Under Attack tudac-2

by Hannah Jayne

  “I don’t think that. I’ve seen your closet.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Black is so stereotypical. I don’t like it. It’s for amateurs. And besides”—she tossed her hair over her shoulders—“it washes me out.”

  I raised one eyebrow, focusing hard on Nina’s back to lily-white, bloodless complexion. “You’re right. It’s definitely the black clothing that makes you look so deathly pale.”

  Nina rolled her eyes and handed me a heap of black fabric from her desktop. “Just put this on.”

  I shimmied out of my dress and stood there in my slip. “You’re kidding me,” I said, when I shook out the dress.

  She shrugged. “I told you, it was all I had. And we’re running out of time. It’s either that, your slip, or lurk in the shadows in your Jackson Pollack-on-speed sheath dress.”

  I eyed my multicolored sheath and then slipped into Nina’s black dress. “Oh yeah,” I said, ekeing the sequined fabric over my hips, “this is definitely made for B and E.”

  The dress was a one-shoulder, bugle-beaded Romona Keveza cocktail gown with a blush-worthy side slit and a foot of fabric that trailed on the ground behind me.

  “Wow,” Nina said, examining me, “that dress really is amazing. With the right shoes ...”

  “No. An evening gown for breaking and entering is as far as I go. I am not wearing heels, too.”

  “Suit yourself.” Nina shrugged. “It would really extend the line though.”

  I blew out a sigh and yanked the extra fabric up, tossing it over my shoulder. Then I hiked the skin-tight skirt to mid-thigh. “I said bring a flashlight, too.”

  Nina rummaged through her bag again and produced two mini Maglites. “Done.”

  “And latex gloves?”

  Nina bit her lip.

  “You forgot the gloves? Well, that’s okay. We’ll just have to be very careful. If Lucas Szabo reports a break-in, I don’t want anyone to find our prints.”

  “Your prints.” Nina waggled her fingers. “I don’t have any. And I said I couldn’t find latex gloves. Besides, they would do nothing for that dress. But I do have gloves. Voila!”

  Nina produced two pairs of elbow-length cashmere gloves. She handed me the black pair that had rhinestone-studded ruching up the sides. “Aren’t those to die for?” she asked. “I want them back.” She slid her own delicate hands into a charcoal-grey pair with a tuft of faux fur around the tops, then stretched her arms elegantly. “Lohman’s. After-Christmas sale. Seventy percent off.”

  “What every good criminal is after,” I muttered as I gathered my purse. “A sale. Well, are you ready?”

  Nina smiled and nodded, then followed me out the office door.

  “You know, a French twist would really offset the one-shoulder neckline of that dress... .”

  “Nina!” I moaned.

  “Sorry!”

  She shut the door with a click behind her.

  We crossed the bridge in near silence, but once our tires hit the Marin side, I was fairly sure the thunderous beat of my heart was filling the car.

  “There’s nothing to be nervous about,” Nina said, not taking her eyes off the road. “Everything is going to be fine.”

  “Thanks,” I said, grateful, but unconvinced. “If I had known he lived just a few miles away ...”

  “You don’t know how long he’s lived here. He could have just moved into the area.”

  “Or he could have been here all along.”

  “Then he’s a huge deadbeat bastard. It’s not nice, but it’s not rare.”

  I blew out a sigh, stroked the smooth fabric of my rhinestone-studded breaking-and-entering gloves. “Turn here,” I said.

  Nina glided her car down a tree-lined street. The moonless darkness was punctuated by the occasional weak streetlight. We rolled slowly down the street until we found number seventy-one, a well kept but otherwise nondescript house set way off from the street at the arc of a cul-de-sac.

  “Here it is.” Nina said.

  “Yeah, here it is.”

  We parked across the street, then ducked our way to the front of my father’s house, positioning ourselves in a thick bank of rosebushes. We hunched low against the moist dirt, our elegant gloves protecting us from the rosebushes’ thorns.

  “See?” Nina said happily. “Better than latex.”

  I squinted, frowned in the darkness. “Binoculars. I should have brought binoculars.”

