Angela took a second to breathe again. Her chest hurt and her ears were ringing a little. “Wouldn’t you . . . have done the same?”
“No,” Kim said, his face reappearing, “because I would have known it meant certain death. So either you don’t have any sense of self-preservation, or you know that killing yourself isn’t a possibility.” His warm mouth tickled the rim of her ear. “You were holding out on me, Angela. There’s more to you than those paintings and dreams.” His finger brushed the tights near her thigh. Ugly purple scars peeked through a hole in the fabric. “Where did these scars come from, by the way? Would it be an insult to call them self-inflicted?”
“The first day we met—” Sophia’s face was still out of sight, but her voice sounded too content. Like a child who’d found her mother at last. “The first day we met, I caught her trying to jump off the roof. She’s reckless. Suicidal.”
Crazy, you mean.
Sophia knelt down and brushed the hair from Angela’s cheeks. Her curls had frizzed over in the humidity, but her face remained lovely and chinalike. Perfect, especially with that smile. “I’m glad you’re all right.”
And I do feel crazy. When she says things like that, it makes me wish it had all been for her.
“What happened?” Angela moved to sit up, but her muscles felt like string, the sorority ring around her finger heavy as a gold boulder. “Where did Stephanie and the others go?”
“Back to where it’s safe. Probably to the Pentacle House, where she can plan how to deal with you best.”
“How to deal with me . . .”
“You weren’t supposed to succeed at anything tonight, Angela. Or was my ex-girlfriend’s envy lost on you? She was hoping you’d fail and end up Lyrica’s clone for the next few years of your life.” Kim lifted her gently by the shoulders, his hands as warm as the night they’d kissed. “Although I doubt that kind of mercy will remain in her much longer.”
Ex-girlfriend, he’d said. Angela slumped against his chest, trying to ingest the enormity of what had happened. Kim’s heart beat steadily, all his fear during the invocation replaced by a certainty that calmed her and made her taste his skin, his flesh, all over again.
Sophia’s interruption was more than a coincidence. Her words had a short clip to them, jealous almost. “Maribel is dying. I’m going to at least make her comfortable—”
“Don’t take another step . . .”
Angela froze instinctively.
The new voice had a cruel rasp to it, and a soft hiss trailed at the edge of each word, honing their preciseness. She stared into the darkness surrounding the outer edges of the candlelight. Two large, yellow eyes flashed in the shadows, narrowing at Sophia in warning. They held their own light, glowing, phosphorescent, mind-numbing.
“Are you planning to keep her for yourself?” Sophia asked.
There was the slightest hint of a growl. “What do you think?”
It has a female voice.
Kim clasped Angela’s arm, as if he knew she might try to escape. As if he knew what her reaction was going to be when she saw what crouched beside Maribel. “Don’t show your fear,” he murmured softly. “It will work against you. I promise. Troy”—his voice grew louder—“you know this one is going to die.”
“Of course I do.” The eyes flashed open again, their pupils huge. Whatever she was, she began to pace softly beyond the reach of Sophia’s candle. “And she’s mine. I brought her down, and I’ll be the one to finish the job.”
“Then please do,” Sophia said, moving away so that the light barely touched Maribel. “Before it becomes too painful. She was always . . . kind to me.”
Angela could barely breathe again, but this had nothing to do with being waterlogged. Her shivers had started, the symptoms of a hypothermia that wouldn’t kill her, but would ruin her night. Nina had a robe wrapped around her legs and waist, and now Kim opened the folds of his own robe, tucking Angela inside where she could lean fast to the warmth of his hard chest. Yet the world continued to fade, everything else lost beyond the spotlight that glimmered faintly on Maribel.
Then, without any more warning, she emerged.
An angel? A demon? But in the end, there was nothing to adequately compare her to. Troy—if that was really her name—had a pixie-pretty face, but one holding a mouthful of tiny knives, blood-stained, hiding behind lips the bluish shade of a corpse. Luminous eyes, savage and hungry, scrutinized Sophia with an air of cruelty only a hunter could express, and lengthy, batlike ears swiveled, catching the terrible sound of Maribel’s breathing. Troy’s skin was whiter than Kim’s—whiter than chalk—and yet her hair, her sharply curved wings, and her nails were a black too deep and dark to name.