Last Rite (17 page)

But as I think it, I feel the sharp stab in my gut as guilt takes over my thoughts again. I picture his wings being ripped from his body. “I won’t tell him,” I groan.

His expression becomes hard as stone, set and determined. “Then what’s there to talk to him about? Just come with me.”

The pain becomes sharper, more intense, as he stares into my eyes, and I sink onto the bed, wrapping my arms around myself. Every muscle in my body clenches as I strain against the pain. “I need to know … if he knew and … didn’t tell me.” I groan between pants. “If it’s true … I’ll come with you.”

“He can read your thoughts, Frannie. If you go out there, he’ll know.”

“No, he won’t. I’ve gotten better … at keeping him out,” I say, clutching myself tighter. The pain is so intense I expect that any second my chest will rip open.

Matt turns his gaze out the window and suddenly the pain stops. “Fine. But make it quick.”

I pant to catch my breath. “Were you doing that?” I ask.

He turns back to look at me. “What?” he asks with inquiring raised eyebrows.

“Nothing.” I shake my head, wondering what I was thinking. I steel my mind, focusing on my dream about Maggie and nothing about Matt. With that dream fresh in my head, I slide past Matt and head for the door. He doesn’t stop me, and I throw a glance over my shoulder as I pass through and close it behind me.

Gabe clicks off the TV when I step into the living room. His eyes pull wide and he’s at my side in a flash. He starts to turn the knob to my door, but I grab his hand.

“What’s wrong?” I say, pulling him back toward the couch.

He glances down at me, still vigilant. “I thought I sensed…” He trails off and looks around again, his eyes finally falling on the door to the bathroom. He blows out a sigh and drops his head before lifting his eyes back to mine. “Could Luc be turning back?” he asks tentatively.

“Into a demon?”

He just looks at me out from under long white lashes, his eyes questioning.

My eyes slide to the bathroom door and I shudder, remembering how much I wanted to be in there with him. “I don’t know,” I say just as the bathroom door cracks open and Luc steps out. His towel is thrown over his shoulder and he’s in jeans and nothing else.

I just stare at him for a long moment. He wants me to leave with him. Would he take me home?

Gabe slides back onto the couch, bringing me with him. Normally, I’d settle into him, but right now it’s taking everything I have to stay in control, and I don’t want to let down, to let him into my head.

He squeezes my shoulder. “So what’s wrong?”

“You’re looking out for them, right? My family? Maggie?”

I feel him stiffen at Maggie’s name and instantly know Matt was telling the truth. I pull away and look him in the eye as I ask. “Is Maggie safe?”

His eyes drop from mine. I can see him struggling with his answer—how to frame it so I won’t freak out.

But I’m already freaking out. “I have to go home!”

“No. That’s not an option.” Gabe’s voice is calm, and I feel him trying to bury me in his summer snow, but I shake it off.

Frustration builds inside me, growing like a thunderhead, and I want to hit him. “How can you just sit there if my family is in danger?”

“Listen to me, Frannie. Everyone involved understands that you are the priority.”

Rage erupts from my emotional black pit and I can’t control the stream of words spilling from my lips. “Does Maggie know? Does
she
understand that I’m the priority? That she’s being sacrificed for me?” I plant my hands on his chest and push him hard, rising from the couch. “
Does she?
”

“Frannie, no one is being sacrificed.” Luc’s voice is soft, and when I look at him, so are his eyes. But I don’t want his sympathy.

I spin on Gabe. “Does he know too?”

“Not everything.”

Gabe starts to pull himself to his feet, but I shove him back down. “
Everything?
What’s everything?”

Luc steps closer and I flash him a glare. He stops moving toward us and holds up a hand. “I’ll go back. I’ll take care of Marc.”

The air leaves my lungs, as if I was punched. He just told me to trust him, but I can’t trust either of them. “You
did
know.”

His eyes don’t leave mine. “Not until just now.”

I’m not sure if I believe him, but it doesn’t matter. I spin back to Gabe. “You’ve got to take me back. I can maybe try my Sway on Maggie … or Marc…” I trail off as despair grips my heart and squeezes. My Sway. The reason for all of this. I throw a growl at the world. “What about the rest of my family. Riley, Trev? Will they go after everyone?”