  “One step ahead of you,” Nina said as she leaned forward, her face pressed up against a pair of bejeweled opera glasses.

  “See anything?”

  “Not really.” She glared down at the long-stemmed binoculars. “These aren’t the best for this kind of thing.”

  “Imagine that,” I said, my legs aching from my fifteen-minute squat. “This was a bad idea. I don’t think we’re going to find anything.”

  “Shh!” Nina’s held out her hand, gloved fingers splayed. “What was that?”

  “What was what?” I asked, relenting and flopping down on my butt in the flower garden. “I’ve got human hearing, remember?”

  But then I heard it, too. A gentle rustling in the bushes to the left of us.

  Nina sniffed at the air, her eyebrows raised. She furrowed her brow, then frowned, sniffing again. “Alex? Is that you?”

  “It’s cool and disconcerting that you can do that.”

  The bushes rustled again and Alex poked his head out, his skin translucent in the pale moonlight.

  “Alex?” I asked.

  He had a pair of binoculars—real binoculars—in one hand and was tastefully dressed in black cargo pants, black combat-style boots, and a yummy, formfitting long-sleeved henley shirt. He grinned when he saw me. “I guess we both had the same idea here. Of course, my tux was at the cleaners.”

  “Very funny,” I scoffed. “You should be glad I don’t have a closet full of breaking-and-entering attire.”

  “You really shouldn’t be here,” Nina said, pointing at Alex. “I could smell you from a mile away.”

  “You shouldn’t be here, either.” Alex was looking at Nina but talking to me.

  “Vampires don’t have a smell. You have a smell.”

  “Sophie has a smell,” Alex said.

  “Sophie is right here and not too crazy about people discussing her smell,” I said.

  The opening of the garage door silenced our smell discussion. “Look!” Nina hissed. “Who’s that?”

  I snatched her opera glasses and peered down at the garage, the yellow glow from the overhead light illuminating my father. My stomach dropped. It was him; it was the man I had seen on the corner on my way to Loco Legs, the man I had seen in a picture that my grandmother kept taped to the back of a picture frame.

  It angered me to see him flipping his car keys in his palm. It roiled my blood to see him glide effortlessly to his car, to back out and drive away. Somehow, I had hoped that things were difficult for him. That going out to look for me, to find me, would be impossible due to paralysis or a lame leg or a rattletrap car. But my father was doing fine, gliding down the street in a midnight blue and perfectly well-running Audi.

  “We need to get inside his house,” I said.

  “We do?” Nina asked.

  “Sophie’s right. We’re not going to find out anything out here. Nina, you stand watch, Sophie and I will go in.”

  Nina stood up, put her cashmere-covered hands on her hips. “Why do I have to stand watch?”

  “Would you rather I asked you to stand smell?”

  She stomped out of the bushes and to the curb. “Fine. But I’m smelling from the car.”

  Alex turned to me. “Are you ready?”

  “For breaking and entering?”

  Alex’s gaze was solid.

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  Alex and I picked our way across the sloping grass, being careful to stay in the shadows. Halfway down, a car drove by and Alex reached behind him, his hand grabbing mine, and we tucked behind a Japanese maple.
<
br />   It may have been my adrenaline or my hormones on high alert, but the feel of his hand on mine was heavenly, the gentle brushing of our knees while we crouched, sweet.

  “Okay,” he whispered, “we’re safe.”

  We stood up, but Alex didn’t let go of my hand.

  “So,” I said when we had made it to the front porch, “do you have some sort of magically angelic way of getting through locked doors?”

  “Yep.” Alex dug in his pocket, revealed a long, skinny tool, and pushed it into the door lock. After a half-second jiggle we heard the lock click and give, and he pushed the door open, slipping the shim into his pocket.

  I put my hands on my hips. “Alex Grace, what would God say?”

  Alex rolled his eyes and ushered me into the dark foyer.

  I went to turn on the light, but Alex stopped me. “Someone might notice it.”

  “How are we supposed to see anything?” I asked.

  “With my glowing angelic orb.”

