A Slither of Hope

by Lisa M Basso

  Chapter Four

  Kade

  After a short glide around the city, using my time to think, I landed at the one place—the only place lately—I could still call home. I still hadn’t been able to fly since Azriel snapped my wing the night Ray swan-dove off the Golden Gate Bridge. Nothing pissed me off more than knowing he was the one that finally put me out of commission. Being almost grounded also made it tough to show Ray how angels and Fallen really fought, but that was among the things I was hoping to forget here. The bell above the door dinged and my second-favorite waitress, Shelly, beamed her brightest smile at me.

  “Hey, doll,” I said, taking my usual squeaky stool at the counter.

  “It’s been a long time, Kady.” She bent behind the counter, the thick blond stripe in her bangs falling from behind her ear, and pulled out a mug. The aroma of grease, burnt meat, and the single best liquid on Earth—coffee—hung in the air like a “Welcome Home Kade!” sign.

  “Yeah, well, I heard a few cops had been sniffing around here thanks to your last waitress. Didn’t want to get caught in the middle of that shit storm.” It wasn’t a lie. Being alive for as long as I have, every once in a while I’d run into some jackass that swore he’d seen me in an old picture or painting. It wasn’t entirely uncommon. And a cop would be the worst sort of person to recognize me.

  Shelly spun around to start me a new pot of coffee. “I know what you mean. Sorry about that. I never would have guessed Ray for a killer. Or a mental patient.”

  “Yeah. Never would have guessed,” I repeated with an exhale.

  “Enough about her.” She flipped the lid on the coffee pot down and leaned into the counter. The floral scent of her perfume KO’d the inside of my nose. “How have you been?”

  My heart beat faster at the scent of her, the feel of her heat so close. I flashed her a toothy grin. “Better now.”

  She trailed a finger along the top of my hand. Her heavily lined lids dropped a fraction and her lips parted for good measure. She wanted me. This was it. What I’d come for. A way to take my mind off Ray. Maybe not for good, but for long enough.

  “What time do you get off?”

  “Ten, but I’m due for a break any minute now.”

  The coffee pot was just starting to drip. “What did you have in mind?”

  She turned her head and shouted, “Daph, I’m going on break!” Her smile grew as she pulled me out of my stool and guided me through the kitchen and out the back.

  It didn’t surprise me that Shelly was so eager. I’d been working her for months, keeping her interested enough without garnering so much attention she’d throw herself at me every time she saw me. It was an art, luring a woman in then putting her on a shelf for later use. Something I was damn proud of. Most of my kind didn’t have the need for such subtlety. They simply took whatever they wanted, draining girls dry, stealing the entirety of their souls so that nothing was left. Despite my lineage, humans weren’t so disposable to me.

  As soon as we broke the threshold into the alley, Shelly slammed my back into the brick wall and claimed my lips with her own. The sticky red lip gloss she wore smeared across our lips and tasted like wax. Modern makeup really wasn’t for me.

  I pushed her back, taking her face in my hands. “Slow down. I’m not going anywhere.” I didn’t have to use my influence on her. She would have done anything I asked, within reason. I pushed off the brick and pulled her to the other side of the door, in case Daphne or another waitress came looking for her.

  “Kade, I’ve been—”

  I slanted my mouth over hers before she could say anything else. Talking led to thinking. No more thinking tonight. She pressed herself against me and moaned. The sound didn’t particularly do anything for me, but it did sound practiced. I had to give the girl credit for trying. When I broke the kiss to access the hungrier part of myself, she dotted kisses along my jaw and nibbled on my neck. It was so unexpected I let her. Not many people could surprise me anymore. When she came back up for another kiss, I latched onto her, closed my eyes, and called to her soul.

