A Crack in Everything

by Ruth Frances Long

  ‘Good choice.’

  ‘Izzy’s Ddd has the best CDs. He lends me stuff, lets me copy them. He’s got … he’s got all the best. Loves his music. My folks don’t get it, but he does. They want me to give it up and concentrate on college. Can you believe that?’

  Maybe Jinx could if he had any idea what it meant. Giving up music for him would be like losing his sight or relinquishing a limb or allowing someone to cut out part of his soul. He suspected the same was true of Dylan.

  ‘Silver taught you, didn’t she?’ Dylan asked.

  He nodded. Silver had taught him everything. She’d been his only friend, the only one who cared. She’d given him the music. More than the music. She’d given him a reason to be something more than Holly’s dog. ‘You need to be careful of Silver, Dylan. I know she means well, but sometimes … like all of us, sometimes she can’t help herself.’

  Dylan turned up the volume, closed his eyes. The music was sad, lonely, abandoned. It pulled at Jinx’s heart and made him think of Silver, of the expression on her face when he’d handed her the phone and left her there in the darkness. He’d made a mistake. He knew that. And there was nothing he could do about it now.

  ‘I should go back, look for her,’ he murmured, more to himself than to Dylan.

  ‘Will she still be there?’

  Jinx pursed his lips and then shook his head. ‘Holly wouldn’t have left her out there in Brí’s territory, alone and hurt. Not even something like Holly would do that.’ But I would, he finished to himself. I did. What am I? What have I become?

  ‘What do we do now?’

  Rolling his shoulders, Jinx took comfort in the sound of the guitar, the plaintive song.

  ‘We help Izzy find a grail. And help her learn how to use it.’

  ‘She’s different than she was, isn’t she? Changed. More … more …’

  Jinx eyed him suspiciously. That look was unexpected – the gleam of interest was for Izzy, and Jinx found, much to his surprise, that he didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all. ‘More. Yes. Izzy is more now.’

  I don’t have time for this, Izzy thought as she closed the door firmly behind her. She wriggled out of the dress and kicked it against the foot of her bed. The t-shirt and jeans she pulled on instead felt blissfully normal.

  The only normal thing.

  She had to turn away from the bed. The urge to collapse on it was far too strong. Tears misted her eyes, drove little needles of frustration into the bridge of her nose. The stupid tea-cosy, that’s what had done it. Something from another world, another life. Something made by another person. And Mari had one too. She raked her fingers through her hair.

  Someone normal. That was all gone now. The sooner she accepted it the better. Because she had been living a lie. Her parents had been trying to protect her, but still. A lie. Now all the stupid weirdness made sense, right down to the toaster the other morning. All the things that had clapped out when she touched them, or blew up, or simply closed down with a whimper never to start up again.

  She had never been normal.

  Her face, in the mirror, looked pale and strained. Too thin. The contrast with her red hair was too extreme. Almost – the thought made her stomach turn – almost like one of them. Sídhe lines in her bone structure. Her skin so white, her hair like fire, her eyes burning like a gas flame. Like one of them.

  Which she was. Kind of. Mum had admitted it. Brí had claimed her.

  Pale skin, red hair, blue eyes. Like it or not, she even looked like Brí.

  Not entirely human. Half Sídhe. Other.

  Freak.

  She sucked in a shaky breath and tried to make her head stop spinning. It didn’t work. If anything, the sickening reel inside her brain got even more hectic.

  Reaching out a hand to the glass, she pressed her palm to the mirror. Her reflection looked human enough in there now. The coldness of the surface grounded her.

  ‘If you’re a freak, we both are,’ said the angel.

  Oh, good. The moment she started to deal with one nightmare change, another made an appearance. Hysteria bubbled up inside her. If it wasn’t the Sídhe matriarch claiming her as a daughter, making her a half-blood monster, and her own mother confirming it, it was the thing in her head trying to comfort her. In its way.

  ‘We both are.’ That made sense. Didn’t it? Sense from the disembodied voice in her mind. Joy.

  Downstairs the sound of a Rory Gallagher CD reached her. Well, at least someone was having fun. Two someones. How could guys do that?

