A Slither of Hope

by Lisa M Basso

  I wiped my fingers on an already destroyed napkin. “You’re not even showing yet. Why’d you tell her so soon?”

  Lee jabbed a thumb at Gina. “That was her call.”

  Gina rolled off the bed and kicked her shoes into the corner by the door. “I didn’t want any secrets. I’ve had enough of those. Mrs. Kyon deserved to know everything.”

  I nodded, fully understanding how she felt, and respecting her a little more for it. Maybe Shelly wasn’t the only girl in San Francisco I could eventually see myself calling a friend.

  “I’ve got a question,” Lee said, looking around. “How are you and this guy both living here when there’s only one bed?”

  That was all it took for Gina to turn on that famous popular-girl nosing in. “I wonder,” she said, waggling her eyebrows. “There’s more going on here than you’re telling us.” Her voice pitched higher than I knew it could go.

  There was a lot I wasn’t telling them. My living arrangements with Kade would just be another secret to keep. I ignored them and stabbed my fork into a mountain of mashed potatoes.

  “Oh, and this is the guy you’re crushing on, right?”

  Gina’s question sent Lee bolting upright. “Crushing on?”

  “Oh no. No, no, no, no.” I wriggled in Kade’s chair. “There are so many things wrong with that statement I can’t even begin to cover it. No crush, just…no.”

  “She’s full of it,” Gina added, sinking back onto the bed. “Look at her face. She’s got it. Bad. Maybe even getting it. And from the look of this place, she’s not the only one. So what’s going on between you two?”

  I glanced around for any pictures of us together or weird creepy sketches of me sleeping I hadn’t noticed before, but the room looked the same as ever. Nothing to make people think Kade and I were a couple. “What are you talking about? The place is fine. Normal.”

  “Not normal.” Gina stood up, as if to make her point. “It’s clean, spotless. From what I’ve heard that’s your thing, Ray. This is his place, no? He should be keeping it to his likes, not adapting it to yours. There isn’t one guy thing lying around, not one girly poster or car calendar. Nada.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck, checking it for sweat. “That stuff’s not Kade’s style.”

  The smile on her face blossomed into something I knew I should be scared of. “Not his style, huh? Case closed.” She shared a high-five with Lee.

  “Sorry, Ray, she’s right. This guy’s doing more than just making you comfortable. He’s inviting you to stay.”

  “You two don’t know Kade. He’s…those things you’re saying, that’s not him.” Feeding off my ex-coworker, Falling for my mom, snapping necks and stabbing hearts—in more ways than one. That was the real Kade. “This doesn’t leave this room.” I pushed my plate aside and moved to a free corner on the bed. “Yes, okay, I might… kind of like him, but right now I have bigger problems.”

  I floundered, my mouth opening and closing a few times, before I told them, “My focus has to be on the angel stuff right now. There’s all this tension and all these new players and I’m caught in the middle for seeing them, and other things I can’t get into.” I gauged their reactions before going on. “My family is in the middle. I’m working on uncovering everything I can about the angels, looking for something that might give me the upper hand.” I slid my phone from my back pocket and opened my San Francisco Public Library app for them to see. “That’s all I’ve been doing the last two days. Reading everything I can get my hands on.”

  Gina thumbed through my digital library of checked out books. “There must be like twenty books on here.”

  “I opened a few accounts in a few different names, but that’s not important. That”—I motioned again to the phone—“is what’s important.”

  “What does this have to do with Kade?” Lee asked.

  “Kade is a piece of this puzzle. He has information I’d probably never be able to find in a book. But he won’t tell me. He thinks keeping me in the dark is the same as protecting me. Cam’s no better. I’m not going to be as helpless as they expect me to be. Last time it almost got me killed. The same thing may happen this time, but at least I’ll be prepared for it.” I slid my phone off the comforter and returned to my plate of cold food. “And I’m nowhere near done looking.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Rayna

  The next afternoon, I ventured outside during the day. Sort of. I hauled myself up to the roof in my finest gardening rags, really looking forward to getting my hands dirty. Reading nothing but angel lore and Bible verses was starting to turn my head inside out and my eyeballs to mush. I needed a break, and nothing sounded like a better release than an afternoon of gardening. Even if my garden only consisted of two withering planter beds.