  Chapter Five

  Rayna

  Work the next day was a welcome distraction. The mingling aromas of coffee and roses weren’t what most people would consider a normal combination, but I’d gotten used to it by now. Smelly Brews, the worst name for a coffee house/florist store, the tiny shop I now worked at. Located in the financial district, far enough away from home and school to—hopefully—ensure my secret identity stayed secret. The job couldn’t have been more perfect. Waking up at four-thirty every morning sucked, but by two in the afternoon I was mostly free to do whatever I wanted. The long shifts weren’t ideal, but getting paid to work on Lola Penmis’s GED—yes, Kade’s sense of humor knew no bounds when he scored me a fake ID that rhymed my last name with penis—wasn’t all bad.

  I turned away from the science book, finally ready to really torture myself. Using the café’s register/computer, I logged onto Lola’s Facebook account. My only friend, Lee, had updated his relationship status to: It’s complicated.

  I wanted to smash my face into the keyboard. A girl like Gina Garson would eat him up and spit him out. Not to mention she was currently carrying his nemesis’s child. Things would be so different if I was still around. In school, I could—

  The breaking news noise on the television positioned high up on a wall mount in the far corner stopped my train of thought. A dark-haired female news anchor, maybe in her thirties, reported an accident at a construction zone was tying up traffic on an already busy highway in San Jose, thirty miles from San Francisco. They cut to a live interview of an older man with graying hair peeking out from under a yellow hard hat, but the news anchor’s voice carried through. “TechNowCorp’s official spokesperson met us at the scene of their newest building, a work in progress the company is calling Hercules.”

  TechNowCorp? That’s where my dad worked. I reached for the remote to turn up the volume and knocked over the tall vase of expensive flowers that were due to be picked up in ten minutes. “No, no, no!” I thrust a towel over the puddle that was fast approaching the keyboard and lunged for the fallen flowers. I dropped the undamaged stems into a metal vase on the shelf behind me and kicked away the biggest pieces of glass so I could rescue the remaining white and purple orchids.

  The TV reporter went on. “They have informed us only one person was injured in what TechNowCorp is calling a ‘freak accident.’ Forty-five-year-old employee, Tom Evans.”

  I looked up through the glass food case separating my workspace and the customer counter to find a picture of Dad’s face staring back at me. The flowers slipped through my fingers.

  “According to reports, Evans was touring the site with several heads of development when a steel beam snapped overhead. Because of the proximity of the new site to the Winchester Boulevard exit, expect delays to continue through your afternoon commute. As for the injured party, paramedics air-lifted him to UCSF’s Parnassus campus where he’s listed as being in critical condition. More on the story as it develops. I’m Rhonda—”

  Without another thought, I bolted up and out the door, barely remembering to lock it behind me. I flagged down a cab a few blocks later when I reached Market Street. “UCSF, Parnassus campus,” I told the cab driver and whipped out my burner phone. I manually punched in Lee’s cell number, my hands shaking so bad it took three tries to get it right. An automated voice informed me this number was no longer in service.

  He must have changed it. Without giving me the new one. Probably after Dad told him and his mom I wasn’t technically sane. My vision blurred. I was probably the reason he’d changed it. Water rimmed my eyes. I thought about calling the only number in my phone, but after last night, I couldn’t deal with Kade. I’d just have to handle this on my own.

  ***

  The antiseptic-filled air pummeled me when I stepped through the two sets of entry doors. Florescent tube lighting gave the scratched white floors and blue-hued waiting area a yellow tin
t. I pressed forward on unsteady legs to a small lady in her fifties who greeted me from behind Plexiglas.

  “Can you tell me anything about Tom Evans’s condition?”

  Her face scrunched up like she had been sucking a lemon for ten years. “If I told you people once, I told you a thousand times, if you aren’t family—”

  I waved both hands in front of my face, as if doing that would stop her tirade. “I’m a friend of his daughter, Laylah. I was just hoping you could tell me—”

  “Oh, sorry sweetie. It’s been a crazy morning since that news report came on. She’s already up there. Eleventh floor.”

  Laylah was here? She should be at school, where the information probably wouldn’t have reached her yet. My sister should be filled with blind ignorance, not sitting alone in a hospital waiting to hear news from strangers about Dad’s condition.