Gabe pulls himself up again. “Honestly, I don’t know.” He already sounds spent—defeated.

Everyone I love is in danger ’cause of me. And it’s never gonna stop. My heart totally caves in as I realize there’s no way for me to protect them.

Unless I go back.

With me there, they’d have no use for my family. They’d come after me. And at this point, giving up doesn’t sound like such a bad option. Not if it would mean they’d leave everyone else alone.

I look Gabe in the eye. “They know I’m here, so there’s no reason not to go back.”

He doesn’t believe me. I can see it in his skeptical expression. “Lucifer may have found you in your dreams, but if He knew where you were, His legions would be parked at our doorstep.”

“Rhen was at the gym today,” I blurt, trying to keep the image of Matt waiting in my room out of my thoughts.

His eyes widen as his hands clench into fists. “How…?”

“I don’t know, but he was there.”

“I knew that wasn’t safe,” he growls. I can see his wheels turning, plotting our next move.

I’m so furious at him that the next thing out of my mouth surprises even me. “Do you even know why Faith fell?” I spit.

He squints at me, confused. “She fell in love with another guardian,” he answers. His face clears and he gives me a reassuring look. “But you can trust her, if that’s what you’re worried about. She has a good heart.”

I almost spill the rest—that it was his fault. I’m
that
mad at him. But I don’t, partly ’cause of what he just said, and partly ’cause it would hurt Faith more than him. And she’s been hurt enough.

I breathe deep and stare him down. “We can run, but it won’t matter. They found me here, they’ll find me anywhere.” I’m a little surprised at how calm I sound. My thoughts start to slip to Matt and I redirect them.

Luc falls back into the wall. “The Mage,” he whispers. His eyes lift to mine. “This is my fault.” His voice is heavy, like the weight of the world is pressing down on him. “In your dreams,” he continues after a deep breath, “were you standing on the outside looking in, or were you seeing things through Maggie’s eyes?”

Not only was I seeing things with Maggie’s eyes but feeling them with her body. Again, I feel dirty just thinking about it. “Through Maggie’s eyes. What does that mean?”

“The Mage is showing you what he wants you to see.”

“He wanted me to know about Maggie and Marc—”

“To draw you out,” Gabe interrupts. “But it’s not true. Maggie is fine.”

I glare up at him. “How do you know?”

Gabe slips an arm around my shoulder. “Daniel is handling it.”

Dad
. I hadn’t thought about Dad. I sink into the couch. “What can he do? How much power does he have?” I shake my head, trying to think. “He couldn’t protect me on his own. He needed you or Matt—” I catch myself before my thoughts wander behind my bedroom door.

“He’s not on his own,” Gabe says. “I’ve sent help.”

I chew my lip, trying to keep from thinking about what comes next. What I’m about to do. “I’m too tired to think about this now, but I still think we need to go back.”

“We’ll figure it out, Frannie,” Gabe says. But I know what he means is that
he’ll
figure out how to keep me from going.

I drag myself off the couch and head to my door. “Fine.” I glance back at Gabe and Luc, wanting so much to confide in them but knowing they’ll never let me go. I swallow back tears and hurry through the door into my room.

I close the door and rush to my closet, pulling out my brown canvas duffel bag. “Matt!” I whisper.

“I was right,” he declares.

When I turn back from the closet with my bag and a fistful of clothes, his face is framed in my window, a smug smile on his lips. But looking at him, something occurs to me. “I can’t just phase. How are we gonna get home?”

He holds up his hand and shakes a key on a ring over his middle finger. “Got it covered.”

I toss the duffel bag on my bed and stuff the clothes and my iPod speaker into it, then return to my closet for some shoes. In five minutes I’m as packed as I’m gonna be, considering I can’t retrieve anything from the bathroom without going into the family room. I shove my bag out the window into Matt’s waiting arms, then swing my leg through the opening and slide to the ground.

Luc told me we needed to leave, to get away from Gabe, and I am. Just not with him.

“Let’s go,” I say spinning to Matt and holding out my hands for the duffel bag.

But when I turn, my pounding heart leaps into my mouth.

