The Complete Hush, Hush Saga Read online

  Something like a war cry went up, and more people grabbed for bar stools. I went down on my hands and knees and looked through the forest of legs for the nearest exit. A few bodies away there was a guy with a gun holstered in an ankle strap. He reached for it, and a moment later the splintering sound of shots rang out. What followed was not silence, but more mayhem: swearing, shouting, and fists hammering into flesh. I got to my feet and ran in a crouch toward the back door.

  I’d just slipped through the exit when someone hooked the waistband of my jeans and hauled me upright. Patch.

  “Take the Jeep,” he ordered, shoving his car keys into my hand. A hasty pause. “What are you waiting for?”

  My eyes teared up, but I angrily blinked them away. “Quit acting like I’m a huge inconvenience! I never asked for your help!”

  “I told you not to come tonight. You wouldn’t be an inconvenience if you’d listened. This isn’t your world—it’s mine. You’re so bent on proving you can handle it that you’re going to do something stupid and get yourself killed.”

  I resented that, and opened my mouth to say so.

  “The guy in the red shirt is Nephilim,” Patch said, cutting me out of the conversation. “The branding mark means he’s in deep with the blood society I told you about earlier. He’s sworn allegiance to them.”

  “Branding mark?”

  “Near his collarbone.”

  The deformity was from a branding? I shifted my eyes to the small window set in the door. Inside, bodies swarmed over the pool tables, punches being thrown in every direction. I didn’t see the guy in the red tee anymore, but now I understood why I’d recognized him. He was Nephilim. He’d reminded me of Chauncey in a way Scott hadn’t even come close to. I wondered if this could somehow mean that, like Chauncey, he was evil. And Scott was not.

  A loud noise seemed to rupture my eardrums, and Patch yanked me to the ground. Fragments of glass hailed down around us. The window in the back door had been shot out.

  “Get out of here,” Patch said, pushing me in the direction of the street.

  I turned back. “Where are you going?”

  “Marcie’s still inside. I’ll get a ride with her.”

  My lungs seemed to lock, no air going in or out. “What about me? You’re my guardian angel.”

  Patch sliced his eyes into mine. “Not anymore, Angel.” Before I could argue back, he slipped through the door, vanishing into the mayhem.

  Out on the street, I unlocked the Jeep, jerked the seat forward, and floored it out of the parking space. He wasn’t my guardian angel anymore? Was he serious? All because I’d told him that’s how I wanted it? Or had he said it to scare me? To make me regret saying I didn’t want him? Well, if he wasn’t my guardian, it was because I was trying to do the right thing! I was trying to make this easier on both of us. I was trying to keep him safe from the archangels. I’d told him exactly why I’d done it, and he was hanging it over my head, as if this whole mess was somehow my fault. As if this was what I wanted! This was more his fault than mine. I had the urge to run back and tell him I wasn’t helpless. I wasn’t a pawn in his big, bad world. And I wasn’t blind. I could see well enough to know something was going on between him and Marcie. In fact, I was now all but certain something was. Forget it. I was better off without him. He was slime. A jerk. An untrustworthy jerk. I didn’t need him—for anything.

  I rolled the Jeep to a stop in front of the farmhouse. My legs were still trembling, and my breath rattled a little when I exhaled. I was acutely aware of the quiet all around. The Jeep had always been a place of refuge; tonight it felt foreign and isolated, and far too big for just one person. I lowered my head onto the steering wheel and cried. I didn’t think about Patch driving Marcie home in her car—I just let the hot air from the vents rush over my skin and breathed in the scent of Patch.

  I sat that way, hunched and sobbing, until the needle on the gas gauge dropped half a bar. I dabbed my eyes dry and let go of a long, troubled sigh. I was just about to shut off the engine when I saw Patch standing on the porch, leaning on one of the support beams.

  For a moment I thought he’d come to check on me, and tears of relief sprang to my eyes. But I was driving his Jeep. He’d most likely come to take it back. After the way he’d treated me tonight, I couldn’t believe there was any other reason.