  The doorbell rang and Izzy swore. ‘Dylan, will you get that?’

  No answer. Izzy opened the bedroom door. The bell rang again, more sharply.

  It was morning, Izzy realised. Somehow it was morning. She’s been running on empty for so long she couldn’t even tell the time of day. The tea helped, but she should have eaten. She needed sleep.

  Needed it, but didn’t have time for it. Her leaden body protested as she stood there, swaying, her head feeling like the centre of a maelstrom.

  And beyond it, the warning, the icy touch of the mark on the back of her neck. The cross tattoo burning with cold against … no, inside, her skin. Something was wrong. This was dangerous. More than dangerous. She knew that feeling now. Not the voice, just the sensation of her tattoo, a warning of danger.

  Izzy’s stomach heaved. Downstairs the sound of guitars got louder, duelling, sound upon sound that tore through her agonised brain. The doorbell sounded out, shrill and harsh, someone leaning on the bell, determined to get an answer.

  ‘Listen, Isabel,’ said the angel. ‘No one must answer the door. You can’t let them inside. Let me help you.’

  The voice felt more determined all of a sudden, and different. Not the sweet lullaby it had been before. This was something more, something … eager.

  Another chill ran through her. And another. So very cold.

  ‘Let. Me. Help!’

  The words rang through her brain with such force that they brought Izzy to her knees. It was wrong. She knew it was wrong. The angel had tried to force Izzy to do her will twice now. She hadn’t asked or cajoled, or even demanded like now. The angel had tried to force her. If she had succeeded then, would she bother to ask now?

  But the voice was that of an angel. Her angel.

  Izzy whimpered, pressing her hands to her ears. She couldn’t stand it. This was all too much. She couldn’t fight any more. She didn’t want to. For once, someone else could help her, was offering to help her. She couldn’t fight anymore.

  ‘Help,’ she whispered, aware that she was giving in, that her weakness, or exhaustion, had the better of her. She wilted, letting the angel have her way.

  Light engulfed her. It tore through her veins and arched along her spine, crackling like electricity, alive and vital, agonising. Light everywhere, blinding, burning, searing through her body.

  Her hearing focused, tightened, and she heard the latch of the door being drawn back, heard Dylan’s voice.

  ‘What?’

  She didn’t know who it was, or what they wanted, but the angel did. The angel knew everything. She surged forwards, moving faster than a mortal could move, her body no longer her own, no longer human. No longer part-Sídhe, even. She moved beyond the realms of the earth planes, into a transcended state that knew only the threat at the door. That only knew Dylan was in danger.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Angels at the Door

  Dylan opened the front door with a curt ‘What?’ just as Jinx stepped out into the hall from the kitchen. Instinct for danger flared in his chest, but it was too late.

  Two men stood there, in identically sombre suits, two men who, even to Jinx’s jaded eye, were the most beautiful things to grace the planet. He faltered, put out an arm to pull Dylan back, even as the screaming in the back of his mind identified them as angels.

  As more than just angels. Haniel was there, sure, but the other one. The other one was an archangel.

  Hair like be
aten gold, polished by a loving hand. Eyes of the deepest sapphire, both blue and black mixed into one shade and altogether endless. One momentary slip and someone could fall into them forever, be lost in the glory they held. Even a creature without a soul, such as himself, struggled with the urge to leap.

  ‘Have you heard the Word?’ the archangel asked. His voice flowed like music, like the strains of lyric adulation, like the heavenly choirs he lorded over in the Holy Court had all sung in unison. In wondrous harmonies.

  Jinx and Dylan froze. What else could they do? Haniel was a minion. This creature, this marvel of creation, came from a far higher rank.

  Which meant only one thing. Heaven was done screwing around with second-rates. It had sent the big gun to claim the prize.

  ‘Izzy,’ Jinx murmured and his body tensed, readied itself. If he ran, if he changed as he ran, could he make it past them and up the stairs in time? Could he—?

  The angels pushed past Dylan, and he turned to stare helplessly after them, stunned by the voice that still reverberated in the air around them.

