Conspiracy Boy (Angel Academy) (12 page)

“There’s water ahead. I can hear it,” I said after a few minutes of wandering. It sounded like someone had left the faucet running and the bathtub had overflowed—more of a trickle than a gush. “It’s a creek or something. This way.”

He hung back, shivering. “You think water will make things better?”

“Water flow means elevation. Elevation means caves, and caves mean warmer temps,” I told him. “Besides, there might be something dry we can burn.”

Or you could use the bond to keep you warm.

The evil thought prodded the back of my skull, but I shoved it away. I didn’t care how good of a kisser he was. The thought of touching him made me indescribably wiggy.

After a few more minutes, my skin felt raw from the cold, and my hands had gone numb. I wasn’t entirely sure I could make it to the waterline, wherever that was. Apparently, Luc had the same issue.

“I need to sit down,” he said and squatted on a tree root.

I stopped walking.

The moon had rallied and sat high and small on the horizon, clouded by the continued unreasonable snowfall. All I could do was stare at it.

This
was how the universe decided to behave tonight?
Really?

The whole thing made me wish I’d paid attention to Jack’s blather about astronomy and direction finding and constellations being helpful for more than determining whether I’d have a good fashion month. If I’d remembered any of that stuff, I might have been more useful than a toadstool. I might also have been able to think about something besides how comforting Luc had felt pressed up against me and what a bad person I was for knowing that.

Think, Amelie.

At the moment, the only tools I had were vague night vision and a shaky awareness that moss grows on the north side of trees. Not enough to solve anything real, and definitely not enough to guide us to the nearest Starbucks. More than anything, I wanted to call Jack—he was probably already texting me like crazy. But with my cell phone out of commission, I couldn’t even reach him.

Defeated, I slumped to the ground next to Luc. “Got any ideas? Because if not, then I think we might be screwed.”

Before Luc could reply, a grove of evergreens rustled beside us, sending a scatter of snow over my shoulders.

“
Screwed
, huh?” The guy behind me sighed and lowered his crossbow. “That’s putting it mildly.”

I’d love to say there wasn’t much that could have surprised me, but that would be naive and stupid, two things which I am not. Still, it was with considerable shock that I scrambled to my feet.

“Hi, Ami.” Alec Charbonnet smiled. “Or should I say, little sis?”

Chapter Twelve:

Secrets and Snowdrifts

I have this theory.

Granted, I have lots of theories, including one about the demonic nature of cottage cheese and another about meerkats being from outer space. But the theory I’m talking about is the one that God hates me. If the evening’s events were any indication, he clearly did.

“Yo, babe,” Alec called as we stumbled through the front door. “I’m home.”

Home
, indeed.

At first glance, it wasn’t the kind of place I would have envisioned Lisa living in. In fact, apart from a homeless mountain man, it wasn’t the kind of place I envisioned any human living in. Rough-hewn beams huddled together in an A-frame design with muddy grout filling the gaps and a few beams lashed to a support post in the center. At the far end, a stone fireplace stood near a garage-sale couch, where orange flames leaped invitingly at a metal screen. Despite the rustic look of the place, I instantly wanted to climb onto the couch and fall asleep.

“Did you find out what set off the alarms?” Lisa hollered down from a makeshift loft area in the far corner—the bedroom, if I had to guess. It was far enough that the fireplace smoke stayed away, but close enough that warmth from the fire would make it a decent place to sleep.

“Matter of fact, I did.”

Alec lifted the crossbow and quiver off his shoulder and chucked them on a shelf next to an ancient-looking microwave. For lack of a better term, I found myself mentally labeling that as the kitchenette.

“Don’t get too excited,” he added. “It’s not dinner.”

With an impatient
thump
, Lisa appeared at the top of the stairs, holding a basket of laundry. She looked beautiful, as always. Sky-blue eyes, wide set in a perfectly heart-shaped face. Cascades of chestnut hair fell in uneven tumbles around her shoulders.

As soon as she saw me, she froze.

I can’t say I hadn’t thought about this before—seeing her again. During countless insomniac nights, I’d played out what I would say when it happened.
If
it happened. The threats, the tears, the accusations. Of course, none of those things popped to mind. So I just stared at her.

Waiting.

I didn’t have to wait long.

“Oh my God, Ami!” She dropped the basket and flew down the stairs, hair fluttering around her in a cloud of brunette fire. I actually had to elbow Luc on to the couch next to Alec so he didn’t fall over when she tackled me. “Where’ve you been? It’s been, like, forever since I sent that note!”

I could practically see the exclamation points falling off her words. My mouth opened to reply, but she cut me off.

“Thank God you came. I thought maybe you wouldn’t forgive me. And if you didn’t, I just knew I’d die.” She tightened the bear hug for a drama-filled moment and then grabbed my hand to start dragging me toward the back door. “Alec?”

“Babe?”

“Ami and I are going out for a bit.”

He nodded. “Nether?”