It’s Faith, not Matt, staring back at me.

“Going somewhere?” She stands on top of the small dune between our houses, still in her workout clothes, fists on her hips.

I glance around wildly for Matt, but he’s nowhere.

“It’s … I’m…” I stumble before I remember I have an advantage. I think about Matt, how much I want him to earn his wings back. “I’m just going for a walk.”

She scowls at me. “A walk,” she repeats, pointing at my bag. “You need a duffel bag for a walk.”

I shift my thoughts to Maggie, and my heart pounds out my need to help her. “I need to think,” I say, focusing that love on Faith.

Slowly, her expression goes blank. “To think…”

“So I’m going for a walk on the beach,” I say. I move slowly toward her and touch her arm, focusing harder. “I may be gone for a while.”

Then something occurs to me.

“If Gabe and Luc come looking for me, tell them you saw me on the beach. Tell them I said I needed some time to think. Tell them I’ll come home when I’m ready, but they shouldn’t come looking for me.”

She blinks, and for a second I think I’ve lost her, but then she says, “Okay.”

Again I look for Matt and find him standing at the road next to a blue Camaro, parked across the street. I turn and run full speed toward him without a backward glance.

13

Living on a Prayer

GABE

Something’s wrong. It started out as an itch under my skin that I chalked up to paranoia at my dwindling abilities, but the itch became a tug. I know it’s more.

I focus on Frannie’s room, and instantly, panic chokes my thoughts. I burst through her door without knocking, because I know it won’t matter.

The room is empty.

“Damn!” I hiss under my breath, charging through the family room and onto the porch. There are a few groups clustered on the beach, but no Frannie.

I run to the side of the house and check her window. Open. And under it is tracks in the sand. One set leads toward the road and another heads to Faith’s house. I follow the ones toward the road first but lose them on the pavement. At a jog, I cross the thirty feet or so to Faith’s and pound on the door. A few seconds later, she’s standing in the doorway.

“Hi Gabriel.”

“Have you seen Frannie?”

She nods absently. “She went for a walk. Said she needed some time to think.”

It makes sense. And sneaking out the window for some alone time is exactly something Frannie would do, but something nags at the back of my mind. “Where did she say she was going?”

“Just down the beach.”

“Then why do her tracks disappear on the road?”

Her face scrunches as she thinks. “I swear I saw her go toward the beach.”

“Was she alone?”

The creases in her forehead deepen as she shakes her head. “She needs time. You’re not supposed to look for her.”

Panic grips my pounding heart. “Who was she with, Faith?”

“No one.”

“You’re sure.”

“I’m…” She hesitates, then shakes her head.

I’m running for the bungalow even before she’s finished the word. When I get there, I tuck around the corner and press myself into the shingled side, asking the Light to take me. I have to get to the Board. But instead of transporting into the Collective, searing pain slices through me and I find myself in a heap on the ground.

“What’s going on?”

I haul myself out of the sand and turn to find Luc standing on the porch, staring down at me.

I drag myself to my feet. “Frannie’s gone,” I pant through the pain.

He eyes me suspiciously, then hops the rail, landing next to me in the sand. “Go find her and tell me where to meet you.” He holds out his hand for the keys to the Jeep.

I dig the keys out of my pocket and drop them into his hand. Summoning everything I can muster, I focus on Frannie, but all I pick up is a whisper of a trail. I walk across the street and stand for a moment on the spot where her tracks stop, opening myself up to anything. Finally, I take a breath and hold it before answering. “I don’t know where to go. I can’t find her.”

Luc just stares, unbelieving. “You’re joking.”

I feel like my throat is closing, depriving my brain of oxygen. I can’t think. Why can’t I sense her? Is it my waning power or something the infernal are doing to block me? I look up at Luc. “Can the infernal Shield a mortal?”

He shakes his head. “Not that I’m aware of.”

“Though that would be a handy trick.”

The baritone voice behind me sends a ripple of dread up my spine.

Luc looks over my shoulder at the bungalow, drops his head, and exhales. “Rhenorian. Sweet sin of Satan.”

“I missed you too, bro,” he says, stepping out of the shadows of the house.

Luc looks up at him, his eyes narrow. “How did you find us?”