“Uh, please?”
“What is this? Double-standard Tuesday?”
“What do you need his number for? I thought Dante was your boy—”
I hung up and tried to think things through. What did I know for certain? That an archangel leading a double life wanted to kidnap me and use me as incentive to get Patch to do him a favor. Or to quit blackmailing him. Or both. I also knew Patch wasn’t the blackmailer.
What information was I low on? Mostly Patch’s whereabouts. Was he safe? Would he contact me? Did he need my help?
Where are you, Patch? I shouted into the universe.
My cell phone chimed.
HERE’S DANTE’S NUMBER. ALSO, I HEAR CHOCOLATE WORKS WELL FOR PMS, Scott texted.
“Funny,” I said out loud, punching in Dante’s number. He answered on the third ring.
“We need to meet,” I said with an edge.
“Listen, if it’s about this morning—”
“Of course it’s about this morning! What did you give me? I drank an unknown liquid, and suddenly I can run as fast as you and soa {s y&rsqr fifty feet into the air, and I’m pretty sure my vision is better than twenty-twenty.”
“It’ll wear off. To sustain those speeds, you’d need to drink the blue stuff daily.”
“Does the blue stuff have a name?”
“Not over the phone.”
“Fine. Meet me in person.”
“Be at Rollerland in thirty.”
I blinked. “You want to meet at the roller-skating rink?”
“It’s noon on a weekday. Nobody there but moms and toddlers. Makes it easy to spot potential spies.”
I wasn’t sure who Dante thought might be spying on us, but I had an uneasy feeling fluttering around in my stomach that whatever the blue stuff was, Dante wasn’t the only one who wanted it. My best guess, it was a drug of some sort. I’d witnessed its enhancement properties firsthand. The powers it gave me were surreal. It was as if I had no boundaries, and the extent of my own physical prowess was . . . limitless. The feeling was exhilarating and unnatural. It was the latter that had me worried.
When Hank was alive, he’d experimented with devilcraft, summoning the powers of hell to his advantage. The objects he’d enchanted had always cast an eerie blue hue. Up until now I’d believed that the knowledge of devilcraft had died with Hank, but I was beginning to have doubts. I hoped Dante’s blue mystery drink was a coincidence, but instinct told me otherwise.
I got out of the car and walked the last few blocks to Rollerland, checking over my shoulder often for signs that I was being followed. No strange men in dark trench coats and sunglasses. No overly tall people, a dead giveaway of Nephilim, either.
I swung through Rollerland’s doors, rented a pair of size-eight roller skates, and sat down on a bench just outside the rink. The lights were low and a disco ball scattered shades of bright, saturated light across the polished wood floor. Old-school Britney Spears played through the speakers. As Dante had predicted, only small children and their moms were skating at this hour.
A shift in the air, snapping with voltage, alerted me to Dante’s presence. He lowered himself onto the bench beside me, dressed in dark tailored jeans and a fitted navy polo. He hadn’t bothered to remove his sunglasses, making it impossible to see his eyes. I wondered if he regretted giving me the drink and was experiencing some degree of moral conflict. I hoped so.
“Going skating?” he asked with a nod at my feet.
I noticed he wasn’t carting skates. “The sign said you have to rent skates to go beyond the lobby.”
“You could have mind-tricked the counter attendant.”
I felt my mood darken. “That’s not really how I play.”
Dante shrugged. “Then you’re missing out on a lot of the perks of being Nephilim.”
“Tell me about the blue drink.”
“It’s an enhancement drink.”
“So I gathered. What’s it enhanced with?”
Dante leaned his head toward mine and spoke in a whisper. “Devilcraft. It’s not as bad as it sounds,” he assured me.
My spine stiffened, and the hairs at the back of my neck tingled. No, no, no. Devilcraft was supposed to be eradicated from Earth. It had disappeared with Hank. “I know what devilcraft is. And I thought it was destroyed.”
Dante’s dark eyebrows furrowed. “How do you know about devilcraft?”
“Hank used it. So did his accomplice, Chauncey Langeais. But when Hank died—” I caught myself. Dante didn’t know I’d killed Hank, and to say that it wasn’t going to help my rapport with the Nephilim, Dante included, if my secret got out, was the understatement of the year. “Patch used to spy for Hank.”
A nod. “I know. They had a deal. Patch fed us information on fallen angels.”
I didn’t know whether Dante intentionally left out that Patch had agreed to spy for Hank on one condition: that he preserve my life, or if Hank had kept those details private.
“Hank told Patch about devilcraft,” I lied, covering my tracks. “But Patch told me that when Hank died, devilcraft went with him. Patch was under the impression that Hank was the only one who knew how to manipulate it.”
Dante shook his head. “Hank put his right-hand man, Blakely, in charge of developing devilcraft prototypes. Blakely knows more about devilcraft than Hank ever did. Blakely has spent the past several months holed up in a lab, enchanting knives, whips, and studded rings with devilcraft, transforming them into deadly weapons. Most recently, he’s formulated a drink that will elevate Nephilim powers. We’re evenly matched, Nora,” he said with an excited glint in his eyes. “Used to be it took ten Nephilim to every fallen angel. Not so anymore. I’ve been testing the drink for Blakely, and when I take the enhanced drink, the playing field consistently tilts to my advantage. I can go up against a single fallen angel without any fear that he’s stronger.”
