by eden Hudson
“Well, I need to report Tough to the Tracker,” Moto-Cop said. “He claims he’s just headed out to the Kelley farm, but you know that kid.”
Fatigues snorted. “Probably across the county line by now. You should’ve run him in.”
Moto-Cop shrugged as he backed toward the door.
“I figured she trumped him,” he said.
They nodded goodbye to each other and Moto-Cop left.
“Modesty, I’ll be escorting you to Mayor Dark,” Fatigues said. His wings did an impatient shiver as he swung around and left me behind. I had to jog to catch up and speed walk to keep pace with his long legs.
In the Permanent Residence wing, stone-tile floors turned into thick carpet. I looked over my shoulder toward the door closing us off from the entrance hall.
“Why isn’t Tough allowed to leave Halo?” I asked.
“You’ve heard of Halo’s NP-human protection rules, haven’t you?”
“I thought residents could leave for a day as long as their protector doesn’t attack anyone while they’re gone.”
Fatigues looked sidelong at me as if he’d been hoping I hadn’t actually heard of them.
“Tough is considered a major flight risk,” Fatigues said. “He’s run away twice already. The last time, he tried to kill a guy.”
I watched our boots hit the carpet for a few steps. Fatigues and I were wearing the same brand, but his were polished and the laces looked new. Maybe I was just kidding myself because I sort of liked Tough, but it was hard to reconcile the idea of a murderer with the cocky-in-a-crowd, shy-one-on-one redneck.
Fatigues must’ve seen the disbelief on my face. He stopped walking and stared me down.
“I don’t know what Tough’s got you thinking or what you might’ve heard,” he said, “But all of the Whitneys are trouble. They want to rid the world of NPs. That’s why Tough went after that guy in Nashville—because the guy is a mage and his wife is a vampire. Tough hunted them down and tried to kill them.”
The awful thing is I wanted to believe Fatigues. Do a search for “fallen+angel+lying” sometime. Every article that comes up will say that fallen angels are so convincing because they use the truth to lie.
“Tough just doesn’t seem like—”
“He is, so drop it.” Fatigues spun around and started speed-striding again. “Mayor Dark won’t want to talk about him anyway. He’s more interested in you and Temperance.”
“Why?”
“That’s not my business.”
Fatigues stopped in front of a door and knocked twice. I didn’t hear anyone grant us entrance the way someone would if they lived in a cathedral, but the door opened. He went in.
I couldn’t move. My heart was beating so hard the tempie-tempie-tempie sound it made echoed off of my ear drums and the vibrations made me dizzy. Fatigues said something to Mayor Dark and Mayor Dark said something back. I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t hear anything until—
“Desty?” Tempie, the half of me that split off in utero, jumped through the doorway and tackled me into the opposite wall. She smelled like caramel apples and our house. “Kathan told me, but I couldn’t believe it! What are you doing here?”
“I followed you,” I said.
“Followed me where?”
“Everywhere. I followed you from home. We’ve got to go back—”
“Stop crying, nerd, I can barely understand you,” Tempie said.
She let go of my neck and stepped back. For a girl who’d spent the last eight months bumming around the country, having sex with guys so they would give her tattoos and money, she looked good. Probably better than I did. Her hair was long, streaked with copper highlights and she had a new nose ring with a black starburst on it. She grinned and I realized she was wearing a lacy black peignoir over a camisole that was too tasteful to have been picked out by any nineteen-year-old, much less Tempie.
“This is so awesome,” she said. “Kathan’s been—” She stopped and listened to something I couldn’t hear. Whatever it was, it must’ve been funny because she laughed. She grabbed my hand and pulled me into a sitting room. “Come on.” Through the lace covering her back, I could see the wings she’d gotten in Santa Barbara.
Fatigues went around us on his way out. Mayor Dark stood beside a luxurious-looking sectional backed by a ten-foot Hell Window. Like yesterday morning, he was dressed in silk pajama pants as if he’d just climbed out of bed in the middle of something.
