Here. Now. I’m going to confront Tarren. Which secret should I demand first? What they’re doing in the lab? Or Tammy?

  “What is it?” Tarren asks, and I realize I’ve been staring at him, trying to mentally grill the answers out of him. His face is pale, highlighting the purple petals of exhaustion under his eyes. I try to remember the last time I’ve seen him sleep or eat. He dozed a little on our way to Los Angeles to Tucker Cartwright’s bloody bash, and there was that half pretzel he nibbled on before we drove to Fiona’s farm. Maybe he got some sleep like I ordered after leaving Grand Junction, but maybe not. Dammit. Gabe and I haven’t been taking care of him.

  “I want to show you something,” I say and head up the stairs. Tarren doesn’t move, so I add, “It’s important.”

  He doesn’t ask. Just follows, his footsteps light behind me. I walk down the long hall of doors and pick one at random. I swing it open and step aside, so Tarren can look in.

  “It’s a guest room,” he states.

  “It’s a bed. Get some sleep.”

  He frowns. He hates my mothering routine, but I really don’t give a fuck. “We’re alive,” I say. “We’re okay.”

  The frown deepens.

  “Tarren, we’re alive. We’re here together.” The words come from a deep, true place inside me. “We’ll go back out there. We’ll keep fighting. But let this be enough for today.”

  “It’s getting worse,” he says, taking his turn as Captain Obvious, but I understand his meaning. We have to fight harder. Be smarter. We can’t afford even the smallest mistake, and we’ve made some ginormous ones these past days.

  I nod.

  “I have to stop them.” His words are soft, but the determination in his voice practically thunders.

  In this weird moment where right and wrong seem like two shades of the same gray paint, I make a decision. I won’t ask Tarren about Tammy. He has his secrets for a reason. Maybe he’s protecting her, like Gabe and I are protecting Raven, Fiona, and Caleb. Maybe he’s somehow protecting Gabe, so he never has to know that his sister is an angel. Perhaps a killer. Tarren has a reason for keeping it from us. I need to let that be good enough

  “You are not saving the world alone,” I tell him. “Gabe and I want in on that action. Think about how pissed he’d be if he doesn’t get his monument in Washington next to Lincoln like he’s always dreamed?”

  A teeny, tiny smile touches Tarren’s lips, but my heart soars. I’ve got him now. I hit him where I know he’s vulnerable.

  “Gabe’s exhausted, and I need to give this time to heal too.” I nod to my shoulder. “We all need down time.” I beckon toward the bed. Now for the kill. “Sleep. Clear your head so you’ll be sharp when we start planning our next mission.”

  Tarren’s gazes at me. He knows the game I’m playing, the low-blow tactics I’m clearly desperate enough to use against him. He blinks, and his expression softens.

  “Okay,” he says, acknowledging his defeat. He steps over the threshold into the room.

  “Watch,” I say and hold out my hand.

  Whatever flicker of humor I roused in him is replaced by a scowl. But, amazingly, he does it, unstrapping the watch from his wrist with the alarm he always sets for four hours, and handing it over. Our hands touch, his aura on my fingertips for just a moment, before I pull back.

  “You saved my life last night,” I tell him as he sits on the bed and unlaces his shoes. He stops and looks up. His eyes are pale blue. “Thank you,” I stutter.

  He’s going to dismiss it, I know. Brush away his heroic deed like he does all the others. But instead his mouth quirks into a small smile. “Who’s Michael Wilkens?”

  “What?” I croak as my face flushes with the heat of a thousand suns. “No one.” Oh God, now I remember that the biggest crush of my elementary school life dropped in for a cameo during my drugged up dreams.

  “He sounded pretty important,” Tarren says with a shrug. He bows his dark head and pulls off a boot.

  “Well he’s not,” I snap. “Go the fuck to sleep.” I whirl around and close the door.

  I find Lo in the kitchen, sitting on the counter, scarfing down a pile of cookies Carmen baked for Gabe the last time we were here. His black boots kick against the expensive oak cabinets.

