A Slither of Hope (16 page)

“What?”

“My phone call. I get one, don't I?”

“You aren't officially under arrest. We're waiting for the people from the Sunflower Serenity Mental Health Clinic to come pick you up.”

Now it was my turn to sound ridiculous. “What?” I should have known.

“Since your father is indisposed, and there is no other guardian listed for you on their paperwork, your psychiatrist and I thought it best you return there for the time being. A short, seventy-two-hour hold to evaluate your mental faculties.”

Dr. G. It always starts with seventy-two hours. But I couldn't think about that, not now. “I still want a phone call.” My burner cell along with my fake ID, wig, and shoelaces were zipped away in a bag somewhere when we came in.

“Who would you call, Rayna? I left a message for your aunt at her emergency contact number before we left the hospital. I'm sure she'll be calling back soon.”

Damn it. I needed to get a call out to Kade so he'd at least know to come break me out of the SS Crazy again, but Detective Rhodes didn't want to make anything easy for me.

“Why don't you just relax? We can talk about anything you want.” He rested his back against the one-way mirror, supporting his weight with his uninjured hand. “Cassie Waters. How you escaped the Sunflower Serenity Mental Health Clinic. Who Lola Penmis is. Anything at all.”

I unclamped my hands, leaned back in the hard plastic chair, and crossed my arms. If I was going away, I'd do so in silence. Anything I said could be used against me at the SS Crazy.

I pulled a deep breath into my lungs. This was it. I was going back. And once again, Cam had done nothing to help. Closing my eyes to stay the flow of tears that threatened to come, I focused on my breath. In. Out. In. Out. In. I held this last one in. If I never breathed again, then I'd never have to go back there. It wouldn't exist if I said it didn't. If I failed to recognize this as reality, then I could simply un-pause when I was released. If I was released to my dad—or whoever—and not the police.

Oh God. I could feel it all slipping away. I curled up and fisted my hands through my hair.

“We have plenty of time before they come, if you decide you want to talk about anything, say, like where you've been this past month.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“How about why you were at the hospital?”

“Visiting my dad.”

“You've been so careful up until now. You didn't think someone would recognize you?”

“It was worth the risk.” As long as my feathers helped Dad heal. Though whether they did or not had yet to be seen.

“Why don't you tell me about the Halloween dance?” He finally pulled out the chair across the table from me and lowered down into it. “What happened with Luke Harper? He had quite a story to tell.”

“I don't know what you're talking about. Any chance you'll let me go?”

“Not that I can see.”

The door swung open. “Well you should look harder.” Kade's voice from the doorway couldn't have been more beautiful if he'd sung.

Joy sent me leaping out of my chair.

“What are you doing in here? Schnider!” Detective Rhodes called for one of his officers.

“You have nothing to worry about.” Calm rode the smokiness of Kade's voice. I didn't need to see his eyes to know they would be completely engulfed by black. His hand snaked around my arm. “Let's get you out of here, Hannibal.”

“Hannibal. Ha!” I let Kade lead me down the hallway and toward the large room the detective brought me through before he ushered me into the interrogation room.

“Don't laugh. You aren't in the clear yet.”

The open floor was packed with desks and phones and uniformed officers manning them. And a huge white-winged angel standing on a desk in the middle of everything with white light emanating from his eyes. Wait, Cam. And Kade. Together? This was not good.

“What's he doing here?” I whispered to Kade.

“He's the reason you aren't still stuck in that little room singing like a canary.”

Oh boy. “I wasn't about to tell him anything. But how—?”

“He called me. Said he saw you get arrested and followed you here.”

“Thanks, Cam!” I called to him.

Cam turned a not-so-happy glowing-eyed look at me. I could be dwelling on how hard he was about to lay into me, but I was too busy relishing the fact that I wasn't going back to the SS Crazy.

“Now let's get the hell out of here,” I said, then called to one of the officers I recognized, “And I want my shoelaces!”

***

Cam held the door of Kade's two-door purple Acura open while I climbed into the back seat. “What were you thinking leaving the apartment?”

“Forget leaving the apartment,” Kade slammed his door and started the engine, “what were you doing anywhere near the hospital?”