  The world zipped in and out of view, blurring and spinning. Little of it made sense, all of it screwed me. Twice. I lurched into the elevator around the corner just as the doors began to close. The button for floor eleven already glowed, looking like a beacon among the fog clouding my head. Splashes of conversations from a group of doctors and nurses riding up burbled in, but nothing stuck. Words, sights, the scent of some lady’s God-awful perfume, none of them meant a thing. Nothing mattered except Dad was in the hospital. He was hurt. I tried over and over to prepare myself for what might be waiting on the other side when the steel doors of the elevator opened.

  It would be so easy to sink right now. Rock back on my heels and just let myself fall. Allow the insanity just beneath the surface of my skin to creep forward. Let it take me. Let go of the control I’d been fighting for so long to keep—still fighting, every day.

  Giving up would be so easy.

  The elevator chimed at the eleventh floor. I released my fingers from the elevator railing one at a time.

  Losing another parent. I’d never make it through.

  I lurched off the elevator and followed the signs to the waiting room, knowing I wouldn’t be allowed in to see Dad. I was missing, after all, a runaway wanted for questioning in a murder. And a suicide. Lola Penmis had no relation to Tom Evans.

  The light blue waiting room was lit only by the light streaming in through the many windows—and the golden glimmers bouncing off my wings. Dark brown carpet matched the upholstery on the chairs. Two clusters of people sat in the room, one in the far right corner and one taking up a circular table underneath a large flat-screen TV. In the left corner, a young blond girl sat alone, sobbing quietly.

  “Laylah.” On the trip up the elevator, I’d been too distracted to focus on her being here. I’d all but forgotten.

  When she looked up, her eyes were red, puffy, and dim. Wetness streaked down her face, chasing trails of black mascara. Why was my twelve-year-old little sister wearing so much makeup? Instead of her school uniform, she donned a shirt that hung off her shoulder, revealing a hot pink bra strap, and tattered jeans that clung to hips I didn’t know she had.

  The ends of my wings curled in as I trudged forward, tapping my fingers on the front of my pants so I wouldn’t be tempted to hug her. I knew how intrusive we both found them. Usually. The family in front of us leaned across the table they sat at, a father hugging his children. A lump formed in my throat, forcing me to turn away or experience the full wrath bubbling its way through my stomach.

  “Wha—?” Her doe eyes scanned my face as if she couldn’t believe I was real—or still alive.

  I tensed my back and wings, fearful she might be the only other person on Earth capable of seeing them.

  Finally she blinked. “What are you doing here?” she hissed, regaining that wonderful harsh exterior.

  My shoulders sagged and I lowered myself into the hard, uncomfortable seat beside her. She could have any number of reasons for being here, several hours before school was out, and not in her school uniform. It didn’t matter so much now. Dad was all that mattered. I ignored her question and asked one of my own. “How is he?”

  “They haven’t told me anything yet, except they’re trying to stabilize him.” The bottom of her chin dimpled as she fought her lower lip from trembling.

  Stabilize. Meaning he wasn’t dead. Yet. But he also wasn’t okay.

  Don’t die, Dad. Please, don’t die.

  Without looking, I reached over for Laylah’s hand, but settled for resting my hand on her leg. My fingers absently fiddled with the white frays of her jeans just above her knee.

  A long silence stretched between us like burnt, brittle paper. Finally Laylah said, “That wig is dumb.”

  Wonderful.

  The chasm between us had grown since our last meeting. Didn’t know it was possible for us to be farther apart than before.

  “You aren’t in uniform. So I take it that means you were skipping school.”

  She harrumphed and crossed her arms, jerking her leg out from under my hand.

  I hated to think what else I’d missed since being gone.

  The two other groups in the waiting room grew and shrank with time, ebbing like ocean waves, until they both eventually left before sunset. The usual gloom of the San Francisco skyline had cleared just as the sun began to dip into the bay, casting pinks, oranges, and reds from the windows behind us, projecting them—and gold shimmers from my wings—onto the walls in front of us. Only our two dark shadows blocked out the colors. Separate. Alone. Dark.

  “You should go ask someone how he is,” Laylah said. “You look older now. They might tell you something they won’t tell me.”

