I don’t take time to think. I burst through the door and go to him, knowing that any second now Kokabel and Samjeeza and who knows who else could be after us, painfully aware that I promised Samjeeza I wouldn’t talk to anybody but Angela, but I don’t care. He’s my brother. In that moment it occurs to me that maybe my purpose in coming to hell wasn’t all about Angela, after all. Maybe I was meant to save Jeffrey.
He does a double take when I approach him, then scowls. “Clara, what are you doing here?”
I guess I shouldn’t expect him to be happy to see me.
There’s no time for small talk, no time for explanations. I spot Angela and Christian on the sidewalk right outside the window, their mouths open in horror that I was right. “I need you to do what I tell you, just this once,” I say quietly, glancing around at the gray people in the restaurant, one person to a table, but none of them look up. Yet. I grab his hand and tug him toward the door. “Come with me, Jeffrey. Now.”
He jerks away from me. “You can’t show up here and order me around. This is my job, Clara. My meal ticket. It sucks, but one of the things about having a job is that I can’t exactly come and go whenever I please. Bosses tend to frown on that.”
He doesn’t know where he is. He thinks this is his normal life. I don’t have time to ruminate about how depressing it is that my brother can’t tell the difference between normalcy and eternal damnation.
“This is not your job,” I say, trying to keep calm. “Come on. Please.”
“No,” he says. “Why should I listen to you? Last time you were really freaking rude to me, and you yelled at me, and then you didn’t come back for all this time, and now you expect me to—”
“I didn’t know you were here,” I interrupt. “I would have come sooner if I’d known.”
“What are you talking about?” He tosses his dishcloth down on a nearby table and glares at me. “Have you gone mental or something?”
Oh, I’m on my way. Already the barrier I’ve erected between me and the emotions of all these people around me is corroding, and little whispers are getting through.
None of her business.
I hate him. I deserve better.
Cheated. They cheated me.
I blink furiously and try to clear my head, concentrate on Jeffrey, but then—
What is she doing here?
Oh, crap. I stare over Jeffrey’s shoulder, and there’s Lucy, framed in the doorway, her expression totally shocked to see me.
“You … What are you doing here?” she marches up and demands, her eyes full of fury, but her voice controlled. She slips her arm into Jeffrey’s. Just seeing her again brings the memory of that night at the Pink Garter rushing back, the fireball she hurled at us, her shriek as Christian cut Olivia down, what she vowed afterward. I swear I will kill you, Clara Gardner. And I’ll make sure you suffer first.
“Let go of him,” I say in a low voice.
Christian is suddenly by my side, staring at Lucy with fierce eyes that dare her to attack us here, like he’s reminding her that he killed her sister and he might have a glory sword with her name on it. Which makes me wonder if glory swords work in hell.
I really, really hope they do.
Lucy stares at me wordlessly, her hold on my brother’s arm tightening. I feel her hatred of me but also her fear. She wants to hurt me, to sever me in two with her blade, to avenge her sister, to earn the respect of her father, but she’s scared of me. She’s scared of Christian. Deep down, she’s a coward.
“We’re going,” Christian says. “Now.”
“I’m not going with you,” Jeffrey says.
“Shut up,” I snap. “I’m taking you out of here.”
“No,” Lucy says, her voice much calmer than what I can feel churning inside of her. “You aren’t.” She smiles at Jeffrey sweetly. “I can explain all of this, baby, I promise, but first, I have to handle something. You stay right here, okay? I have to go for a minute, but I’ll be right back. Okay?”
“Okay …,” Jeffrey agrees, frowning. He’s confused, but he trusts her.
She leans up to kiss him softly on the mouth, and he relaxes. Then she lets go of him, which kind of shocks me, that she’s releasing him without a fight. I brace myself for a sudden sorrow blade to the chest, but she brushes past me without a second look in my direction.
Then I feel what she intends to do. She’s going to the club, three blocks away. To find her father. To bring a whole world of hurt down on our heads.
She hopes that Asael will turn us all, me and Christian and Angela, to tiny piles of ash.
When she’s out of sight I turn to Jeffrey, who goes back to wiping down the table. “Jeffrey. Jeffrey! Look at me. Listen. We’re in hell. We have to go, like now, so we can catch a train out of here.”
He shakes his head. “I told you, I have to work. I can’t leave.” He moves to another empty table and starts stacking dishes.
“This isn’t the place where you work,” I say, careful to keep my voice even. “This is hell. Hades. The underworld. It looks like the pizza joint, but it’s not. It’s only a reflection of earth. This isn’t real pizza, see?” I cross to a table and grab a slice of fake pizza from the plate, hold it up next to Jeffrey’s face. It’s like a hunk of soggy cardboard, gray and textureless, dissolving in my hand. “It isn’t real. Nothing’s real here. Nothing’s solid. This is hell.”
