothing was more certain to make me blush than thinking about being kissed by Will.
My heart sank as quickly as it had fluttered. It wasn’t like he’d ever kiss me again. Since he’d learned that I was an angel, a divine thing, he’d been distant in every way imaginable. He was still my infallible Guardian, but he wasn’t allowed to touch me that way because I was Gabriel, the archangel.
Centuries ago, my brother, the archangel Michael, gave Will his sword and the duty of being my Guardian. With that enormous responsibility, he was forbidden to be any more than that, and Will was not one to disobey. He could be my friend, but Michael believed it would be improper and dangerous for Will to become romantically involved with me. To angels, the reapers were nothing but instruments to be used up so Heaven’s forces wouldn’t have to get their wings bloody. If Michael thought Will wasn’t good enough for me, then he couldn’t be more wrong.
As much as I hated to admit it, it had been easier to be around him before he’d kissed me that first time. I was a seventeen-year-old girl. I wanted to be loved by a great boy, and I was, but I couldn’t have him. And it broke my heart.
“You’re very quiet.” His voice startled me.
“I’m just tired.” I rested my head against the cold window and closed my eyes, relaxed by the gentle hum of the moving car. I’d come so close to dying tonight, so, so close. More than anything, I wanted to curl into his arms and just be held. We were confronted by our mortality so often that it gave us an intimacy that few shared, even those in love. It was heart wrenching to have something so amazing just out of reach. It would be simpler if he was just there to protect me because it was his duty, and not because he was in love with me.
“How are you feeling?”
I shrugged. “Just another night on the job. I’ll live.”
“You had quite a fall.”
“Well, you caught me, didn’t you?”
He was silent after that. When he pulled into my driveway, I knew that in a moment he’d slip into the Grim and be gone. He was my secret, but he wasn’t mine.
It was the last week of January, and I was finally off the hook after my mom had grounded me for almost two months when she’d discovered I’d lied to her. I was forced to confess to her that instead of going up north with Kate for Thanksgiving weekend, I’d been with Will the whole time, though I left out the “flying to Puerto Rico with a fake I.D.” thing. As far as she knew, Will was my boyfriend, but since he’d tried to distance himself emotionally from me after our trip, she thought we were broken up. It was best to leave it at that.
“See you tomorrow?” I asked him. “We can train after my homework is done and hunt at dusk.”
“Perfect. I’ll meet you at Nathaniel’s, then.”
After I’d destroyed the old warehouse where we used to train (incidentally, in the process of avenging Marshmallow), Nathaniel had set up a full workout room in the basement of his house for us. If we wanted to spar and take it up a notch, he made us go outside. We didn’t need what happened to that warehouse to be repeated in Nathaniel’s house.
I sneaked into my house through the back door by traveling invisibly through the Grim. Will returned to his post on my roof, where he always stayed until dawn, keeping a lookout. Demonic reapers tended to come out only at night. They were sensitive to daylight, and while they didn’t burst into flames from anything but my angelfire, they smoked like chimneys under the bright sun, and direct sunlight was extremely painful. Will spent his days hanging out at Nathaniel’s so he could eat and shower and relax while I was in school. It was good for him, and school was good for me too. I needed my friends, and while school threatened to eat me alive, it helped to feel like a normal high school senior on occasion.
Except on exam days. I’d rather face Bastian than an econ test any day.
3
THE NEXT DAY, MY BODY WAS STILL SORE AND I WAS still shaken up. I never thought I’d have a fear of heights, but I guess falling a thousand feet was enough to ignite that fear. At one point after homeroom this morning, I stood up too fast and had a swirling bout of vertigo and nearly fell to my knees. My class right after lunch was psychology, and it was my favorite. There were only thirteen students in the class, including my friends Kate and Chris. Landon had tried to get into the class with us, but enrollment was clo
sed before he signed up. Served him right for sitting on his ass about scheduling. Today we were working in groups of mostly three on a learning-and-conditioning project. Instead of focusing, I flipped through my book absently as Kate and Chris argued about what to do our project on.
