Fierce Angels Read online

  “I smell like your favorite candy?” I said slowly. Of course, Ryker and Levi and Jacob all smelled delicious to me, but I hadn’t thought before about having the same effect on them.

  He tilted his head up to look at the ceiling in exasperation. “Is this really the most important thing we can talk about?”

  “No, of course not. I’m just always trying to make sense of the curse—”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what this line of conversation is about.”

  “—and figuring out how it affects us seems like it must be key to curing the curse.”

  He nodded skeptically. One of those arrogant-prick smirks was curving up his lush-lipped mouth, although for once, that smirk didn’t make me want to slap him. “Okay, Ellis. Fine. To me you smell like cinnamon and sugar and capsacin. Like that bite of pepper that’ll make your eyes sting, but you’ll bite anyway. Closest thing I can think of is red-hots.”

  I leaned against the table, crossing my arms over my chest. “That’s, oddly, kind of nice.”

  “Would you not rest your ass on the priceless fifteenth century manuscript?” he groused, grabbing my wrist to pull me forward away from the books. His fingers were warm and lithe, even if the way he touched me was always brusque. Almost as soon as his fingers had wrapped around me, he dropped my wrist. His eyes met mine with that strange golden spark they sometimes held when he looked at me.

  What I really wanted to ask was about that line he had dropped in sideways—tea and ghosts and child abuse—but even though there must be something he wanted me to know, he’d bite my head off if I asked him directly. “Do you want to know what you smell like to me?”

  “Eau de Jerkface?” he asked. “I don’t care, Ellis.”

  I rolled my eyes. Okay, he was clearly done with being even the littlest bit charming. “So where can we find the ingredients we need?”

  “Maybe we could go to an apothecary. But we’ll have to wait until we need to place an order anyway—which is fine. There’s no rush.”

  I quirked an eyebrow at him. “I don’t know why we need to keep this a secret.”

  “There’s no way Ryker and Levi would sign on to this,” he said. “And for good reason. It might dull your powers, Princess.”

  “I’m not going to leave us stuck with each other,” I said.

  “I know.” He raised a hand to cut me off. “But we’ll wait, anyway. Until we’ve gotten your sister from the Far.”

  “You don’t mind waiting?” As high as the stakes were—for me—I had expected that Jacob would be desperate to cut us all loose. I found myself unexpectedly touched by the thought of him putting my sister and me first, above what he wanted himself. But then, Jacob might be a total prick, but he was a Hunter, too. Maybe he was just doing what he had to do for his own sense of honor. Nothing to do with me.

  His jaw worked, just once. “I don’t want to risk it.”

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “Stop saying nice.”

  “You don’t want to be nice to me.” I ducked my head, grinning. “But you can’t help it. You really are just nice on the inside, aren’t you, Jacob?”

  He shook his head, pushing the book we’d found under a stack of other texts, and pulling another one towards him. “Why don’t you get ready for your little date with Levi? You guys are wasting time like it’s your job.”

  “It is our job. We’re bonding.”

  “It’s stupid,” he said.

  “Stupid can be fun.”

  “You would know.”

  “So you’re not taking me on a date later?”

  Jacob just rolled his eyes. “Would you go?”

  I backed towards the doorway towards the kitchen, still grinning. “What should I wear?”

  “Just jeans,” he said. He quirked an eyebrow back at me, flipping the text open without looking. “Have fun with Levi. Be ready at nine tomorrow.”

  I nodded once and turned around, heading through the kitchen and living room for the stairs. Despite myself, despite the butterflies that Jacob raised in my stomach—from nerves, not affection—I found myself grinning. Grinning stupidly, I was sure Jacob would have said.

  It was just the curse.

  It was just the curse.

  I couldn’t let myself forget that.

