“I can’t handle it!” He slammed his hand on the mattress. “Loving you would make you a target to every demon I ever go after. They’ll hunt you down and kill you, and I can’t put you in that kind of danger!” He thumped to his feet. “I’m sorry, Maren. I’m sorry it has to be this way. But it’s done. It’s over. You need to stay away from me, and I from you. For good.” He leapt for the open window, climbed on the ledge, and disappeared.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t follow him, couldn’t even watch him leave. Confusion ricocheted from my head to my heart and back again. Did he just tell me he loved me and then broke up with me in the same breath?
I threw myself down on the bed, prepared to cry my eyes out, when I spotted a white bundle on the floor near the headboard. I stretched out my arm, hooked it with my finger, and brought it close. It was Gavin’s shirt. The shirt I’d wrapped around me when he’d flown me back. I lifted it to my cheek. I could smell Gavin in the fibers. And, somehow, the tunic was still warm.
I scrunched it into a ball, clutched it to my heart, and let my tears wash over it. What had I done in a past life to deserve so much heartbreak in this one?
I fumbled at my neck for the Tudor rose necklace from my mom and rubbed its cool glass petals to soothe myself. Instead, self-pity tried to swallow me whole. I finally found a guy I liked who actually liked me back, and somehow I’d messed it up. How? Could I ever fix it? And why did it have to hurt so badly?
I never talked to my mom about boys, because there had never been any worth mentioning. Now there was one, I was desperate to talk to her, and she was gone. So was he, I reminded myself.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I wiped my face with the back of my hand and pulled it out. I hit the side button and found a text from Jo:
OUR BOG BUTTER IS GOING TO THE EDINBURGH MUSEUM!!
HOW COOL IS THAT? IM AT TV STATION. TALK LATER
Sweet Jo, she was always so darn perky. How did she manage it when she had a crappy life too? I thought about calling her, but I didn’t want to interrupt her with my sob story. And I wasn’t sure her eternal optimism was going to help anyway. I needed to talk to someone a little more dark and twisted.
I dialed Hunter.
“Hey, I was just thinking about you!” she said.
“Really?” I sniffed. “Why?”
“Wait, are you crying?”
I sniffed again. “No, I mean . . . not anymore.”
“Aw, is it your mom?” she asked.
“Kind of, but not totally.”
“A guy?”
“Good guess.”
“It’s always a guy, isn’t it? What did he do? Want me to come knock him out for you?”
I smiled into the phone. Calling Hunter was definitely a good idea. I told her about meeting Gavin in the woods, him showing up at my house, and my trip to his village.
She was impressed, and started babbling on, probably to distract me from the painful parts. “Oh, you’re so lucky! I’ve never met an angel. I know my parents worked with them. I can’t wait to work for the Abbey myself. Finally get out of here . . .”
“Where is the Abbey?” I interrupted. I rolled over and slid my mom’s journal out from under my bed.
“France.”
I slipped the decoded letter from between the pages and ran my fingers over the smooth outside of the envelope. “Le Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy?”
“Why are you asking me if you already know?”
“I don’t. I found an envelope my mom had addressed there right before she died.”
“So you found something?” Her voice went up an octave; from excitement or fear, I couldn’t tell.
“Yeah,” I admitted. I described the heart box, the journal, and the letter.
“How did you know it was written in invisible ink?” she asked. “Did you decode it?”
“Yes,” I said, remembering the cup of tea. “Sort of on accident.”
“There are no accidents,” she reminded me. “It’s amazing you could do that, you know. Not everyone can cryptanalyze. You must have inherited that from your parents. The Abbey’s going to want you for sure!”
“Maybe I don’t want them,” I replied. “And I think you were right.”
“Of course I was,” she said. “About what?”
