Amaya giggled. “I didn’t.”
Dina rolled onto her side and faced Sophie. “Gideon and Bane broke through the wall and rescued us.”
Amaya snorted. “As if we needed them for that.”
“Kushiél broke through a wall and rescued Pilar from the demon.” Dina winked.
“Did you see the sparks between them when they met?” Amaya snickered.
“How could I miss it?” Dina giggled, a sound Sophie had never heard from the former angel.
Puzzled, Sophie asked, “So, your friend knows about the demons and the UnHallowed? And everyone is okay with that?”
Amaya’s phone rang. “Chay said Kush removed the memory of the attack from her mind.” She picked up her cell. “Speak of the devil.” She swiped her finger across the screen. “Pilar! About time you answer my calls. I’ve been trying to catch up with you since the convention center. How are you?”
Sophie heard a garbled reply come through the phone, but not the words. She didn’t need to hear when Amaya jumped up from her lounge chair. “You want to come over here? Now? Um, that’s not a good idea. How about I come to you?” She headed into the house.
A whistle came from the rear of the property, whipping everyone’s attention around.
“This is why no one answered the door?” Scarla sat on top of the back retaining wall built for extra protection. She jumped from the nine-foot wall and vanished behind a row of trees and bushes, then emerged, strutting across the manicured lawn.
“Took you long enough to show up. Got tired of you avoiding us, we were about to gather a hunting party,” Dina shouted.
“Scarla, sweetheart, I wondered where you were.” Ellen sat up and brought her oxygen tank with her. Scarla sank to her knees in front of Ellen and failed at hiding her shock over Ellen’s frail condition.
“Hey, Miss Ellen. I didn’t know you were here. No one told me.” Scarla glared at Sophie. “Don’t tell me you’re on a diet again. I think it’s time you stop.”
Ellen laughed. “I wish it were a diet. I have cancer, dear. My boobs have betrayed me.” She patted Scarla’s back and resumed her position on the lounger.
Scarla perched on the edge and took Ellen’s hand. “I heard. Is there anything I can do? Anything you need?”
“No, dear? I’m fine, really. Don’t hover, okay?”
Scarla squeezed Ellen’s hand and brought the weathered, aged hand to her lips to press a kiss to her knuckles. “Anything you want, you got.”
“Ladies.” Scarla nodded at Dina and Amaya. Her gaze cut to Sophie and she gave an awkward wave. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Sophie got stuck on what else to say.
Ellen piped in with, “What’s going on between the two of you? Don’t tell me the love affair is over. You two are thicker than thieves, whatever it is, go work it out. Go on, go fix it.” She shooed them away.
Well, she did plan on calling Scarla and apologizing. Sophie signaled to Dina and Amaya to keep an eye on her mother, and then pulled her cover-up over her bikini, stuck her feet in a pair of flip-flops, and entered the house. She went to the bar in the living room and poured two glasses of Jack. Their drug of choice when truths needed to be told.
Scarla was thin, Sophie noted over the rim of her glass. Her cheeks were sunken and dark smudges stained the skin beneath her eyes. The baggy shirt and long pants hid much of her figure, shapeless clothing Sophie never dreamed she’d ever see Scarla in. And her hair, when had she dyed it all one color? And brown? It didn’t look bad, nothing ever looked truly bad on her. Regardless, the drab, dour person in front of Sophie wasn’t Scarla. This was not the woman she’d known as her bestie.
“What’s up with Ellen? Is it true she has breast cancer?” Scarla asked.
“Yeah. I have called to get her records sent up here and get her a local doctor.”
“I had hoped it wasn’t true. So sorry,” Scarla whispered, her voice cracking at the end. She took a gulp of her drink. Sophie noticed the fine tremor in Scarla’s hand when she brought the drink to her lips.
“How are you handling…” How to put it? “Not being UnHallowed anymore?”
Anger flashed in Scarla’s champagne colored eyes. She drained her glass in a single gulp, and then moved Sophie out of her way to grab the Jack. “I’m handling it just fine,” she snapped as she poured a refill.