  Beds that Kade built up here for me a week after I moved in. Not to mention the bags of potting soil and fertilizer he lugged up here. I let a small smile slip past my defenses and got to work.

  One particular flower, a small rose bush, wasn’t doing well at all. In fact, it was dying off.

  “No, no, no,” I begged, examining the wilting leaves between my fingers. “Anyone but you.”

  It had been risky to plant it so late in the season, but I used a fertilizer specifically for root growth so it would take before the frost came, which would make the root system stronger come spring and allow for more blooms. I’d done everything right. Everything. So why wasn’t it working? Why was it dying?

  Live, stupid roses! I might not be good at very much, but damn it, flowers were my thing. I couldn’t even do that right anymore.

  I bent down again to get a better look at the problem and my wings flopped into my elbow. Stupid roses and even stupider wings.

  At the end of my rope with this situation and these stupid wings, I stood up, reached back, and yanked, hard, trying to rip the bastards off. Pain made my eyes tear. One feather. All that work for one stupid little gray feather. The luminescent quality my wings gave off in the sunlight no longer shone on it. I grunted and tried to throw the dull, lackluster feather. It fell instead, slowly, gracefully, landing on top of my sad sack little rose bush. Just my luck. After spending another all-nighter with an eyeful of useless angel information, I should have known today wouldn’t be my day either.

  With a sigh I pulled the feather off the rose bush. The leaves beneath it weren’t as wilted as I first thought. Maybe this one would make it after all. Only how did they improve so fast? I looked from the rose bush to the feather and back again.

  No way.

  Just to be sure I wasn’t losing my mind—again—I plucked another feather, bit my lip against the pain, and held it on just one leaf. A prick of warmth, almost imperceptible, rose and fell from around the leaf. When I moved the feather the leaf was not only greener, but the entire stalk that attached to the stem was stronger, thicker. I’d even bet the root was stronger too.

  No effing way.

  Stunned, I stood up. There was only one way to know for sure. I rolled up my sleeve, held my breath, and dragged the inside of my forearm on the corner of the azalea bush trellised against the chimney stack. I looked down at the gray feather in my hand and placed it over the shallow cut. When I removed it, the bleeding had stopped and the cut had changed, not healed completely, but the process was kick-started.

  Holy crap.

  If one feather could heal a cut, what could a handful do?

  I bolted down the fire escape, kicked off my sweats, threw on jeans and a sweater, and ran outside to catch a cab.

  ***

  I’d gotten so lucky. No Cam, no Aunt Nora, and no Laylah. I stood over my dad’s bed in the tiny hospital room and watched him. Thin and frail, his arms didn’t even look like they belonged to him anymore. At least they’d kept him better shaved than he usually kept himself, but he obviously hadn’t gotten much sunlight in the last week or so from the tinge of his pallid skin. The unwelcome scent of antibacterial hand wash stung my nostrils, and the machine breathing
for Dad was way too loud to be relaxing, but he was still in a coma. None of this would bother him. It would though if he woke up.

  I slid the curtain to his small room closed and pushed forward on shaky steps to his bedside.

  “Life never works out the way you want it to, right, Dad?” I reached behind me and grabbed a handful of wing. “Let’s hope, just this one time, that it does.” Closing my eyes, I yanked as hard as I could. White-hot tears stung my eyes and a fire like no other trailed up the right side of my spine, but I came away with a handful of feathers.

  Reaching forward, I peeled back the layers of his head bandages until I saw way more red and soggy, puffy skin than I was prepared for. I turned my head, closed my eyes, and stuffed. Then I prayed. I’d never done it before, so it really just consisted of about twenty pleases. When my fingers were free of feathers, I used both hands to lightly tug his bandages down. Then I waited.

