Just before we get to town, I get a text from Angela: trp dr, it says, and I don’t know what that means, but it makes my bad feeling get worse. Then when we arrive at the Garter, we find the front door open a crack. Christian and I both stiffen at the sight. We know that Anna Zerbino keeps this place locked up extra tight in the off hours, ever since an incident last year when a group of drunken tourists broke in and stole a bunch of costumes out of the dressing rooms and went gallivanting in chaps and petticoats all over town. Christian toes the door open enough for us to pass through, and we creep into the front lobby. The room is empty. He takes a moment to inspect the door, but there’s nothing to suggest violence. The lock is intact.
I cross the lobby to the red velvet curtain that separates the front of the house from the auditorium and push it aside. The lights are off. The theater is a pit of blackness straight out of my worst fears, and I can’t look at it for more than a few seconds before I have to turn away.
Upstairs there’s the sound of a muffled voice, a dragging noise like a chair scraping across the floor.
I glance uncertainly at Christian like, What should we do?
He gestures with his head toward the back corner, where there’s a staircase that goes to the second floor. We take the stairs slowly, careful not to make any noise. At the top we stop and listen. This door is closed, a ribbon of bright light glowing beneath it.
I’m tempted by the ridiculous urge to knock, like maybe if I act normal, things will be normal. I’ll knock, and Anna will answer it all serious and ask us what we’re doing here at this late hour, but then she’ll take us back to Angela’s room, and Angela will look up from where she’s sprawled on her bed, reading, and she’ll say, Really, you guys? You’re really so paranoid that you couldn’t wait until morning?
I could knock, and then there wouldn’t be anything evil on the other side of that door.
Christian shakes his head slightly. What do you feel? he asks.
I open my mind. The minute I lower my defenses—which I wasn’t even aware I had up—sorrow floods me, a deep penetrating pain, so fierce it makes me gasp for air. I lean against the wall and try to delve inside the suffering, to identify its source, but all I get is an image of a woman’s body floating facedown in the water, her dark hair spreading out around her head. The angel—oh yes, definitely an angel—is not Samjeeza, that much I know. His sorrow is different from Sam’s, angrier, a rage caught up in an agony that’s centuries old and still red hot, but it’s also more controlled than Sam’s, less self-pitying, like he’s channeling his emotions into something else: a purpose. A desire to destroy.
There’s a Black Wing, I say to Christian silently, careful to keep the words flowing only between us, the way Dad taught us to do. Grade-A sorrow. That’s about all I can get—it overwhelms everything else. What about you? Can you tell what somebody’s thinking in there?
There are at least seven people in that room, he says, closing his eyes. It’s hard to sift through.
“I told you that you’re not welcome here,” a voice says suddenly, low and frightened. “I want you to leave.”
“Come now, Anna,” responds another voice—an older man, from the sound of it, with the slight lilt to his speech that Dad has. “Is that any way to treat an old friend?”
“You were never my friend,” Anna says. “You were a mistake. A sin.”
“Oh, a sin,” he says. “I’m flattered.”
“I rebuke you,” Anna says. “In the name of Jesus Christ. Begone.”
This annoys him. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. This isn’t about you.”
“Then what is it about?” This from Angela, steady and crazy calm considering there’s a Black Wing in her living room. “What do you want?”
“We’ve come to see the baby,” he says.
Christian and I exchange troubled glances. Where is Webster?
“My baby?” Angela repeats, almost stupidly. “Why?”
“Penamue would like to see the wee thing, as would I. I’m the grandfather, after all.”
Holy crap, I think. Phen’s here. And … does that mean that the other angel is Angela’s father?
“You are nothing to him, Asael,” Anna spits out. “Nothing.”
At the name Asael my brain floods with every piece of information I’ve gathered about this guy over the past year: the collector, the big bad who would stop at nothing to recruit or destroy all of the Triplare from this world, the brother who usurped Samjeeza as the leader of the Watchers. Very dangerous, I can practically hear my father saying. Without pity. Without hesitation. He takes what he wants, and if he sees you, if he knows what you are, he will take you. I want to run, that’s my instinct—run, run down the stairs and out the door and not look back—but I clench my teeth and stay right where I am.
“He’s not here,” Angela says, like she’s only irritated at this intrusion and not terrified out of her mind. “You could have simply called, Phen, and I would have told you that. You didn’t have to make the trip all this way.”
