Milayna's Angel (26 page)

The card had one word written on it:
Chay
.

A man of few words. How the heck am I
supposed to figure him out when he won’t give me anything to work
with?

“Well? Who are they from?”

I peered over the card. Both my parents were
looking at me expectantly.

Benjamin shrugged his shoulders before
announcing, “I hope they’re from Chay. I like him better.”

I leaned down and kissed my brother on the
top of the head, breathing in the scent of shampoo and soap. “They
are,” I whispered. He looked up and smiled at me. Then his eyes
flitted to the side of my face that was raw and swollen, and his
expression changed.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“For what?”

“It’s my fault.”

“No way. This,” I pointed at my mangled eye,
“is Jake’s fault. No one else’s.”

Benjamin tried to smile, but there was
sadness and a little fear in it.

My mom cleared her throat and swiped at a
tear falling from her lashes. “So,” she said too brightly. “Who are
the flowers from?”

“Chay.” Benjamin giggled.

***

I was helping my mother clean up from dinner
when I saw him jump the back fence. I sucked in a breath.

“What’s wrong?” My mom looked at me.

“Nothing. Chay’s here.”

My mom gave me a small smile. “I’ll finish
this up. You go out and see what he wants.”

I stood with my hand on the door handle,
taking a deep breath before opening it and walking outside into the
backyard.

“Hey,” he said when he saw me. He stood with
his shoulder leaning against the house, thumb hooked through his
belt loop, looking gorgeous as always. My heart skipped a beat, and
then it bungee jumped directly to my toes before snapping back into
place.

“Hi. Thank you for the flowers. They’re
really pretty.”

He pursed his lips, trying to hide a grin.
“No problem. You look like hell, Milayna.”

“Thanks. You mentioned that last night.” I
turned the bruised and swollen side of my face away from of him.
“So what’s up?” I wrapped my arms around me to ward off the cold
March air, wishing they were his arms instead.

He didn’t have to answer my question. The red
hobgoblins ran past us, chasing each other. I counted seven, but it
was hard to be accurate when they were running around in
circles.

“How long have they been here?”

“I didn’t know they were,” I answered with a
shrug.

One of the demons stopped running, slipped on
the snow, and skidded toward me on his butt.

“Milayna!” Friendly called, clapping his
hands together, bumping into my leg as he slid across the snow.
“You came out to play.”

“Nope, sorry.”

“Nice face.” Scarface smiled one of his
grotesque smiles. “Looks like mine.” He cackled.

I shot him a small smile. “What are you doing
here?”

“We came to make sure you’re okay,” Friendly
said, spinning on his butt on the hard-packed snow.

“Why? You want to see me dead.”

Friendly sucked in a breath and shook his
head, the tuft of jet-black hair on the top of his head flopping
back and forth. “No, we don’t want you dead. We just need you to
come live with us.”

“We want her dead, moron,” Scarface snapped
at Friendly.

“That’s not the deal,” Friendly argued.
“We’re supposed to get her to come with us. Alive.”

“No—”

Friendly’s face turned from soft and
childlike to demonic. His bulbous lips pulled back over yellowing
teeth. A guttural growl tore from his throat. “We take her to him
alive,” he bellowed.

Scarface answered Friendly with a demonic
look of his own. “Shut up. You’re an idiot.”

I watched in awed amusement as Friendly
tackled Scarface. Their red bodies rolled around on the white snow
like two drunken garden gnomes in a bar fight. Little red fists
flew and stumpy legs kicked at each other.

I started giggling. Chay chuckled, rubbing
his hand across the back of his neck and over the back of his head.
His hand rested on top of his head as he watched the little demons
wrestle in the snow.

“Well, this is new,” I whispered to Chay.

“Yeah.”

“I guess I know which of the two has my back
in a fight, huh?”

“Yeah. One definitely has it out for you,”
Chay said with a small chuckle.

“Who’s Abaddon?” I called to the fighting
goblins.

Both hobgoblins froze, their eyes wide. “No,
no, no, don’t say that name, Milayna,” Friendly warned quietly.

“Why?”

“He’s not nice.”

I laughed hard at that.