  6

  Levi held my car door open for me. Once I’d swung my legs into the car, he closed the door too, which left me smoothing my jeans over my legs like I was a lady in a gorgeous gown. Instead of a perpetually-rumpled teenager wearing a dead woman’s clothes. Levi was just that kind of guy though—the kind that makes you feel beautiful no matter how much of a mess you are. Everyone should have one of those guys.

  When he climbed into the driver’s side, his broad shoulder brushed against me for a second as he clipped in his seatbelt. He smelled like sandalwood soap and spicy aftershave, like he’d just taken a shower, and I wanted to lean into him. So I did. Because it was Levi, and I could.

  He grinned, glancing down at me as my head rested on his shoulder. “Do you want to know where we’re going?”

  “It doesn’t matter to me,” I said.

  “I thought we could be normal people for a night,” he said. “Well, normal people who are getting a little fancy. I thought we could swing by the mall, buy you a dress, maybe more than a dress, and then go to dinner and the theater.”

  “The movie theater?”

  “Theater-theater. I got tickets for a musical in the city.”

  “That sounds amazing,” I aid. “You really want to take me shopping?”

  “Desperately,” he said, turning from their long driveway onto the gravel road. “By the way.”

  He reached into the inside pocket of his navy suit jacket—the dressiest I’d ever seen Levi, although he wore it with a gray button-down shirt and a pair of jeans—and pulled out an envelope.

  “What’s this?” I asked, taking the white envelope from him.

  “Credit and debit cards. I had Olivia set you up on our accounts. I like the idea of buying you presents, but I don’t want you to feel like you’re dependent on us.”

  “Except for, you know, my life?”

  “I don’t know about that, dangerous girl,” he said. “I think you saved Ryker and me when you burned down the Company.”

  “I’m going to burn it all down,” I said, my jaw tightening as I thought about how Mr. Joseph had threatened my sister and mother. It wasn’t enough to have destroyed one of his buildings. I intended to see him bowed in the ashes.

  “And Ryker will call you Firestarter for the rest of your life,” he observed.

  “I was hoping maybe eventually we could move on to other sweet little nothings. That maybe don’t reference me being dangerous, or having magical powers, or being a princess…”

  “Like normal people?” he asked.

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  “But calling you dangerous is my sweet little nothing. I like you dangerous.”

  “That is because you are a warped and twisted human being.”

  “Try to give a girl a compliment.”

  “Why do you want to buy me new clothes desperately?” I asked. I glanced down at my jeans and the black top I’d found. “Is it weird that I’m wearing your mom’s clothes?”

  “Honestly, yes. I remember her wearing that shirt.”

  “Ohh.” I tugged the hem absently over my lap. That was a little strange.

  "She wore that shirt hunting geists sometimes. I always hated when she wore black, because it’s hard enough to see each other in a haunted house. She didn't need to dress like a ninja."

  "It's not really a ninja shirt. There's a glitter heart on the front."

  "She was probably the girliest woman to ever send hundreds of ghosts screaming into the afterlife. Quick with a sword or a bo..."

  "These are the things you value in a woman,” I observed.

  Levi rolled his eyes. But I was willing to bet it was true, because that was the woman he had grown up watching in
action. Just as I had adored my mom, who was cool and beautiful and devastatingly funny.

  “When she wasn’t killing, she was the most Betty Crocker mom you could imagine,” he said. “She liked home decorating. Pie-baking. She made her own catsup and sewed aprons, and then wore them to clean the house.”

  I took in that information without comment. My mom always said that men secretly expect their girlfriends to turn into the same kind of woman as their mom. When Ash and I were in junior high, Mom dated our gym teacher until she found out his mother still fixed him and Daddy a plate, and then she had noped on out of there. Which had left me suffering through volleyball in P.E. once again, after a straight month of being excused for improbable cramps.

  "Did you have a girlfriend in high school?" I almost managed to ask it casually.

  "I didn't go to high school. Mom dragged us around while she slayed. Made us work the family business."

  "You guys were homeschooled? That explains so much."

