Beautiful Redemption (29 page)

“Link. Don’t say that.” It was true. If Link went to college—even Summerville Community College—it would mean the end of the world had finally arrived, no matter how many times Ethan tried to save us all.

Had tried.

“Maybe I’m just not as brave as you are, Lena.”

“Sure you are. You’ve survived all those years in your house with your mom, haven’t you?” I tried to smile, but Link was beyond cheering up.

It was like talking to myself.

“Maybe I just gotta give up when the odds are as bad as they are now.”

“What are you talking about? The odds are always this bad,” I said.

“I’m the guy who gets bit. I’m the guy who gets the F and then even fails summer school.”

“That wasn’t your fault, Link. You were helping Ethan rescue me.”

“Face it. The only girl I ever loved chose Darkness over me.”

“Rid loved you. You know that. And about Ridley…” I had almost forgotten why I’d brought him here. He still didn’t know. “Seriously. You don’t understand. Rid—”

“I don’t want to talk about her. It wasn’t meant to be. Nothin’s ever gone my way before. I shoulda known it wouldn’t work out.”

Link stopped talking because the bell over the door rang in the distance, and time stopped—in a flurry of bright pink flapper feathers and purple tin beads. Not to mention eyeliner and lip liner and anything else that could possibly be lined or shined or painted any of the colors of the cosmetic rainbow.

Ridley.

I barely thought the word before I flew halfway up out of my seat and toward her for a hug.

I knew she was coming—I was the one who’d found her at Abraham’s—but it was a different thing to see her making her way safe and sound through the plastic tables of the Dar-ee Keen. I almost knocked her off her three-inch platforms. Nobody walked in heels like my cousin.

Cuz.

She Kelted it as she buried her face in my shoulder, and all I could smell was hair spray and bath gel and sugar. Glitter swirled in the air around us, knocked loose from whatever sparkly goop she’d smeared all over her body.

Dark or Light, somehow it never mattered between us. Not when it really counted. We were still family, and we were together again.

It’s strange to be here without Short Straw. I’m sorry, Cuz.

I know, Rid.

Here at the Dar-ee Keen, it was all hitting home, like she finally understood what happened.

What I’d lost.

“You okay, kid?” She pulled back, looking me in the eyes.

I shook my head as my eyes started to blur. “No.”

“Somebody mind fillin’ me in on what’s goin’ on here?” Link looked like he was about to pass out, or throw up, or both.

“I was trying to tell you. We found Ridley, stuck in one of Abraham’s cages.”

“You know it. Like a peacock, Hot Rod.” She didn’t look right at Link, and I wondered if it was because she didn’t want to or because she didn’t dare. “A really hot one.”

I would never understand what went on between the two of them. I didn’t think anyone could—not even them.

“Hey, Rid.” Link was pale, even for a quarter Incubus. He looked like someone had just punched him in the face.

She blew him a kiss across the table. “Looking good, Hot Rod.”

He was stammering. “You look… you’re lookin’… I mean, you know.”

“I know.” Ridley winked and turned back to me. “Let’s get out of here. It’s been too long. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Do what?” Link managed not to stammer, though his face was now as red as the plastic bucket beneath the leaking ceiling.

Ridley sighed, sticking her lollipop to one side of her mouth. “Hello? I’m a Siren, Shrinky Dink. A bad girl. I need to be back among my own.”

“Abraham, eh? That old goat?” Ridley shook her head.

I nodded. “That’s the plan.” For what it was worth, if it was worth anything.

The air was dark, and the ceiling lights of Exile only seemed to make it darker, instead of adding to the light. I
didn’t blame Ridley for wanting to bring us here. It was the first place she always wanted to go when she was Dark.

But if you weren’t Dark, it wasn’t the most relaxing place in the world. You spent half the night making sure not to accidentally look anyone in the eye or smile in the wrong direction.

“And you think getting Short Straw
The Book of Moons
is going to help him un-kick the can?”

Link growled from the next seat. He insisted on coming with us for safekeeping, but I could tell he hated it here even more than I did.

“Watch it, Rid. Ethan hasn’t kicked the can. He’s just—bent it outta shape a little.”

I smiled. I guess Link could tell me Ethan was gone all he wanted, but it wasn’t the same when someone else said it.

And it meant Ridley wasn’t one of us anymore, at least not for Link. She really had left him, and she really was Dark.

She was an outsider.

Link seemed to sense it, too. “I need to use the bathroom.” He hesitated, unwilling to leave my side. Everyone seemed to have their own brand of bodyguard at a club like Exile. My bodyguard happened to be a quarter Incubus with a heart of gold.

Ridley waited until he was out of earshot. “Your plan sucks.”

“The plan doesn’t suck.”

“Abraham’s not going to trade John Breed for
The Book of Moons
. John isn’t worth anything to him now that the Order of Things has been set right. It’s too late.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You’re forgetting I’ve spent more time than I wanted to with Abraham in the past few months. He’s been keeping himself busy. He spends every day in that Frankenstein lab of his, trying to figure out what went wrong with John Breed. He’s gone back to the mad science drawing board.”