Like the demons and Azazel are nice. Yeah,
right, they’re teddy bears.

“He works for Azazel,” I guessed.

“No. He rules Azazel. He’s mean,” Friendly
whispered. “A name that shouldn’t be uttered.”

“He’s gonna kill you, you know.” Scarface
said. “You and your family. You should have obeyed Azazel, Milayna.
Now you’ve angered Aba—”

“No!” Friendly yelled. “It’s a name that
can’t be uttered.”

Scarface rolled his large black eyes but
said, “You’ve angered him,” instead.

My family.

My blood ran cold. Like ice water filled my
veins, it chilled me from the inside out. My family. At least
Azazel only wanted me. Abaddon was trying to hurt my family. I
remembered Jake running with Benjamin—he’d already tried to hurt my
family.

“Why does he want to kill my family and
me?”

Scarface looked at me and leaned his body
close to mine. I could smell the sulfur and stench of rot clinging
to his ruddy skin. “You’ll meet him soon enough. You can ask him
yourself.”

His message delivered, he disappeared in a
cloud of smoke. I watched the hobgoblins leave in seven little
puffs, the smell of sulfur swirling around me.

“What do you think that was?” I looked at
Chay.

He let his hand fall from his head. “Empty
threats.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.”

My stomach clenched and I doubled over in
pain, gasping from the intensity of it. I reached out and steadied
myself against the corner of the house. The vision assaulted my
senses. I could smell it, hear it, see it, and taste it in the back
of my throat.

“Come on. Sit down.” Chay led me to a patio
chair. He didn’t have to ask if I was having a vision. He’d seen
enough of them to know.

Fire. Heat. Glowing light. A boy
screaming.

I could feel the burning heat singeing my
skin. The smoke burned my nostrils; I could taste the char.

I concentrated on the vision. Where was it? I
couldn’t see anything familiar. Just as the image started to move,
giving me a different perspective, it disappeared. The clenching in
my stomach went with it. The only thing that remained was the
slight smell of burning wood.

“It’s over,” I told Chay.

“What was it?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t really
see anything. Just fire.”

“Well, let me know if it changes and I can
help.” Chay turned and started toward the fence.

“Why’d you come?” I called after him.

“The goblins—”

“No. I could have handled them. And you
could’ve watched from home. Why’d you really come over?” I
interrupted.

He didn’t answer me, just stood with his back
facing me. “I wanted to make sure you were alright,” he said
quietly.

“Then use the phone.”

He turned and looked at me. “I couldn’t see
you through the phone. Look, Milayna, I… I still care what happens
to you even though we aren’t together.”

I looked at him, studied his expression. It
was neutral, passive. “I can’t figure you out.”

“Yeah, well, you aren’t the only one.” He
shrugged a shoulder.

“You are so infuriating, Chay. Why do you
always have to be evasive with everything you say?” I yelled.

“Keeps me mysterious,” he said with a twitch
of his lips.

“No, it makes you freakin’ irritating.”

“Milayna, I think you have bigger things to
worry about than me.”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right. I won’t
call.”

“Huh?”

“If I need anything. You said to let you
know. I won’t, Chay. I’m done.” I turned and walked into the house.
The door slammed behind me.

I stood with my back leaning against the
door, my head turned toward the window. I watched Chay jump the
fence and jog into the darkness beyond. A shadow slinked around a
large oak following him as he passed by.

20

Monday and Tuesday, I got a free pass from
school. The swelling hadn’t gone down, and I was still painted in
beautiful shades of purple and blue. Rather than field a lot of
questions and try to find plausible explanations for injuries—you
could only use the falling down stairs excuse so many times—I
stayed home and watched daytime television. People on game shows
got entirely too excited. I loved watching them.

Monday night, I had the dream again. I bolted
upright in bed, breathing hard. My sweat-drenched skin was covered
in goose flesh. Shivering, I rubbed my hands up and down my arms to
warm them. I wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or the
dream—probably a little of both.