“We could just stick Ellie in a Skinner box,” Chris offered.
That got my attention. I glared at him from over the top of my textbook. “Or not.”
“Just think, Ell,” Kate chimed. “Solve a puzzle, get a cookie? Easy A for sure. Plus, you get cookies.”
“Or not.”
They laughed, but I knew they were serious about locking me inside a box. I’d like to see them try to overpower me, since I could throw them both through a wall with a flick of my wrist. My powers were scary, but at least I didn’t have to worry about anyone hurting me—unless they were winged reapers who ate people and dragged their souls to Hell. Yeah, they were a lot scarier than any human killers I’d ever heard of. Jeffrey Dahmer was a buttercup compared to some of the things I’d faced and defeated.
I needed to use the restroom, so I stood up from our table and asked for permission from the teacher. With the hall pass in hand, I walked toward the classroom door.
“Okay, everybody who’s not cool, leave the room.”
I’d already walked out the door when Chris’s words sank in, and I spun on my heels. Poking my head back in the door, I flipped him off, and pretty much the entire class laughed their asses off. “You are such a jerk,” I growled, and continued on my way.
My friends considered teasing me an Olympic sport, but when it really came down to it, I knew they had my back. Especially Kate. She was my best friend and had defended me on countless occasions.
The hallways were empty. As I passed by the windows on my way to the restroom, a figure standing out in the courtyard made my heart stop dead.
A demonic reaper stood in the sunlight, steaming like dry ice in a bucket of water. I didn’t stop to stare, but I registered that it was a he and a vir reaper. Gray feathered wings sprouted high from his shoulders, as if he’d landed just a moment ago. And then he was gone, disappearing into the Grim before anyone else noticed him. He wanted me to see him. Fear shuddered through me and I bolted. I wasn’t ready to face a vir reaper on my own. Their human guises were clever, but I knew they were the most powerful of all reapers.
“Ellie,” called a careful voice.
The reaper suddenly appeared right in front of me, wings folding and disappearing, and I couldn’t help the cry that escaped my lips. Adrenaline pounded through me, and I could barely hear anything above my own wild pulse. I swung a fist without a thought, but he grabbed my wrist and held my arm tight, away from his face.
“I’m not here to fight,” he said.
“Yeah, right.” I yanked my arm down and shot a knee into his gut. He let out a whoosh of air, and I slammed a palm into his chest, shoving his back into the wall. Tiles cracked and he doubled over.
“Wait,” he pleaded as I curled my hand around his throat and pressed him harder into the wall.
My eyes went wide when I recognized him. My spiked adrenaline hadn’t allowed me to think straight right away, but I’d know that ethereally beautiful face and pale-gold hair anywhere. It was Cadan. He was like the real-life version of an ancient Greek statue—except not totally naked. Thank God … or maybe not. I grimaced and shook my head, trying to banish the thought.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“Nice to see you, too,” he said with a grin, as if reading my mind.
My heart slowed down, but I didn’t release him. “What are you doing here? Isn’t this a little early for you to be up, seeing as how the sun’s out and all? Pretty gutsy of you, if you ask me.”
“I needed to catch you without your Guardian,” he said. “He’d never let me speak to you otherwise.”
“Can you blame him?”
His grin widened, and something dark flickered there. “Not in the slightest.”
“If you came here to speak, then speak,” I said, my voice ice cold.
His smile vanished. “I’ve come here to warn you.”
I almost laughed. “About what?”
“Bastian has the Enshi.”
My blood ran cold and my lips went numb. I stared into his opal eyes, watching the flames flicker there, searching for any sign that told me he was lying.
Footsteps echoed down the hall. I quickly released his throat in exchange for his arm and dragged him into the girls’ restroom for some privacy. Humans couldn’t be allowed to overhear our conversation, and while the Grim could conceal us from sight, we could still be heard.
“How?” I barked, and let go of him a little too roughly.
“I have no idea,” he said, rubbing his arm. “A submarine, maybe a leviathan, who knows. But he has it. I’ve seen the sarcophagus with my own eyes.”
