Crescendo (40 page)

I opened the door. “You told Detective Basso where to find me. You stopped Rixon from shooting me.”

Patch’s dark eyes assessed me. For half a moment, I saw a string of emotions play out inside them. Exhaustion, worry, relief. He smelled of rust, stale cotton candy, and dank water, and I knew he’d been close by when Detective Basso found me in the heart of the fun house. He’d been right there the whole time, making sure I was safe.

He wrapped his arms around me and held me tight, clutching me against him. “I thought I got there too late. I thought you were dead.”

I curled my hands into the front of his shirt and bent my head against his chest. I didn’t care that I was crying. I was safe, and Patch was here. Nothing else mattered.

“How did you find me?” I asked.

“I’d thought for a while it was Rixon,” he said quietly. “But I had to make sure.”

I looked up. “You knew Rixon wanted to kill me?”

“I kept picking up clues, but I didn’t want to believe them. Rixon and I were friends—” Patch’s voice cracked. “I didn’t want to believe he’d cross me. When I was your guardian angel, I sensed someone was out to kill you. I didn’t know who, because they were being careful. They weren’t actively meditating on killing you, so I wasn’t getting much of a picture. I knew a human wouldn’t cover their thoughts that carefully. They wouldn’t know their thoughts were transmitting all kinds of information to angels. Every now and then I’d get a flash of insight. Little things that made me look at Rixon, even though I didn’t want to. I set him up with Vee so I could keep a closer watch on him. Also because I didn’t want to give him any reason to think I was onto him. I knew the
only
reason he’d kill you was for a human body, so I started digging into Barnabas’s past. That’s when I figured out the truth. Rixon was two steps ahead of me, but he must have found out after I tracked you down and enrolled in school last year. He wanted to sacrifice you as much as I did. He did everything he could to convince me to give up on the Book of Enoch so I wouldn’t kill you and he could.”

“Why didn’t you tell me he was trying to kill me?”

“I couldn’t. You fired me as your guardian angel. I physically
couldn’t
intervene in your life when it came to your safety. The archangels blocked me every time I tried. But I found a way around them. I figured out I could make you see my memories while you were sleeping. I tried to give you the information you’d need to figure out Hank Millar was your biological dad, and Rixon’s Nephilim vassal. I know you think I abandoned you when you needed me most, but I never gave up searching for a way to warn you about Rixon.” His mouth tugged up on one side, but it was a tired gesture. “Even when you kept blocking me.”

I realized I was holding my breath and slowly released it. “Where is Rixon now?”

“I sent him to hell. He’s never coming back.” Patch stared straight ahead, his eyes hard, but not angry. Disappointed, maybe. Wishing for a different outcome. But underneath it all, I suspected he was suffering more than he let on. He’d sent his closest friend, and the one person who’d been at his side through everything, to face an eternity of darkness.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

We stood in silence a moment, both of us replaying our own image of Rixon’s fate in our heads. I hadn’t seen it firsthand, but the image I conjured up was gruesome enough to send a shudder right through me.

Finally Patch said in my thoughts,
I’ve gone rogue, Nora. As soon
as the archangels figure it out, they’ll come looking for me. You were right. I don’t really care about breaking rules.

I felt the mad impulse to push Patch out the door. His words drummed in my head.
Rogue?
The first place the archangels would look was here. Was he being deliberately careless? “Are you crazy?” I said.

“Crazy about you.”

“Patch!”

“Don’t worry, we’ve got time.”

“How do you know?”

He staggered back a step, with his hand over his heart. “Your lack of faith hurts.”

I only looked more sternly at him. “When did you do it? When did you go rogue?”

Earlier tonight. I dropped by here to make sure you were safe. I knew Rixon was at Delphic, and when I saw the note on your counter saying that’s where you’d gone, I knew he was going to make his move. I broke with the archangels and went after you. If I hadn’t broken with them, Angel, I physically couldn’t have stepped in. Rixon would have won.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

Patch held me tighter. I wanted to stay in his embrace and ignore everything but the feel of his strong, solid body, yet there were questions that couldn’t wait.

“Does this mean you’ll no longer be Marcie’s guardian angel?” I asked.

I felt Patch smile. “I’m a private contractor now. I choose my clients, not the other way around.”

“Why did Hank hide me but not Marcie?” I turned my face into his shirt so he wouldn’t see my eyes. I didn’t care about Hank. Not at all. He was nothing to me, and yet, in a secret place in my heart, I wanted him to love me as much as Marcie. I was his daughter too. But all I saw was that he’d chosen Marcie over me. He’d sent me away and doted on her.

“I don’t know.” It was so quiet I could hear him breathing. “Marcie doesn’t have your mark. Hank does, and Chauncey did. I don’t think it’s a coincidence, Angel.”

My eyes traveled to the inside of my right wrist, to the dark slash that people often mistook as a scar. I’d always thought the birthmark was unique. Until I met Chauncey. And now Hank. I had a feeling the meaning behind the mark went deeper than linking me biologically to Chauncey’s bloodline, and it was a frightening thought.

