Crescendo (29 page)

“I have a key to the Jeep,” I said, the words surprising even me.

A frown mark stretched across Vee’s forehead. “Patch never asked for it back?”

“He never gave it to me. I found it in Marcie’s room Tuesday night.”

“Whoa.”

I shoved the key in the lock, climbed in, and sat in the driver’s seat. Then I adjusted the seat forward, cranked the ignition, and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. Despite the heat, my hands were cold and jittery.

“You’re not thinking about doing more damage than just driving this thing home, are you?” Vee asked, buckling herself into shotgun. “Because the vein in your temple is throbbing, and the
last time I saw it do that was right before you clipped Marcie in the jaw at the Devil’s Handbag.”

I licked my lips, which felt sandpapery and rubbery at the same time. “He gave Marcie a spare to the Jeep—I should park this thing in the ocean, twenty feet under.”

“Maybe he had a really good reason,” Vee said nervously.

I gave a high slight laugh. “I won’t do anything to it until after I drop you off.” I cranked the wheel to the left and peeled onto the street.

“You swear to add that disclaimer when you try explaining to Patch why you stole his Jeep?”

“I’m not stealing it. We’re stranded. This is called borrowing.”

“This is called you’re crazy.” I could feel Vee’s bewilderment at my anger. I could see
irrational
in the way she stared at me. Maybe I was irrational. Maybe I’d pushed things over the edge.
Two people can have the same nickname
, I thought, trying to convince myself. They could.
They could, they could, they could.
I hoped the more I said it, the more I’d come to believe it, but the place that I reserved in my heart for trust felt hollow.

“Let’s get out of here,” Vee said, using a wary, frightened voice she never used with me. “We have lemonade at my place. After that we could watch TV. Maybe take a nap. Don’t you have to work tonight?”

I was about to tell her that Roberta hadn’t scheduled me tonight, when I tapped the brake. “What’s that?”

Vee followed my gaze. She bent forward, pulling a scrap of pink fabric off the dash. She dangled the French bikini top between us.

We looked at each other, and we were both thinking the same thing.

Marcie.

No doubt about it, she was here with Patch. Right now. On the beach. Lying on the sand. Doing who knows what else.

A violent, traitorous surge of hate spiked through me. I hated him. And I hated myself for adding my name to the list of girls he’d seduced, then betrayed. A raw desire to rectify my ignorance gripped me. I wasn’t going to be just another girl. He couldn’t make me disappear. If he was the Black Hand, I would find out. And if he’d had
anything
to do with my dad’s death, I would make him pay.

“He can find his own ride home,” I said through a quivering jaw. I punched the gas, laying down a stretch of rubber on the street.

Hours later, I stood in front of the fridge, door open, surveying the contents, looking for something that could pass as dinner. When nothing popped out at me, I moved to the narrow pantry kitty-corner to the fridge and did the same thing. I settled on a box of bow-tie pasta and a jar of sausage spaghetti sauce.

When the stove timer beeped, I drained the pasta, poured myself a bowl, and stuck the sauce in the microwave. We were out of Parmesan, so I grated cheddar and called it good. The microwave chimed, and I spooned layers of sauce and cheese on top of
the pasta. As I turned to carry everything to the table, I found Patch leaning against it. The bowl of pasta nearly slipped through my fingers.

“How did you get in?” I asked.

“Might want to keep the door locked. Especially when you’re home alone.”

His stance was relaxed, but his eyes were not. The color of black marble, they cut right through me. I had no doubt he knew I’d stolen the Jeep. Hard not to, since it was parked in the driveway. There were only so many places to hide a Jeep at a house surrounded by open fields on one side, and impenetrable woodlands on the other. I hadn’t been thinking about hiding when I’d pulled the Jeep into the driveway; I’d been consumed by sickening abhorrence and shock. Everything had come into sharp focus: his smooth words, his black, glinting eyes, his broad experience with lies, seduction, women. I’d fallen in love with the devil.

“You took the Jeep,” Patch said. Calm but not happy.