  There were angels in the house. Jinx knew he had to do something and quickly, but their presence stole all his strength, drained away his will. And that voice, that melodic, hypnotic voice … He could only stare at them, lost.

  Was it really possible? That his people had been like that once?

  But then another light dawned above them, brighter, deeper, more terrible by far. Where the archangel’s light was sunshine through clouds, this was raw, the light of the sun in space itself – boiling fire, untempered by air. It came from the top of the stairs and a voice rang out, a voice that shook the house from the upper rafters down to the foundations.

  ‘You may not enter here without leave, my brother.’

  Izzy’s voice. And yet not her voice at all. Something else, something other, something with no place here.

  The light of the archangel dimmed, revealing their figures again.

  ‘You are no sibling of mine,’ said the archangel. ‘The fallen do not command us. Rather you should come with us, and give yourself up for judgement.’

  Izzy took two steps down the stairs and stood there, aglow from head to foot.

  ‘This is a place forbidden to you, under my protection. I need not leave. In truth, I need never leave. Not while I am here.’

  ‘Sorath, you overstep yourself.’

  Her hair flared back from her face as if a hot wind fanned it and light spilled from her eyes instead of tears. ‘I know no other way, Zadkiel.’

  ‘This is not over,’ Zadkiel growled, his mouth a hard line.

  ‘Far from it,’ the angel Sorath promised with Izzy’s sweet lips. Jinx’s heart lurched inside him. He should have kissed her when he had the chance. He should have taken that proffered moment of joy because now … now … would there ever be another chance? With an angel inhabiting her half-Sídhe body, having ignited from the divine spark she carried, a transformation was inevitable. She’d never be herself again.

  Even if Sorath deigned to give up her form. Which was unlikely. Izzy was a vessel. That’s what Brí had called her. A vessel for divine power. She could have been made for something like this.

  And angels didn’t tend to give back anything they took.

  Jinx sucked in a breath. ‘Izzy.’

  She turned and looked at him with that endless gaze full of light. It was only a glance, only the briefest moment, but it almost felled him.

  Nothing of the girl remained to be seen. Nothing at all but the vague suggestion of the outer shell.

  But Zadkiel wasn’t finished. He took a step back towards the door, towards Dylan, and a sly smile spread over his perfect features. Dylan didn’t move as Zadkiel reached out – his grace like an unfurling wing – and rested two fingers on his forehead.

  ‘No!’ Jinx yelled. But he was too late.

  Light filled the doorway, blinding, dazzling. It forced Jinx back, his instincts too strong, terror like a netted bird inside his chest. And at the heart of that light, Dylan gave a strangled cry of agony. His knees sagged, but he didn’t fall. Zadkiel pinned him there.

  Sorath took another few steps down to the turn of the stairs and rounded on the angels.

  ‘Leave. Now!’

  Another blast of wind ripped through the hall and the front door slammed shut, the glass shaking in the frame.

  The light snuffed out like a candle and the house fell still.

  Jinx forced himself to take another breath. Everything in him was screaming to change, to attack, to rip the thing out of Izzy. That he couldn’t do it was beside the point. That she was now far stronger than he could ever hope to be, just an aside. The angel turned to him now, folded her arms across her chest.

  ‘Get out of her.’

  She tilted her head to one side and fixed him with an expression far more ancient and knowing than Izzy could ever have managed. Her eyes were flat as stones – polished and beautiful, but lifeless. A predator’s eyes. He’d caught glimpses of those eyes peering out at him before, behind Izzy’s consciousness, but now, to look right into them and see nothing left of her at all … Jinx could barely breathe. He choked on fear.

  ‘She asked for my help. I gave it. I didn’t even have to be bound to do so. Not like you, hound. I am a generous friend and a staunch protector. Isabel knows this to be true. She trusts me.’

  He ground his teeth together, even as they tried to elongate and sharpen. Everything inside him screamed that he had to protect her, that the angel was beyond dangerous. ‘Let her go. Give her back control.’

