“And let me tell you where rock bottom will be,” he returned with a gravelly edge. “Your grave. A shallow backwoods grave where no one will find you. No one will come to your gravesite and mourn for you. As far as humanity is concerned, you’ll vanish off the grid. It will wear on your mom. That constant menacing sense of the unknown. It will peck away at her, driving her closer to the edge until it shoves her over. And instead of being buried in some green-lawned cemetery beside you, where loved ones can visit you until the end of time, she’ll be alone. And so will you. For eternity.” I stood taller, determined to show him I wasn’t going to be scared off that easily, but I felt a queasy little flutter of premonition in my belly. “Tell me, or I’ll rat you out to the cops, that’s a promise. I want to know where I’ve been. And I want to know who took me.”
He dragged a hand down his mouth, laughing to himself. It was a tense, tired sound.
“Who kidnapped me?” I snapped, running out of patience. I wasn’t moving from this spot until he confessed what he knew. I suddenly resented him for saving my life earlier. I wanted to view him with nothing short of hot contempt and hatred. I’d point him out to the police without a moment’s hesitation if he refused to tell me what he knew.
He raised those impenetrable eyes to mine, his mouth crooking down on one side. Not a frown.
Something infinitely more bewildering and frightening.
“You’re not supposed to be in this anymore. Even I can’t keep you safe.” Then he walked away, having said all he was going to, but I couldn’t accept it. This was my one chance to make sense of the part of my life that was missing.
I stomped after him and grabbed the back of his shirt so hard it tore. I didn’t care. I had bigger things to worry about. I said, “What am I not supposed to be involved in anymore?” Only the words didn’t come out right. They were sucked away from me at the exact same time that a hook seemed to latch behind my stomach and yank me inside out. I felt myself being hurled through the air, and every muscle in my body tensed, bracing for the unknown.
The last thing I remembered was the roar of air past my ears and the world crashing to black.
CHAPTER 11
WHEN I OPENED MY EYES, I WASN’T ON THE street anymore. The Tahoe, the cornfields, the starry night
—it was all gone. I stood inside a concrete building that smelled of sawdust and something slightly metal ic, like rust. I was shivering, but not from cold.
I’d grabbed Jev’s shirt. I’d heard fabric ripping. I might have touched his back. And now … I was in what appeared to be a vacant warehouse.
Ahead, I saw two figures. Jev and Hank Mill ar. Relieved that I wasn’t in this place alone, I strode toward them, hoping they could tell me where I was, and how I’d gotten here.
“Jev!” I called out.
Neither one so much as looked in my direction, but surely they’d heard me. In this vast space, voices carried.
I was about to open my mouth a second time, when I came to a startled halt. Behind them, the evenly spaced bars of a cage peeked out from under a canvas. In a great wave, it all came back to me. The cage. The girl with icy-black hair. The high school bathroom. When I’d blacked out momentarily. My palms tingled with sweat. It could mean only one thing. I was hallucinating.
Again.
“You brought me here to show me this?” Jev told Hank with quiet disgust. “Do you understand the risk I take every time we meet? Don’t call me here to chat. Don’t call me here for a shoulder to cry on. Don’t ever call me here to show off your latest conquest.”
“Patience, boy. I showed you the archangel because I need your help. Obviously we both have questions.” He looked meaningfully at the cage. “Well, she has answers.”
“My curiosity for that life died a long time ago.”
“Whether you want it or not, this life is still yours. I’ve tried everything to persuade her to talk, but she’s cagey, pardon the pun.” He smiled mildly. “Get her to tell me what I need to know, and I’ll turn her over to you. I doubt I need to remind you the trouble the archangels have caused for you. If there were a way to seek revenge … well, surely I don’t need to say more.”
“How have you managed to keep her caged?” Jev asked coolly.
Hank’s mouth twisted with amusement. “Sawed off her wings. Just because I can’t see them doesn’t mean I don’t have a pretty good idea where they are. You put the idea in my head. Before you, I never would have imagined a Nephil could un-wing an angel.” Something dark stirred in Jev’s eyes. “An ordinary saw couldn’t cut through her wings.”
“I didn’t use an ordinary saw.”
“Whatever you’re messed up in, Hank, I’d advise you to get out. Fast.”
“If you knew what I was messed up in, you’d beg me to let you in on it. The archangels’ empire won’t last forever. There are powers out there that surpass even theirs. Powers waiting to be harnessed, if you know where to look,” he said cryptically.
With a disgusted gesture, Jev turned to go.
“Our agreement, boy,” Hank called after him.
“This wasn’t part of it.”
“Perhaps we can come to a new arrangement, then. Rumor has it you haven’t forced a Nephil to swear fealty. Cheshvan is only weeks away… .” He let the sentence hang.
Jev stopped. “You’d offer me one of your own men?”