My sister. He just climbed out of bed in the middle of my sister.
I tried not to grind my teeth.
“Modesty, I’m glad to officially meet you,” he said, stepping forward.
“Mayor Dark, can—”
“Please, call me Kathan.”
Tempie let go of my hand and went to his side. He put an arm around her and that voice in my head trying to deny that this was happening started rambling. This wasn’t right. She shouldn’t be looking at him like that, like a knight in shining armor, like the one who made everything better. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. The dizziness came back and red started creeping in at the edges of my sight.
“Forgive my lapse in manners,” Kathan said, gesturing toward a recliner matching the sectional. “Have a seat, Modesty. Someone should be bringing a snack soon.”
I more fell into the chair than sat. I was staring into the middle distance, but in my peripheral vision I saw Tempie look up at Kathan. He nodded. Permission granted, she came and knelt in front of me, adjusting until we locked eyes.
“Hey, nerd,” she said. “You’re not getting sick or something, are you?”
I shook my head. “I traded a vamp some blood so he would tell me where you were. And I guess before that, I sold—”
“Are you serious?” Tempie asked. “You didn’t let him suck straight from your vein, did you? That’s dangerous, Desty. You should know better.”
I laughed. At least I wasn’t giving it up to some fallen angel because I was mad at my daddy.
“Screw you,” Tempie snapped and I realized I’d just said all that out loud. “Kathan gives me power and unconditional love and—”
I grabbed her wrist. “I’m your freaking twin, Tempie. I know you. It’s not poetic or romantic or whatever.”
“Let go of me!”
“You’re not going down in a blaze of glory,” I said. “He’s going to mess you up and cast you out—”
Tempie hit me so hard that little sparks appeared when I opened my eyes.
“Don’t you dare say one more word about Kathan,” she said.
My vision cleared. I touched the white-hot spot under my eye to make sure I wasn’t bleeding. She hit me. Tempie hit me. The world blurred again, but this time it was because I was trying not to cry.
Tempie made a disgusted sound in her throat. “Jeez, you even take a punch like a nerd.”
“Temperance.” Kathan’s voice was warm and dark like melted chocolate, but it was also an order. Tempie went running to him like a good little lapdog.
I bit my lip and glared down at the floor. Tears dripped onto my knees. I sniffed and wiped my eyes on the back of my hand, accidentally aggravating the spot where Tempie had punched me. None of this was going the way it was supposed to.
Someone knocked on the door. It opened and a cart was wheeled into the room, then the door closed again.
“Modesty, please, eat something,” Kathan said. “Whoever traded for your blood obviously took too much. You need to refuel.”
On the cart in front of me was a glass, a pitcher of orange juice, and a plate of chocolate chip cookies. Add a blood vault and a few security guards armed with stakes and crosses and it could’ve been an after-donation table at a Red Cross instead of a midnight snack in a fallen angel’s lair. My stomach growled. That cheese sandwich and pickles from this afternoon felt a million years away.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” Kathan said. “They’re not drugged, magically or chemically.”
I didn’t know what else to
do, so I ate one. It melted on my tongue, fresh out of the oven. Why did everything fallen angels had have to be so darn good?
“I’m sorry that I didn’t say anything yesterday, Modesty,” Kathan said. Hearing my full name so often was weirdly formal. I felt like I should be sipping my orange juice with my pinkie out. “To be honest, I was surprised to see you with the tour group. I didn’t expect you to just turn up, literally at my door. I actually had a few soldiers in Hannibal looking for you.”
I sat up straight and looked at them lounging on the sectional together. Kathan’s glittering black wings hung over the arm. Tempie had one hand on his six-pack, her face resting against his jaw.
“Why were you looking for me?” I asked.
“Are you angry with me for making your sister my familiar?” Kathan asked.
“No.” Right then I wasn’t feeling much besides failure and the throbbing under my eye. “But I did come to take her home. Will you release her?”