  “You have one of those?”

  “In your world, it’s called a flashlight. Now come on.” Alex clicked on his flashlight and kept the beam low. We edged around the furniture in Szabo’s living room and made our way to the bookcases that lined one wall.

  “Look for anything that has to do with the Vessel. We need to know what he knows about ... it.”

  I fingered the spine of classics (Moby Dick, Gulliver’s Travels) and figured my dad must have been quite the traveler from his collection of Let’s Go! guides. I passed over the usual stock of New York Times bestsellers and John Grisham novels, then stopped on one book—Stroham’s Guide to Angels. Beside that, Contacting Angels and Communicating After Death.

  “I haven’t found anything about the Vessel, but he sure is into angels.”

  “Makes sense,” Alex said, turning to me and showing the carved ivory angel figurine he held in his hand.

  I turned back to the bookshelf and bumped a small volume that stuck out from the pack. It was simply titled Dark Angels.

  I held the book up. “Maybe he was looking for you, too.” I thumbed through the book. “It’s all about fallen angels. It was probably for work though; my grandmother did say he was a professor of mythological studies at one time.”

  Alex snorted. “Angels. Mythological. Whatev.”

  I grinned. “Don’t get your wings in a bunch.”

  Alex scanned the bookshelves, the blue-white light of his flashlight illuminating the spines.

  “Communicating with the dead, waking the dead,” he murmured, “your dad was sure death-occupied.”

  I crouched down to get a better look at a stack of papers on the bottom shelf. “Well, that’s a plus.”

  Alex looked at me, confused.

  “I would think Satan would know how to talk to the dead, so maybe Lucas is just ...” I struggled not to say Dad. “A guy.” I snagged a book off the shelf and wagged it in front of Alex. “Also, I don’t think Satan reads Janet Evanovich.”

  He grinned. “I guess that’s good news.”

  I shoved the book back and continued searching. “Maybe he is just a guy. Maybe he was just trying to contact my mother. Or Ophelia.”

  “Why would he want to contact—”

  “Ophelia,” I said again.

  I held the yellowed Chronicle newspaper clipping in my shaking hands, staring into Ophelia’s eyes. She was young, with a printed jumper and pigtails, but her eyes were still the same, vivid, even through the pixilated and fading print. The last time I had looked into those eyes she had vowed to kill me and now there she was, snuggled up against the man who was supposed to be my father, the man who was supposed to have been photographed with me on his knee.

  “Lawson?” Alex whispered.

  I dropped the newspaper clipping and took the stairs two by two. I was vaguely aware that Alex was behind me, calling to me, but something drove me. I darted down the hall, pushing open doors as I went. I paused at the last door and sucked in a breath. Closing my hand on the knob, I pushed the door open.

  It was a young woman’s room, but still held the pale pink remnants of little-girl life. The frilly lace lampshade was now partly covered by an orange and black Giants baseball cap. The rolling pink teddy bears on the wallpaper were now mostly covered by concert posters, magazine clippings, and photographs of smiling teenagers, their arms entwined, their youth captured forever. The fresh, bright smell of freesias still hung on the air, their sweet scent making me nauseous.

  “This was Ophelia’s room,” I said slowly. “This is where she grew up.”

  A yearbook was askew on her night table, its binding creased and old, as though someone had leafed through the book often. Alex picked it up and it fell open. He turned the book to face me.

  There, with a demure look as she stared over her shoulder, was a full-page photograph of Ophelia. Underneath, it read: In Memory of Ophelia Szabo: a bright light gone out much too soon.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered. “Oh my God. She was my sister.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I felt a coil of anger in my stomach. “Did you know?”

  “No, Sophie, I swear. How would I have known?”

  “You dated her, Alex! You dated her and you didn’t know where she came from before?”

  I was spitting mad now, feeling the emotion roiling through my veins. I was standing up, cornering Alex. “How could you not have known?”

  Alex put his hands on my arms, holding me at arm’s length. His eyes were hard, cold. “I didn’t know, Sophie. Angels in grace don’t have any knowledge of the circumstances of their death or anything that happened before it. Time moves differently there. There is no way I could have put this together.”