I looked from Kade to Cam and back again. “What are you two, like, pals now?”

“Not on your life,” Cam said.

At the same time, Kade said, “You wish.”

“They talk alike, they think alike, heck, they even drink alike,” I joked.

“Stop trying to change the subject,” Kade said, glaring at me through the rearview mirror.

“Thanks again,
Cam
, for getting me out.” I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at Kade.

“I almost didn't.”

“Excuse me?” I blew out a frustrated breath, sounding more and more like Kade all the time. “What am I talking about, of course you were going to leave without helping. Oh, so that's why you did nothing when I blew past you with a cop on my heels.”

“You did what?” Kade pulled out into traffic. “You could've stopped this before we had to influence an entire police station?”

Cam looked out his window. “With everything going on, I thought maybe with the police would be the safest place for her.”

“Traitor,” I mumbled before curiosity got the better of me. “So what changed your mind, traitor?”

“A phone call.”

I wasn't going to ask. Really, I wasn't, but the silence in the car took on a whole new thickness. “Do tell whose kindly phone call saved my ass, since you would've let me rot in a mental hospital.”

“Elyon.”

Kade swerved in his lane. The bumps dividing lanes vibrated the car before he corrected the wheel and pulled in front of our building.

Our. Building. For someone that was quite vocal about not trusting Cam, my roommate of sorts was having a serious lack of judgment at the wrong time. Why else would he bring Cam here?

Kade and I exchanged glances in his mirror. He gave a curt nod. “Go on up. I'll find a place to park.”

Cam opened the passenger-side door and flipped the seat down so I could get out. I placed my hand on Kade's chair to get some leverage so I could scoot out.

Kade pulled my arm in front of his chest, drawing me close. His leather jacket looked clean, but still held a faint tinge of dirt around the cuff and smelled of redwood. In contrast, his skin smelled clean and light. “I want to know every word he says.”

“Got it,” I said.

“Now go get yourself away from prying eyes.”

I turned my face to hide the blush in my cheeks and inched out, closing the door behind me.

“This is us,” I said to Cam, fishing in my pocket for my keys. “Why did Elyon's call change your mind about me?” I pushed the door open and fought the sticky lock for my key back.

“He pulled me off your dad. I'm your Protector now.”

“What?” I almost tripped over the first step, but caught myself on the railing. My thighs were still burning after the race I'd lost at the hospital. “Cam, no. What about my dad?”

“Your father will be in good hands. He's put another Protector on him. Elyon believes you should be the priority now.”

Oh great. Of course the killing angel would take an interest in me.

We climbed all four flights of stairs in silence. Turning the knob without needing a key, I opened the door to our apartment and followed Cam in, closing it behind me.

Cam stood in the center of the room with his hands behind his back, his gaze circling like a vulture, taking everything in. “This is where you live?”

“Yeah. Not all of us can afford gilded cages.”

“With Kade?”

“Yeah.” I dropped my keys into my pocket.

“It's unacceptable.”

I spun on him. “What's wrong with it?”

“There's only one bed.”

Ugh. This again? “You're as bad as Lee and Gina. What do you guys think goes on here?”

Cam's eyes narrowed.

“Oh. Well it doesn't. At all. Uh, never mind. Just forget it.” The tops of my ears heated like they were on fire. “So, you’re protecting me. That must mean I'm in some serious trouble.”

“Indeed.” He browsed the narrow bookshelf between the recliner and the nightstand.

“How big?” I waited for an answer that never came. “The trouble I'm in.”

He abandoned the bookshelf to look at me. “Both sides see you as an advantage, an upper hand. One we've never had before. Angels and Fallen are flocking to the city with nothing but you on their minds.”

I slid off my wig and placed it on the dresser. “Why is everyone so stuck on the fact that I can see them? If we could please get over this little fact my life would be so much easier.”

Cam blinked at the sight of my real hair. “Elyon is focused on you. I don't know what to do about him.”

I pulled my now flat hair back in a ponytail and secured it with a hair tie I kept on Kade's dresser. “He must still trust you if he gave you the task he has a hard-on for.” Cam blanched at my choice of words. “Sorry. I've been spending way too much time around Kade. What, uh, happened with that angel that followed you to Muir Woods? Was it Elyon?”