  He shot me a look, and I smirked back. "I'm kidding. You're very suave. Jacob, on the other hand...."

  "Jacob is... Jacob."

  "You guys cut him some slack, I know. For the tragic history."

  "I don't know what's wrong with the two of you," Levi said, "But I hope you figure it out."

  "With the two of us?" Like I had any hand in the bizarre way Jacob acted around me.

  "Yep."

  Okay, Levi wasn't backing down on the idea that I was half the Jacob-Ellis problem. I felt distinctly put out.

  "That particular shirt," he said, "I remember we were hunting this geist that had like a religious fixation. Tried to kill people it thought was unworthy. We called it the Judge. Anyway, Mom always had a way with ghosts, she had a knack for connecting to them, talking to them so we could find out how to get them out of this world.”

  I cocked my head, filing this away. So I was expected to sew my own frilly aprons, wear them to clean the house, and speak with the dead. Mother-in-laws; they were a pain-in-the-ass even beyond the grave.

  “Ryker was going through this big skeptical phase, reading lots of Hitchens and Dawkins, which drove Mom nuts. I mean, we see the world beyond. Skepticism takes a special kind of wishful thinking in our line of work. And he would not stop going on, in this haunted house full of crucifixes and bleeding walls, about how our ghost’s overactive imagination had led to all these murders. How stupid it all was.”

  “So the geist fixed on Ryker, and it went after him. I’ll never forget this crack, like a whip, and Ryker stumbling forward. His blood splattered over our mother, it was all beaded on her face like freckles, and we saw the geist trying to smoke up through the ceiling at the other end of the room. And my mom, who had been all, hey ghost friend, let’s talk, ran up the wall and slammed her sword through this thing, dropped it straight to Hell. And then she wrapped her arms around Ryker, telling him, god damn it listen to your mother next time, are you okay baby?”

  "That's a great story," I said, "I'm never wearing this shirt again."

  "I didn't mean to make it weird."

  "No, it's true, it is weird I guess. I wouldn't wear Ash's clothes..." I trailed off. "I wonder how my mom is doing."

  "We could go look in on her sometimes."

  "I would like that."

  "Do you want to go now?"

  "You planned this whole night..."

  "It's our night. Anyway, it's almost on our way, we're headed to D.C. But even if our plans change... it doesn't matter."

  "You're a far nicer boy than I deserve."

  “I don't believe that for a minute, pretty girl."

  Maybe he would believe it if he knew that I was keeping a secret from him.

  When he exited the highway, familiar territory jarred me: first we passed the buildings I'd driven past before, strip malls and restaurants, and then entered the shape of our neighborhood where I grew up. We passed my elementary school, with the big open field where we’d played, and the monkey bars and swings. I remembered losing my first earring in that grass and getting mulch from under those monkey bars thrown into my face during my first fight. And I remembered my sister jumping in, throwing mulch herself at my bully.

  Ash was always a fighter, the kind of kid who couldn’t handle any injustice. She was polite to teachers unless she thought they were being unfair, in which case, her cheeks would flush and her left toe would start to tap in agitation while she tried to work out what to say. I always knew she was going to blow when that toe went to work. She had a lot of friends, but she was kind of a floater, friendly with everyone but not tied too tightly to any one group. But she’d been a charmer, with her quick laugh and easygoing personality, and at her funeral I think there were eight different girls who thought she was their best friend.

  God, I missed her.

  If I thought someone was responsible for her death, I wouldn’t forgive them either. How could I be mad at my mother for hating me now? But I missed her, anyway, like a constant ache, and then that ache hummed like anger.

  “Is there any magic that can show us different times?” I asked.

  “I don’t know any Marty McFly types, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “No. I don’t want to time travel. Like a video surveillance camera,” I said. “But for something that already happened somewhere.”

  “The night of the accident,” he said, his voice certain as he understood what I was thinking about. “I’ve heard angels and demons both have some kind of power to access things that have already happened. They can’t see the future, though. Only God can.”

