Dust and Roses: Book Two of the Dust Trilogy (18 page)

She sat forward nodding enthusiastically.
I wondered how long that feeling would last after I told her what the cost
would be. “Really? That’s awesome! How?”

Clearing my throat and glancing around, I
realized how insane it was going to sound. I was totally prepared for Rose to
freak and walk out. “A special offering has to be made to the Archangels. It
has to be placed in a platinum box.”

She stirred her melting smoothie with her
straw. “Okay.”

“You have two hearts,” I told her.

Rose narrowed her eyes at me. “Yeah. I’m
aware of my anatomy. What does that have to do with anything?”

 “The offering has to be the heart of
a Nephilim and the ground bone of a Banshee. A part of a Taker and Giver—life
and death.”

Rose stared at me for a moment, clasping
her smoothie. “But, wait . . . I’m a Nephilim.”  

“As far as we know, you’re the only one
around.” Breed-mixing was rare, there were only about ten cases amongst
thousands of creatures, and Rose and I were two of them, the only two we knew
of.

She shook her head. “That doesn’t sound
right.”

“It is. My dad—our dad told me. He’s an
Angel. He would know and he wouldn’t give me any wrong information.”

Rose’s eyes looked everywhere. “So, if you
need my heart, does that mean—”

“No, you won’t die. I know someone who can
remove one. It won’t even leave a scar. She’ll have to remove a part of my bone
too.” I had been trying not to think about how my bone would get taken from my
body. I didn’t want to think about it. Even as I spoke to Rose, I wasn’t sure I
could go through with it myself.

Rose frowned. “I don’t know. That’s a huge
thing to ask.”

I knew it was. “Think of all the lives
we’ll save. The surgery will be quick and painless. There’s nothing to worry
about.”

“Who would do it?”

I swallowed hard. “A Harpy named Cadence.
She takes care of all the lair’s medical needs. She’d take great care of us.”

Rose’s eyes widened. “You want me to put
my life in the hands of a Taker? I’m supposed to trust her to cut me open,
remove one of my hearts, and not kill me?”

It did sound crazy. I was having a hard
time trusting Cadence myself, but it was a risk I was willing to take for
Fletcher. “Rose, if you and I don’t do this, half of us will die. Do you want
that? I know it sounds crazy but I need you to trust me on this.”

Rose practically jumped out of her seat
when a woman entered the smoothie shop. I had the crushing feeling she was
about to say no.

“Rose, my Gemini is dying. Do you know who
my Gemini is?”

She locked eyes with me. “Who?”

“Fletcher. Fletcher’s dying.” The words
sounded so wrong coming from my mouth, but they were true.

“Fletcher,” she whispered. The way she
said his name, I could tell she loved him.

“He’s very weak. He doesn’t have much
time.”

Rose looked down at her pink-glittered finger
nails for a long time. “Uh, okay.”

“Really?”

She paused for a moment, then nodded.
“Yeah. I’ll do it.”

I slid my phone into my pocket and stood.
I couldn’t miss the train.  “Thank you so much, Rose. I need to sit down
with Cadence, then I’ll contact you. Thanks for being open to this. See you
later.”

“Arden?” Rose called as I headed for the
door.

I turned to face her. “Yeah?”

“Um, I . . . I’d like to meet them one day
soon.”

I nodded and then continued on my way. I
knew she would want to meet my family one day and for some reason, it scared
me.

Hollis watched the monitors while
scribbling in a notebook. Every few moments, he would go over to the file cabinet
and look through some papers. “Arden, I don’t have time for this right now.”

I had been trying to tell him that I had a
solution to our problems but he wasn’t listening. “Hollis, can you stop for
just a second?”

“Can’t. I think I’m on my Gemini’s trail
and three Takers from other states are unaccounted for. The Givers are winning.
I’ll be damned if my Gemini takes me out.”

I grabbed his massive arm to slow him
down. “That’s what I’m trying to talk to you about. I know how to stop this.
You won’t have to worry about your Gemini.”

Hollis looked down from where he towered
over me. “You know how to stop it? How then?”

“We need Nephilim heart and a death
fairy’s bone dust. We have to make an offering of it to the Archs.”

Hollis yanked his arm away from me. “We’re
not offering those assholes anything. You have any idea how weak this will make
us look? They put this curse on us and their own people. Now we’re supposed to
cower to them and make them some offering? We’re not doing that. We’re going to
wipe out their freaking Giver children and make them regret the day they put
this curse on us.”

I followed him as he bounced back and
forth around the room. “Think about it. You just said yourself that three
Takers are unaccounted for. You want more to die? This is not about getting
back at the Angels or holding on to your pride. This is about saving lives.
Besides, it’s not just an offering from us, it takes a Giver’s heart.”

Hollis scowled at me. I took a step back
from him. “You’re only saying that because your father’s a damn Angel. We’re
not making them any offering. Do you know what an offering symbolizes? It’s a
gift someone makes as a form of worship and respect.”