Tempie lunged for me, fists balled, but Kathan caught her arm. With her hair and peignoir caught up in the forward inertia, she looked like one of those dogs that had run to the end of its chain and gotten yanked backward.
“Temperance, if you want to go with your sister, you may,” Kathan said.
Her face crumpled up and tears glossed over her eyes. She fell on her knees in front of him and grabbed a fistful of his pajama pants.
“You promised, Kathan!” She sounded betrayed. Part of me—maybe the part slowly coming out of shock—thought she deserved a taste of how it felt. “You swore!”
“Sit down and stop that,” he ordered.
Tempie did. Without even saying that she was doing it because she wanted to sit down, not because he’d told her to.
Kathan’s black eyes met mine. “I’m sorry, Modesty. She doesn’t want to go home with you. From what she’s told me, there isn’t much left for either of you there.”
There would be if Tempie came back.
“I know you’re disappointed,” Kathan said. “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to find your sister and you feel as if she’s stabbed you in the back, choosing to stay with me. She hasn’t. In fact, Temperance is looking out for both of your best interests.”
“That’d be a first,” I said.
He didn’t get upset at the insult. I wondered whether Tempie could see that her fanatical devotion was all one-sided.
“Modesty, I hope you’ll listen before you judge what your sister has chosen to do with her life,” Kathan said. His wings unfolded to allow him to lean forward on the sectional and rest his elbows on his knees. Even half-naked, he looked like he was making a business proposition and all of Hell was standing behind him. “I’d like you to become my familiar. I told Temperance that if you agreed to it—”
“If I agreed to it, you’d let her go?”
He shook his head.
“I should’ve explained better,” he said. “And I would have if you hadn’t interrupted. I’d like for you to become my familiar—jointly—with Temperance.”
“Isn’t that impossible?” I asked.
“For all enforcers and for almost all alphas, it is.” Kathan’s wings puffed up. “But under the right circumstances, I have the ability to impose my essence on two people at the same time.”
“What are the right circumstances?”
He smiled and I felt him pulling away from the conversation. “I don’t want to bore you with the details, but the most basic requirement is that both familiars be genetically identical—‘bred in the bone the same, borne in the flesh the same.’ Identical twins born to an identical twin.”
“Like us to Mom and Aunt Arie,” Tempie said.
“Thanks for spelling it out,” I said. “I’m too stupid to get it otherwise.”
“You’re awfully bitchy tonight, nerd. If I—”
“I don’t want to leave you in the dark about my motivations, Modesty,” Kathan cut in. “The end result of enthralling the two of you is that I will be elevated for a period of time to the level of commander—a leader of legions.”
“I’ve never read about commanders,” I said.
“Would it be prejudiced for me to assume the only books you’ve read were written by humans?” Kathan asked.
I looked down at the half-eaten cookie I was holding. The chocolate chips were oozing onto my fingers.
“I’m not asking you to decide tonight,” Kathan said. “That wouldn’t be fair with all you’ve been through, and from what Temperance tells me, you’ll want to do as much research as possible before—”
Another knock interrupted him. A muscle in Kathan’s jaw jumped and he glared at the door. It swung open. Fatigues was back.
“Sorry for the disturbance, Mayor Dark. Tough Whitney is in the parlor. Mikal’s on her way to take care of it, but she said you’d want to know.”
“I wasn’t informed that the Tracker was going after him,” Kathan said.
Fatigues shook his head. “Didn’t have to. The kid drove up the lane and walked in on his own.”
Kathan cracked a smile and stood up.
“I’d like to see this,” he said. He looked at Tempie. “Why don’t you keep your sister company? I’ll be back before long.”
“Promise?” Tempie asked in this disgusting, saccharine voice.
I wanted to scream at her. Over the years, Tempie had been a lot of things that weren’t very good, but she’d never acted like one of those stupid twee-girls. Seeing that was worse than knowing what she’d done for that tattoo artist and his friends back in Santa Barbara.