Yep. I can tell. Pressing her further wouldn’t help, especially when her pain was clear and present. “I don’t trust my mother being alone in Jacksonville. She remarried, and her husband is a piece of shit. He knocked up some woman half his age.”
“I heard you kicked his ass and got arrested.” Scarla grinned. “I’m proud of you.”
Sophie couldn’t help smiling. “I knew you would be. Jail was scary though.”
“You weren’t there long. Chay busted you out.” Scarla rolled her drink between her palms.
The memory of him appearing outside of her cell filled her. “Yeah. He did.” He wiped everybody’s mind clean who had knowledge of her, and she wasn’t pissed that he did it. If she wasn’t pissed at Chay, she couldn’t remain pissed at Scarla. “I forgive you for what you did. I realize you had my best interest at heart.”
Scarla tossed back her head and laughed. “Okay. Whatever.”
That wasn’t the reaction Sophie expected.
“Hey, I’m over it. I apologized to you several times in person and on the phone, and you rejected it. My conscience is clear.”
“Wow. Well. All right then.”
“I mean, how long did you expect me to tear myself up over you? Especially when everything I did was for you.” Sophie opened her mouth to answer, but Scarla continued. “I’m glad you’re okay. And I’m glad you and Chay are together. You are together, right?” Scarla eyed Sophie.
What they did last night flitted across her mind. “Um. Yeah, I believe we’ve ironed out most of our differences.”
“Good. Chay deserves some happiness.”
“And I don’t?” Sophie snapped.
Scarla rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I said. You know what, coming here was a bad idea.” She downed her drink and set the glass back on the bar. “I’m going back to the training camp. Tell Chay I stopped by.”
“Scarla, don’t go because of me.”
“I’m not. I just…don’t belong here.” Scarla headed for the front door.
“What?” Sophie darted from behind the bar. “You belong anywhere you choose to be. That’s what you told me when I first showed up on your training center doorstep.”
Scarla paused, her hands on her hips, her head hanging. “I remember that,” she murmured.
“You should stay. I’m gonna order some delivery for everyone and hang around the pool all day. All the UnHallowed are off somewhere. It’s a girls’ day.”
Scarla seemed to waver, then she said, “I don’t have a bathing suit.”
Sophie snorted. “Since when has that stopped you?”
Scarla spun and struck a pose with her hand on her hip and her head cocked to the side. “You have a point there.” She sauntered back over to Sophie. “What are you ordering for delivery?”
“Everyone wants sushi, except Mom. She wants Italian.”
“Mom, is it?” Scarla noted. “Good. I’m glad you two made up. Order me a dragon roll, okay.” She strutted back to the pool, her shirt halfway over her head.
Sophie went into the kitchen to get the menu to order dinner and choked on a scream. The Crossroad demon was sitting at the kitchen table, her legs crossed, her hands folded in her lap.
“H-How did you get in here?” Sophie croaked.
Her brow furrowed as if she had no idea what Sophie was talking about, then said, “Oh? You thought the wards would keep you safe. They have, from all the ordinary demons hunting you, but not from me. I’m a Crossroad Demon. There is no ward or boundary that can keep me from where I want to go. From who I need to see. And I needed to see you.”
“What do you want?”
�
��I made you an offer. You have yet to give me an answer.”
“That’s easy. The answer is no.”
“No? I don’t understand. Why no?” Her shoulders lifted and fell with her agitation. “I’ve offered you what you most desire. What no one could ever do for you.”
“What no one could give me, including you.” Sophie braced one hand on the table and leaned in. She pointed a finger in Celine’s face. “Bullshit you can give my daughter back. Bull-fucking-shit. And if, if you could, why in all the universe would I yank my baby girl out of Heaven to bring her back here? And don’t tell me she’s not in Heaven ‘cause that’s where she is. In Heaven. I’m not so selfish to take that away from her. So, no. I refuse your offer. Now get the fuck out.”
The chair scraped the tile as Celine stood. She smoothed the imaginary wrinkles out of her skintight dress and folded her hands in front of her. “Wow. I am impressed. Since I have nothing else to offer, I will leave you alone.”
