Chasing Before (32 page)

To avoid any Morati who may be out looking for me, I keep in the shadows on the way to the jail. Like I did the night when I went to visit Julian there, I rush from tree to tree, hiding myself behind their trunks. When I pass the Forgetting Tree, I wonder again what Neil wrote on his scrap of paper, but laugh when I realize that I simply don’t care that much anymore. It’s so liberating that he finally confided in me, like a giant weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Is it possible to rebuild our relationship? I want to believe it is.

When I reach the tall stone doors to the jail, they are open and unguarded. Alarm bells go off in my head. Maybe Furukama had an emergency and called the guards down to him. If so, I need to help out. I pause long enough to send a mental SOS to Brady just in case. I think about his silver belt buckle
and lock on to his signal. He’s in the dorm, so he must not have been on guard duty tonight.

I enter the jail and tiptoe down the stairs, my senses on high alert. On my last visit I got a headache, thanks to my fraction of angel DNA. I’ll have to make this quick, if I can.

When I reach the base of the stairs, I duck behind a column and scan my surroundings. Emilia stands inside the bars of Julian’s former cell, but she’s not with Furukama. Instead it’s Autumn who jiggles a key in the lock of the cell door, unlocking it with a clang. What is she doing? And where are Furukama and the guards?

Emilia rushes the door and exits with a smile on her face. She is slow, stumbling over her own feet like a drunk, but as she nears my hiding place, I prepare to stop her from getting away.

Just as I stick out my foot to trip Emilia, Autumn grabs Emilia’s arms and twists them behind her back. As Autumn drags her toward the hellhole, Emilia struggles against her. She looks up and sees me staring. “Help me, Felicia! Autumn has gone mad!”

If she knows me still, Emilia’s not as far gone as Julian was, but Autumn has her completely overpowered. Her long hair is plastered to her sweaty skin, and she grimaces in pain.

“Shut up.” Autumn curses, but then smiles at me. Her pupils are huge and crazed, like when Furukama kicked her out of training. “It’s fine. I’m taking out the trash.”

“I won’t say a word. I swear,” Emilia pleads.

I step forward, my hands stretched out beseechingly.
“Don’t do it. Furukama can’t have authorized this.”

Autumn laughs. “Who cares about Furukama? She’s going into the hole.” She smashes the bottom of her palm against Emilia’s forehead, knocking her out. She really means to throw her in.

If she’s not here under Furukama’s orders, she must have gotten rid of the guards. It could be a personal vendetta against Furukama, but it could be something more sinister.

Autumn drops into a crouch behind Emilia and shoves her arms under Emilia’s armpits. I can’t let her do this. I close the distance between us, smashing into her just as she pivots to heave Emilia into the pit.

The force of my tackle knocks them both to the ground. The key flies up, ricochets off the inside edge of the safety railing, and falls into the pit. Emilia’s limp body somersaults and then lands with a crash against the brimstone bars of the last jail cell.

Autumn squirms away, but I straddle her back and clamp her arms down at the wrists with her palms facing up. “If you won’t tell me the truth, I’ll force it out of you.”

She bucks beneath me, trying to throw me off. I hit her between her shoulder blades, and she collapses, clenching her hands into fists. I force one open and connect my palm.

I sift through her memories, an automatic response now that I’ve been practicing with Julian. It’s almost like flipping through an old family photo album, as I recognize familiar faces of friends and parents and siblings gathered at barbeques and pool parties and trips to quaint European villages.

But there’s someone I never expected to find in Autumn’s memories. Cash. I had no idea she knew him on Earth. I jump into that memory to investigate.

“You’re dressed up,” Cash says to Autumn, his gaze raking over her body in a way that sets her on fire. He tucks his hands between her gold belt and white gown and pulls her in for a kiss. “What’s the occasion?”

“Halloween party at the field house.” She snuggles up to him. Then she reaches for the gold halo headband she bought today to complete her costume. She holds it up. “I’m going as an angel.”

“One day you’ll be one for real,” Cash says fiercely. “And then we can be together forever.”

“I know.” She looks up into his pale blue eyes and sees the promises shimmering there. She’s never been lucky when it comes to love. And when Julian showed up at the sushi restaurant that day, she thought everything had changed for her. That someone might actually prefer her company to Felicia’s. But it became increasingly hard to ignore the way he was always sneaking glances at her best friend and mooning over her like a lovesick ape.

Then Cash came and swept Autumn off her feet. After she confided to him that she was envious of Felicia, after they made love, after she found out that Cash and Julian are real-life angels from heaven, Cash insisted that his being here should remain a secret from Felicia. Autumn is more than happy to oblige. Felicia still presumes that Autumn is
dating Julian—making Felicia believe that she’s going behind Autumn’s back with Julian was also Cash’s idea—and Autumn thinks it’s hilarious that Felicia is so racked with guilt. It serves her right to have to suffer once in a while.

The doorbell rings. That must be Julian now. On her way to let him in, she pops a peppermint into her mouth and crunches down on it with her teeth.

At the door Julian barely masks his contempt for her, but once they’re in the living room with Cash and seated around the coffee table, he’s all respect and compliments. Autumn admires Cash for having that kind of power over Julian.

“Why is this job taking you so long?” Cash asks, cutting through Julian’s fawning.

Julian leans back in his chair. “Cassius,” he says, addressing Cash by his real name. “This kind of job takes finesse. If there’s a problem—”

“The problem is that you’re not following the plan,” Cash says. “You’re supposed to be driving Felicia to suicide, not falling in love with her.”

