“You come back, kid, all right? Pick anything you like. Ink’s on me.”
Jake can’t decide if he’s tempted or not. “I appreciate it.”
“Anything for Doctor Doom’s kid.”
Jake steps onto the sidewalk, the glorious summer day at war with the cold winter taking up residence in his chest.
The son of Doctor Doom.
Go figure.
31
Brielle
Redial.
Pick up, pick up, pick up.
Voice mail.
Again.
“So he’s invisible? This demon?”
“Kind of, yes,” I say. “Invisible to you.”
She picks at her eyelashes. I redial again. “Why can you see him, Elle?”
I don’t have time to consider the consequences of telling her. I don’t even have time to weigh my options. It’s not ideal, not as I imagined it would be: sipping coffee and eating cookies, poring over Scripture. But what about my life is ideal these days?
I’ll answer her questions. Truthfully. There’s no other way to explain this morning anyway. No other way to explain my crazy response to Damien and Helene.
“The halo. It’s not just a halo in the figurative sense. It’s an actual, literal halo. An angel’s halo.”
Her jaw drops open, making a sucking, popping sound, but she doesn’t question my claim.
“Where is it?” she asks, searching my wrists.
“Marco has it,” I say. The phone at my ear rings again and again.
“Marco’s an—”
“No, no, no. It was in Jake’s bag—the halo—and Marco grabbed the wrong bag when he left,” I say quickly. “Pick up!”
“Marco left?”
“Pick up!”
But Jake doesn’t pick up. I jam my finger on End and hand the phone back to Kaylee.
“I might kill that boyfriend of yours,” she says.
“Not if I kill him first.”
I search the sky, but there’s nothing to see. Not even a cloud.
“So he flies, then,” Kaylee says, shooting darting glances upward.
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah. Big black wings and all.”
“So, if there are demons . . .” Her voice has gotten all gulpy.
“Then there are also angels,” I say, placing my hands on her shoulders. “Good guys.”
“Jake?”
I shake my head. “Canaan.”
“Oh.” She’s computing. I see it—her brain working, her eyes twitching as this new information slides into place.
“So Jake, then. He’s the son of an angel?”
I shake my head. “Jake’s parents abandoned him when he was young. Canaan raised him.”
More info. More computing.
“You have way too many secrets. Okay, then what about this demon-guy? What does he want?”
“That’s a very, very good question.”
“You don’t know?” Shrill. Gulpy.
“Well, the idea of the Palatine being here freaked him out.”
“Have we decided what the Palatine is?”
“No,” I say, “but just before Damien—”
“Damien? That’s his name? The demon’s name is Damien? You’re kidding, right?”
“Not kidding. Before he asked me about the Palatine, Helene fell through my roof and told me that the Palatine are coming.”
“Helene too?”
“Yes.”
“And she fell through your roof?” Kaylee stumbles back a step and slides down the door of her Honda. Her Tazmanian Devil slippers kick up dust as they slip out from under her, and she plops down in the gravel. I squat beside her.
“She’ll be okay. She heals.”
“She heals?”
“Look,” I say, tugging on the brim of her hat. “I know this isn’t a good time to dump more info on you, but you need to know something, okay? Damien—this demon—he was the author of the whole warehouse thing. It wasn’t that Juan guy or Eddie.”
Her face puckers at my reference to Eddie. Dimples. The guy who kidnapped her last December; he tied her up and hauled her to Damien’s warehouse intending to sell her. I hate bringing him up, but she wanted the truth and I don’t have time for a soft version of it.
“They were just a couple goons he worked with. Damien is the real nightmare.”
She just stares. I hope—hope—that she’s getting this. That she’s understanding, because I have no idea where Damien is or whether he’s coming back, and I want her to be prepared.
“He has the ability to cloak people, Kay. Make us invisible like him. He can pick us up—fly us around—do bad things to us, but you need to know this. Are you listening? Because if you don’t hear anything else I’m telling you, you need to hear this: there are more fighting for us than there are fighting against us.”
I give it a second to sink in, but she just blinks back at me.
“Listen, I’m going to do my best to talk to him. To understand what he wants and why he’s here.”
“Why is he here?” And now tears pour down her face. They’re pink, her mascara running, dripping from her chin onto her pajamas.