“You do that.”
In the other room, the sliding glass door opened. “Sophie, I think I’ve overdone it a bit. Who would’ve thought laying out in the sun would be exhausting. I’m gonna take a bath an’ lay down ‘til dinner.”
Her words were slurred. Sophie needed to get to her, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the demon in the fucking kitchen. There was a crash. Glass breaking. The solid thud of a body hitting the floor.
“Mom!” She ran into the living room to find her mother sprawled on top of the shattered coffee table. Dina and Amaya rushed into the room from the pool as Sophie skidded on the glass to stop next to her mother. Blood ran from her temple to pool on the beige carpet, a glaring blotch of red Sophie couldn’t un-see.
“I’m calling for an ambulance,” Amaya said.
But there wasn’t time. They lived thirty minutes from the nearest town. Fifty minutes from the nearest hospital. “We have to take her. We have to take her, or she won’t make it.”
“Let me.” Effortlessly, Dina picked Ellen up and was headed for the front door when from every point in the room shadows climbed up the walls, then unfurled, revealing the UnHallowed. All of them.
“What’s happened?” Chay demanded.
“We have to get her to the hospital, and we can’t use the shadows, and none of us can form a dimensional pocket, not after Siberia,” Dina said while Sophie sobbed.
Chay wrapped an arm around her and she practically collapsed into his chest. This couldn’t be happening. Couldn’t.
“Give her to me.” Riél stepped forward. “I can fly her to the hospital faster than any of you can drive.” He took Ellen and her oxygen tank from Gideon and raced out of the door. Sophie tripped over her own feet following him and had barely caught up to him on the front lawn when Riél’s cream-colored wings appeared. “Meet me there,” he shouted, and with a great flap of his wings, he took to the sky.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Sophie couldn’t ask Scarla to drive any faster. Not when the speedometer clocked ninety-two miles per hour. She was in the backseat of the Lexus SUV. Kush was in the front seat holding onto the oh crap bar above his head. Next to her, taking up a good portion of the back seat, Chay.
The first twenty miles, she focused on the road, wishing she were the one behind the wheel, weaving through traffic, her foot on the pedal. Barring that, she wanted to roll down the window and scream at the top of her lungs to get the fuck out of the way.
She can’t die. She can’t die. She can’t die. Please, God. I just found her. Don’t take her from me.
Chay’s hand covered her fist. She jumped, startled. He didn’t pull away. Instead, he pried open her hand and threaded his fingers through hers as if to anchor her. It worked. Her mind cleared enough for her to latch onto something other than death. She latched onto Chay. “You said we’d talk about it tomorrow.” She couldn’t remember what it was, but that wasn’t a surprise. “Tomorrow is now.”
His tone level, he spoke quietly. “We tracked down a Crossroad demon named Bryce. He heard of a demon named Celine. Heard she was in league with the Demon Army. We still don’t know who’s leading the army, but it’s a clue. More than what we’ve had since Siberia. We’ll find her, Sophie. We won’t stop until we do.”
She chewed on her bottom lip, a habit she’d conquered in her teens was back. “What will you do when you find her? Will you kill her?”
He sighed, and his tone flipped to granite. “We can’t kill her. If you kill a Crossroad demon, you must take her place. You become that Crossroad demon.”
What? Why? “I don’t understand.”
“Crossroad demons are special. They’re part of the pact Father made with Satan. They’re allowed to mingle with humans in order to tempt them, corrupt them. It’s the biblical temptation of JOB on a global scale. It’s all a part of free will. Humans have the right to choose, Crossroad demons facilitate that choice…leaning heavily toward evil.”
The right to choose. The words lodged in Sophie’s head as she gave her attention back to the road. She focused on Scarla’s mastery of the car and the space it occupied. She willed the car to go faster, break any law, whether legal or physical, to get to the hospital in record time.