“Yup.” She paused. “And could you fix us popcorn, please? Emotional reunions totally wipe me out.”

Sighing, Alec hoisted himself off the couch and headed toward the kitchenette. Luc didn’t seem to mind. Within a few seconds, he’d stretched out under a discarded afghan and started shivering peacefully.

I pried my hand out of Lisa’s.

“What’s wrong?”

“What’s
wrong
? You single-handedly murdered dozens of innocent Guardians, and you’re asking
me
what’s
wrong
?”

“Not single-handed,” Alec chimed in from the kitchenette. “I helped.”

“True story. He took out most of them. I only killed eight.”

“Nine,” Alec corrected. “Jackson.”

Lisa frowned. “He didn’t stay dead.”

“Like that makes a difference,” I snapped. “Lis, you
murdered
people. And you practically destroyed poor Matt. Do you have any idea what went down after you left? How crazy things have gotten?”

Lisa folded her hands behind her and looked at the ground. “That’s not my fault. Half of what’s happening now is exactly what Alec and I were trying to prevent. Besides, Matt’s with Katie. Jack’s alive. And you’re with…
him
.” She glanced at Luc with what could only be described as confusion. “Why
are
you with him, anyway? Not that I disapprove, but we kind of thought you’d be portal jumping with Jack.”

“So did I,” I said. On the couch, Luc’s shivers had transitioned into hard-core hypothermia with a side of snoring.

“What’d you do to him?” Lisa asked.

“I healed him.”

“But he looks like crap.”

“Does it seem like I need feedback right now?”

She arched an eyebrow. “Remind me never to let you touch Alec.”

“Lisa.” I leveled her with a glare. “I promise if I ever lay a hand on Alec, it will be with the intent of killing him. Now, can we not talk about this, please?”

“Absolutely.” Lisa tugged on my hand again. “Now, come on. There’s someone you need to meet, and we don’t have much time.”

Reluctantly, I followed her out the back door to a grove of pine trees clustered around a tiny underground spring. It must have been the same water feature I’d heard from the woods, which meant Lisa’s exit locus code really had dumped us in her backyard.

“Wait,” I said.

“What?”

I hesitated. “I still don’t trust you. And I definitely don’t trust your boyfriend. If I go with you, can you guarantee Luc will be safe with him?”

“What do you mean?”

As much as my life would be simplified by Luc vanishing off the face of the planet, it didn’t seem quite right to leave him alone, undefended, with a guy who had tried to murder him just a few months ago. Granted, Alec didn’t seem like a killer psychopath at the moment, but he hadn’t seemed crazy last fall, either.

“I mean, your boyfriend isn’t going to accidentally trip and stab Luc with a broadsword, is he? I know he’s a pain in the ass, but he’s kind of
my
pain in the ass now.”

My sister squinted at me for a second. “Do you have a thing for him?”

I didn’t answer right away. Honestly, I didn’t know how to answer. No, I didn’t have a
thing
for Luc. I was in love with Jack. He was my bondmate. That all still felt true.

But it wasn’t that simple anymore. Luc meant something to me, too. The problem was, I had no idea how to define it.

“I just don’t want him dead, okay?”

She nodded. “You may not realize this, but Luc Montaigne could be the only person standing between the Guardians and a full-on war. He’s safer with Alec than styling product at a gamer convention. Now, hurry up. We’re running low on time.”

I stared at her back as she made her way into the tree grove. Despite her assurances, it still left a knot in my belly to leave Luc in that cabin. What did that mean, that he was the only thing keeping us from a war? Weren’t the Guardians already
at
war?

And where the hell were we going in the middle of the night?

Lisa tromped ahead through the clearing until she got to the spring, and then climbed onto a rocky ledge overlooking the water pool. Moonlight bled through the trees, casting silver shadows on her hair.

As beautiful and confident as she’d always been, it had never occurred to me how much she resembled our mother. Now, the similarities seemed impossible to ignore. Chestnut curls, defined brow line, sloped jaw with the ever-so-slight underbite. Even Lisa’s eyes were lit with the same pain and determination I’d seen so often in Mom. With Mom, it made sense—all the battles she’d seen, all the loss she’d experienced. In Lisa, I’d always assumed it was just obsessiveness over grades and boys and stupid stuff. I could see it all now—the tightness of her features, the lost-in-thought look, like she was holding her breath until life was safe to live again. After a moment, she turned to me, and the pained expression vanished under a well-practiced smile.

“Ready?” she asked, extending a hand.

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be ready for, so I didn’t respond right away. It took me a full second of staring at her hand before it occurred to me that I should take it.

“Please don’t kill me.”

“I’m not a masochist.”

Good point.
It wasn’t like she
could
kill me, unless she wanted to die herself. No amount of distance or time would change that—we’d always be two sides of the same coin, two halves of the same soul. If I died, she died with me. She could probably torture me without a ton of repercussions, but I really wasn’t feeling the psycho vibe from her. In a way, it would be easier if she
was
bat-poop crazy, since at least then I wouldn’t feel too bad about turning her in to the proper authorities. As it was, she still just felt like Lisa. My best friend. My sister.