  “Where’s your mom?” I ask as I swing open the massive fridge and pull out an apple, yogurt, and jars of peanut butter and jelly.

  “Step-mom,” he corrects. “I believe she is paying someone to pump botulism into her face right now.”

  I place everything on the counter and pull a plate from the cabinet.

  “Do you hide away at night and rub human food all over your naked body?” Lo asks. “Since you can’t eat it anymore?”

  I throw him a look with all the disgust I can muster. “If I ever went inside your brain I don’t think even a Hazmat suit would be enough to protect me,” I say. “Seriously, what dark corner of the internet did you find that on?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” He gives me a crooked smile, which I decide is all show.

  I turn and lean against the counter. “What are you two working on? Why the live angel?”

  “We want to make it run through mazes and then see if it will hit the heroin button instead of the food button until it starves to death.”

  If I hadn’t seen the pain prickling along Lo’s aura last year when he came to visit while Gabe was in a coma, I would seriously wonder if he had a soul beneath all that black eyeliner. “Be serious,” I say as I drop two pieces of bread on the plate.

  He shoves another cookie in his mouth. The way he’s growing, he’ll probably burn through all those calories in a minute. He shrugs. “Trying to save the world.”

  “It’s not a cure. I’m not stupid.” I open the jar of jelly.

  “Oh, it is a cure.” His eyes light up in a way that might just be a little evil. He switches to a grave tone. “A storm’s coming. Humans and angels. Who will prevail?” He laughs, blinks, and grabs another cookie. “The end is nigh.”

  His words echo too closely to War’s crazy revival tent of doom racket, and I shiver. “You give weirdos a bad name,” I grumble as I swipe a generous portion of peanut butter on the bread and join it to its jelly partner. I put the containers away and take the plate.

  “Have fun with your food,” Lo calls after me with a snicker as I walk out of the kitchen.

  Tarren is already asleep in the bedroom, his head resting on a folded arm. His eyelids twitch with dreams. With all the worry gone, his face is smooth and looks shockingly young. I have to remind myself that he is only 27. I watch his aura to make sure his dreams are being kind to him. The color is a deep blue, vibrant in a way it never was before Gem dipped into his mind. Peaceful. I put the plate on the nightstand next to his phone.

  Clever, clever. I tap it on and see the alarm icon in the corner. That’s why he turned the watch over so quickly. “Nice try,” I whisper under my breath. I don’t know his password, so I can’t turn the alarm off. A small hurdled that I effortlessly clear by pocketing the phone.

  “Sweet dreams,” I whisper to my brother and close the door silently behind me.

  Outside, Gabe is still on the lounger, though now a case of sweating beers keeps him company.

  “Here,” I toss Tarren’s phone at him, and he catches it with only a few bobbles. “Hide that somewhere interesting when you get a chance.”

  A smile dashes to his lip. “Yes Ma’am.”

  “Tarren’s sleeping. Make sure Lo doesn’t bother him.”

  “You got him to sleep?” Gabe turns over onto his stomach. “You’re a miracle worker. Helen Keller has nothing on you.”

  “Anne Sullivan was the miracle worker.”

  “Wait, but who was the blind and deaf one?”

  “Helen Keller.”

  “Right.” He takes a long pull from his beer.

  “I need two days off,” I say. The words are a surprise.

  “Tarren won’t like that,” Gabe says.

  “We all need a break,” I reply.

  “Damn right.”

  “You got any girlfriends around here?” I ask.

  A sly smile curves his lips. “I can find some.”

  “Amelia Earhart was having some plane trouble. Chuck Norris offered to give her a little push,” I say. “She was never seen again.”

  Gabe cracks up like I’ve said the funniest thing in the world. It’s definitely the booze and the stress and the fact that Gabe hates being mad at me, or pretty much anyone besides Lo. His laughs turn into wild cackles. I can’t resist, and we both laugh at poor Amelia Earhart’s expense. It feels good. My bridge with Gabe is still solid, and it needs to be or I think my entire soul would tumble into the rapids below.