  The angel waved one of Izzy’s hands dismissively. ‘It will happen. I’m not strong enough to stay. Not yet. And she is strong indeed. I chose well. I sensed her across the centuries and she called to me. I put game-pieces in play and mapped their course. I fitted moment and vessel together so well. Perfect, as in all things.’ She stretched, her arms reaching out to either side like wings, tilting her head back so that her throat was exposed. ‘But now, I’m tired. Catch me.’

  It took an instant to register what was happening, what she was doing. She pitched forward, down the stairs, and that momentary hesitation made his heart lurch with panic. He dived forwards, catching her before she hit the ground. Izzy, his Izzy. She hardly weighed anything at all, but he held her close, the most precious thing on the earth. Or above or below it. Not because of her bloodline, or the angel, or because of the spark.

  Because she was Izzy.

  And for a moment he’d thought her lost forever.

  The shocked realisation robbed him of breath. He cradled her close, growled in the back of his throat and fought the curious sensation of being whole at last.

  ‘Jinx?’ Her voice was hoarse, as if it had passed through razors to reach his ears.

  ‘I’m here. You’re okay.’

  I should have kissed her. When I had the chance. And I should kiss her now.

  But he didn’t dare. Wanted to. Needed to. But didn’t.

  Her eyes fixed on his face, studying him intently. ‘Are they gone?’

  ‘Yes, for now. We’re safe.’

  ‘Dylan?’

  He hesitated, unsure of the answer to that. Unsure of everything. Especially of the girl he held in his arms. No, not a girl. Not facing the things she was being forced to face. A woman. The one who now, somehow, held his heart as well as his freedom.

  Chapter Twenty

  Aftermath

  The first thing Izzy knew was that her head felt like something was trying to claw its way out. The second was the sound of someone crying softly, so quietly, because no one would ever hear, because no one would care even if they did. She struggled towards wakefulness, in spite of the lurching stomach and the throbbing at the top of her spine.

  ‘Steady,’ said Jinx’s voice.

  Strong hands cradled her, helped her to sit. So gentle. Touching her as if afraid she would shatter into a million pieces.

  Which was just as well because just then she was afraid that she mi
ght.

  Dylan sat on the sofa, his shoulders shaking, his face buried in his hands. As she managed, with Jinx’s help, to drag herself upright, the memories flooded back – the angel, the deal, the fire and burning light. As if the sun had poured directly into her veins.

  ‘What happened to Dylan?’ she asked. Jinx had been there, she recalled, as she came back to herself, as she fell forwards down the stairs. He caught her. And she had felt – safe?

  Safe. With him. A shapeshifting Sídhe hound serving as an assassin to a mistress who hated Izzy’s biological mother – who only wanted to kill her for the spark inside her, to torture her for the angel she harboured. Jinx, who was only helping her because he’d been inadvertently bound to do so when she pulled the knife out and broke his geis. He didn’t have a choice in this, did he?

  So why was he suddenly being nice?

  ‘What happened?’ Her throat ached, like she’d spent the night screaming. Which wasn’t far from the truth.

  ‘The angel.’

  ‘She said she’d help.’ Izzy wilted against the warmth of his hard body. So close a contact, so warm, and that scent, that intoxicating scent – cinnamon and musk, heady. It made her shudder inside. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  A swirl of light, of fire, filling her, consuming her, and a voice, not her voice. Her body no longer her own. Her mind burning.

  ‘Sorath,’ she whispered. ‘Her name is Sorath.’

  Jinx stroked her hair. The urge to lean in to him, to let him caress her made her tremble inside. Shivers passed over her scalp and down her spine.

  ‘Dylan?’

  ‘I’m here,’ he said, his voice ragged. ‘I’m okay.’

  Izzy tried to stand on legs almost too wobbly to hold her, but made it the short distance to the other sofa. Kneeling down was easy. She just wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to get up again. That didn’t matter right now, did it? This was her fault. All her fault.

  ‘He looked inside my head, rummaged around in there like it was a box at a jumble sale.’ Dylan pushed himself up from the sofa and lurched towards the French windows. ‘I need air. I’m sorry. I just—’