“My mom.” I sucked in my breath and closed my eyes. “I don’t think it was an accident that she died. I think she was killed . . . by demons. I think a demon dropped her.” Like the hiker from Culloden. “My mom was found in the middle of an open field, dead from impact injuries, but there was nothing around for her to have fallen from. The coroner said she fell from about eighty feet up, too low for an airplane or a hot air balloon or something along those lines. It made no sense. She was crushed into the ground with no reasonable explanation.”
I decided not to tell her about my premonitory dreams and how I could have stopped my mom from leaving the house that day, how I should have but didn’t because I was holding a grudge from the night before. I couldn’t even remember what our fight had been about—something small and stupid, no doubt—but I was a bad enough daughter that I let her leave without warning her. The truth was, the Abbey would want nothing to do with me.
“Why do you think they did it?” Hunter shook me out of my miserable musing. “Because of the journal?”
“Maybe. She named it ‘Demon Strongholds,’ and it has a bunch of drawings of three different buildings.”
“If you have maps into demons’ strongholds, you’d better be careful. They will not take losing those lightly. Obviously, if they killed your mum for them. Do you know where the buildings are?”
“No. I don’t recognize any of them.”
“Take pictures with your phone and send them to me. Maybe I’d know them.” I knew Hunter was anxious to prove herself to the Abbey, and I was happy to help her get in. Let her dreams come true, even if mine couldn’t.
“What about the letter?” she continued. “What did it say?”
I read it to her.
“‘Soldiers’ definitely means Warrior angels,” Hunter said. “Like Gavin. No wonder he just showed up in your area. He’s probably scouting for this program. You live in Aviemore, right? With an A? Has anything weird been going on in your area?”
“Just some crazy dogs or something. Nothing serious.”
“Well, you’d better keep an eye out, because it’s likely to get serious soon. And don’t tell anyone anything about this,” she warned. “Not your grandparents, not your friends . . .”
“Why not?” I thought about Jo. I’d already told her about meeting Gavin, and I was planning on showing her my mom’s stuff. I would feel terrible keeping such a big secret from her.
“For their own protection,” Hunter said with no small amount of gravity. “Trust me, the less they have to do with demons, the better.”
She was probably right, although the minute I started having bad dreams starring Jo, all bets were off. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake I’d made with my mom.
“Except Gavin,” she added. “You should tell him about the journal if you see him again.”
“I’m sure I won’t,” I sighed. “He’s gone, and he can’t stand to be around me.”
“I wish I had a hot angel who couldn’t stand to be near me, so much so that he took me home with him,” Hunter teased.
“Yeah, well, now he hates me.”
“I highly doubt that,” she said. “Angels don’t hate anyone. You probably just have him so mixed up, he doesn’t know what to do with himself—because he’s definitely not supposed to love you, either. So he threw a big, bad tantrum and stormed off. He’ll show up again, especially if something happens in your town.” She crunched into the phone, as if she was eating popcorn as we talked. “Who knew angels were so much like kindergarten boys?”
Gavin was nothing like a kindergarten boy, I thought to myself, recalling his muscular chest, the way his hair fell over his dark blue eyes, his gorgeous lips. He was nothing like a
boy at all. He was nothing like anyone I’d ever met.
In spite of myself, I hoped something bad would happen so I could meet him again.
The next week, something bad did happen. Bertie’s mauled body was discovered in the woods.
The official cause of death was reported as “attacked by wild animals,” but I knew better. The “wild animals” were demons, but like Gavin said, they seemed to have moved out of the area.
The animal madness, however, hadn’t. It migrated from dogs to bigger animals, like horses and cows. Farmers were told to kill even prized animals that showed any signs of sickness to stop the spread of the unknown disease, but so far, it hadn’t seemed to work. A woman died after being kicked in the head while milking her family cow. A man was thrown from his horse when it apparently went berserk. More people turned up dead in Aviemore that week than had in the past four years.
The local government was investigating, but all they could really advise was to keep your pets inside, and avoid walking by yourself. Word was they were afraid the large deer in the area might gore someone.
