Phone in hand, I called my mom. I wasn’t going to put this off any longer. I’d come too close to death tonight. I was amending my life, cleaning out and starting fresh, and I was doing it now.
The only thing left standing in my way was this call.
“Nora?” she answered in a panicked voice. “I got the detective’s message. I’m on my way home right now. Are you all right? Tell me you’re all right!”
I drew a shaky breath. “I am now.”
“Oh, baby, I love you so much. You know that, right?” she sobbed.
“I know the truth.”
A pause.
“I know the truth about what really happened sixteen years ago,” I said more clearly.
“What are you talking about? I’m almost home. I haven’t been able to stop shaking since I hung up with the detective. I’m a wreck, an absolute wreck. Do they have any idea who this guy
—this Rixon—is? What he wanted with you? I don’t understand how you got dragged into this.”
“Why couldn’t you have just told me?” I whispered, tears brimming my eyes.
“Baby?”
“Nora.” I’m not a little girl anymore. “All those years you lied to me. All those times I went off on Marcie. All those times we laughed at the Mill ars for being stupid and rich and tactless—” My voice caught.
I’d been brimming with anger earlier, but I didn’t know how to feel now. Upset? Weary? Lost and all in a jumble? My parents had started out doing Hank Mill ar a favor, but obviously grew to love each other … and me. We’d made things work. We’d been happy. My dad was gone now, but he still thought about me. He still cared about me. He would want me to keep what was left of our family together instead of running away from my mom.
It’s what I wanted too.
I sucked in some air. “When you get home, we need to talk. About Hank Millar.”
I microwaved a mug of hot chocolate and carried it to my bedroom. My first reaction was to feel fear over being all alone in the farmhouse, knowing Rixon could be running free. My second reaction was a quiet calm. I couldn’t say why, but somehow, I knew I was safe. I tried to remember what had happened in the mechanical room moments before I fell unconscious. Patch had walked into the room….
And then I drew a blank. Which was frustrating, because I sensed more to the memory. It danced just out of reach, but I knew it was important.
After a while, I gave up trying to recapture the memory, and my thoughts took a sharp, alarming turn. My biological father was alive. Hank Mill ar had given me life, then given me up to protect me. Right now, I had no desire to contact him. It was too painful to even think about approaching him. It would be admitting he was my father, and I didn’t want that. It was hard enough keeping my real dad’s face in my memory; I didn’t want to replace that picture or fade it any faster than it already would.
No, I’d leave Hank Mill ar right where he was—at a distance. I wondered if someday I’d change my mind, and the possibility terrified me. Not only the fact that I had a whole other life hidden away, but the fact that once I uncovered it, the life I currently had would be altered forever.
I didn’t have any desire to dwel on Hank further, but there was one thing still not adding up. Hank hid me away as a baby to protect me from Rixon because I was a girl. But what about Marcie? My—sister. She had as much of his blood as I did.
Then why didn’t he hide her? I tried reasoning it out in my head, but I didn’t have an answer.
I’d just curled under the blankets when there was a knock at the door. I set the mug of hot chocolate on the nightstand. There weren’t too many people who would be stopping by this late at night. I padded downstairs and peered into the peephole. But I didn’t need the peephole to confirm who stood on the other side of the door. I knew it was Patch from the way my heart couldn’t carry a steady rhythm.
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 Mill ar 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.