“You’re safe with me,” Patch murmured, caressing my arms.

After a beat of silence, I said, “Where does this leave us?”

“Together.” He lifted his eyebrows in question and crossed his fingers, as if begging for luck.

“We fight a lot,” I said.

“We also make up a lot.” Patch reached for my hand and pushed my dad’s ring off the tip of his finger and into my palm, curling my fingers around it. He kissed my knuckles. “I was going to give this back earlier, but it wasn’t finished.”

I opened my palm and held the ring up. The same heart was engraved on the underside, but now there were two names carved on either side of it: NORA and JEV.

I looked up. “Jev? That’s your real name?”

“Nobody’s called me that in a long time.” He stroked his finger across my lip, assessing me with his soft black eyes.

Desire melted through me, hot and urgent.

Apparently feeling the same way, Patch shut the door and turned the lock. He flipped the main light off, and the room settled into darkness, lit only by the moonlight sifting through the drapes. At the same time, our eyes shifted to the sofa.

“My mom’s coming home soon,” I said. “We should go to your place.”

Patch ran a hand across the shadow of stubble along his jaw. “I have rules about who I take there.”

I was getting really tired of that answer.

“If you showed me, you’d have to kill me?” I guessed, fighting the urge to feel irritated. “Once I’m inside, I can never leave?”

Patch studied me a moment. Then he reached into his pocket, twisted a key off his key chain, and slipped it into the front pocket of my pajama top.

“Once you’ve gone inside, you have to keep coming back.”

Forty minutes later, I discovered which door the key unlocked. Patch pulled the Jeep into Delphic amusement park’s vacant parking
lot. We crossed the lot hand in hand, a cool summer breeze tangling my hair in my face. Patch creaked the gate open, holding it while I passed through.

Delphic had a completely different feel without the barrage of noise and carnival lights. A quiet, haunted, magical place. A discarded soda can scraped the pavement as the breeze pushed it along. Sticking to the walkway, I kept my eyes fastened on the dark skeleton of the Archangel rising up against the black sky. The air smelled like rain. A distant grumble of thunder reeled overhead.

Just north of the Archangel, Patch pulled me off the walkway. We climbed the steps to a utility shed. He unlocked the door just as a pattering of rain spilled from the sky, dancing on the pavement. The door swung shut behind me, shrouding us in stormy darkness. The park was eerily quiet, except for the steady
rat-a-tat
of rain splattering the roof. I felt Patch move behind me, his hands on my waist, his voice soft in my ear.

“Delphic was built by fallen angels, and is the one place the archangels won’t go near. It’s just you and me tonight, Angel.”

I turned, absorbing the heat of his body. Patch tipped my chin up and kissed me. The kiss was warm and sent a shiver of pleasure through me. His hair was damp from rain, and I could smell a faint trace of soap. Our mouths slipped over each other, our skin slick with rain that dripped through the low ceiling, sprinkling us with little pricks of cold. Patch’s arms enveloped me, holding me with an intensity that only made me want to sink deeper into him.

He sucked some of the rain from my bottom lip, and I felt his mouth smile against mine. He swept my hair aside and kissed me just above the collarbone. He nibbled at my ear, then sank his teeth into my shoulder.

I hung my fingertips on his waistband, tugging him closer.

Patch buried his face in the curve of my shoulder, his hands flexing over my back. He gave a low groan. “I love you,” he murmured into my hair. “I’m happier right now than I ever remember being.”

“How very touching.” A deep voice carried out of the darkest part of the shed, along the back wall. “Seize the angel.”

A handful of overly tall young men, undoubtedly Nephilim, came out of the shadows and surrounded Patch, twisting his arms behind his back. To my confusion, Patch let them do it without resistance.

When I start fighting, run
, Patch spoke to my thoughts, and I realized he’d stalled fighting to speak to me, to help me find a way out.
I’ll distract them. You run. Take the Jeep. Do you remember how to hot-wire it? Don’t go home. Stay in the Jeep until I find you—

The man who lingered at the back of the shed, commanding the others, stepped forward into a hazy ray of light slicing through one of the shed’s many cracks. He was tall, lean, handsome, unnaturally young-looking for his age, and dressed impeccably in a white country-club polo and cotton twill pants.

“Mr. Millar,” I whispered. I couldn’t think of anything else to
call him. Hank seemed too informal; Dad seemed revoltingly intimate.

“Let me introduce myself properly,” he said. “I’m the Black Hand. I knew your father Harrison well. I’m glad he’s not here now to see you debasing yourself with one of the devil’s brood.” He wagged his head. “You’re not the girl I thought you’d grow up to be, Nora. Fraternizing with the enemy, making a mockery of your heritage. I believe you even blew up one of my Nephilim safe houses last night. But no matter. I can forgive
that
.” He paused with significance. “Tell me, Nora. Was it you who killed my dear friend Chauncey Langeais?”