  He walked down the driveway and opened the driver’s-side door. “You okay?”

  I nodded stiffly. I would have said yes, but my voice was still hiding out in the vicinity of my stomach. The cold-eyed Nephil was fresh in my thoughts, and I couldn’t stop wondering what had happened after I left the Z. Had Scott gotten out? Had Marcie?

  Of course she had. Patch had seemed bent on making sure of it.

  “Why did the Nephil in the red shirt want money?” I asked, climbing sideways into the passenger seat. It was still sprinkling, and even though I knew Patch couldn’t feel the damp chill of the rain, it felt somehow wrong to leave him standing in it.

  After a count, he got behind the wheel, closing us into the Jeep together. Two nights ago the gesture would have felt intimate. Now it just felt tense and awkward. “He was fund-raising for the Nephilim blood society. I wish I had a better idea of what they’re planning. If they need money, it’s most likely for resources. Either that, or to buy off fallen angels. But how, who, and why, I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I need someone on the inside. For the first time, being an angel puts me at a disadvantage. They’re not going to let me within a mile of the operation.”

  For a split second it occurred to me that he could be asking for my help, but I was hardly Nephilim. I had an infinitesimal amount of Nephilim blood running through my veins that could be traced back over four hundred years to my Nephilim ancestor, Chauncey Langeais. For all intents and purposes, I was human. I wasn’t getting on the inside any faster than Patch.

  I said, “You said Scott and the Nephil in the red shirt are both part of the blood society, but they didn’t seem to know each other. Are you sure Scott’s involved?”

  “He’s involved.”

  “Then how could they not know each other?”

  “My best guess right now is that whoever’s running the society is separating the individual members to keep them in the dark. Without solidarity, the chances of a coup are low. More than that, if they don’t know how strong they are, the Nephilim can’t leak that information to the enemy. Fallen angels can’t get information if the society members themselves know nothing.”

  Digesting this, I wasn’t sure whose side I was on. Part of me abhorred the idea of fallen angels possessing the bodies of Nephilim every Cheshvan. A less noble part of me was grateful they were targeting Nephilim and not humans. Not me. Not anyone I loved.

  “And Marcie?” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral.

  “She likes poker,” Patch said noncommittally. He put the Jeep in reverse. “I should be going. You going to be okay tonight? Is your mom gone?”

  I turned in the seat to face him. “Marcie had her arms around you.”

  “Marcie’s sense of personal space is nonexistent.”

  “So you’re an expert on Marcie now?”

  His eyes darkened, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to go there, but I didn’t care. I was so going there. “What’s going on between the two of you? What I saw didn’t look like business.”

  “I was in the middle of a game when she came up behind me. It’s not the first time a girl has done that, and it probably won’t be the last.”

  “You could have pushed her away.”

  “She had her arms around me one moment, and the next moment the Nephil threw the cue ball. I wasn’t thinking about Marcie. I ran outside to check the perimeter in case he wasn’t alone.”

  “You went back for her.”

  “I wasn’t going to leave her there.”

  I stayed in my seat a moment, the knot in my stomach so tight it hurt. What was I supposed to think? Had he gone back for Marcie out of courtesy? A sense of
duty? Or something entirely different, and much more worrisome?

  “I had a dream about Marcie’s dad last night.” I wasn’t even sure why I’d said it. Possibly to communicate to Patch that my pain was so raw it had even entered my dreams. I’d once read that dreams are a way of reconciling what’s happening in our lives, and if that was true, my dream was definitely telling me I hadn’t come to terms with whatever was going on between Patch and Marcie. Not if I was dreaming about fallen angels and Cheshvan. Not if I was dreaming about Marcie’s father.

  “You dreamed about Marcie’s dad?” Patch’s voice was as calm as ever, but something in the way he looked sharply at me made me think he was surprised by this news. Maybe even disconcerted.

  “I think I was in England. A long time ago. Marcie’s dad was being chased through a forest. Only he couldn’t get away, because his cape got tangled in the trees. He kept saying a fallen angel was trying to possess him.”