“That means he’ll want John back, so he’ll trade us the Book. Which is exactly what we want.”

Ridley sighed. “Are you listening to yourself? He’s not a good guy. You don’t want to hand John over to him. When Abraham’s not gluing wings onto bats, he’s been having secret meetings with some creepy bald guy.”

“Can you be more specific? That doesn’t narrow it down.”

Rid shrugged. “I don’t know. Angel? Angelo? Something church-y like that.”

I felt sick. My glass turned to ice in my hand. I could feel the frozen particles collecting at the tips of my fingers.

“Angelus?”

She popped a chip into her mouth from the black bowl on the bar. “That’s it. They’re teaming up for some supersecret takedown. I never heard the details. But this guy definitely hates Mortals as much as Abraham does.”

What would a member of the Council of the Far Keep be doing with a Blood Incubus like Abraham Ravenwood? After what Angelus tried to do to Marian, I knew he was a monster, but I thought he was some kind of righteous lunatic. Not someone who would conspire with Abraham.

Still, it wasn’t the first time Abraham and the Far Keep seemed to have their agendas aligned. Uncle Macon had brought it up before, right after Marian’s trial.

I shook my head at the thought. “We have to tell Marian. After we get that book. So unless you have a better idea, we’re meeting Abraham to make the trade.” I drained what was left of my frozen soda water, knocking the glass back down to the bar.

It shattered in my hand.

The room quieted around me, and I could feel the eyes—nonhuman eyes, some gold and others black as the Tunnels themselves—staring back at me. I ducked my head from view.

The bartender made a face, and I glanced at the door from the corner of my eye—half-expecting to see my Uncle Macon standing there. The bartender was staring. “Those are some eyes you’ve got.”

Rid shot me a look. “Hers? One of them didn’t take,” she said casually. “You know how it goes.” We waited in our seats, nervous and tense. You didn’t want to attract too much attention at Exile, not when you only had one gold eye to show for it.

The bartender studied me for another moment, then nodded and checked his watch. “Yeah. I know how it goes.” This time he glanced at the door. He’d probably already made the call to my uncle.

That rat.

“You’re going to need all the help you can get, Cuz.”

“What are you saying, Rid?”

“I’m saying it looks like I’m going to have to rescue you fools again.” She flicked a piece of broken glass off the counter.

“Rescue us how?”

“You leave that to me. Turns out I’m not just another pretty face. Well, I’m that, too.” She smiled, but she couldn’t quite pull it off. “All this
and
another pretty face.”

Even her smart mouth seemed halfhearted to me now. I wondered if Ethan’s disappearance was getting to her as much as the rest of us.

My instincts were still right about one thing.

Uncle Macon showed up at the door like clockwork, and I was back home in my bedroom before I could ask her.

CHAPTER 24

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

R
idley was waiting for us behind the farthest row of crypts, which, judging by the number of abandoned beer bottles in the bushes, was also a Gatlin County hot spot.

I couldn’t imagine hanging out here willingly. His Garden of Perpetual Peace still had Abraham’s fingerprints all over it. Nothing seemed to have changed since he had called up the Vexes only weeks before the Eighteenth Moon. Warning signs and yellow caution tape created a labyrinth between the broken mausoleums, uprooted trees, and cracked gravestones in the new section of the cemetery. Now that the Order of Things was repaired, the grass wasn’t burning up anymore, and the
lubbers were gone. But the other scars were still there if you knew where to look for them.

True to Gatlin form, the worst of the damage had already been hidden under the layers of fresh dirt Ridley was standing on now. The caskets had been reburied and the tombs sealed. I wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t like the good citizens of Gatlin to keep the skeletons out of the closet for long.

Rid unwrapped a cherry lollipop and waved it around dramatically. “I sold it to him. Hook, line, and stinker.” She smiled at Link. “That’s you, Shrinky Dink.”

“You know what they say. Takes one to know one,” Link shot back.

“You know I smell like frosting on a cupcake. Why don’t you come on over here, and I’ll show you just how sweet I can be?” She wriggled her long pink nails like claws.

Link walked over to John, who was leaning against a weeping angel that was split right down the middle. “Just callin’ it like I see it, Babe. And I can smell you just fine from here.”

Link was throwing Ridley more than just quarter-Incubus swagger today. Now that he’d wrapped his head around the fact that she was back, it was like he lived to trade insults with her.

Ridley turned back to me, annoyed that she hadn’t gotten a bigger rise out of him. “All it took was a little trip back to N’awlins, and I had Abraham eating out of my hand.”

That was hard to imagine, and John definitely wasn’t buying it. “You expect us to believe you Charmed Abraham with a few Ridley pops? You and what chain of candy stores?”

Ridley pouted. “Of course not. I had to sell it. So I thought, who would be stupid enough to do whatever I say and play right into my hands?” She blew Link a kiss. “Our little Dinkubus, of course.”