“There’s no such thing as hell,” he murmurs, his gaze on the pizza, vaguely concerned. “It’s something church people made up to scare us.”
“Did Lucy tell you that?”
He doesn’t answer, but I see it in his eyes, the beginnings of doubt. “I can’t remember.”
“Come with me, and we’ll take a train, and everything will get clear again. I promise.”
He resists as I pull at his arm. “Lucy said that she’d be right back. She said she’d explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” I say to Jeffrey. “It’s simple. We’re in hell. We need to get out. Lucy’s a Black Wing, Jeffrey. She brought you here.”
He shakes his head, jaw tightening. “No. Not possible.”
Christian is pacing at the door, unwilling to wait any longer. You have to come now.
I turn to Jeffrey. “Come on, Jeffrey. Trust me. I’m your sister. I’m the only family you’ve got. We have to stick together. That’s what Mom told us, remember? Do this for me now.”
His silver eyes get mournful, and I feel behind my ever-crumbling wall how hurt he is by all that’s happened: the inexplicable vision and his failure to enact it, the way everything was always about me and never him, Dad abandoning us, Mom dying and leaving him with so many unanswered questions, everything turning to ashes right before his eyes. Everyone’s gone, and there’s nobody left for him but Lucy, and there’s something that he knows is missing in her, something important, and he doesn’t know if it’s all his fault, if it’s because he’s not the person he’s supposed to be, but he doesn’t want to lose her, too. Who am I? he thinks. Why am I here? Why do I have to hurt so much all the time? Why does it never, never get any easier?
And he wishes it would just stop.
He wishes he were dead.
“Oh, Jeffrey,” I gasp. “Don’t think that.” I throw my arms around him, my heart in my throat. “I love you, I love you,” I’m saying over and over. “And Mom loves you, and Dad loves you, he does; we all love you, silly. Don’t think that.”
“Mom’s dead. Dad’s gone. You’re busy,” he says without inflection.
“No.” I pull back and look into his eyes, tears streaming down my face. I put a hand on his cheek the way I did with Samjeeza earlier and flood him with the memory of Mom on Buzzards Roost this afternoon, hoping he can receive it, focusing on the moment when I first told her about Jeffrey, how happy she was at the very idea of him. Then I show him heaven. Mom walking into the distant light. The warmth of it. The peace. The lingering traces of love all over her.
“Don’t you see? It’s real,” I whisper.
He stares at me, a sheen of tears in his eyes.
“Let’s go home,” I say.
“Okay.” He nods. “Okay.”
All my breath leaves me in a relieved rush. We move to the door. Christian’s practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, looking all around like the very shadows are going to jump us. Over there, he says, looking to the west, to the waning light. Something’s coming.
I grab Christian’s hand, still gripping Jeffrey’s. “Come on.”
There’s the clear sound of a train whistle, high and sweet. I’ve never heard a more welcome sound in my life.
The people on the street turn toward the noise.
It’s coming. It’s almost here.
But now we’ve caught the attention of the damned. I was concentrating on Jeffrey before, not looking at the other lost souls in the pizza parlor, but they are all looking at me. Even the gray people out on the street are turning slowly toward us, their faces raised instead of bent to the ground. They look directly at us, and where their eyes should be are black, empty holes. They open their mouths, and the insides are black—their teeth are black, their tongues—and I become aware of another noise, like the buzzing of flies. Death.
Christian swears under his breath. Angela grabs Jeffrey’s hand.
One of the gray people lifts a bony finger to point at us. Then another, and another. Then they start to move in our direction.
“Run!” Angela yells, and we take off toward the train station down the middle of the street, our arms bumping and jarring as we struggle to keep holding on to one another. We can do it. We’ve only got like half a block to go, if that. We’re so close. Minutes away from safety. We can do this. We can get there.
But we don’t make it ten feet before the gray people start to pour onto the asphalt to block our way. They are lighter than real people, easier to shove back, to push past, but soon there are so many of them, too many of them now, an army of the damned between us and the station. Their fingers are cold and damp, zombielike, their hands tearing at my hoodie and then at my hair, Angela kicking and screaming and crying, Jeffrey being jerked out of my grasp. They’re all around us, on every side, moaning, yelling things in a language I don’t understand, a litany of low, guttural noises, shrieks. We’re going to be torn to pieces, I think. We’re going to die right here.
But then they stop, as suddenly as they turned on us. They back away, then cast their faces down again, leaving the four of us gasping and panting in a small empty circle in the middle of the road. We’re trapped.