  Patch pondered this a moment. Once again, his silence told me I’d said something that interested him. But I couldn’t guess what.

  He glanced at his watch. “Need me to walk through the house?”

  I gazed up at the dark, vacant windows of the farmhouse. The combination of nightfall and drizzling rain cast a gloomy, uninviting feeling all around. I couldn’t tell which was less appealing: going inside alone, or sitting out here with Patch, scared he might be moving on. To Marcie Millar.

  “I’m hesitating because I don’t want to get wet. Besides, you obviously have somewhere to be.” I pushed on the door and swung one leg out. “That, and our relationship is over. You don’t owe me any favors.”

  We locked eyes.

  I’d said it to hurt him, but I was the one with the lump in my throat. Before I could say something that would slice deeper, I dashed for the porch, holding my arms over my head to shield my hair from the rain.

  Inside, I leaned against the front door and listened to Patch drive away. My vision smeared with tears, and I closed my eyes. I wished Patch would come back. I wanted him here. I wanted him to pull me against him and kiss away the cold, empty feeling slowly freezing me from the inside out. But the sound of tires skimming over the wet road outside never came.

  Without warning, the unbidden memory of our last night together before everything collapsed drifted up from my memory. I automatically started to block it. The trouble was, I wanted to remember. I needed some way to still have Patch close. Dropping my guard, I let myself feel his mouth on mine. Light at first, then more serious. I felt his body, warm and solid, against mine. His hands were at the nape of my neck, fastening his silver chain. He promised to love me forever . . . .

  I turned the deadbolt, dissolving the memory with a click. Screw. Him. I’d keep saying the words as many times as it took.

  In the kitchen, the lights answered at the flip of a switch, and I was relieved to find the electricity up and running. The phone was blinking red, and I played the messages.

  “Nora,” my mom’s voice said, “we’re getting tons of rain here in Boston, and they’ve decided to reschedule the rest of the auctions. I’m headed home and should be there by eleven. You can send Vee home if you’d like. Love you and see you soon.”

  I checked the clock. It was a few minutes before ten. I had only one more hour alone.

  CHAPTER

  7

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I DRAGGED MYSELF OUT of bed, and after a quick stint in the bathroom that included dabbing on under-eye concealer and spritzing my hair with curl revitalizer, I moseyed into the kitchen to find my mom already seated at the table. She had a mug of herbal tea between her hands, and her hair had a tousled, slept-on look, which was a nice way of saying she looked like a porcupine. Glancing at me over the top of her mug, she smiled. “Morning.”

  I slid into the seat opposite and shook shredded wheat into a bowl. My mom had set out strawberries and a small pitcher of milk, and I added both to the cereal. I tried to be conscientious about what I ate, but it always seemed much easier when my mom was home, making sure meals amounted to more than whatever I could grab in ten seconds.

  “Sleep well?” she asked.

  I nodded, having just eaten a spoonful of cereal.

  “I forgot to ask last night,” Mom said. “Did you end up taking Scott on a tour of town?”

  “I canceled.” Probably best to leave it at that. I wasn’t sure how she’d react if she found out I’d tailed him to the pier, then spent the evening with him at a dive of a pool hall in Springvale.

  Mom’s nose wrinkled. “Is that . . . smoke I smell?”

  Oh shoot.

  “I lit some candles in my room this morning,” I said, regretting that I hadn’t taken the time to shower. I was sure the Z lingered in my clothes, my sheets, my hair.

  She frowned. “That’s definitely smoke I smell.” Her chair scraped back, and she started to stand, on her way over to investigate.

  No use stalling now. I scratched my eyebrow nervously. “I sort of went to a pool hall last night.”

  “Patch?” We’d settled on a rule not too long ago that I was absolutely not, under any circumstances, allowed to go out with Patch while my mom was away.

  “He was there, yes.”

  “And?”

  “I didn’t go with Patch. I went with Scott.” By the look on her face, I was pretty sure this was worse. “But before you blow up,” I rushed on, “I just want to say that my curiosity is killing me. I’m having a really hard time ignoring the fact that the Parnells are doing everything possible to keep Scott’s past in the dark. Why is it that every time Mrs. Parnell opens her mouth, Scott is two inches away, watching her like a hawk? What could he have done that was so bad?”