I thought about Fletcher wasting away in his
bed. I had to get through to Hollis and the others. Before I could say anything
else, Violet stuck her head in the room. “Hollis, they just reported another
one. Your father wants to see you right away.”

“Another what?” I asked.

Violet looked at me as if she’d just
noticed me standing there for the first time. “Another Taker has turned up
missing. A Satyr in California.”

I threw Hollis a sharp look. “Stop this.
Clearly we’re losing and we’re going to keep losing. These kids shouldn’t lose
their lives because you’re being stubborn.”

Violet’s gaze shifted back and forth
between the two of us. Hollis looked as if he were going to say something to
me, but stopped and patted Violet on the head. “Thanks, Cuddle Bug. I’ll be
right there.”

She scowled at him and left the room.

“You shouldn’t do that,” I told him.

He edged closer to the door. Wouldn’t want
to keep his psychopath of a father waiting. “Do what?”

“Call her Cuddle Bug. It only makes her
angry.”

Hollis checked his phone. “Yeah, whatever.
Why don’t you worry about Cuddle Bug and her feelings? I have more important
things to take care of.”

I sighed. Hollis had never been this
difficult. It was always the others. “Where’s Cadence?” I asked before he could
escape.

Hollis shrugged. “Somewhere avoiding me.
She hasn’t spoken to me for a couple of days. Hell if I know what I did.”

Cadence was really who I needed to talk
to, because if she refused to do the procedure, none of this even mattered. I
wouldn’t call her a doctor exactly, but she was good at cutting people open and
mending them back up. She’d even done it to me when she inserted a tracking
device into my thigh months ago when Hollis had first brought me to the lair.
The only problem with needing Cadence was that she was a hundred times harder
to deal with than Hollis. I wondered where she was and why she was avoiding
him.

I traveled down the long hallway of
bedrooms. I had never been in Cadence’s room, but I figured hers was somewhere
toward the end.  Poking my head in each open door, I found Cadence sitting
cross-legged on a bed writing in what looked like a journal. I never pictured
her as the kind of girl that would do that. I wondered what she was writing
about.

When I knocked on the door frame, her head
shot up and she slammed the journal shut. “What do you want?”

Like Hollis’ bedroom, Cadence’s was bare.
The walls were white. A small wooden dresser took up one corner while a
twin-sized bed with a maroon bed spread sat in another. I figured all their
bedrooms were this simple.

My gaze landed on her pillow which was
covered with shreds of lilac material that were sickeningly familiar. My heart
pounded in my chest as I thought about how hard I had worked on that dress.
Poor Lady. I swallowed my anger. I needed Cadence’s help so the last thing I
needed was for the two of us to have a big blow-out, but we were going to talk
about that dress.

“What happened?” I asked, breathing
patiently.

She looked at the shredded dress and
rolled her eyes as if it were nothing—used toilet paper or something. “Oh, I
guess it really wasn’t my style after all.”

She was lying. I saw the way her eyes lit
up when she pulled Lady from the box. Things hadn’t gone the way she hoped they
would with Hollis. I sat on the edge of her bed. “Tell me.”

She sighed impatiently. “There’s nothing
to tell. It doesn’t matter what I do or what I wear, he’ll never see me the way
I want him to.”

Hollis had obviously done something to
hurt her feelings. “What did he say?”

“Well at first he didn’t say anything. He
just laughed and laughed and laughed and asked me what I was doing. I told him
I wanted to try wearing a dress and he said that dresses weren’t my thing. What
does that even mean?”

I felt horrible because I was the one who
had talked her into that. “It means he likes you just the way you are already.”

Cadence stuffed the shredded dress into
her pillow case. “Yeah, except he doesn’t.”

I really wanted to help Cadence, but there
was something much more important at hand and I needed to focus. “Hey, Cadence.
I need to ask you a favor.”

Cadence threw her head back and chuckled.
“Of course you do, Arden. You always need a favor. Just tell me what it is so I
can say no.”

Taking a deep breath, I figured I should
start with the easier thing first. “I need you to remove a bone from me. Just a
small one.”

Cadence picked her journal up and stuffed
it in her top dresser drawer underneath some clothes. “You want me to cut you
open? Sure. I have some time right now.”

I couldn’t tell whether she was joking or not.
Probably not. “Cadence, I’m serious. I need a piece of my bone for an offering
to stop the curse.” 

“What are you talking about?”

I told her everything. Fortunately, her
reaction was different from Hollis’. She was all for stopping the curse.

“You’re absolutely sure this is going to
work?”

I nodded. “I know you guys don’t trust
Givers but my father wouldn’t lead me wrong.”

The small bit of hope in her eyes
disappeared. “Your bone is one thing, I can do that, but the Nephilim’s heart?
Not gonna happen.”

“I know a Nephilim and she’s agreed to it.
All we need is for you to do the procedures.”

“You got a Nephilim to go along with
this?” If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that Cadence seemed impressed.
“Okay, I’ll do it. Just tell me when,” she said.