I warned you not to speak to anyone, comes Samjeeza’s voice ringing in my head, and I feel a kind of eagerness from him. Fear. Excitement. He expected this. He knew that Jeffrey was in hell, and he knew that I’d talk to him. He knew that I’d give us all away.
I’m beginning to think he tricked us.
Please, I say desperately. Help us.
I can’t help you now. Asael has you, and then Samjeeza’s presence vanishes as quickly as it came. He’s deserted us.
The crowd of gray people is parting to let someone come through. I can’t see him yet, but I feel him. I know him. My blood turns to ice at the wave of malevolent delight that radiates out of this man, this angel, which overcomes his sense of sorrow to the point that it chills my bones to think all that he could be capable of. He is powerful. He is hate. And he carries the image of a drowned woman like a tattoo on his heart.
“Asael,” I whisper.
I turn to Christian. He smiles at me sadly, lifts my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles. Angela puts her tattooed hand on my shoulder and squeezes.
“Thanks for trying,” she says. “It means a lot that you tried.”
“What’s happening?” Jeffrey asks.
“We’re done,” I answer. “There’s no way out.”
“You could cross us.” Christian’s eyes meet mine, flaring with hope. “Call the glory, Clara. This is it. You were right. This is your purpose, this right now. Call the glory. Get us out of here.”
I reach for the glory, but the sorrow presses in.
“I can’t,” I say helplessly. “There’s too many of them, too much sorrow; I can feel them—”
“Forget them.” He takes my face in his hands. “Forget Asael. Just be with me.”
I stare up into his warm green eyes, so close that I can see the flecks of gold.
“I love you,” he murmurs. “Can you feel that? You. Not some destiny I think I’m called to. You. I’m with you. My strength. My soul. My heart. Feel it.”
I feel it. I feel his strength, and more importantly, I feel mine. He’s right. I can do this.
I have to do this.
My light explodes around us. And I send us away.
The light takes a while to fade. I step back from Christian, my breath coming in ragged gasps. He gently brushes a strand of hair away from my face, the back of his hand lingering against my cheek. He wants to kiss me.
“Get a room, you two,” Angela says, taking her hand off my shoulder. With the other hand she’s holding on to Jeffrey’s ear. He pushes her hand away almost absentmindedly.
We made it out.
Christian glances around. “Where are we?”
A cow lows nervously from the darkness, and everybody but me turns to look. I hold up my hand and call glory into it so they can all see what I already know is there: a set of stalls against one side, saddles and tack, farm equipment, an old rusted tractor in the far back, a hayloft over us.
“Pretty,” says Angela, staring into my glory lantern. “I want one.”
I stumble over to the wall to turn on the light. My knees feel funny as I let the glory blink out. I’ve expended a lot of energy in the past few minutes. I’m tired.
“What is this?” Christian asks, still sounding dazed. “A barn?”
“The Lazy Dog,” I say, staring into the dirt to avoid the sudden comprehension in his eyes. “The Averys’ barn.”
Angela bursts out laughing. “You brought us to Tucker’s barn,” she says, her eyes bright.
“Sorry,” I whisper up to Christian.
“Sorry?” Angela repeats. “You’re sorry? You brought us out of hell. You brought us home.” She lifts her tattooed arm over her head and breathes in deep like this manure-scented place where we’ve landed is the freshest, freest air she’s ever smelled.
Jeffrey sits on a bale of hay, his face pale, clutching at his stomach like he’s been punched. “You brought us out of hell.”
“You brought us out of hell,” Christian repeats with such proud conviction in his voice that tears spring to my eyes.
“I was in hell,” Jeffrey whispers, like he only now gets it. “Did you see those people’s eyes? I was in freaking hell. How did I end up in hell?”
“Where’s Web?” Angela asks suddenly. “Where is he?”
“He’s with Billy. He’s safe.”
“I want to see him. Can we go see him? I bet he won’t even recognize me. He’s probably taller than me by now. Where is he, did you say? Where’s Web?”
Christian and I exchange worried glances. “He’s with Billy,” I say again, slowly. “He’s still a baby, Ange. He’s not even three weeks old.”
She stares at me, then at Christian. “Three weeks?”
“We’ve been taking good care of him. He’s great, Ange. I mean, he cries. A lot. But outside of that he’s the best baby.”
“But—” She closes her eyes, brings a trembling hand to her mouth. She laughs again, wildly. “So I didn’t miss it. Every day I thought, I’m missing it. I’m missing his life. All those years I wondered.” Her eyes lift to mine. “But you brought me back.”
I knew time worked differently in hell, but I didn’t expect this. Angela had been gone for ten days when we decided to go find her, but it sounds like, on her end, she’s been gone for longer.