Asael laughs. The sound makes my skin crawl. “We could have called,” he repeats, amused. “Where is the baby, then, if not here?”
“I gave him away.”
“You gave him away? To whom?”
“To a nice couple in a profile I picked at the adoption agency, who desperately wanted a kid. The dad’s a musician; the mom’s a pastry chef. I liked the idea that he’d always have music and good food.”
“Hmm,” Asael says thoughtfully. “I believe that Penamue was under the impression that you were going to keep the child. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” answers a voice I wouldn’t have recognized as Phen’s if I didn’t know it was him speaking. He sounds like he has a bad cold. “She told me she was keeping it.”
“Him,” Angela corrects. “And I changed my mind, after it was clear that you were going to bail on me.” She can’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. “Look, I’m not the maternal type. I’m nineteen years old. I go to Stanford. I have a life. Being strapped with a kid’s the last thing I want. So I gave him to some people who’d take care of him.”
I can’t see, but I can imagine Angela standing there, that carefully blank expression she gets when she’s hiding something, her hip pushed out a bit to one side, her head cocked like she can’t believe she’s still having this oh-so-boring conversation. “So it looks like you wasted your time,” she adds. “And mine.”
There’s a moment of silence. Then Asael starts to clap, slowly, so loudly I flinch every time his hands strike each other.
“What a performance,” he says. “You’re quite the actress, my dear.”
“Believe me or don’t,” she says. “It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Search the apartment,” Asael says, an untroubled calm to his voice, like still water on the lake, which doesn’t reveal the turmoil under the surface. “Look in all the nooks and crannies. I believe the baby is here, somewhere.”
I hear people moving away from us, down the hall, and then the noise of tossing furniture and breaking glass. Anna starts to whisper to herself, soft and desperate, something that I vaguely recognize as the Lord’s Prayer.
We should do something, I send to Christian.
He shakes his head again. We’re outnumbered. There are two full angels, Clara, and your dad said we wouldn’t be able to beat even one of them in a head-to-head fight. Then add in a few what I am betting are Triplare. We wouldn’t stand a chance in there.
I bite my lip. But we have to help Angela.
He shakes his head. We should figure out where Web is. That’s what Angela would want us to do, he says. I can feel his desire to run away, the way he’s been conditioned to in this situation, and I can feel his fear, almost panic at this point, rising in him. He’s not afraid for himself. He’s afraid for me. He wants to put me in his truck and drive far away from here. He knows if we stay it will all play out like his vision, which ends with me covered in blood, staring up at him with glassy eyes. He can’t let that happen.
Now it’s my turn to shake my head. We can’t just leave Angela.
“He’s not here. I told you,” Angela says.
“You are mine,” Asael says in a harder voice, starting to lose patience. The floor creaks under his weight as he takes a step toward her. “You are blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, and that baby belongs to me as well. The seventh is mine. I will have it.”
“Him,” she corrects again softly.
The others return.
“There’s no baby,” a woman’s voice reports. “But there’s a crib in one of the back rooms.” Then they start tearing apart the kitchen, dumping out drawers, throwing things on the floor for good measure.
Anna’s praying gets louder.
“Enough,” Asael says, his voice calm again. “Tell us where he is.”
“He’s gone,” Angela says, her voice wavering. “I sent him away from here.”
“Where?” Asael asks again, less patiently. “Where did you send him?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Angela,” rasps Phen. “Please. Tell him. Just tell him, and he will let you go.”
Asael makes an amused sound in the back of his throat. “Oh, Penamue, you really do care for her, don’t you? How droll. I would never have imagined, when I sent you to check up on my long-lost daughter in Italy, that you’d lose your little gray heart. But I suppose I understand. I do. She’s so young, isn’t she? So new, like a tender green sprout pushing up out of the earth.”
I get a flash of the floating woman again, him carrying her this time, his face pressed against her white, pulseless neck.
“So,” Asael continues, “do as your lover bids you. Tell us where you’ve taken the baby.”
“No.”
He sighs. “Very well. I don’t enjoy having to employ this particular tactic, but … Desmond, hold her mother for a moment?”
Footsteps. Anna stops praying as she’s yanked away from Angela. Then she starts up again: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven….”
“Amen. I do hope He’s listening to all this,” Asael says. “Now, then, tell me what I want to know, or your mother will die.”