  Please work, please work.

  Outside the curtain I heard nurses shuffling back and forth. Better not to be caught gray-handed. I headed out, avoiding the nurses’ station as I turned the corner and exited the spaceship doors toward the elevator. I pressed the button for the elevator, and a strange sensation jerked me into high alert. My wings started to vibrate. In a matter of seconds they were going haywire, beating into my back so hard I had to lean against the wall to stay upright.

  Inside the waiting room two men stood up, both with their eyes locked on me. The man closest to the door wore a navy suit and a brown Stetson. The man behind him whispered into his ear and a slow, molasses smile split his lips. The beating of my wings intensified, blurring the edges of my vision. But I didn’t need the edges to see that the man straight ahead of me in the Stetson hat was Detective Rhodes. The man that wanted me for questioning in Cassie Waters’ murder.

  “Miss Evans, I’m going to have to ask you to come with me.” He spoke in a slow breath, making slow, deliberate movements while he reached for his radio and not his gun.

  One was as good as the other.

  The man behind the detective whispered a word that sounded something like “Aterasp.” It echoed in my head, but paused the violent vibration in my wings.

  I turned away from the elevator and bolted. Footsteps clomped after me. Detective Rhodes. I pushed harder, rounding the corner toward the stairs. From the stairwell, an angel emerged, quickly maneuvering out of my way before I barreled into him. Cam. He took one look at me and one at the detective giving chase and took another step back. Out of the detective’s way instead of into it.

  Of course he wouldn’t help. He was neutral ground. Switzerland. For lack of a better word: useless. It was the orderlies dragging me away to the SS Crazy all over again. The only difference between then and now was, this time I’d gotten a better head start.

  I zipped into the stairwell and hopped down several sets at a time, taking almost entire flights in a single leap. I could do this. Could? I had to do this. There was no other option. Entire floors passed by me in a blur as I continued to push my legs as fast as they could go, never daring to look back. Not even once. Five. Four. Three. Two. Almost there. One. I jumped for the open door of the first-floor stairwell exit. But I wasn’t the only one.

  A-hundred-eighty pounds of detective flopped onto my back, sending me face-first into the polished linoleum floor. I swallowed a groan, bit back the pain, and scrambled forward on my hands, but a sure grip locked around my knees. This fight was over.

  Chapter Twenty

  Rayna

  From the look on Detective Rhodes’s face, he’d expected to drag me kicking and screaming into his interrogation room. On that, I had the last laugh. Yes, I was already caught, but that was the point. I sure as hell wasn’t going anywhere now. I’d be wasting my fight if I brought it to the surface now.

  I folded my hands on top of the table in front of me and stared straight ahead.

  “You were awfully compliant after we left the hospital. Why?”

  “No reason not to be,” I answered, keeping my face schooled in a cold mask.

  “Then why did you run in the first place?” He examined the heel of his hand for the third time since we left his unmarked police car and rode the elevator up to the third floor of the Tenderloin precinct.

  “You should have that looked at.”

  He thrust his hand in his pocket and asked again. “Why did you run?”

  “Because I didn’t want to go back. Didn’t want to be called crazy again. Didn’t want to answer questions about Cassie Waters. Or get blamed for her death.” I was careful not to use the word murder.

  “Then what can you tell me about Cassie Waters’ death? When was the last time you saw her?”

  My eyes drifted closed for a second. Darkness. A flash of white. Blood. Tears. I opened my eyes and blinked up at him. “I’d like my phone call, please.”

  “What?”

  “My phone call. I get one, don’t I?”

  “You aren’t officially under arrest. We’re waiting for the people from the Sunflower Serenity Mental Health Clinic to come pick you up.”

  Now it was my turn to sound ridiculous. “What?” I should have known.

  “Since your father is indisposed, and there is no other guardian listed for you on their paperwork, your psychiatrist and I thought it best you return there for the time being. A short, seventy-two-hour hold to evaluate your mental faculties.”