I studied his face, perplexed. “Why are you telling me this?”
“I like things the way they are,” he confessed. “This Enshi, whatever it is, scares me, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. It could be more dangerous than anyone ever imagined.”
“That’s strange for one of the demonic to say. I thought you guys loved chaos, death, and destruction.”
“Chaos is a treasured pastime, but I’m not really interested in destroying the world.”
“I thought Bastian just wanted to destroy my soul.”
“You’re only a stepping-stone, angel girl. Bastian wants a war. Like in the old days. Hell on Earth, if you catch my drift.”
“The Second War,” I concluded. “The Apocalypse.”
Something flickered in my senses, and I shoved Cadan into one of the stalls. The door opened suddenly. I spun around, my heart pounding, as Kate emerged.
“Dude, where have you been?” she pressed, her annoyance obvious.
“Just in here,” I said with a smile. If I’d gone into the Grim and no one could find me, I would’ve created a lot more problems for myself.
“You’re going to get into trouble if you don’t come back soon.”
“I’m just fixing my hair,” I lied. “Another minute and I’ll be back.”
She narrowed her eyes, frowning. “Your hair looks fine.”
“Whatever. I’ll be back in a minute. I promise.”
“’Kay. See you.” She disappeared out of the restroom, her long blond hair swinging behind her.
I turned back and pushed open the door to the stall I’d shoved Cadan into. His grin made me want to punch him. Again.
“Imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t heard her coming.”
“Screw you,” I growled, and grabbed his collar to drag him out of the stall.
“In a public restroom, Ellie? Really? Didn’t think you were that kind of girl.”
My jaw ground tight. “I don’t have all day and neither do you. Finish what you came here to say and get lost.”
“I’m here to warn you that you’re being hunted,” he said, suddenly serious, his words edged with something frightening.
“I’m always being hunted.”
“They want you alive, and Bastian’s sent his nastiest to snatch you up. The nycterids are only the beginning. If they fail, Bastian has worse things lined up. Worse than me, worse than Ragnuk, worse than Ivar. Things that know what they’re doing. They’ve lived a long time, even by my standards, and they calculate every move they make. They aren’t fueled by rage or madness like those you’ve fought before. Killing is their occupation, and they are very likely to succeed in capturing you if Orek and his ilk don’t get you first.”
I leaned back against the sink and crossed my arms over my chest. Pressure built in the front of my skull as I weighed his words. This was not what I wanted to hear the day I had to start a new psych project. Why couldn’t evil wait for summer, when I had nothing better to do than fight it and get a tan?
“Are they vir?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Oh, great. The humanlik
e vir reapers were the strongest by far, and I’d only killed two before in this lifetime—and barely. If these could scare a demonic vir like Cadan, then my future was bleak. “Why doesn’t Bastian come for me himself?”
“Because he’s looking for a key of some kind,” Cadan explained. “The Enochian prayer on the sarcophagus is actually a spell. Angelic magic has it locked up tight, but every spell can be broken. Something will unlock it, and I think it has to do with you. That’s all I know. I’m no longer in Bastian’s private circle, and he doesn’t trust me—for good reason.”
I nearly laughed. “Is this because you didn’t help him stop us from throwing the sarcophagus to the bottom of the ocean?”
“Something like that.”
“Will he kill you for telling me all this?”
“If he finds out, then I don’t doubt it.”
My gaze darkened. “If you think you’ve just won amnesty from me, you’re wrong.”
To my surprise, he glared at me in anger. It appeared I’d struck a nerve. “You have trust issues, you know.”
“You’re a reaper. Of course I don’t trust you.”
“I’m putting myself at risk by coming here, out in the middle of the day, no less. Who knows if your overzealous guard dog will smash my face through a wall any second, or if Bastian will be waiting for me when I get home? In any case, I’ve told you what I know, and I want you to make use of it before we all die.”
“Are you finished?” I slid along the wall to the exit so that my back was never to him.
“So eager to get away from me, I see. How disappointing.”