I heard Hank shouting, and I knew it meant I hadn’t fully crossed over. Maybe my hand was close to the base of Patch’s wings, but not close enough. I couldn’t block out the flashing images of all the horrible, painful ways Hank could end my life, and I fought my way through the darkness, determined to see Patch in his memories one last time before it was all over.
Tears stained my vision. The end. I didn’t want this to be that moment, stealing up behind me with no warning. I had so much more I wanted to tell Patch. Did he know how much he meant to me?
What we had together—it had barely started. Everything could not come crashing down now.
I summoned a picture of Patch’s face. The image I chose was of the very first time we met. His hair was long, curling over his ears, and his eyes looked like they didn’t miss a thing, perceiving the secrets and desires of my soul. I remembered the startled expression on his face when I’d stormed into Bo’s Arcade, upsetting his pool game, and demanded that he help me finish our biology assignment. I remembered his wolfish smile, daring me to play along, as he’d moved to kiss me that very first time in my kitchen….
Patch was shouting too. Not ahead of me in his memories, but far below me, in the shed. Two words rose above the others, sounding distorted in my ears, as though they had traveled a great distance.
Deal. Compromise.
I frowned, straining to hear more. What was Patch saying? I suddenly feared that whatever it was, I wouldn’t like it.
No! I shouted, needing to stop Patch. I tried to propel myself back to the shed, but I was in a vacuum, floating idly. Patch! What are you telling him?
I felt a strange tug to my body, as if I’d been latched behind my spine. The sound of shouting voices swirled shut behind me as I hurtled toward a blinding light and inside the corridors of Patch’s memory.
Again.
I arrived inside the second memory in an instant.
I stood once again in the damp chil of the shed crowded with Hank, his Nephilim men, and Jev, and I could only gather that this second memory was beginning precisely where the last one had ended. I felt that familiar switch being thrown, but this time I wasn’t locked inside a version of myself from the past. My thoughts and actions belonged to the present me. I was now a double, an invisible bystander, watching Jev’s version of this moment as he remembered it.
Jev held a sluggish version of my body. My body was limp except for my hand, which was splayed on his back. My eyes were rolled back to whites and I vaguely wondered if I would remember both memories when I pulled out entirely.
“Ah, yes. I’d heard about that trick,” Hank said. “It’s true, I gather? She’s inside your memory as we speak, and all this by simply touching your wings?”
Looking at Hank, I felt a surge of helplessness. Had I just said he was my father? I had. I felt a compulsion to beat my fists against his chest until he denied it, but the truth burned like a fever inside me. I could loathe him all I wanted, but it didn’t change the fact that his vile blood coursed through my veins. Harrison Grey might have given me all the love of a parent, but Hank Mill ar had given me life.
“I’ll make a deal,” Jev said roughly. “Something you want, in exchange for Nora’s life.” Hank’s lips twitched. “What could you possibly have that I want?”
“You’re building a Nephilim army with the hope of overthrowing fall en angels as early as this Cheshvan. Don’t look surprised. I’m not the only angel who knows what you’re up to. Bands of fall en angels are forming all iances, and they’re going to make their Nephilim vassals regret thinking they could ever break free. It’s not going to be a pretty Cheshvan for any Nephil who bears the Black Hand’s mark of all egiance. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what they have in store. You’re never going to pull this off without a man on the inside.” Hank gestured to dismiss his men. “Leave me alone with the angel. Take the girl outside.”
“You’re kidding if you think I’m letting her out of my sight,” Jev said.
Hank relented with an amused snort. “Very well. Keep her while you can.” As soon as the Nephilim exited, Hank said, “Keep talking.”
“Let Nora live, and I’ll spy for you.”
Hank’s blond eyebrows swept up. “My, my. Your feelings for her run deeper than I thought.” His gaze raked my unconscious figure. “I daresay she’s not worth it. Sadly, I don’t care what you and your guardian angel friends think of my plans. I’m far more interested in fall en angels, what they’re thinking, any countermeasures they might attempt. You’re not one of them anymore. So how do you plan to be privy to their dealings?”
“Let me worry about that.”
Hank considered Jev with a discriminating eye. “All right,” he said at last. “I’m intrigued.” A careless shrug. “I’m not the one who stands to lose. I take it you’d have me swear an oath?”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Jev said coolly.
Drawing the dagger once again from the waist of his pants, Hank made a slash across the palm of his left hand. “I swear my oath to let the girl live. If I break my vow, I plead that I may die and return to the dust from which I was created.”
Jev accepted the blade and sliced his hand next. Making a fist, he shook loose a few drops of a bloodlike substance. “I swear to feed you all the information I can on what fall en angels are planning.
If I break my vow, I will voluntarily lock myself in the chains of hell.” The two of them clasped hands, mingling their blood. By the time they pulled free, their wounds had healed perfectly.