I hear Angela’s sharp intake of breath. I cast a desperate glance at Christian, my mind whirling. What can we do?
“It’s quite the dilemma,” Asael says. “Your mother or your son. But consider this: If you tell us where to find the infant, I promise you that he’ll be safe from harm. He’ll want for nothing. I will raise him as my own child.”
“Yeah, well, I’m your child,” Angela says. “And that’s not working out so great.”
He gives a startled laugh at her back talk. “Then be my daughter, as these two lovely girls have been—your sisters, you know. I will give you a room in my house, a place at my table, by my side.”
“In hell, you mean,” she says.
“Hell’s not so bad. We’re free there. The angels are kings, and you could be a princess. And you could remain with your child.”
“Don’t do it,” Anna says.
“Come with me, and we’ll let your mother go unharmed, for the rest of her life,” Asael promises.
“No. Remember what I taught you,” Anna murmurs. “Don’t worry about me. They can murder my body, but they can never harm my soul.”
“Are you so sure about that?” Asael asks. “Olivia, come here, dear. Perhaps we should educate her. This”—he pauses briefly—“is a very special kind of knife. I call it Dubium Alta—the great doubt. The blade causes grievous injury, I’m afraid, to both body and soul. If I say the word, my girl Olivia here will cut your soul to ribbons. I think she’ll rather enjoy it.”
“Lead us not into temptation—”
“Olivia,” he prompts.
I don’t hear the one called Olivia move, but suddenly Anna gives a long, agonized cry.
“Mom,” whispers Angela, as Anna dissolves into ragged sobs.
I taste blood I’m biting my lip so hard. Christian’s hand comes down on my arm, tight enough to hurt.
No, he says.
I’ll call glory, I say, and we’ll run to them, before they can—
I feel him going through the possible scenarios, but none of them work, none of them will end the way we want them to, with all of us together and safe. It’s no use, he says. They’re too fast. Even with surprise on our side, there are too many of them. They’re too strong.
“And deliver us from evil,” Anna pants out finally.
“She’s a bit like a broken record, isn’t she? Olivia, sweetheart …”
Anna cries out again.
“Stop,” Angela says. “Stop hurting her!” She takes a deep breath. “I will take you to Web—to the baby.”
“Excellent,” Asael almost purrs.
“No, Angela,” Anna pleads weakly, like speaking is almost too much for her.
“You have to promise me that he’ll be taken care of, that he’ll be safe,” Angela says.
“I give you my word,” Asael agrees. “Not a hair on his head will be harmed.”
“All right. Let’s go, then,” she says.
Christian starts pulling me down the stairs.
But Asael sighs. “I wish I could believe you, my dear.”
“What?” Angela’s confused.
“You have no intention of taking us to your son. I hate to think of the wild goose chase you’d lead us on.”
“No, I swear—”
“You’ll give me what I want,” he says almost cheerfully. “Eventually. A few hours in hell and you’ll be drawing me a map to the child, I think.” His voice hardens. “All right, Olivia. I’m tired of playing games.”
“Wait!” Angela says desperately. “I said I would—”
Someone gags—a muffled cough, choking.
“Mom!” Angela’s crying, struggling against someone’s arms. “Mom! Mom!”
Anna whispers hoarsely, “God help me,” and falls heavily to the floor.
I can smell her blood.
God help me.
“Mom,” whimpers Angela. “No.”
The reality of what’s happened breaks over me like a tidal wave. We’ve waited too long, too afraid to take action. We’ve let this happen. We’ve let them kill her.
“Let’s go,” Asael says.
They move swiftly toward the door, giving Christian only seconds to drag me down the stairs before we’re seen. There’s not enough time to make it across the lobby and out into the street. He pulls me inside the auditorium, moving us blindly into the dark.
For a few minutes I stand in the blackness, quaking, my eyes going in and out of focus, my stomach cramping, yet at the same time I feel strangely disconnected from my body, like I’m seeing myself from a distance. From a vision, maybe. My vision.
Anna is dead. Angela is being taken to hell. And there’s nothing I can do about it.