“I never found out who it was, but I know for a fact it wasn't Elyon. He would never have let Kasade walk away that night. If I had to guess, it was another under his wing. He's called several of my brothers into this fray.”

“Did he say anything about meeting with us that night?”

Cam shook his head. “No. Which means he doesn't want me to know he had me followed.”

“Does that mean this place will be swarmed by angels?”

Cam shook his head again and stepped to the side half an inch. “He's been keeping his intentions toward you quiet. I only know because I've been listening, watching. He says you're important because of your sight, but there's more he isn't saying. In all honesty, I'm struggling with trusting him. He's my superior in every sense of the word and I'm keeping important information from him. It isn't easy, Rayna.”

I knew what it was like to live a lie. “I'm sorry you have to do this for me.”

“It's necessary. Elyon is keeping things from me as well. Which reminds me.” From the inside of his gray jacket Cam pulled out a thin set of folded papers with staples in the middle. The edges were frayed and the paper had yellowed, but I knew a book when I saw one. “He wanted me to give you this.”

“What is it?” I turned the book over in my hands to find it had no writing on the cover.

“It's the truth about our kind.
The Lost Apologues
.”

I had no idea what apologues were, so I leafed through the book. It was written in English; granted, it was in a much more formal style than I was used to, and almost every twelfth word was angels, wings, or feathers. I tore my eyes away from the pages. “This is some kind of angel bible.”

Cam nodded, placing his hands over mine and using them to close the book. “Tales of our kind, stricken from the record books centuries ago. Elyon wanted you to have it, which proves there is some good still in him. I will take care of what Elyon knows about you and what he doesn't. All I ask is that you trust me.”

“And how's she supposed to do that when you're working for the angel of death?” Kade asked when he entered the room.

I backed away from Cam who blocked Kade's view of what was between our hands and slid the book behind my back. I'd asked Kade every day to tell me about the angels and the Fallen. He'd had a month and had told me nothing. I didn't know why he was so against me knowing, but instinct told me he wouldn't be happy about anything Elyon wanted me to have, especially this book. The Fallen had his chance, now maybe it was time for the angels to explain a few things.

“Is Elyon really the angel of death?” I asked, knocking over an empty cup on Kade's side of the bed. When I scooped to pick it up, I slid the book under the bed.

“That's a myth,” Cam said.

“But he can kill,” Kade added. “And he does.”

“Without Falling?” I stood up, trying my best not to fidget.

“It's the sword he uses,” Kade said. “It lets him give his victims any cause of death he pleases.”

“Even with the sword, how does he not Fall?”

“The work that he does is unlike what any of us can do,” Cam explained, trying not to eye the bed and disturb his very modest angel sensibilities. “Elyon was created with this purpose in mind. Not all conflicts can be handled by regular angels. When they can't, and it's very rare, he's called down to dissolve the situation.”

“Dissolve? That's what you call it when an angel, sanctioned or not, kills someone?” I asked, feeling bolder now that Kade was back. Cam didn't say a word this time. “And I'm assuming we're talking about humans here and not Fallen.”

“His work is very important. I won't have that tarnished.”

“He's a murderer,” Kade all but shouted.

“So. Are. You.” Cam's eyes narrowed a little with each word.

Uh oh. I stepped between them. “We have to live here,” I told Kade, reminding him an angel/Fallen fistfight inside our apartment wasn't the best idea. Especially seeing as how they took out a section of ancient forest without so much as breaking a sweat.

“Rayna, what happened to your wing?” Cam asked, his fingers barely touching the raw bald spot near the end.

I turned in a full circle, gently slapping away his hand. “Oh, that. It's a funny story, actually.”

“One we're dying to hear.” Kade walked passed us and plopped into his favorite chair.

“I cut myself upstairs.”

“Big surprise,” Kade murmured while kicking his feet up on his end table.

“And a feather from my wing practically healed it. See?” I stripped off my jacket and yanked back my sweater sleeve to show Cam (the only interested party) the cut from the corner of the planter box. “How come no one told me our feathers heal wounds? Is that how you guys heal so fast?”