Much longer.
She stumbles, and Christian and I catch her between us, guide her to a hay bale, and sit her down. She grabs my wrist suddenly, and I’m flooded with the tangle of her emotions, amazement and relief and rage, a deep desire to see Web, to hold him and smell that place behind his ears, a fear that it won’t smell the same, that place, or that she won’t be the same. She’s fractured now, she thinks, a broken doll with glassy eyes.
“Ange, it’s okay,” I say.
“Thank you for coming,” she murmurs, then shakes her head, brushes her bangs out of her eyes, and looks up at me earnestly. “Thank you,” she tries again. “For coming for me. How did you find me?”
“Yes, how did you find her?” booms a voice from behind us. “That’s the part I couldn’t figure out.”
Angela looks up. Then she bends her head to her knees and groans, a dying, hopeless noise.
I spin around. There, standing in the shadows at the back of the barn, is Asael.
He looks like Samjeeza, I think. They’re both tall, but that’s kind of a given for angels, with coal-black, glossy hair. This man’s is cut so that it ends just past his ears, a bit wavy whereas Samjeeza’s is straight, but they have the same deep-set amber eyes. I see Angela in his face, too, something about the Roman nose with the slight hook at the bridge, her full bottom lip. And there’s something else about him that strikes me as familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it.
Lucy is standing beside him, arms crossed, looking pouty.
Jeffrey stands up. “Luce? Mr. Wick?”
Mr. Wick. Lucy’s dad. The man who owns the club and the tattoo parlor.
“Hello, Jeffrey,” Asael says. He takes a step forward. I counter by summoning a circle of glory around us. I’m so tired. It starts to waver immediately, but before it goes out, Christian replaces it with his own glory. I sigh with relief. At least for the moment we’re safe.
Asael stops short, annoyance on his face, like we’ve done something incredibly rude. He looks first at Jeffrey, who’s staring at him all freaked out, the way you naturally would if you ever encountered your girlfriend’s dad in a random barn in another state, then at Angela, who doesn’t move or raise her head, then at Christian. Then me.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” he says, lingering on me. “I’m Mr. Wick.”
“You’re Asael,” I say. “You’re the leader of the Watchers,” I say, for Jeffrey’s sake. “A Black Wing.”
Asael turns his hands up imploringly. “Why must you insist on such labels? Black, white, gray, what does it matter? Jeffrey, you know me. Have I ever been unkind to you?”
“No,” says Jeffrey, but he’s starting to look queasy, confused.
“It does matter,” I say to my brother. “Good and evil exist, Jeffrey. They’re real. This guy is about as evil as they come. Can’t you feel it?”
Asael laughs like the idea is preposterous, and Lucy joins in.
“Come on, Jeffrey,” she says. “Come back with us. You don’t belong with these people. You belong with me.”
“In hell?” he asks.
Her eyes flash. “That wasn’t hell. It’s an alternate world to our own, yes, but it’s not hell. Did you see any boiling pit of lava or a guy in a red suit with a tail and a pitchfork? That’s a myth, baby. What’s important is that we can be together. We’re meant to be together, right?”
For an awful second I think he’s going to say, Right, and walk across to them, and I’ll lose him again, this time forever, but then his jaw tightens.
“No,” he says quietly. “I don’t belong with you.”
“What?” She sounds truly shocked. “What are you saying?”
“He’s saying that he thinks the two of you should see other people,” I quip.
Enough with the small talk, I say to Christian, mind-to-mind. Let’s get out of here. I’d feel a lot better if we were on hallowed ground.
Can you do it? Christian asks. You’re not too tired?
I’m tired. But I’m pretty motivated to give the getting-the-heck-out-of-here plan a try. I’m fine.
Christian takes my hand, and instantly I feel stronger. I can do this, I think. Christian bends and whispers something to Angela. She stands, studiously not looking at Asael or Lucy, and tucks her arm in his.
I hold my hand out to Jeffrey. Let’s go home, I say.
“Jeffrey, listen to me—” Lucy says.
I start to imagine our place in Jackson, only a few miles from here, the aspen tree in the front yard, the wind in the pines, the sense of well-being and warmth that I always associate with our house, the squirrels staking out their territory in the trees, chattering, the birds flitting from branch to branch. That’s where I’ll take us. We’ll be safe there. We can figure things out.
Jeffrey takes my hand, which makes me feel stronger still. “Let’s go,” he says.
Asael makes an angry noise in the back of his throat, but he can’t stop me, he can’t touch me, and I close my eyes.
I’m two seconds from willing us out of there. Two seconds.
But then the barn door opens and Tucker walks in.
I know the minute I see him that we’re screwed.