  It would have been a good idea. “I can’t. I can’t risk getting recognized.”

  “Seriously, Ray?”

  I pulled my jacket closed, glancing around to make sure no one had heard. “Don’t call me that. Not here.”

  “Isn’t Dad more important than your stupid sickness? Oh, wait, what am I talking about? Nothing has ever been as important to you. It’s not like anyone cares who you are anymore. You’re so frogging selfish.” She jumped out of her seat and stomped out of the room before I could stop her.

  She was right, of course.

  Why had I even said that? I was supposed to be the big sister. I should be protecting her in any way I can, not abandoning her to do it all on her own.

  I needed to get to Laylah, to stop hiding behind my fears of being exposed, or of finding out Dad may not make it. I pushed out of my chair and marched for the door, right as someone turned in. Someone with hair like sunshine, and the shadows of white wings behind him.

  My heart shifted in my chest and thumped against my ribcage. “Cam?”

  I stepped back. This couldn’t be real. I drank in his tall form and wide shadow, including his wings. I stood there for a long time, refusing to let myself blink. Watching, waiting for him to disappear.

  “Rayna,” he whispered. A muscle feathered in his jaw.

  “Cam?” Laylah called from the hall. Her stylishly floppy boots clapped along the floor. Cam turned just in time to catch her as she flung her arms around him.

  Chapter Six

  Rayna

  A fist clenched in my gut, twisting with razor-sharp intensity. He was real. And my little sister had… stolen my fantasy.

  “Hey.” Cam let loose a chuckle as he patted Laylah on the back. A half-laugh. Such an out-of-place sound in this cold, sterile hospital, worlds away from my and Laylah’s emotional state.

  I swallowed the intrusive welling of emotions. “Dad. How’s Dad?” I asked, forcing myself to ignore Cam, the twitching of my wings, and the fact that Laylah was still grasping onto him—the way I should have a month ago.

  “The same. They let me in to see him, but the view isn’t…” She was still clinging to Cam.

  I sidestepped them and flipped on the light switch, accidentally brushing Cam’s wing, the feathers tickling my skin.

  Cam stroked Laylah’s hair. So much for her hating hugs.

  If my mouth wasn’t still slack, I’d ask him what the hell he was
doing here. Here. Back on Earth. On my planet. In my city. In this hospital. On Dad’s floor.

  The haze in my head cleared some. Was he…here for me? Had he somehow heard about Dad’s accident and—

  He looked at me then, his gaze intent, his face hard, serious.

  No. He was here on business.

  “Did they say anything else?” I asked Laylah, determined to ignore Cam. I had to in order to keep myself together. If I allowed myself to think about him being here, I didn’t know what I’d do. Even now, my heart was swelling and breaking all at the same time. It wasn’t like Cam and I could have an off the record conversation with Laylah’s ears—I looked at her again, still suctioned to him—between us.

  “I’ll go talk to them,” Cam said, “see if they’ll tell me anything more.”

  To my surprise, Laylah detached from him without the use of a pry bar.

  Jumping at the chance I should have taken earlier, I said, “I’ll go with you.”

  I didn’t turn to see if Cam followed me, or if Laylah moved to the door frame. Her skin had been so pale when she returned from seeing Dad.

  The thought of him lying in a hospital bed, fighting for his life, or losing it, ripped my raw world open again. I braced myself even as my feet got heavier, weighing me down, making it that much harder to push forward.

  The double doors riveted in metal at the end of the hall reminded me of the entrance to a spaceship. I punched the doorbell on the left.

  Through the two rectangular glass panes a nurse exchanged a thick handful of paperwork with another nurse and settled in behind the counter before pushing the buzzer. She drew a world-weary gaze up to meet mine as we shuffled forward. “Can I help you?”

  “My d—” Not dad, I couldn’t say dad. I wasn’t Rayna Evans anymore. “My, uh…” My tongue thickened in my mouth. From the bored, lidded look of the nurse’s eyes I knew I was going to lose my opportunity if I didn’t say something soon.