She’d asked if one of the others could fly her since Chay had been one of the many who’d lost his wings in his fall from grace. Maybe Daghony, Rimmon, or Kush, as terrifying as Sam was, she’d take him if he’d offered, but none did. Two UnHallowed taking to the air in broad daylight was too risky. They couldn’t manage the large-scale exposure if something went wrong. Too many cell phones. All they needed was some random person to record an angel and all hell would break loose.
A bout of nausea had her fighting to hold what food she had in her stomach. What if she got there and her mother was already gone? She covered her mouth as her stomach rolled. Burying another family member…she didn’t bury her daughter, had no idea what happened to her after she’d passed out. Her stomach was flat when she opened her eyes days later. The nurse confirmed what she already knew, and she couldn’t form the words to ask.
“It’s okay. I got you.” Chay unbuckled her seatbelt and pulled her onto his lap.
She didn’t want his comfort, so why was she clinging to him, her fingers clutching his shirt, her face buried in his chest. She knew she was crying. The tears coasting down her cheeks were a clue.
Caleb’s funeral had been a horror, yet as bad as it had been, thinking he died in an accident, now, knowing the truth, it was a thousand times worse. Her mother had bawled, inconsolable, her wails for her dead son were sharp, bitter cries laced with the irony of what could have been. Caleb was so damn bright. He wasn’t gonna be stuck in Detroit at some dead-end job. He was gonna change the world. Just you wait and see, she told everyone whenever the subject of children came up. Her daughter… Well, she’s living with her boyfriend and working at a bar. I think she’s in school. One was going to change the world, the other was shacking up.
That was the dynamics in their household. Sophie never fought it. Why fight the rising tide when eventually, it would ebb. And it had. Her childhood trauma had receded. She moved out and moved on, left everyone behind, even tried to leave Caleb. Her little brother refused to be ignored. So many nights he interrupted the pain Ozzy was inflicting on her body. So many nights he came over to her small apartment to check on her and stayed because Ozzy was drunk. So many nights he’d give her the stare that said, Why are you staying with this loser!
“Your mother is going to be all right.” Chay warmed her with soothing circular strokes to her back.
“You don’t know that,” she blurted into his chest.
He squeezed her arms. “I do know that. You have to know that.”
“She’s dying!” Sophie yanked away. Chay held fast. “Why am I talking to you about death when you’re fucking immortal? How could you possibly understand what you’ve never had to face? What we lowly humans face every time we step off a curb, get behind the wheel of a car, shit! Take a fucking shower, eat red
meat. Every single day there are a thousand ways I could die. How could you possible relate to that?”
A tic worked his jaw and a thin crimson line bleed into his pewter irises. “You will not die,” he said with so much conviction she almost believed him.
“Yeah, I will. Eventually, one of Sam’s Reapers will come to collect me.” She tried again to break free and failed. His grip wasn’t something she could escape without losing a layer of skin, and only if he allowed it.
Red swallowed his eyes. “No one is going to collect you. I won’t allow it.”
It was a lie. By the sheer determination on his face, a lie he wholeheartedly believed. He thought he could save her.
Sophie leaned in to rest her forehead on his pecs. The fight had left her, but not the truth. “In case you didn’t realize, I’m human. I didn’t get the immortal gene. I’m gonna age, wrinkle like a prune, and eventually, I will be dust.”
He cupped her face and eased her chin up until their eyes met. The intensity had lessened, though his gaze remained fully red. “You are not going to die.”
“Damn right,” Scarla grunted from the driver’s seat.
“In fact,” Chay continued. “No one is going to die. Not you and not your mother.”
“And Santa Claus is real.” He allowed her to scoot off his lap and retreat to her seat behind Scarla. “How much longer?”
The car veered sharply from the left lane to the right to swing onto the off-ramp, where they passed a blue and white road sign for the hospital. “Ten minutes,” Scarla said, her focus locked on the road. She weaved through the traffic like a boss.
Sophie closed her eyes. She had to get her mind right before they arrived. Had to prepare for the worst. Fragments of prayers came to her. Funny how that happens when rock bottom is three feet above your head.
She mumbled quietly, “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name… Um…” What was the rest?
“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” Chay picked up the thread.
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