Kathan followed Fatigues out into the hall, his bare feet making almost no sound on the thick carpet. The door eased shut behind them.
I picked up another cookie. Eight months following her across the country. I’d traded clothes and shoes with some girl trying to confuse a tracker so I could have a pair of boots that wouldn’t wear out as fast as my flats had. I’d sold my hair for the cash to make it from Tucson to Fort Worth, sold my phone for the cash to make it from Fort Worth to New Orleans, hitched halfway up the Mississippi, then finally broke down and used the bank card I stole from Mom to get myself to Halo. Eight months of getting hassled by demons, sirens, undead, mambos, primals, and just plain creeps. Now Tempie was sitting right there, happy and healthy and apparently in love, waiting for me to say something.
“Cookie?” I asked, pushing the cart toward her with the toe of my boot.
She thought about it for a second, which was another new, ugly thing to see.
“Yes.” She took one and ate it in four bites. The next one was gone in three. “Man, these are so good. I wish Kathan would keep our room stocked with them. He forgets about food sometimes since they only eat for the taste, anyway, and then I have to remind him that humans eat every day.”
“How long’s it been since you ate, Tempie?”
“I ate earlier today. I think. Don’t you give me that look! Kathan treats me well and he doesn’t have to. You should see some of the junk Mikal does to her familiar. The whole basement—”
“Colt,” I said.
“Huh?”
“His name is Colt.”
“Who cares? He’s just an enforcer’s familiar. Kathan’s an alpha—and he’s able to be a commander. Everyone around here treats me like a queen because I’m his.” She got this wicked smile on her face, almost exactly like the one she’d had after she got home three hours late from her date with Leif Barnhart back in ninth grade. “When we make it out of the bedroom, anyway. We’re usually too busy.”
“City budget work and stuff?” I said.
Tempie laughed. Why did she sound and look so much like my sister?
“He’s incredible, right?” She looked at the door as if she could see Kathan behind it. “That face and those abs—and I’m pretty sure if you shot him in the butt, the bullet would bounce off. I don’t know if he spent his whole existence working out and screwing, but let me tell you, a forked tongue—”
“Yeah, he’s a sex-go
d. I got it,” I said. I leaned forward and looked into the matched set of my eyes. “Tempie, he said if you wanted to come home, he’d let you.”
“If I wanted to live with a pathetic loser whining and crying about the asshole that dumped her for someone younger, I wouldn’t have left in the first place.”
“Mom needs us, Tempie.”
“She doesn’t give a crap about us,” Tempie said. “You know she doesn’t. Kathan does. He’ll take care of us. And with him, we’ll be as powerful as any foot soldier—maybe even as powerful as Mikal.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The two of us as Kathan’s familiars,” Tempie said. “Commanders raise their familiars to a level of power humans could never experience, not even witches. And we’ll rule with him.”
“Rule what?” I asked.
Tempie laughed. “I never thought I’d see the day the Great Nerd of Hannibal didn’t do her homework.”
I jumped up.
“I did my homework,” I snapped. “Do you want to know what happens around Day 179 of Tempie’s Angel Rebellion? Kathan throws you out because your brain—that squishy thing in your skull that most people use to think—falls apart. Falls. Apart. Do you even get that?”
Tempie shrugged one shoulder and looked down at her fingernails the way she always did when she knew something I didn’t.
“If he’s a commander and we’re his co-familiars,” she said, “The essence doesn’t corrode anything. That’s part of why he wants us both. He loves me and he wants to protect me. The day we met, he sent the foot soldiers to find you because he was worried about me. How’s that for treating me well?”
I sat back down, hard. “If I’m enthralled, too, the essence doesn’t…”
She shook her head. “No, it doesn’t. And remember the power? He said we’re strong enough to be world destroyers, maybe even god-killers. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”
Sometimes it’s a shock to realize that the universe or God or someone is providing you with loopholes to jump through so you can do something that just a second ago was impossible. I could still save Tempie. I would have to give myself up, but I’d be with her, wouldn’t I?