I was about to leave but there was still
something else we had to worry about. We still had a problem. A HUGE problem.
“What about Mr. Mason and the sixth tunnel? What are we going to do about that?”
If that tunnel was opened, the curse wouldn’t even matter. We’d all be done
for.

Cadence slid her feet into some boots
sitting beside her bed. “Would you drop that already? I told you, we heard him
wrong, that’s all. I have to get the others ready for snapperwhip hunting.”

She left me standing alone in her bedroom.
As far as Mr. Mason was concerned, no matter what she said, Cadence knew just
as well as I, that we had a terrible problem.

Outside it was raining again. When I had
gotten to the lair, the weather had been bright and sunny without a cloud in
the sky. Now the sky was an ugly, dull gray and rain was falling in sheets.
This storm wasn’t courtesy of Mother Nature. I was soaked within seconds as I
ran home.

At the end of my block, I stopped in front
of Mrs. Nelson’s house. The place was dark and the curtains were drawn. I
thought about Dad’s words. Telling Mrs. Nelson about my premonition wouldn’t
really help her in his opinion. She wouldn’t believe me and I would probably do
nothing but scare her. I couldn’t help but think that if it were me, how I
would want to know. Maybe she could do something to prevent it.

I rang her doorbell and stood on her front
porch shivering. I hugged myself as a bolt of lightning brightened the sky.
Damn, Violet.

Mrs. Nelson took a moment to come to the
door. Her eyes looked weary, as if she had been sleeping. She stared at me as
she adjusted her sweater. She had skipped one of the button holes. “Arden?”

“Hey, Mrs. Nelson. I’m sorry to bother
you, but I wanted to talk to you about something important. Can I come inside
for a minute?”

Her brow furrowed with concern and I
couldn’t say that I blamed her. She opened the door wider and motioned for me
to come inside.

Her living room was cluttered with
newspapers, magazines, and unfolded laundry. The one clear surface was her
coffee table where a black cat lay curled up on top and a white and gray kitty
sat underneath.

The walls were filled with portraits of
her and Mr. Nelson. I remembered him passing away when I was in elementary
school.

Mrs. Nelson grabbed a pile of laundry in
her arms and tossed it onto the other couch. “Have a seat.”

I did as she said. She settled down beside
me since there was nowhere else to sit. I had no idea what the best way to do
this was, so I figured I would just come out and say it. Either way, it was
going to be bad.

She watched me expectantly. I took her
thin, wrinkled hands into mine. They were cold and trembling. Don’t draw this
out, Arden. Just tell her.

“Mrs. Nelson, this is really hard to
explain so I’ll just tell you the gist of it. I get these premonitions about
people, like when they’re about to die.”

The black kitty meowed and bounded out of
the room like it knew what I was about to say. Mrs. Nelson narrowed her eyes at
me and I knew she was on the verge of throwing me out. “Excuse me.”

I couldn’t tell her I was part Banshee. I
couldn’t tell her any of that. It would only make what I was telling her even
more unbelievable. “I get signs.” Really, this was only the second time it had
happened. “I just . . . I know something bad is about to happen to you.”

“Like I’m going to die?” Her eyes were
suddenly wide and filled with fear. Dad was right. This was a horrible thing to
do to someone.

I nodded because I couldn’t say the words
again.

Mrs. Nelson’s fear quickly turned to
anger. “Is this some kind of sick joke? Don’t you kids have anything better to
do with your time? You think this is funny?”

“No, Mrs. Nelson. This isn’t a joke.”

She jumped up from her couch and pointed
to the door. “Out now. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

For some reason I was, even though I
hadn’t done anything wrong. Nothing I could say would make her believe me, so I
left. Mrs. Nelson slammed her door behind me.

When I got home Mom was in the kitchen on
the phone. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Nelson. I don’t know what got into her. She just
walked in. I’ll talk to her about it right now. Uh-huh . . . uh-huh. Okay.
Good-bye now.”

I stood in the living room frozen, just
waiting for Mom to go off. She rounded the corner and glared at me. “Didn’t
your father tell you the other night not to do this? Didn’t he warn you that
this very thing would happen? She doesn’t believe you and she thinks you’re
crazy.”

“I tried to obey Dad but I wouldn’t be
able to live with myself if I hadn’t told her. I don’t care if she’s mad at me.
At least I tried. At least I did my part.”

Mom shook her head. She didn’t get it.
“Arden, you—”

“No, Mom. I’m sorry but you have no idea
what this life is like. Nobody does. You think I like this? Do you know what it
feels like to know when someone’s going to die? You’re not the one who has to
live with the guilt of not telling them. I do!”

I flew up the stairs and to my room,
throwing myself across my bed. Jealous thoughts filled my head as I thought
about Rose and how she wouldn’t be giving my parents or anyone these problems.

That evening Wiley texted me that he
wanted to take me for a drive. I told him no and then he sent me a copy of the
video which I promptly deleted without watching. I didn’t appreciate being
threatened but I had no idea how to stop it. He pulled into my driveway at
seven on the dot just as he’d promised.