  “Two days off sounds good,” Gabe pants. “You go, and I’ll explain to Tarren when he wakes up. You know, the whole ‘Ask forgiveness instead of permission thing.’” That pretty much sums up Gabe’s standard operating procedure.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “I’ll hotwire one of Lo’s cars for you.”

  “How about I just ask him for the keys?” I need to talk to the horny boy wonder anyway about building a second Prism. He’ll understand the logic of having a backup. As to how I’ll get it to Fiona’s farm without raising suspicions…I’ll figure something out.

  “Can’t I just hotwire his Porsche for fun?” Gabe says. His churning aura is a deep shade of blue like sapphires. Blue as blue, true as true. It was so damn good to hear him laugh.

  I give him a wave as I set off for the house.

  “Maya,” he calls after me.

  I stop and turn back toward him. “Yep?”

  “Tell Rain he’s still a fuck up…you know, if you see him.”

  I try to look annoyed, but I can’t. It’s Gabe. Instead, I give him an awkward little nod and head toward the kitchen to have another delightful conversation with Lo.

  Epilogue

  I sit carefully with my low back against a tall, sturdy tree and let the sunshine fall across my body like a warm blanket. The wind plays through my hair whispering secrets that I can’t decode. I’m glad of it. My brain can’t take anymore secrets.

  It was only a four hour drive from Lo’s mansion outside of Vegas to Balboa Park near San Diego, but my brain wasn’t quiet for one minute of that drive. As I drove with my left hand on the wheel, I kept thinking about War and Raven. How could I have let War escape? When will his army come sweeping through the land, eating through the human population like locusts? I see his ugly face in my mind, that low, hoarse voice spouting treachery and lies. And Raven. Did I make the right decision in protecting her from Tarren? Is Fiona really who she said she was? I practically traded Gabe’s soul for her life, and I wonder if I’ve permanently broken his compass.

  I still can’t believe I saw Raven and War on consecutive days. What are the freaking chances of that happening? Is the universe just sticking its finger in my life and swirling everything around for a laugh?

  Balboa Park offers sprawling fields of green grass and stoic trees. Auras churn at the edge of my consciousness as families make their way to the nearby San Diego Zoo or to the main square of Balboa where a handful of gorgeous museums compete for attention. Across the shady field, two homeless men lay sprawled out, sleeping on the grass a hundred feet from one another. One is an old white man with a lined, leathery face and a short beard. He wears a puffy red and blue jacket, though the weather is mild and inviting. The other is a short, bald, black man in dirty sweat pants. He twitches and mutters with his dreams, and I wonder what demons he’s fighting. Just down the hill, six tanned kids who look like they could be college students throw around a Frisbee. It’s good to see that people still do that -- come outside just to play. The Frisbee game is made up of five athletic guys and one slim-legged girl with short blonde hair who giggles and grounds every Frisbee she throws. She’s so terrible at Frisbee that she must be one of the guy’s girlfriends, though I can’t tell which, because three of the men are throwing shades of lust her way in their auras.

  Speaking of lust, my stomach tightens. I feel Rain’s aura prickle at the edge of my consciousness. That other part of me reaches, latching onto the feel of his energy. I don’t turn my head. Don’t try to find him. I just let his energy come closer. The feeling in my stomach isn’t butterflies. It’s more like centipedes or something with a thousand thready legs all brushing the lining of my stomach.

  Now I hear his clumpy steps through the grass, the way he plants the crutches and swings forward. He’s coming up from behind me. The wind brings me his scent -- his toothpaste, his cologne, that more earthy man smell that is the real him. Lots of cologne. He must be nervous. Like me. I wonder how many centipedes he has crawling around in his stomach. I will be able to tell the moment I turn around and see the colors streaking through his aura. I think I’ve actually forgotten how to breathe.

  “Buffy,” he says, and even that one word feels the way I remember hot syrup used to taste.

  Before I turn my head, I can’t help but do a quick mental sketch of myself right at this moment. I tried to dress casual, but not too casual. Just a simple t-shirt and jeans. But I chose the royal blue t-shirt with the V-neck that sinks just enough to hint at cleavage. I’m also wearing my one fancy bra, the one with too much padding. I probably used too much eyeliner, but it will make my stormy blue eyes look huge and distract from my round nose.