  “Do you believe in God?”

  “You might have noticed that in that story I told you about my mom, I wasn’t the one antagonizing the uber-religious ghost.”

  “You were there too.”

  “It was always the three of us.”

  I glanced over at him, wondering how he’d coped without her. “How long ago did she… pass?”

  “Two years. And she didn’t pass. That implies a certain amount of peace, dying in bed. That’s not usually how we go.”

  He turned onto my old street. I could imagine the white panel van that had kidnapped me making this turn, rolling down my street towards where I’d stood on the front porch. Ryker had projected here, to warn me that Beefy and Burly were coming. He’d been gorgeous and accidentally threatening, trying to explain to me in twenty-seven seconds that we were fated to be together and that I was about to be kidnapped and that everything was going to be fine. I could see the front porch now, the swing hanging there with the same red-and-blue pillows, the red front door that I’d pounded on, hoping my mother would hear me.

  She probably had. She’d decided to lock me out so I could be dragged off to a reform camp that would beat the magic out of a mutant like me.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” I said.

  Levi immediately eased on the brake, and we nosed to parallel park along the curb. “Whatever you want, Ellis.”

  “Would you forgive your mom if she thought you were evil and completely betrayed you?” I asked.

  Levi rested his arm on the back of my seat, and I breathed in his comforting scent. I leaned my head against his chest, and he wrapped his arm around my shoulders.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t imagine my mother betraying me. We were always a team.”

  Maybe I should ask Jacob. He certainly felt like his mother had betrayed him when she sent him to England, even if her mission had been to save his life. I was slowly trying to put together the picture of what had happened to them, how Jacob had found Ryker and Levi, how the three of them had become a team and family again. Even if their bond wasn’t quite perfect. No one wanted to talk about it. I could feel the air rush out of the room every time I brought up how Wendy had died and what had happened before they met me.

  I should have time to figure these men out, but it felt like a ticking clock with Jacob searching for an exit.

  “Do you ever think about what it would b
e like to meet her in the Far?” I asked.

  “I’m sure she’s in Heaven already.” Levi pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “Do you want me to drive on?”

  I hesitated. I couldn’t figure out what I wanted. It seemed ungrateful to make Levi drive out here, and then change my mind. “Let’s stay for a minute.”

  He nodded and eased forward, pulling up just alongside my house. The lights were on downstairs, shining softly out of the dining room and living room windows. My mother hadn’t yet closed the curtains or the windows for the night. When she was home, she liked to turn off the air-conditioning and open the windows. I spend all day in a cold office, I need the fresh air, she’d told us when Ash and I complained. Air-conditioning in Virginia summers wasn’t meant to be optional. I knew that by now, the house would be stifling hot and at the same time, filled with the warm breeze and scent of grass and lilacs.

  Levi frowned, sitting forward slightly. “Anyone could cut through those screens and get inside. And as soon as it gets dark, she should have the curtains drawn and outside lights on.”

  “My mother doesn’t share your paranoia,” I said.

  “Because she doesn’t share my knowledge of all the things that go bump in the night,” he said, bumping me with his shoulder.

  My mother desperately needed better security with the Company threatening her life to control me. I couldn’t just blurt that out, but I wondered if I could push Levi into bringing it up more.

  “We should do something to keep an eye on your mom,” Levi said, all on his own. “I worry about the demons coming after anyone who knows you.”

  “The demons can visit my old P.E. teacher,” I grumbled. “But yeah, I’d like that. I worry about my mom.”

  I rested my hand on his on the gear shift, thinking that it was time to go on; I had won a small victory here, even without being able to tell the boys why I was scared about my mom.

  “We can ward the place,” he said.

  My heart sunk. That wouldn’t help; the people I was afraid of were human, and there were no wards that blocked bullets.

  “What are the demons like?” I asked. Maybe there was a way to guide this back around to protecting my mom from demons and humans.