The group comes down the stairs, Phen first, from the little I can see through the two-inch slit in the velvet curtains, then Angela being flanked by two identically dressed dark-haired girls. I don’t see their faces, but something about them strikes me as young, about my own age, maybe even younger. Angela’s face as she passes is shocked; tears gleam on her cheeks. She keeps her eyes down. Then a guy I’ve never seen before saunters by—the one called Desmond, I assume—and finally a man in a black suit who looks enough like Samjeeza that from a distance I doubt I could tell them apart. He raises a hand, and everybody stops in the middle of the lobby.
“You two,” he says. “I want you to stay and clean up.”
“Clean up?” repeats one of the girls in almost a whine. “But Father—”
“Burn the place,” he says.
“But how are we supposed to get back?” asks the other.
“Just take care of it,” he says irritably.
Desmond snickers, and one of the girls hits him hard in the chest. He lifts his fist to retaliate, but Asael stops him, laying a hand on his shoulder in a paternal manner, then turns to Angela and grabs her gently at the back of the neck. He smiles. Leans close to her ear. Whispers, “This, my child, is where you must abandon all hope.”
They vanish.
The first girl makes a disgusted sound, kicks a booted foot against one of the brass poles that holds up a line of velvet rope. It topples to the floor with a resounding crash. “Why do we always get the crap jobs?”
I expect Phen to disappear too, now that his dirty work is done, but he stays. He comes to the theater entrance and pulls back the curtain, forcing Christian and me to slink even farther into the belly of the auditorium, deeper in shadows, crouching among the seats.
“All the world’s a stage,” Phen says absently, like he’s talking to himself. “And all the men and women merely players.”
“What are you talking about?” one of the girls asks him. Their voices are exactly the same, like they’re twins or something, although one of them is wearing a bunch of glinting silver bracelets that occasionally jangle together when she moves. From the sound of it they’re breaking open the cash register at the refreshments counter and scooping out the change.
“I think Father’s done with you,” she says to Phen. “You can go back to your little hidey-hole in Rome. Unless you’d give us a ride home? Would you? That would be so sweet of you.”
“All the world’s a stage,” he murmurs, seeming not to hear her. “A stage.”
He turns, letting the curtain drop, and we’re plunged back into utter darkness.
“Oh, come on,” the girl purrs, “we’ll make it worth your while.”
No answer. He’s gone.
“Jerk,” Evil Twin One mutters. “Where’s the next train station? Like five hundred miles from here, I bet. Dumb hick town.”
“You have to admit, though, Phen’s sexy,” teases Evil Twin Two. “I wouldn’t have minded doing him a favor.”
“Just because he’s in a hot body doesn’t mean he’s not an old man inside,” Evil Twin One retorts.
“That’s right; I forgot,” says Evil Twin Two, obviously chewing on something, probably candy from under the counter. “You only go for younger guys.”
“Shut up. Come on, let’s get this over with,” Evil Twin One says.
It’s quiet for a minute. My heart drums in my ears, hard and fast. Then I catch the first whiff of smoke in the air.
This is it.
I know how this is going to happen. I’ve seen it too many times to count. But even so, in the real-life moment, knowing all that I do, I hold on to the hope that they’ll just leave now. I hear them jangling toward the door, and I think, They’ll leave this time, and then we can get out of this black hole that’s got us. I’ll run upstairs, and Anna will still be alive, and I’ll heal her. We’ll find Web. Everything will be okay, somehow.
But then, as always happens, there’s the high-pitched cry, muffled and frightened. And I remember.
Web’s in here with us. Somewhere in this darkness.
Behind me I feel Christian tense like a coiled spring.
“What’s that?” one of the twins says. “Shh. Be quiet.”
As if on cue, the crying abruptly stops. The silence in its wake is deafening. I hold my breath.
Then the curtains part, sending a beam of light down the middle of the auditorium.
“Something’s in there. Get the light.” They scuffle along the wall.
“I can’t find the stupid switch.”
The first one laughs. “Watch this.”
The fireball arcs over my head and strikes the back edge of the left wall, which ignites instantly. I’m blinded by the light.
Christian doesn’t wait for them to see us. “Get down!” he yells, his glory sword like a flare in his hand. I dive for the aisle, which is awkward since it’s slanted. I bang my chin hard and then lie flat as Christian leaps over me, bringing his blade down hard on an evil twin’s black dagger. The sorrow blade crackles and splits, but the girl has another one in her hand before the first has fully disintegrated. She lunges down at him, swiping at his legs, but he moves aside. The other girl hisses and tries to move in on his flank.