“Vee parked in an illegal zone and they put a boot on her car. We had to get home, and that’s when we saw the Jeep across the street.” My palms touched with sweat, but I didn’t dare wipe them dry. Not in front of Patch. He looked different tonight. More severe, hardened. The wan glow of the kitchen lights traced the cut of his cheekbones, and his black hair, tousled from a day at the beach, hung low across his forehead, nearly touching his obscenely long eyelashes. His mouth, which I’d always thought
of as sensual, was turned up cynically on one side. It wasn’t a warm smile.

“You couldn’t call and give me a heads-up?” he asked.

“I didn’t have my phone.”

“And Vee?”

“She doesn’t have your number on her phone. And I couldn’t remember your new number anyway. We didn’t have a way to reach you.”

“You don’t have a key to the Jeep. How’d you get in?”

It was all I could do not to give him a traitorous look. “Your spare.”

I saw him trying to calculate where I was going with this. We both knew he’d never given me a spare. I watched him closely for any sign that he knew I was referring to Marcie’s key, but the light of understanding never lit his eyes. Everything about him was controlled, impenetrable, unreadable.

“Which spare?” he asked.

This only made me angrier, because I’d expected him to know exactly which key I was talking about. How many spares did he have? How many other girls had a key to the Jeep stowed in their purses? “Your girlfriend,” I said. “Or is that not enough of a clarification?”

“Let me see if I’ve got this. You stole the Jeep to get back at me for giving a spare to Marcie?”

“I stole the Jeep because Vee and I needed it,” I said coolly. “There was a time when you were always there when I needed you.
I thought maybe that was still true, but apparently I was wrong.”

Patch’s eyes didn’t waver from mine. “Want to tell me what this is really about?” When I didn’t answer, he dragged out one of the kitchen chairs tucked under the table. He sat, arms crossed, legs stretched out languidly. “I’ve got time.”

The Black Hand. That’s what this was really about. But I was scared to confront him. Because of what I might learn, and how he might react. I felt sure that he had absolutely no idea how much I knew. If I accused him of being the Black Hand, there was no turning back. I would have to face the truth that held the power to break me down to my very soul.

Patch raised his eyebrows. “Silent treatment?”

“This is about telling the truth,” I said. “Something you’ve never done.” If he’d killed my dad, how could he have looked me in the eye all those times, telling me how sorry he was, and never told me the truth? How could he kiss me, caress me, hold me in his arms, and live with himself?

“Something I’ve never done? From the day we met, I never lied to you. You didn’t always like what I had to say, but I was always up-front.”

“You let me believe you loved me. A lie!”

“I’m sorry it felt like a lie.” He wasn’t sorry. There was a look of stony fury in his gaze. He hated that I was calling him out. He wanted me to be like all the other girls and disappear into his past without so much as a peep.

“If you felt anything for me, you wouldn’t have moved on to Marcie in record time.”

“And you didn’t move on to Scott in record time? You’d rather have half a man than me?”

“Half a man? Scott is a
person
.”

“He’s Nephilim.” He made a careless gesture in the direction of the front door. “The Jeep has more value.”

“Maybe he feels the same way about angels.”

He shrugged, lazy and arrogant. “I doubt it. If it weren’t for us, his race wouldn’t exist.”

“Frankenstein’s monster didn’t love him.”

“And?”

“The Nephilim race is already seeking revenge on angels. Maybe this is only the beginning.”

Patch raised his ball cap and dragged a hand through his hair. From the look on his face, I got the impression that the situation was far more dangerous than I’d originally been led to believe. How close was the Nephilim race to overpowering fallen angels? Surely not by this Cheshvan. Patch couldn’t mean that in less than five months, swarms of fallen angels would invade, and eventually kill, tens of thousands of humans. But everything in the way he held himself, down to the very look in his eye, told me that was exactly what was in store.

“What are you doing about it?” I asked, horrified.

He picked up the glass of water I’d poured for myself and left
on the table, and took a drink. “I’ve been told to stay out of it.”

“By the archangels?”

“The Nephilim race is evil. They were never supposed to inhabit Earth. They exist because of the pride of fallen angels. The archangels want nothing to do with them. They’re not going to step in where Nephilim are concerned.”

“And all the humans who will die?”

“The archangels have their own plan. Sometimes bad things have to happen before good things can.”

“Plan? What plan? To watch innocent people die?”