  Stop thinking. Say something. I turn toward him.

  “Hi,” I say. All the dead romantic poets of the ages groan in their graves.

  “Can I sit?” Rain asks.

  It is so epically clear that he also tried way too hard to look like he didn’t try hard. I can see it in the careful spikes of his hair that are supposed to look like he just ruffled it in the morning. When I look him over, I get caught up on his sleepy brown eyes, where his heart lives. And his mouth. Yep, kind of stuck on that too, those soft pink lips guarded by rough stubble. I’ve mentioned to him before how much I like his rough, bad-boy stubble, and I know he squirreled it away in his memory.

  “Yup,” I say and do this awkward sweep with my hand, forgetting about my injury and biting back a hiss of pain.

  Rain lets his crutches down and slowly attempts to sit while sticking his cast out. I’m guessing he’s not so much trying to sit as trying to get to the ground without falling. Flickers of burnt orange light up in his aura. I know how to read that color on him. I’ve seen it when he’s knocked over the salt at our table and when he closed his coat in the car door and I had to gently point it out. I can practically hear the sigh from his brain, I wish I were cool.

  Somehow that waver of orange is what I need.

  “I had no right to tell you what you could or couldn’t do,” I say. “This is a big battle, and we don’t have enough soldiers as it is. I was afraid for you, because…I…I…”

  In the car while I was practicing my speech, I imagined looking him in the eye. Being strong and calm and amazingly tender. Now my tongue feels as bloated as a beached whale.

  “…Because I care about you,” I manage. “But that was selfish. The ultimatum I gave you was wrong. I just have to live in the moment, stop wondering about tomorrow or the day after or…”

  “Maya, it’s okay.” Rain has put himself on the ground with only kind of a fall. His left leg is stretched out, and he leans back on his hands. We could be our own angel-hunting DL together. “You were right. I’m not very good in the field. It was only a matter of time before I fell off of something.”

  “I’m going to help train you,” I vow. Damn. My speech is all off now. That was supposed to come toward the end.

  Rain shakes his head, throwing a wave of cologne at me. He definitely used too much. It’s adorable.

  “I’m not going back out in the field.”

  “Oh!” The way I say it, with such a clear whoosh of relief betrays all my memorized words. And I’m grinning, this stupid, loopy grin, because he’s getting out of the biz. That means he’s safe. That means he’ll leave me more stupid little song refrains he made up on my voicemail.

  Rain scoots closer to me. I like his cologne and the smell of him underneath it. “The news isn’t talking about what happened in Scottsdale anymore. Have you noticed that? Yesterday it was all over the TV and web, but today they’re calling it a gang fight and burying it. The coroner says that the body of the perpetrator they picked up was spiked with flakka. That’s how they’re explaining it.”

  I nod. I’ve been following the story all day on the radio, or at least trying to follow it. Hard when no one is talking about it anymore. “There are still some high up angels. They squelched it,” I say. “They can do that.”

  “No, that’s the thing. They can’t.” Rain grins. “That video is on the web now.” Excitement pulses in his aura. “Maya, I’m not the only one who’s caught a glimpse of angels, you know. Seen something I can’t quite explain, lost a family member and watched it covered up. This entire country is filled with people who suspect something. Angry people. People who want to fight back.”

  I don’t like where this is going. Especially not the intense shades of blue glowing in Rain’s aura like a new purpose. Rain lowers his voice even though there is no one around us. He’s used so much gel on his hair that it doesn’t move at all when he leans in close.

  “I’ve created a forum,” he admits.

  “What!” I squawk. Shit. This is Tarren’s worst nightmare. The Totem going around blabbing the big “hey, guess what, genetically altered things who call themselves angels are secretly killing people and planning to turn the human race into livestock” secret.

  Rain looks at me with eyes that practically shine with purpose. “I have to. These people are searching. They’re already bumping into each other online. Sharing their experiences. They need a place to learn the truth. A place that will let them channel their anger.”

 

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