Her hand felt warm in mine.

“Okay.” She pulled me on to the rock. “Close your eyes and don’t let go of me.”

I let my eyes flutter shut as she flattened a hand to the air. It was similar to what I did before a portal jump, but without the wards. Which meant wherever we were going, it probably wouldn’t take us too far into the Crossworlds. Definitely not into deep subterranean territory.

“
Semper noctis,
” she whispered.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then
nothing
started to happen very loudly. The water shut off. The air stopped moving. The leaves quit rustling. Even the moonlight seemed to freeze in its path.

I cracked an eyelid to see what was up and immediately shut my eye again. Not that I get freaked out easily. I don’t, for the record. But when you instantaneously go from a semi-quaint forest into a blackened pit of hell, it’s a bit difficult to maintain that whole neutral-indifference thing.

“Holy freaking hell, Lisa,” I muttered, letting my eyes creep open. “Where on God’s green earth are we?”

“We’re not on God’s green earth,” she said, smiling. “We’re in holy freaking hell. Let’s go meet the natives.”

A spray of dust and ash went up around her ankles as she leaped off the rocky ledge into a pile of bones. If you could still call them bones. Honestly, they looked more like the schmutz bones might become if you left them in an incinerator for too long, all dark and corroded at the edges.

It didn’t matter that we weren’t freezing our butts off anymore. I still wouldn’t have traded my boots and leggings for the world.

We traipsed across the grosstastic desert of death for another few minutes before Lisa bothered to speak. “So, does Jack know?”

“Does Jack know what?”

“That you and Luc are, like,
involved.
”

I kicked a pile of bones out of my way before responding. “Luc and I aren’t involved. Not in the way you’re thinking, anyway. I’m his fledgling, that’s all.”

“But you channeled together.”

“So?”

“So, that’s not really fledgling stuff,” she pointed out.

Sigh.
This was
so
not a conversation I wanted to have with her. “New topic, please.”

“Alec and I set up charms around our whole perimeter to disable channels. So when you said you healed him—”

“This isn’t a different topic, Lisa.”

“—I knew something had to be up. You guys have a bond thing, don’t you?” She smiled. “Have you kissed him yet?”

I drew in a deep breath—like scorched dust in my lungs—and let it out slowly. Sometimes I hated how smart she was. Why didn’t I get the brains and she get the natural ability to annoy people?

The landscape had shifted subtly from apocalyptic wasteland to
suburban
apocalyptic wasteland, such that we were now walking down an abandoned street. On either side, colorless houses lay in various stages of decay and disrepair, street signs hung limply from their posts, and burned-out vehicles littered the front lawns. Except I’m not sure you could call them lawns, since there wasn’t a single blade of grass anywhere.

“Where are we?”

Lisa looked around thoughtfully before answering. “Missouri, I think.”

I kicked a bullet-riddled soda can to the curb. “They may have stretched the truth a bit in their tourism pamphlets.”

“Not the
real
Missouri, dummy. The one on the Nether.”

I stopped next to a decapitated doll with a melted left foot. “Do I want to ask?”

“Probably not,” she said. “Though I will say if you paid attention at school, you’d probably already know about this place.”

I kicked the doll out of the way and kept walking. Because,
obviously,
everybody knows about the Nether, right?

“Just a thought,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could maybe have a class at St. Michael’s titled Crap You Need to Know When Coping With an Impending Apocalypse?”

“You should mention it to Henry,” Lisa suggested. “Not that it would help you. How’s he doing, by the way?”

“Depressed,” I said. “Someone murdered his bondmate.”

She didn’t even turn around. Or slow down. If anything, she picked up the pace as we rounded the corner to a new and even more dilapidated cul-de-sac. On second thought, maybe this one just looked more dilapidated because of the contrast.

At the end of the block, surrounded by a lush green lawn and fluffy flowering trees, stood an adorable yellow craftsman house. It was the kind of house you’d see on insurance commercials when they’re trying to make you feel comfortable and safe even though a tornado’s about to rip the roof off your minivan.

It totally failed.

The sight of that quaint little haven, lit by gentle afternoon sunlight—the same sun that burned so harshly on every other square inch of this pit—sent the most hellacious trail of willies down my spine, I didn’t think I’d ever recover.

“We’re all gonna die, aren’t we?”

“Probably.” Lisa shrugged. “But don’t be too dramatic. These are good people you’re about to meet.”

“That’s what everyone said about the Kardashians.”

She ignored me as we trudged up the drive to the front door. It was odd the way the wards flexed over my skin when we passed through the bubble of doom that separated the house from the neighborhood. A stiff crackle, but no acid shock. This was how the wards used to feel at St. Michael’s, before Hansen got her sadistic, little paws into them.