“Who are you?” She darts in, and he easily deflects her blow, shatters her dagger.
“Concerned. Citizen,” he gets out between lunges.
They haven’t even seen me.
I scramble backward until my back hits a chair. I watch Christian dodge another strike from the second twin, moving faster than I’ve ever seen him move. Suddenly he veers sideways into the first twin and turns and hurls her into the second one. They stagger but recover quickly, advancing. One hops over a row of seats, then another, attempting to get behind him, but he retreats, keeping them in front of him. They remind me of snakes, I think dazedly, their movements fluid, purposeful, synchronized.
The fire’s spread to the heavy curtains at the edge of the stage now, filling the room with thick black smoke that boils in the rafters overhead. The baby starts to cry again, louder this time, angrier. The twins turn toward the sound.
Christian pivots to stand between them and the direction the cry is coming from. He’s amazing with the sword, whirling and cutting, keeping them at bay almost like a dance, so much more than I ever saw in our training together. There’s a fierceness in him that’s breathtaking to behold. But he’s tiring. I can see that, too.
I need to get up, I think. I need to draw my own sword, and help him.
I get my legs under me and shakily rise to my feet.
No, get back, Christian says in my mind. I’ll hold them off. Find the baby.
Web. My shell-shocked brain struggles to focus. I need to get Web.
I stumble up onto the stage and beyond it, backstage into one of the tiny dressing rooms on the side. There’s fabric everywhere, rolls of it lying around, costumes. I paw through them but don’t hit anything solid like a baby. I try to listen for the crying, but it’s stopped again.
“Web!” I call, even though he obviously can’t answer me. “Web, where are you?”
Over to the other side of the stage I go, to another dressing room, but it’s empty. The fire is on this side, and I can literally feel its heat growing. There’s a snapping sound above me, and one of the lenses from a stage light crashes to the floor, making me scream. It’s dark back here, too freaking dark to see anything.
“Cry, Web, cry,” I call. I hear Christian shout out in pain from somewhere above me, near the door to the lobby. I have to do something.
I stagger into the middle of the stage. I don’t see the bright arc of Christian’s sword or the shadows of the twins anymore. The lobby is completely engulfed in flames. There’s not much time left before I won’t be able to breathe or see or fight my way out of here.
But I can’t leave here without Web.
And then I remember the trapdoor. Angela showed it to us once, when we were bored during Angel Club. It’s a space under the stage only big enough for a person to fit, meant for moments in a play when the character should magically disappear.
trp dr
Angela was trying to tell me where he was.
I dash over to the spot and start tearing at the floorboards, then reach deep down into the dark beneath, coughing on account of the growing smoke, and my fingers touch something soft and warm and alive.
I pull out a bundle wrapped in a blanket.
Web.
I don’t take time to get reacquainted. I snug his body into my shoulder and turn and head straight for the back door, which lets out into the alley behind the building.
Christian, I think. I have him. I’m getting out.
But before I make it three steps, I find my path blocked by the twins.
I take a stumbling step back.
They’re my brother’s girlfriend. At least, one of them is.
“Lucy,” I say, blinking at them in confusion.
“Clara Gardner,” says the one with the jangling bracelets, her dark eyes widening in astonishment. “Oh my God.” She smiles. “What a coincidence, me stumbling upon you here, of all places. Clara, I’d like to introduce you to my sister, Olivia,” she says, like we’ve bumped into each other at the country club.
She killed Anna, I think. That girl just killed my friend’s mother.
“Charmed, I’m sure,” says Olivia, although she’s clearly not charmed. “Give us the baby,” she says. “It’s over.”
I glance over my shoulder, back at the auditorium. Where is Christian?
“Oh, we took care of your friend, although he did put up a pretty good fight,” Lucy says offhandedly. “Now hand us the baby. If you give it to us right now, I promise it’ll be quick when I kill you.”
My throat closes in despair at the idea that Christian is lying in the dark below us somewhere, dead or dying, his soul laid bare. I clutch Web to my chest. He’s being so quiet—too quiet, I think—but I can’t worry about that at the moment.
“Give me the baby,” Lucy says.
I shake my head.
She sighs like I am really wrecking her day. “I’m going to enjoy gutting you.” The black dagger appears in her hand. I sense a kind of humming noise from it, a vibration that resonates all through me. She steps closer to me. “I just adore your brother, you know.” She laughs. “He’s the best boyfriend I’ve ever had. So attentive. So sexy. It’s going to be terrible when he finds out his sister died. So tragically too—a fire. He’s going to need so much TLC to get him through it.”