  Dr. G. It always starts with seventy-two hours. But I couldn’t think about that, not now. “I still want a phone call.” My burner cell along with my fake ID, wig, and shoelaces were zipped away in a bag somewhere when we came in.

  “Who would you call, Rayna? I left a message for your aunt at her emergency contact number before we left the hospital. I’m sure she’ll be calling back soon.”

  Damn it. I needed to get a call out to Kade so he’d at least know to come break me out of the SS Crazy again, but Detective Rhodes didn’t want to make anything easy for me.

  “Why don’t you just relax? We can talk about anything you want.” He rested his back against the one-way mirror, supporting his weight with his uninjured hand. “Cassie Waters. How you escaped the Sunflower Serenity Mental Health Clinic. Who Lola Penmis is. Anything at all.”

  I unclamped my hands, leaned back in the hard plastic chair, and crossed my arms. If I was going away, I’d do so in silence. Anything I said could be used against me at the SS Crazy.

  I pulled a deep breath into my lungs. This was it. I was going back. And once again, Cam had done nothing to help. Closing my eyes to stay the flow of tears that threatened to come, I focused on my breath. In. Out. In. Out. In. I held this last one in. If I never breathed again, then I’d never have to go back there. It wouldn’t exist if I said it didn’t. If I failed to recognize this as reality, then I could simply un-pause when I was released. If I was released to my dad—or whoever—and not the police.

  Oh God. I could feel it all slipping away. I curled up and fisted my hands through my hair.

  “We have plenty of time before they come, if you decide you want to talk about anything, say, like where you’ve been this past month.”

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “How about why you were at the hospital?”

  “Visiting my dad.”

  “You’ve been so careful up until now. You didn’t think someone would recognize you?”

  “It was worth the risk.” As long as my feathers helped Dad heal. Though whether they did or not had yet to be seen.

  “Why don’t you tell me about the Halloween dance?” He finally pulled out the chair across the table from me and lowered down into it. “What happened with Luke Harper? He had quite a story to tell.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Any chance you’ll let me go?”

  “Not that I can see.”

  The door swung open. “Well you should look harder.” Kade’s voice from the doorway couldn’t have been more beautiful if he’d sung.

  Joy sent
me leaping out of my chair.

  “What are you doing in here? Schnider!” Detective Rhodes called for one of his officers.

  “You have nothing to worry about.” Calm rode the smokiness of Kade’s voice. I didn’t need to see his eyes to know they would be completely engulfed by black. His hand snaked around my arm. “Let’s get you out of here, Hannibal.”

  “Hannibal. Ha!” I let Kade lead me down the hallway and toward the large room the detective brought me through before he ushered me into the interrogation room.

  “Don’t laugh. You aren’t in the clear yet.”

  The open floor was packed with desks and phones and uniformed officers manning them. And a huge white-winged angel standing on a desk in the middle of everything with white light emanating from his eyes. Wait, Cam. And Kade. Together? This was not good.

  “What’s he doing here?” I whispered to Kade.

  “He’s the reason you aren’t still stuck in that little room singing like a canary.”

  Oh boy. “I wasn’t about to tell him anything. But how—?”

  “He called me. Said he saw you get arrested and followed you here.”

  “Thanks, Cam!” I called to him.

  Cam turned a not-so-happy glowing-eyed look at me. I could be dwelling on how hard he was about to lay into me, but I was too busy relishing the fact that I wasn’t going back to the SS Crazy.

  “Now let’s get the hell out of here,” I said, then called to one of the officers I recognized, “And I want my shoelaces!”

  ***

  Cam held the door of Kade’s two-door purple Acura open while I climbed into the back seat. “What were you thinking leaving the apartment?”

  “Forget leaving the apartment,” Kade slammed his door and started the engine, “what were you doing anywhere near the hospital?”

  I looked from Kade to Cam and back again. “What are you two, like, pals now?”

  “Not on your life,” Cam said.