“Keep in touch,” Hank said with irony, dusting his shirt as though being in the shed had somehow sull ied him. He raised his cell phone to his ear, and when he caught Jev watching, he explained,
“Making sure my car is ready.”
However, when he spoke into the phone, his words adopted a hardened undertone. “Send my men in. All of them. I want the girl taken away.”
Jev went still. Even as the sound of running feet approached the shed he said, “What’s this?”
“I swore an oath to let her live,” Hank informed him. “When I release her is up to me—and you.
She’s yours after you’ve given me enough information to guarantee I can overthrow fall en angels by Cheshvan. Consider Nora insurance.”
Jev’s eyes flicked to the shed door, but Hank interjected smoothly, “Don’t go down that road.
You’re outnumbered twenty to one. We’d both hate to see Nora needlessly injured in a scuffle. Play this smart. Hand her over.”
Jev grabbed Hank’s sleeve, jerking him close. “If you take her away, I will see to it that your corpse fertilizes the ground we’re standing on,” he said, his voice more venomous than I’d ever heard it.
Nothing in Hank’s expression hinted at fear. If anything, he appeared almost smug. “My corpse? Is that my cue to laugh?”
Hank opened the shed door, and his Nephilim men thundered in.
Just like a dream, Jev’s memories ended almost before they began. There was a moment of disorientation, and then the granite studio came into focus. Jev stood silhouetted against the candlelight. The flame gave just enough ill umination to bring a severe glint to his eyes. A dark angel indeed.
“Okay,” I whispered, haunted by a sensation of lingering vertigo. “Okay … then.” He smiled, but his expression was uncertain. “Okay then? That’s it?” I turned my face up to his. I could hardly look at him the same way. I was crying without realizing I’d started. “You made a deal with Hank. You saved my life. Why would you do that for me?”
“Angel,” he murmured, clasping my face between his hands. “I don’t think you understand the lengths I would go to if it means keeping you here with me.” My throat choked with emotion. I couldn’t find words. Hank Mill ar, a man who’d stood quietly in the shadows for years, was now revealed to have given me life, only to try to end it, and Jev was the reason I was alive. Hank Mill ar. The man who’d stood in my house on numerous occasions, as if he belonged. Who’d smiled and kissed my mom. Who’d spoken to me with warmth and familiarity—
“He kidnapped me,” I said, piecing it all together. I’d suspected it before, but Jev’s memories filled in the gaps with shocking clarity. “He swore the oath not to kill me, but he held me hostage to make sure you were motivated to spy for him. Three whole months. He strung everyone along for three whole months. All to get his hands on information about fall en angels. He let my mom believe I was as good as dead.”
Of course he had. He’d proven he had no qualms when it came to getting his hands dirty. He was a powerful Nephil, capable of an arsenal of mind-tricks. And after dumping me in the cemetery, he’d used them to keep my memories far, far away. After all, he couldn’t release me and have me shouting his diabolical deeds to the world.
“I hate him. Words can’t express how angry I am. I want him to pay. I want him dead,” I said with hardened resolution.
“The mark on your wrist,” Jev said. “It’s not a birthmark. I’ve seen it twice before. On my old Nephil vassal, a man named Chauncey Langeais. Hank Mill ar also has the mark, Nora. The mark links you to their bloodline, like an outward expression of a genetic marker or DNA sequence. Hank is your biological father.”
“I know,” I said, shaking my head with bitterness.
He laced his hand in mine, brushing a kiss across my knuckles. I was acutely aware of the pressure of his mouth, little tingles swimming under my skin. “You remember?”
“I heard myself say it in the memory, but I must have already known. I wasn’t surprised; I was angry. I don’t remember when I first knew it.” I pressed my thumb into the mark slashing my inner wrist. “But I feel it. There’s a disconnect between my mind and my heart, but I feel the truth. They say when people lose their vision, their hearing becomes sharper. I’ve lost part of my memory, but maybe my intuition is stronger.”
We considered this in silence. What Jev didn’t know was that my true parentage wasn’t the only piece of information my intuition was making a judgment on.
“I don’t want to talk about Hank. Not right now. I want to talk about something else I saw. Or rather, I should say something I discovered.”
He regarded me with equal parts curiosity and wariness.
A deep breath. “I learned that I was either crazy in love with you, or putting on the best performance of my life.”
His eyes remained carefully guarded, but I thought I saw a flicker of hope. “Which one are you leaning toward?”
Only one way to find out. “First, I need to know what happened between you and Marcie. This is one of those times when giving me full disclosure is in your best interest,” I warned. “Marcie said you were her summer fling. Scott told me she played a role in our breakup. All that’s missing is your version.”
Jev stroked his chin. “Do I look like a summer fling?”