“The Nephilim are walking straight into a trap of their own making. If people have to die to annihilate the Nephilim race, the archangels will risk it.”

The hairs on my scalp prickled. “And you agree with them?”

“I’m a guardian angel now. My allegiance is to the archangels.” A blaze of killing hate rose in his eyes, and for one brief moment, I believed it was directed at me. As if he blamed me for what he’d become. In my defense, I felt a wash of anger. Had he forgotten everything from that night? I’d sacrificed my life for him, and he rejected it. If he wanted to blame someone for his circumstances, it wasn’t me!

“How strong are the Nephilim?” I asked.

“Strong enough.” His voice was disturbingly devoid of concern.

“They could hold off the fallen angels as early as this Cheshvan, couldn’t they?”

He gave a nod.

I hugged myself to ward off a deep, sudden chill, but it was more psychological than physical. “You have to do something.”

He shut his eyes.

“If fallen angels can’t possess Nephilim, they’ll move on to humans,” I said, trying to break through his hands-off attitude and reach his conscience. “That’s what you said. Tens of thousands of humans. Maybe Vee. My mom. Maybe me.”

He still said nothing.

“Don’t you even care?”

His eyes flicked to his watch, and he pushed up from the table. “I hate to rush out of here when we’ve got unfinished business, but I’m late.” The spare key to the Jeep was lying in a dish on the sideboard, and he pocketed it. “Thanks for the key. I’ll add borrowing the Jeep to your tab.”

I parked myself between him and the door. “My tab?”

“I got you home from the Z, got you off Marcie’s roof, and now I let you use my Jeep. I don’t give out favors for free.”

I was pretty sure he wasn’t joking. In fact, I was pretty sure he was dead serious.

“We can work it so you pay me after each individual favor, but I figured a tab would be easier.” His smile was a taunting curve. First-class-jerk smug.

I narrowed my eyes. “You’re actually enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“One of these days I’m going to come to collect on the favors, and then I’ll really be enjoying it.”

“You didn’t loan me the Jeep,” I argued. “I stole it. And it wasn’t a favor—I commandeered it.”

He gave his watch a second glance. “We’re going to have to finish this later. I’ve got to run.”

“That’s right,” I snapped. “A movie with Marcie. Go have fun while my world hangs in the balance.” I told myself I wanted him to go. He deserved Marcie. I didn’t care. I was tempted to hurl something after him; I thought about slamming the door at his back. But I wasn’t going to let him go without asking the question that burned my every thought. I dug my teeth into the inside of my cheek to keep my voice from unraveling. “Do you know who killed my dad?” My voice was cold and controlled, and not my own. It was the voice of someone who was filled to the very tips of her fingers with hate, devastation, accusation.

Patch stopped with his back to me.

“What happened that night?” I didn’t bother trying to hide the desperation in my voice.

After a moment of silence, he said, “You’re asking me like you think I might know.”

“I know you’re the Black Hand.” I shut my eyes briefly, feeling my whole body sway under a wave of nausea.

He looked over his shoulder. “Who told you that?”

“Then it’s true?” I realized my hands were balled into fists at my sides, shaking violently. “You’re the Black Hand.” I watched his face, praying he’d somehow refute it.

The grandfather clock in the hall chimed the hour, a heavy, reverberating sound.

“Get out,” I said. I wouldn’t cry in front of him. I refused to. I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.

He stood in place, his face cold with shadow, mildly satanic.

The clock counted through the silence.
One, two, three.

“I’ll make you pay for it,” I said, my voice still oddly foreign.

Four, five.

“I’ll find a way. You deserve to go to hell. The only thing that could make me sorry is if the archangels beat me to it.”

A flash of hot black crossed his eyes.

“You deserve everything that’s coming to you,” I told him. “Every time you kissed me and held me, knowing what you did to my dad—” I choked and turned away, falling apart when I could least afford it.

Six.

“Go away,” I said, my voice quiet, but not steady.

I looked up, glaring, intending to make Patch leave with the intensity of hate and loathing in my eyes, but I was alone in the hall. I glanced around, expecting him to have stepped out of my view, but he wasn’t there. A strange silence settled in between the shadows, and I realized the grandfather clock had stopped beating.