My thoughts spun wildly. Devilcraft was thriving on Earth? The Nephilim had a secret weapon, being fabricated in a secret lab? I had to tell Patch. “Is the drink you gave me the same one you’ve been testing for Blakely?”
“Yes.” A crafty smile. “Now you understand what I’m talking about.”
If he wanted accolades, he wasn’t getting them from me. “How many Nephilim know about the drink or have ingested it?”
Dante leaned back on the bench and sighed. “Are you asking for yourself?” He paused with meaning. “Or to share our secret with Patch?”
I hesitated, and Dante’s face fell.
“You have to choose, Nora. You can’t be loyal to us and Patch. You’re making an admirable go of it, but in the end, loyalty is about taking a side. You’re either with the Nephilim or against us.”
The worst part of this conversation was that Dante was right. Deep down, I knew it. Patch and I had agreed that our endgame in the war was to come out of it safely together, but i {getghtf I still maintained that that was my only goal, where did it leave the Nephilim? I was supposedly their leader, asking them to believe I was going to help them, but I really wasn’t.
“If you tell Patch about devilcraft, he won’t sit on the information,” Dante said. “He’ll go after Blakely and try to destroy the lab. Not out of a lofty sense of moral duty, but out of self-preservation. This isn’t just about Cheshvan anymore,” he explained. “My goal isn’t to push fallen angels back behind some arbitrary line, such as stopping them from possessing us. My goal is to annihilate the entire fallen angel race using devilcraft. And if they don’t already know it, they’re going to figure it out soon.”
I sputtered. “What?”
“Hank had a plan. This was it. The extinction of their race. Blakely believes that with a little more time, he can develop a prototype of a weapon strong enough to kill a fallen angel, something that was never even considered possible. Until now.”
I jumped off the bench and began pacing the floor. “Why are you telling me this?”
“It’s time to make your choice. Are you with us or not?”
“Patch isn’t the problem. He isn’t working with fallen angels. He doesn’t want war.” Patch’s only goal was making sure I stayed in power, fulfilled my oath, and came out alive. But if I told him about devilcraft, Dante was right: Patch would do everything he could to destroy it.
“If you tell him about devilcraft, it’s over for us,” Dante said.
He was asking me to either betray him, Scott, and thousands of innocent Nephilim . . . or Patch. A heavy weight roiled my stomach. The pain was so sharp, I nearly doubled over.
“Take the afternoon to think about it,” Dante said, rising to his feet. “Unless I hear otherwise, I’ll expect you to be ready to train first thing tomorrow.” He watched me a moment, his brown eyes steady but holding a shade of doubt. “I hope we’re still on the same side, Nora,” he said quietly, then walked out.
I stayed in the building several minutes, sitting in the semidarkness, surrounded by the bizarrely cheerful squeals and laughter of children trying to do the Hokey Pokey in roller skates. I bowed my head and hid my face in my hands. This wasn’t how things were supposed to happen. I was supposed to call off the war, declare a cease-fire, and walk away from it all to be with Patch.
Instead Dante and Blakely had plowed ahead, picked up right where Hank had left off, and raised the stakes to all or nothing. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t think Dante and Blakely, and all Nephilim for that matter, stood a chance at annihilating fallen angels, but I suspected that devilcraft changed everything. And what did it mean for my half of the deal? If the Nephilim waged war without me, would the archangels still hold me accountable?
Yes. Yes, they would.
Wherever Blakely was holed up, undoubtedly guarded by his own small and vigilant Nephilim security detail, it was clear he was experimenting with more powerful and more dangerous prototypes. He was the root of the problem.
Which put finding him, and his secret lab, at the top of my priority list.
Right after I found Patch. My stomach somersaulted with worry, and I sent up yet another silent prayer for him.
Chapter 10
I WAS A SHORT DISTANCE FROM THE VOLKSWAGEN WHEN I saw a shadowy figure taking up space in the driver’s seat. I stopped, my thoughts taking an initial dive into Cowboy-Hat-back-for-round-two territory. I held my breath, debating the wisdom of running. But the longer I debated, the more my over-active imagination waned, and the figure took its true form. Patch crooked his finger, beckoning me inside. I broke into a grin, my worry dissolving instantaneously.
“Skipping school for roller-skating?” he asked as I dropped inside the car.
“You know me. Purple wheels are my weakness.”
Patch smiled. “I didn’t see your car at school. I’ve been looking for you. Can you spare a few minutes?”
I handed him my keys. “You drive.”
Patch drove us to a gorgeous luxury townhouse complex overlooking Casco Bay. The building’s historic charm—deep red brick mixed with stone from a local quarry—placed it well over a hundred years old, but it had been completely renovated with gleaming windows, black marble columns, and a doorman. Patch pulled into a single-car garage and lowered the door, leaving us in cool darkness.