She’s trying to goad me, I realize dully, but nothing in me rises to fight her. I don’t have long now. Out of the corner of my eye I see Olivia start to move in on me from the side. They’re backing me to the edge of the stage. Even if I could fight them, I’d never be able to keep them both at bay. Not with Web in my arms.
They’re closing in for the kill.
I need to summon glory, I think. I don’t know if it will keep them back the way it will for Black Wings, but I need to try. It’s my only shot.
I close my eyes.
I try to empty myself.
Focus.
Every other time I’ve asked it, truly asked it, the light has come to me—that day in the forest with my mother, when I fought Samjeeza; the night of the car accident after prom; any time I’ve truly needed it, it’s been there like it was waiting for the moment to literally shine. But there’s no glory anywhere inside me right now, or if there is, I can’t feel it. I can’t access it.
All I feel is dark. Because I’m going to lose this battle. Christian’s seen it.
I am going to die.
No, comes Christian’s voice in my mind. No, you aren’t.
Tears spring to my eyes. You’re not dead, I say stupidly.
I need you to do what I tell you, exactly when I tell you to. Okay?
Okay.
I hear the sound of sirens in the distance.
“Give. Us. The baby.” Olivia is close enough now that she could easily stab me. She lifts the dagger.
“Go. To. Hell,” I say between clenched teeth. Maybe there is some fire left in me, after all.
Lift Web up over your head! Now! Christian shouts in my mind, and I don’t think, I just do as he asks, I lift the baby, and Christian leaps up from the orchestra pit onto the stage, and his glory sword is a blinding spray of light as it passes through me from shoulder to hip. I can feel it slicing through my clothes, but when it touches my skin, there’s only warmth.
“No!” someone calls out.
Dazed, I lower Web back to my shoulder, and that’s when I see Lucy—the one with the bracelets—standing a few feet away, her face a mask of rage and disbelief, screaming in this ragged, animal-like agony.
And Olivia falls at my feet, dead.
Cut almost in half by Christian’s glory sword.
“I will kill you!” Lucy screams, staring at me with bulging, grief-filled eyes, the black dagger clutched in her fist.
But Christian is with me now, beside me, sword in hand, and the sirens are getting closer. Any minute and this place will be crawling with firefighters.
Lucy glances toward the exit. “I swear I will kill you, Clara Gardner.” A tear makes its way down her face, dangling on her chin for a few seconds before it drops. “And I’ll make sure you suffer first,” she says, then turns and runs up the aisle of the theater, bursting through the smoke and flame and out onto the street.
I can hear her sobbing as she runs.
I don’t look at Olivia. I can’t. I turn away, bile rising in my throat as I realize that I’m covered in her blood, my shirt soaked with it, my shoulders and arms splattered.
I used to think of this place as being so safe, I think. A place for all of us to talk and be ourselves. A magic place.
Now it’s burning down around us. It’s gone.
Angela is gone.
Slowly I become aware of Christian standing in front of me, panting, pressing his shirt to his ribs.
“Are you okay?” he asks, squeezing my shoulder. “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” I answer to both questions, then see that he’s bleeding. “You’re cut.”
“I’ll survive,” he says. At the same moment, we hear shouted voices in the lobby. “We have to get out of here. Now.”
We hurry toward the back exit and into the alley behind the theater. Cool night air hits my skin, my lungs, and I can breathe again.
“We have to fly,” Christian says. He unfolds his wings, the black speckles standing out on his white feathers like ink spilled on paper in the dark.
My heart is so heavy with dread and shock, with sadness for Anna, with fear for Angela, with Olivia’s death, that I know flight isn’t possible. I shake my head at Christian. “I can’t.”
He looks down at the ground for a minute, thinking, then nods solemnly and retracts his wings. “Okay. We’ll circle around and get my truck. It’s a better plan, anyway. All right?”
I nod.
“You’ve got him?” Christian asks.
I gaze down into Web’s round little face. He looks up at me with wide amber eyes. Angela’s eyes. He coughs. I pull him tighter to me.
“I’ve got him,” I say, and then we’re running, running, through the smoky streets of Jackson.