  I expected my mom to jump to her feet and tell me that starting the minute I got home from school this afternoon, I was grounded until the Fourth of July, but she said, “I noticed that too.”

  “Is it just me, or does she seem scared of him?” I continued, relieved that she appeared more interested in discussing Scott than my punishment for spending the evening at a sketchy pool hall.

  “What kind of mother is scared of her own son?” Mom wondered aloud.

  “I think she knows his secret. She knows what he did. And he knows that she knows.” Maybe Scott’s secret was simply that he was Nephilim, but I didn’t think so. Based on his reaction last night when he’d been attacked by the red-shirted Nephil, I was beginning to suspect he didn’t know the truth about who he was, or what he was capable of. He might have noticed his incredible strength or his ability to speak to people’s thoughts, but he probably didn’t know how to explain it. But if Scott and his mom weren’t trying to hide his Nephilim heritage, what were they trying to hide? What had he done that needed so much covering up?

  Thirty minutes later, I strolled into chemistry to find Marcie already at our desk, talking on her cell phone, completely ignoring the sign on the whiteboard that read NO CELL PHONES, NO EXCEPTIONS. When she saw me, she gave me her back and cupped a hand over her mouth, clearly wanting privacy. Like I cared. By the time I made it to our desk, the only part of the conversation I picked up was a seductive, “Love you, too.”

  She slipped her cell inside a pouch at the front of her backpack and smiled at me. “My boyfriend. He doesn’t go to high school.”

  I immediately had a moment of self-doubt and wondered if Patch was on the other end of the line, but he had sworn that what happened between him and Marcie last night meant nothing. I could either stir myself into a jealous frenzy, or I could believe him. I nodded sympathetically. “Must be hard dating a dropout.”

  “Ha, ha. Just so you know, I’m sending out a text after class to everyone who’s invited to my annual summer party Tuesday night. You’re on the list,” she said casually. “Missing my party is the surest way to sabotage your social life . . . not that you have to worry about sabotaging something you don’t have.”

  “Annual summer party? Never heard of it.”

  She retrieved a makeup compact
, which had worn a circle into the back pocket of her jeans, and dabbed pressed powder on her nose. “That’s because you’ve never been invited before.”

  Okay, hold on. Why was Marcie inviting me? Even though my IQ was double hers, she had to have noticed the frost between us. That, and we didn’t share any common friends. Or interests, for that matter. “Wow, Marcie. That’s really nice of you to invite me. A little unexpected, but still nice. I’ll definitely try to make it.” But not very hard.

  Marcie bent toward me. “I saw you last night.”

  My heart beat slightly faster, but I managed to hold my voice level. Noncommittal, even. “Yeah, I saw you, too.”

  “That was kind of . . . crazy.” She left her statement open-ended, as if she wanted me to elaborate for her.

  “I guess.”

  “You guess? Did you see the pool stick? I’ve never seen anyone do that before. He shoved it through the pool table. Aren’t those things made of slate?”

  “I was at the back of the crowd. I couldn’t see much. Sorry.” I wasn’t trying to be unhelpful on purpose; this was just one discussion I didn’t want to have. And was this why she was inviting me to her party? To instill a sense of trust and friendship into our relationship, so that I’d tell her what, if anything, I knew about what happened last night?

  “You didn’t see anything?” Marcie repeated, a line of doubt creasing her forehead.

  “No. Did you study for today’s quiz? I have most of the periodic table memorized, but the bottom row keeps tripping me up.”

  “Did Patch ever take you to play pool there? Did you ever see anything like that before?”

  Ignoring her, I flipped open my textbook.

  “I heard you and Patch broke up,” she said, trying a new angle.

  I sucked in some air, but a little too late, since my face already felt hot.

  “Who called things off?” Marcie asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  Marcie scowled. “You know what? If you’re not going to talk, you can forget coming to my party.”