True to his word, I didn’t see Gavin. I thought about him all the time, though. So much, I had trouble concentrating on just about anything else. I scanned the woods for a glimpse of him. Imagined I saw him on the street. I was always wrong.
I figured he was out doing what he loved best: fighting demons. I fantasized about him tearing up the bad guys, his muscles bulging, his eyes blazing. I found myself sketching my own pictures of him in the margins of my notebooks. And every night before I went to sleep, I replayed the best day of my life—the day I visited his village. I recalled every moment in painstaking detail: holding his hand, lying against his chest on the warm rocks, what it felt like being held in his arms. I relived every caress, memorized every smoldering look, remembered every word he said to me in his amazing accent.
I added a million new scenes in my mind. All of them ended with us in a passionate embrace. I imagined that when we were lying on the boulder, he reached over and rolled me onto his body, my hair grazing his cheeks as we kissed. I dreamed that as we were walking through the woods, he suddenly pushed me up against a tree trunk and stole a kiss, a kiss I was shocked to receive but more than happy to return.
I reflected on how much my life had changed since I was little—not even as little as the tiny angels in Gavin’s village, but just in the past few years. When I was twelve, I had crushes on boys, but most of them were on the posters in my room. I never expected I would have such strong romantic feelings about someone I actually knew.
I had only met Gavin a few times, and I did hardly know him, but I ached without him. He took a piece of me with him when he left.
CHAPTER 15
I was swimming in a pool. A giant waterfall cascaded into it, making the surface of the water pulse and filling the air with a soft roar. There was something entrancing about the water, the way it rippled against my body.
There was a boy in the pool with me. He swam past, and I felt the heat of his wake. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it was handsome. His muscles glistened as he stood up and waded over to me. He smiled, and I laughed. He leaned forward to kiss me, but I bent my head to avert his lips, stared at the turquoise water. A few bubbles appeared, floating up from the bottom. The water got warmer. More and more bubbles rose until the whole pool was boiling.
I wanted to get out, but he was holding my shoulders, hugging me to him. As the water churned furiously around us, he tried to kiss me again, and again I turned away. This time, when I looked down, the water was dark red. It was hot now—too hot. It made me dizzy. I closed my eyes to stop the spinning. I felt the water rise around me, only it wasn’t the water moving. It was me. I was sinking.
Even though I’d lived with my grandparents for more than a month, I’d never been inside their bedroom before. I needed a pencil sharpener, and my grandfather had sent me in to fetch it. He’d promised that a small silver one was in a drawer of the antique “dental cabinet,” but I was having no luck finding it.
I was lucky to have found the cabinet at all. I was expecting a white, mirrored compartment on the wall, like in a bathroom, but the dental cabinet turned out to be a huge mahogany dresser with more than two dozen tiny drawers, each with a shiny glass knob. I ran my hands over the smooth, faceted drawer pulls. The little girl in me wished that they were real diamonds.
The thin drawers were stuffed with random objects: pens, coins, matchbooks, a crystal frog, cocktail stirrers shaped like little sabers, corks from long-drunk bottles of wine. I was about to give up when two sparkling discs rolled out from the back of a dark drawer. I picked them up. They were cufflinks embossed with the Tudor rose—exactly like my mom’s necklace. I rolled them between my fingers, staring at the colorful petals.
“What are you doing?” my grandmother called from behind me. I dropped the cufflinks and pushed the drawer shut.
“Nothing,” I said, swinging around to face her. “I mean, looking for a pencil sharpener . . .”
“And did you find one?” she mused. I shook my head. “Well, what did you find?” I didn’t move. She waggled her fingers. “Come on, out with it. I know you’ve found something.”
Obediently, I retrieved the cufflinks and deposited them into her open palm. “Whose are they?” I breathed, afraid I was somehow in trouble.
“They belonged to your father,” she said. “I’d almost forgotten about them. Your mum mailed them to us after he died. Said they were a gift from his work . . .” She closed her hand around the cufflinks.