I’d thought the dream was gone for good. I
mean, Chay broke up with me. He already stabbed me, metaphorically
speaking. Why was I dreaming about it again? I saw myself through
his eyes as he plunged the dagger into my stomach. I saw the look
of terror on my face as he stood and watched me bleed on the
kitchen floor. Saw him look down and wipe the blood off the knife
on his pant leg, the metallic blade acting as a mirror, reflecting
his image.

Dangling my feet over the side of the bed, I
sat with my face in my hands, a puddle of warm tears growing in my
palm. Sniffing, I wiped my hand on my sweatpants before swiping
away the tears from my cheeks. I stood and walked to the bathroom,
slipping a sweatshirt over my head on the way. Pulling out a bottle
of pain reliever, I downed two tablets, drinking water out of the
tap like a water fountain. Then I made my way downstairs.

It was three o’clock and he was there.

I froze at the foot of the stairs, looking
out the window in the living room. His shadowy figure stood on the
sidewalk in front of our house.

“Again? Don’t you ever sleep?” I whispered in
the dark room.

“Apparently not.”

I screamed and whirled around. “What are you
doing here, Chay?” I said through clenched teeth.

“Watching shadow man out there.”

“How long has he been here?” I watched the
man outside. He’d moved when I screamed. Now he knew we were
watching him watch us.

“I don’t know. I’ve been here an hour.”

I hate that my dad gave you a key.

“Who is it?” The person was too far away from
the streetlight for me to tell who it was, but I had a feeling it
was either Jake or Rod.

“I’m pretty sure it’s Jake.” Chay stretched
his legs out in front of him.

“Why haven’t you called the police?”

“Figured I’d see how long he’d hang
around.”

“Well, I don’t like him out there. It creeps
me out.”

I walked to the front door and flipped the
lock open. Chay was beside me before I could open the door. He
grabbed my wrist and pulled me around to look at him.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going outside to see what he wants.”

Isn’t that fairly obvious?

“Why on earth would you go traipsing out
there to talk to a guy who did that to your face?” Chay whispered.
He dropped my wrist and leaned back on his heels to look at me. “Is
that what you were doing?” A smile tugged on his lips.

“Yeah, so?”

Chay chuckled. “We should go see Uncle
Stewart for a milkshake when you feel better.” As soon as the words
crossed his lips, he realized his mistake.

“There is no
‘we’
anymore. You saw to
that.”

He reached up and tugged gently on a lock of
hair before sliding it behind my ear. “Yeah, I guess the friend
thing is out, huh?”

“I don’t want to be your friend, Chay. It’s
bad enough we’re stuck together in the same demi group. Otherwise,
I’d choose to not see you at all.”

Jerking the door open, I was outside before
he could stop me. I immediately wished I stayed inside, or at least
looked out the window to see what my stalker was doing, because
when I crossed the threshold, I came nose to chest with Jake.

“Ouch. I clocked you better than I thought I
did,” Jake said, laughing.

“Yeah, you hit a girl. Your mother would be
so proud,” I snapped. “What are you doing stalking around in the
dark like the cockroach you are, Jake?”

His laughter died on his lips, and I thought
he was going to hit me. I braced myself, getting ready for the
attack, ready to block his blow. But Jake didn’t take a swing.
Instead, his gaze drifted over my shoulder and he smiled.

“Can’t stay away, huh?” Jake said to Chay. “I
have to admit, I don’t blame you.”

Chay’s look was defiant. He didn’t
acknowledge Jake or his comment. He just stared at him, moving his
hand possessively to the small of my back.

“Well, as much fun as this little reunion is,
it’s time for you to leave,” I said.

“Don’t you want to know what I came to
say?”

“No.”

Jake leaned in close to my ear. His vile
breath moved wisps of my hair when he talked. “He’s sending someone
for you.”

Chay grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled
me away. “Back up,” he ordered Jake.

Jake took a step back, his hands raised in
surrender. “Hey, whatever, man. Just thought I’d give ya a head’s
up is all.”

“Who?” I called out as Jake walked down the
porch steps.

“Someone you’ll never see coming. Someone you
trust with your life.”

“I already know Azazel has sent someone,” I
bluffed.

Jake laughed. The sound matched the sneer on
his face, garish and ugly. “Ha! You don’t know anything.”