  I knew he was right, but I balled my hands into fists anyway, felt the tears spring into my eyes. I looked around the room, looked at the sweet pink sheets on the still-made bed, at the photographs of Ophelia and my father sharing family moments—at the beach, under the Christmas tree.

  “He knew me and he didn’t want me,” I sobbed. “He knew how to be a dad, he just didn’t want to be one to me.”

  Alex put his arms around me and I crumbled into him, sobbing, hiccupping. “I don’t care, I swear,” I sobbed. “He never even tried to find me.”

  I gathered myself and used the tail of my black evening gown to wipe my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I sniffed.

  Alex just squeezed my shoulder and led me out of Ophelia’s room. We picked our way down the stairs, peeking in rooms and thumbing through bookshelves until we came to my father’s den. Alex was rifling through the top desk drawer when he suddenly stopped and withdrew a large manila envelope. He dumped the contents on the desk.

  “Uh, Lawson?”

  I dropped the statuette I was holding and went to the desk, sucking in a gasp as I did. I stared down into my own eyes. Into my own face.

  “What the—?” I pawed through the heap of photographs—they were all me, from every angle. I was a pudgy, round-eyed baby in some shots, then a toddler, gripping my mother’s hand. There was a long gap, and then the next few pictures were more recent.

  “Maybe he was looking for you.”

  But they weren’t the photographs of a father longing for his child. There weren’t shots of me grinning, shopping at the Farmer’s Market, snuggling the family dog. They were banal: shots of daily tasks, close-ups of my face, my hands, slipping into the doors above the UDA.

  Four days after I was born ... I thought. He was seeking the Vessel; it consumed him... .

  I put the photograph I was holding back on the desk. My saliva went sour, my face hot.

  “Sophie?”

  Alex’s voice sounded tinny, far away.

  Now don’t you see? You’re the only one who didn’t know. Poor, dumb baby sister ...

  It was Ophelia’s voice and it was happy, giggly.

  You know the truth, she said. You know it’s there.... You’ve always known that you weren’t right, you never fit in.... But a prize? Nah. Just a thing. You wer
e always just a thing, Sophie. We know it, Daddy knew it, and now Alex knows it, too.

  She whispered the last part and her breath echoed in my mind, ran shivers up my spine.

  “You.” The word caught in my throat, hung in the air.

  “What?”

  I took a step back. “You know ... about me. He knew. My dad knew.”

  Alex looked at me, his eyes wide. “What are you talking about? Are you okay? Maybe you should sit down.” Alex reached out for my hand and his touch—usually warm and comforting—was icy and I pulled my hand away, stumbling.

  “You know about me.”

  Alex opened his mouth and then closed it, and I watched the flash of realization cross over his eyes. “You are the Vessel of Souls.”

  I nodded, every inch of my body tense, on high alert. I was aware each time my heart beat, was certain of each pump of blood. I was ready to run but Alex just sat, stunned.

  “You.”

  I could feel the tears pooling behind my eyes. “You didn’t know?”

  Alex wagged his head. “I had no idea. When did—did you always know?”

  “No. Will told me.”

  “Will? The guy from your apartment building?”

  I nodded. “He told me after he bailed me out of jail. Yesterday.”

  Alex’s eyes flashed. “Geez, Lawson. Jail?”

  “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later.”

  Alex rubbed his palm over his forehead. “Okay. So how does this Will guy know anything about you—about you being—”

  “The Vessel.”

  Alex just nodded, wouldn’t say the words.

  “He’s the seventh guardian.”

  Shock registered across Alex’s features. “Well, I’ll be... .”

  I bit my lip. “So, you really didn’t know.”

  “Know? Lawson, I’ve been chasing my tail around this my whole afterlife. If I knew it was you I’d—”

  “You’d what?”

  He looked me up and down, slowly, carefully choosing his words. “I—I don’t know. I don’t even know what this means for ...” He let the word trail off.

  “For you. You don’t know what it means for you.”