Suicide?
Cash didn’t tell Autumn about the suicide angle. She may be fed up with Felicia getting all the attention, but she doesn’t want her to get hurt or to
die
. A chill comes over her. What has she gotten herself into?

“I need time to put all the pieces in place, that’s all,” Julian insists, flustered.

Autumn’s head spins. “Cash, why are you talking about suicide? That’s not what I agreed to.” She only wanted to teach Felicia a lesson.

Cash turns to her, puts his hand on her knee. His blue eyes are like deep pools, and she gets lost in them. The room blurs. Everything slows down. Her heartbeat. Her breathing. Her thoughts. Cash loves her and only wants the best for her. She has to listen to him. “Sometimes we have to make small sacrifices for the greater good,” he says.

“Yes, you’re right. The greater good.”

Julian snorts with disgust. “Why don’t you compel Felicia to commit suicide, since you obviously have no problem compelling Autumn to hate her.” Autumn’s mind is fuzzy, but she knows Cash is on her side. Felicia doesn’t care about anyone but herself, and she deserves what’s coming to her.

“I wish. But unfortunately, we can only bring desires to the surface that are already there, however small. In any case, I’m taking over from here on out,” Cash says to Julian. “You failed. You’re being recalled to Level Two and you can forget living on Earth.”

Julian shakes his head. “We have a plan for tonight. Right, Autumn?”

Autumn smiles, anticipating the look on Felicia’s face when she tells her that she and Julian kissed. Never mind that they didn’t. “We do.” She scoots closer to Cash on the sofa and runs her fingers lightly over his collarbone. “Give Julian another chance. It will be awesome.”

Cash puts his arm around her. “If you say so. But, Julian—dump Felicia tonight and then get out of town. Can you do that?”

Julian nods. “Of course.”

“Good.” Cash gives him an authoritative stare as Julian slinks out.

“I’ll see you later,” Autumn calls behind him. “Ten o’clock!”

The door slamming is his only response. “I don’t like him.” Autumn curls her lip and reaches for her flask of vodka. She takes a gulp, and some of it runs down her chin. Cash licks it off her face and then kisses her hard. It makes her feel the right amount of reckless.

“Nobody likes him,” Cash says. “He has been Earth-obsessed ever since the fissure and watching Felicia get mugged. He thinks he’s clever about hiding it, but he’s not.”

“Will you let him stay?”

“If he’s successful. But let’s not waste time discussing him,” Cash says with a devilishly seductive smile right before he bites her earlobe. “We have better things to do.”

Her phone vibrates on the table. It’s a text from Felicia that she has arrived at the field house. “Ooooh!” Autumn jumps up. “I’m so ready for my fight scene.”

“You’ll be great.” Cash follows her to her room, where she picks up her chiffon wrap and lets him drape it around her shoulders. “And don’t forget your halo.”

I exit Autumn’s memory and stare at her, openmouthed. Cash and Julian and my best friend were conspiring against me. I may have betrayed Autumn, but she betrayed me, too.

thirty-five

DENIAL AND ANGER weigh down my chest. This cannot be the same girl who wrote stories with me, who baked sugar cookies with me, and who gave me a charm bracelet and called me her best friend. “Why did you do it?” I scoot forward, readjusting my position so that my leg presses down on her spine and my knee immobilizes her neck. I push down on her shoulders, grinding her cheek into the stone floor.

The chamber fills with Autumn’s frenetic laughter. She twists violently under me, flipping onto her back and throwing me off balance. I fall onto my side, banging my knee. Before I can get up, she lunges forward and grabs my neck with both hands. “I did it for love.”

“You think Cash loves you?” I choke out. “He’s a Morati. He has bigger plans than you!”

“He’s all I ever wanted. He sees
me
. He told me it’s
my
time to shine. Everyone treats you like you’re some special snowflake. But you’re not.”

“You’re right. I’m not a snowflake.” I put my palms together, like I’m praying. I thrust them upward and slam my arms apart in a
V
, tearing her arms off my neck and making her stumble onto her butt. “I’m a snowstorm.”

I place my palm against her forehead and focus my energy on her frontal lobe like Furukama taught me, so I can mind stun and incapacitate her, but she slaps my hand away and laughs. “You keep forgetting I’ve been here longer than you. And you’re not the only one who had an angel to train with. Cash will be here soon.”

Brady appears in my field of vision. He got my message. “Yeah, well you keep forgetting who your real friends are,” I say. Brady slides in next to me, and we both slam our hands against her forehead at the same time.

With both of us focusing our energy on her frontal lobe, Autumn’s resistance crumbles and she loses consciousness.

“What the heck is going on down here? Where’s the key to the cells?” He pats Autumn down but doesn’t find it. If we had it, we could lock Autumn in while we look for Furukama.

“It fell into the pit. Autumn tried to throw Emilia down it too.”

“I don’t believe it.” He rises slowly.

“I read her memories. She’s working with the Morati. Cash is one of them.”

“Cash? Aw, hell.”

“How’d you know she had a key?” I ask.

“It’s the only way to open the cells. And only Furukama has got a key.”

“There’s no way he gave it to her willingly.”

We both know what that means. Somehow Autumn incapacitated Furukama to get the key. She took out two guards. There’s no way to restrain her. She’ll wake up soon, and she said Cash was on his way, probably with the Morati cavalry in tow. We are screwed.

Emilia coughs and groans, lifting her head with effort.

“Did Furukama interrogate her?” I point at Emilia.