my tongue. Her head turns violently to the right, and she disappears. Instinct pulls my head up and around, looking, looking. Wishing I could command my eyes to see the world as it really is.
But I can’t.
The second hand on the clock twitches seventeen times before I make a decision. I run to the bathroom door and bang on it. I’ve got to get him out of here. The closer he is to me, the more danger he’s likely to be in. “Dad! You’re gonna be late. Hurry up!”
He hollers something back and turns off the water, but I’m already running through the house, looking for my phone.
Where is it?!
I lift the couch cushions and then shake out the blankets. I brush the curtains aside to check the window seat where I sat early this morning and watched Jake drive away. My phone’s not there, but I catch sight of something else beyond the window.
Kaylee.
You have got to be kidding me!
She’s pulling into my drive looking even more harried than normal. I dash back into the kitchen, colliding with Dad, who’s standing in the arched entryway wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist, brushing his teeth and staring at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“What are you looking for, kiddo?”
“My phone,” I say. “Kaylee just pulled up, Dad, and you’re naked! In the kitchen!”
“All right,” he huffs. “I’m going. What’s the herbivore doing here this early?”
I don’t answer, but I notice he sounds better. Definitely smells better. Still, I have got to get him out of here.
And Kaylee too.
“. . . don’t have time for you to answer the door. Brielle, did you hear a word I just said?”
Kaylee’s so close I can smell her cool mint toothpaste. She’s still in her jammies, her hair tucked into a baseball bat, Tasmanian Devil slippers on her feet, hot-pink mascara lining her lashes.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Have you seen Helene?” she asks.
I lick my lips. “Why?”
“Because she showed up at my door—at the butt crack of dawn, by the way—asking if I’d seen Olivia and telling me we had to go. And then I, like, blinked or something, and she was gone.”
“I don’t . . .”
“I tried to call you, Elle. Where’s your phone?”
I scrape my nails across my scalp. “That is a very good question.”
And then I can see. Into the Celestial.
A wing dips low through the roof. White. Shining.
I duck.
Kaylee makes a face. “Whatcha doin’?”
I look up and I see.
Not the entirety of the Celestial.
Just Helene.
Just Damien.
Just their swords!
I duck again.
“You gonna tell me what’s going on, homegirl, or would you rather I drive you to the sanitarium?”
Helene swings her blade again, spinning, spinning toward him. He’s so much bigger than she is, but she’s fast—wicked fast—her sword nothing but a blur against the morning sky.
I grab Kaylee’s hand and drag her toward the door, yelling over my shoulder.
“Daaaad!”
And that’s when my heart explodes.
Two white wings and a tiny body fall through the roof, and I shove Kaylee aside.
“Whoa, turbo!” she says, colliding with the counter.
But I can’t concentrate on Kaylee now. Helene connects with the linoleum, her wings useless, her limbs splayed like pickup sticks on the floor.
“Helene!” I scream.
A smoking wound of black ice cuts across the thick cords of shimmering white that wrap her torso. I drop to the ground, to my knees, and wrap my trembling hand around hers. Her white eyes find mine, and I hear her voice in my head.
“The Palatine are coming.”
Before I can ask what in Neverland she’s talking about, she vanishes, her fading eyes the last thing I see.
29
Brielle
The Palatine are coming.”
“You’ve said that no less than twenty times, and I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I’m kneeling on the floor, the linoleum squares swimming before me.
“The Palatine—”
“Are coming,” Kay says flippantly. “I got it. What exactly would you like me to do about it?”
“Who are they?” I whisper.
“I know you’re not talking to me.”
I’m not. I’m talking to Helene. My Shield. My beautiful, powerful, wounded Shield. How many times will that little angel be mangled in front of me?
“Kaylee?”
“Right here. On Planet Sanity, by the way. Whenever you’re ready for a return trip.”
“What happened?” I ask.
Kaylee’s slippers purr along the linoleum, and two Tasmanian Devils move into my line of sight. “Okay, that didn’t sound like a rhetorical question, but let’s just say I’m a little short on details myself.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Kaylee’s hands find my shoulders, and she pulls me to my feet. She doesn’t stumble, she doesn’t