“For the greater good, yes.” Hank spread his hands, chuckling softly. “You’d have your pick. Am I making this offer too good to refuse yet?”
“I wonder what your men would think if they knew you were selling them off to the highest bidder.”
“swallow your pride. Pushing my buttons won’t settle the score. Let me tell you why I’ve made it as far as I have in this life. I don’t take things personally. You shouldn’t either. Don’t let this be about you and me, and past differences. We both have something to gain. Help me, and I’ll help you. It’s as simple as that.”
He paused, giving Jev time to think.
“Last time you walked away from an offer of mine, it ended disastrously,” Hank added with a certain curl of his lips.
“I’m done making deals with you,” Jev answered in measured tones. “But I’ll give you some advice. Let her go. The archangels are going to notice she’s missing. Kidnapping might be your strong suit, but this time you’re pushing your luck. We both know how this is going to end. The archangels don’t lose.”
“Ah, but they do,” Hank corrected. “They lost when your kind fell. They lost again when you created the Nephilim race. They can lose again, and they will. All the more reason you should act now. We have one of their own, giving us the upper hand. Together, you and I can turn the tables. Together, boy. But we must act now.”
I sat against the wall and hugged my knees to my chest. I let my head tip back until it rested on concrete. Deep breaths. I’d gotten myself out of a hallucination before, and I could do it again.
Wiping away the sweat beading my forehead, I concentrated on what I’d been doing before the hallucination started. Go back to Jev—the real Jev. Open a door in your mind. Walk through it.
“I know about the necklace.”
At Hank’s words, my eyes flew open. I looked between the two men standing in front of me, ultimately focusing on Hank. He knew about the necklace? The one Marcie was looking for? Was there any way the two necklaces were one and the same?
No, they’re not, I reasoned. Nothing in this hallucination is valid. You’re creating every detail of this scene with your subconscious. Focus instead on creating an exit.
Jev raised his eyebrows in inquiry.
“I’d rather not reveal my source,” Hank replied dryly. “Obviously all I need now is an actual necklace. You’re smart enough to know this is where you come in. Help me find an archangel’s necklace. Any one will do.”
“Try your source,” Jev said simply, but with a trace of derision.
Hank’s mouth compressed into a severe line. “Two Nephilim. Your choice, of course,” he bargained. “You could alternate between them—”
Jev waved him off. “I don’t have my archangel’s necklace anymore, if that’s where you’re going.
The archangels confiscated it when I fell.”
“That’s not what my source tells me.”
“Your source lied,” he said blandly.
“A second source confirms seeing you wearing it as recently as this past summer.” A moment ticked by before Jev wagged his head at the floor. He tipped his head back and laughed, almost disbelievingly. “You didn’t.” His laughter died abruptly. “Tell me you didn’t drag your daughter into the middle of this.”
“She saw a silver chain around your neck. This past June.” Jev’s eyes sized up Hank. “How much does she know?”
“About me? She’s learning. I don’t like it, but my back’s against the wall. Help me, and I won’t use her again.”
“You’re assuming I care about your daughter.”
“You care about one of them,” Hank said with a sardonic twist of his lips. “Or used to.” A muscle in Jev’s jaw twitched, and Hank laughed. “After all this time, you’re still stoking the fire. A pity she doesn’t know you exist. Speaking of my other daughter, I also heard she was seen wearing your necklace in June. She has it, doesn’t she,” he stated rather than inquired.
Jev returned Hank’s even stare. “She doesn’t have it.”
“It would have been a genius plan,” Hank said, not sounding in the least like he believed Jev. “It’s not like I can torture its whereabouts out of her—she doesn’t know anything.” He laughed, but the sound didn’t ring true. “Now that would be ironic. The one piece of information I need is buried deep in a mind I effectively erased.”
“A shame.”
With a flourish, Hank yanked the canvas off the cage. He kicked the metal box into the light, the base scraping over the floor. The girl’s hair was tangled across her face, her eyes ringed in black and darting wildly around the warehouse, as though trying to memorize every detail of her prison before the canvas blinded her again.
“Well?” Hank asked the girl. “What do you think, my pet? Do you think we can find you an archangel’s necklace in time?”
She turned toward Jev, and there was no mistaking the recognition widening her eyes. Her hands squeezed the bars of the cage so tightly her skin turned translucent. She snarled a word that sounded like “traitor.” She glared between Hank and Jev, then her mouth snapped open with a piercing, howling scream.
The force of the scream hurled me backward. My body smashed through the walls of the warehouse. I flew through darkness, tumbling over and over. My stomach roiled, a great wave of nausea crashing over me.
And then I was sprawled facedown on the shoulder of the road, my hands curling into the gravel. I scrambled into a sitting position. The air was thick with the smell of cornfields. Night insects droned all around. Everything was exactly as it had been.