Christian’s hand trembles as he puts the keys in the ignition. Then his jaw tightens and the truck rumbles to life and we peel away from the curb. Neither of us says anything for a while, the only sound the gunning of the engine. I want to tell him that he’s driving too fast, that the last thing we need is to get pulled over, what with us all bloody and a baby in the front seat, but I don’t have the heart. He’s doing the best he can.
“Where are we going?” I ask as he turns onto the road that will lead us out of town.
“I don’t know,” he says. “The girl, the one who I didn’t—” He stops talking for a minute and takes a shallow breath, like he’s trying not to puke. “She’ll probably call for reinforcements. I don’t know how long it will take her to get to hell and back.”
“Lucy,” I murmur.
He glances over at me sharply. “How do you know her name?”
“She’s Jeffrey’s girlfriend.”
If it’s possible for his face to go any stonier, it does. “And she knows who you are? She knows your name?”
“Yes.”
“Then we can’t go home,” he says, as if that settles it.
I fight down a wave of panic. “Why? It’s hallowed ground; your place and mine both are. It’d be safe there.”
He shakes his head. “The hallowed-ground thing works on Black Wings, not Triplare.” He takes a deep breath. “We have to go,” he says slowly, deliberately, because he knows this is going to upset me. “They’ll be hunting you. They’ll be after the baby, too. We have to get far away from here.”
“But Angela—”
“Angela would want us to keep Web safe,” he says.
I know he’s right, but there’s a finality I feel in this moment, like if we go now, if I leave this place, we’ll never come back. We’ll always be running. We’ll always be scared.
“Clara, please,” he says softly. We’ll figure something out. But right now I need you to trust me. I need you safe.
I swallow, hard, and nod. Christian lowers his head for a second, relieved, then reaches under his seat and pulls out a faded road atlas. He opens it to a map of the United States and lays it across the dashboard.
“Close your eyes and put your finger down on a spot,” he says. “And that’s where we’ll go.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and touch my finger to the page.
I wonder if I will ever see Tucker again.
We drive through the night. In the morning we pull over at a rest stop to clean up and then Christian goes into Walmart for some new clothes, a car seat, and baby supplies. He surprises me by unlocking the silver box in the bed of his truck to reveal an escape kit straight out of an action movie: a bunch of documents, birth certificates, fake driver’s licenses, something that looks like insurance paperwork, and the biggest pile of cash I’ve ever seen.
“My uncle,” he says by way of explanation. “He could see into the future—not just his own, sometimes, but for others. He always said someday I’d have to run.”
His uncle was a bit extreme. But then, here we are. Running.
I try to fix Web a bottle of formula, but he won’t drink it. He takes one good look at me now that it’s light and starts crying. Hard. Nothing I do seems to help. I am not his mother. Where is my mother? I can practically feel him wondering. My grandmother? What have you done with them?
“You should try to get some rest,” Christian says after we pull back out onto the highway and Web, lulled by the vibrations of the road, finally goes back to sleep.
There’s no possibility of that. Whenever I close my eyes, I’m back in that stairwell listening to somebody kill my friend’s mother. I’m in the dark room waiting to be killed myself. I’m watching someone die right in front of me. Instead I reach into my pocket and take out my cell and call Billy for like the tenth time since we fled Jackson.
She doesn’t answer, which makes me all kinds of paranoid that somehow Lucy has gotten back to hell by now and rallied some evil army of the undead and has already been to my house looking for me, possibly stumbling over an unsuspecting Billy. I keep imagining it like a scene out of a horror film, where Lucy is standing in front of the answering machine, laughing wickedly as she hears my voice trying to warn Billy.
“Hi, Billy, this is Clara,” I say into the phone, my voice cracking on my own name. “Call me. It’s important.”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Christian says after I hang up. “Billy can take care of herself.”
I think about the blood. The sound of Olivia’s body hitting the stage.
“It’s okay, Clara,” Christian murmurs. “We’re safe.”
I turn to look out the window. We’re passing a ridge full of wind turbines: tall white windmills, their propellers whirling round and round, cutting the air. The clouds leave shadows as they move between the sun and the earth, like dark creatures roaming the land.
Will we ever be safe again? I wonder.
Christian takes one hand off the wheel and reaches for mine. He rubs his thumb across my knuckles, and it’s supposed to comfort me the way it always does. It’s supposed to fill me with his strength.
But all I feel is weak.