“Where, exactly, did my dad work?” I asked. I didn’t want to bring up any of Hunter’s crazy suggestions about the Abbey, but I was dying to know more.
“Where do you think he worked?” my grandmother replied.
I sucked in my breath and decided to dive in. “For an international spy agency?”
She bit on her top lip for a few seconds before she answered. “As far as we know, yes.”
“You don’t know for sure?” I pressed.
She shook her head. “It was all very top secret. Once he joined, we heard from him less and less. Then we got a phone call . . .” Her eyes glazed over a bit.
I didn’t want her to stop talking. I needed to know what my grandparents knew about my parents’ secret lives. “A phone call?” I repeated. I sat down on a beat-up leather armchair to show I wasn’t going anywhere. She lowered herself onto the edge of the ottoman.
“Yes. In the middle of the night, your father called. He was quite upset. He said he wouldn’t be able to contact us ever again, and that we should remove all record of him from our lives, even the photographs on the walls, for our protection. Something about being tracked by evil forces . . .” She studied me for a reaction, but I held my face still even though I was panicking inside. Maybe Gavin hasn’t been exaggerating about putting me in danger . . .
“And?” I swallowed.
“Well, of course we didn’t do any of that—at least not at first. But two days later, we got news that he had been killed in a terrible accident, and that your mother had gone into hiding with you.”
“So you didn’t know where we were?” I was shocked. All those years, I’d just assumed my grandparents wanted nothing to do with us.
“No, and it broke our hearts.” She sighed and blinked back tears. “I always felt we should have tried harder to find you and your mum, but we didn’t know where to start. We didn’t even know the name of the agency they worked for, or where it was.”
Seeing her pain, my heart melted for her, for me, for our whole family torn apart by the mysterious Abbey.
My grandmother patted me on the knee and stood up. “What’s done is done. The important thing is that we have you here with us today.”
She smiled at me like she really might love me. I hoped it was true. I needed someone to love me. Everyone else I loved had died or disappeared.
Later that afternoon, I was sitting in my favorite spot, my window seat, trying to finis
h my homework. Like most of the area, I was stuck at home, imprisoned by the weather. I’d learned that rain didn’t stop Scottish people from most anything, even golf, but when you added a cold wind, they preferred to stay indoors. A teeth-chattering gale had chased all the clouds out of the valley, but somehow added even more darkness to what was otherwise the middle of the day.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched a long, black, impossibly shiny car pull up to our house. A man in a black suit climbed out of the back carrying a silver tray, and promptly disappeared onto the porch. The doorbell pinged.
“Maren!” my grandmother called from downstairs.
“Yeah?”
“Come here, please. You’ve got a visitor.”
The only person I knew who drove around—or was driven around—in a limousine was Anders Campbell, but he and Graham hadn’t been at school since their family funeral. I’d heard they went directly to the Bahamas on an annual family trip. Lifestyles of the rich and famous. Must be nice.
My grandmother stood by the open front door. Outside—as if he was too good to come into our common house—stood the man with the tray. As I approached, he held it out to me.
“Miss Maren Hamilton, I presume.” He possessed a snootier-sounding accent than I normally heard in Scotland.
“Yes.”
“This is for you.” The tray was as shiny as the car outside, and it held a thick envelope with my name elaborately scrawled across it in black ink. I picked it up.
“Thank you,” I said. He bowed, clicked his heels together, spun, and returned to his car without a word.
“I’ll leave you to it,” my gran said, eyeing the envelope as if she really didn’t want to leave. “I’ve got to get ready for my ladies’ golf club luncheon.”
“Okay,” I agreed, turning away from her in case it was somehow a message from Gavin. She closed the front door, and walked down the hall without a word.
I flipped the envelope over and found it sealed by a big clump of wax stamped with a cursive C. I slid my finger under it, careful not to get a paper cut, and gently pried up the seal. Inside was an invitation to a gala celebrating the eighteenth birthday of one Anders Campbell.
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