Finale (24 page)

“Red apples are matched to boys’ names,” Marcie added. “Green to girls’.”

Fine! Whatever! Just get this over with,
I told myself. It wasn’t like I had anything to lose: Starting tomorrow, I was grounded. There were no blind dates in my future, game or no.

I dipped my face into the cold water. My nose bumped into one apple after another, but I couldn’t sink my teeth into any of them. I came up for air, and my ears rang with boos and jeering hisses.

“Give me a break!” I said. “I haven’t done this since I was five. That should say a lot about this game!” I added.

“Nora hasn’t had a blind date since she was five,” Marcie said, misinterpreting my meaning and adding her own commentary.

“You are
so
next up,” I told Marcie, glaring at her from my knees.

“If there is a next. Looks to me like you might be sucking face with apples all night,” she returned sweetly, and the crowd howled with amusement.

I plunged my head into the tub, snapping my teeth at apples. Water sloshed over the rim, drenching the front of my red devil costume. I came
this close
to grabbing an apple with my hand and pressing it into my mouth, but figured Marcie would disqualify the move. I wasn’t in the mood for a do-over. Just as I was about to come up for another breath, my front teeth crunched into a bloodred apple.

I surfaced, shaking water out of my hair to the sounds of cheering and applause. I chucked the apple at Marcie and grabbed a towel, patting my face dry.

“And the lucky guy who gets a blind date with our drowned rat here is . . .” Marcie pulled a sealed tube from the center of the cored apple. She uncurled the scroll of paper inside the tube, and her nose wrinkled. “Baruch? Just Baruch?” She pronounced it like
Bar-ooch
. “Am I saying that right?” she asked the audience.

No response. Already people were shuffling away now that the immediate entertainment had ended. I was grateful that
Bar-ooch
, whoever he was, appeared to be a fake entry. Either that, or he was too mortified to own up to a date with me.

Marcie stared me down, as though expecting me to admit I knew the guy.

“He’s not one of your friends?” I asked her as I scrunched the tips of my hair in the towel.

“No. I thought he was one of yours.”

I was on the verge of wondering whether this was another one of her bizarre games, when the lights in the house flickered. Once, twice, then they shut off completely. The music faded to eerie silence. There was a moment of stupefied confusion, and then the screaming started. Baffled and jumbled at first, rising to a hair-raising note of terror. The screams preceded the unmistakable thud of bodies being thrown against the living room walls.

“Nora!” Marcie cried. “What’s going on?”

I didn’t have a chance to answer. ce h? JusAn invisible force seemed to smack me back a step, rendering me paralyzed. Cold, crisp energy coiled up my body. The air crackled and flexed with the power of multiple fallen angels. Their sudden appearance in the farmhouse was as tangible as a gust of arctic wind. I didn’t know how many there were, or what they wanted, but I could feel them move deeper into the house, spreading out to fill every room.

“Nora, Nora. Come out and play,” a male voice singsonged. Unfamiliar and eerily falsetto.

I drew two shallow breaths. At least now I knew what they were after.

“I’ll find you my sweet, my pet,” he continued to croon in chilling tones.

He was close, so close. I crawled behind the family room sofa, but someone had beat me to the hiding place.

“Nora? Is that you? What’s going on?” Andy Smith asked me. He sat two chairs behind me in math and was Marcie’s friend Addyson’s boyfriend. I could feel the heat of his sweat rising off him.

“Quiet,” I instructed him softly.

“If you won’t come to me, I’ll come to you,” the fallen angel sang out.

His mental power sliced into me like a hot knife. I gasped as he felt around inside my mind, probing every which way, analyzing my thoughts to determine where I was hiding. I threw up wall after wall to stop him, but he plowed through them like I’d constructed them from dust. I tried to recall every defense mechanism Dante had taught me against mind-invasion, but the fallen angel moved too fast. He was always two—dangerous—steps ahead. I’d never had a fallen angel have this effect on me before. There was only one way to describe it. He was directing all his mental energy at me through a magnifying glass, amplifying the effect.

Without warning, an orange glow flared in my mind. A great furnace of energy blasted across my skin. I felt the heat of it melt my clothes. Flames chewed through the fabric, raking my skin with hot torment. In unimaginable agony, I coiled into a ball. I tucked my head between my knees, grinding my teeth to keep from screaming. The fire wasn’t real. It had to be a mind-trick. But I didn’t really believe it. The heat was so blistering, I was sure he really had lit me on fire.

“Stop!” I finally cried out, lunging into the open and writhing on the floor—anything to suffocate the flames devouring my flesh.

In that instant, the fiery heat vanished, though I hadn’t felt the water that had surely extinguished it. I lay on my back, my face bathed in sweat. It hurt to breathe.

“Everyone
out
,” the fallen angel commanded.

I’d almost forgotten there were others in the room. They would never forget this. How could they? Did they understand what was happening? Did they know this hadn’t been staged for the party? I prayed someone would go for help. But the farmhouse was so remote. It would take time to bring help.

And the only person who could help was Patch, and I had no way to reach him.

Legs and feet scrabbled across the floor, darting for the exit. Andy Smith dodged from behind the sofa and plowed frantically through the doorway.

es ewedI lifted my head just high enough to look at the fallen angel. It was dark, but I saw a towering, skeletal, half-naked silhouette. And two savage, glittering eyes.

The bare-chested fallen angel from the Devil’s Handbag and the woods watched me. His disfiguring hieroglyphics seemed to twitch and flutter over his skin, as though attached to invisible strings. In realty, I was sure they moved with the rise and fall of his breathing. I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the small, raw wound on his chest.

“I’m Baruch.” He pronounced it
Ba-rewk
.

I scooted to the corner of the room, wincing in pain.

“Cheshvan has started, and I don’t have a Nephil vassal,” he said. He kept his tone conversational, but there was no light in his eyes. No light, and no warmth.

Too much adrenaline made my legs feel twitchy and weighted. I didn’t have many options. I wasn’t strong enough to barrel past him. I couldn’t fight him—if I tried, one call to his buddies would leave me outnumbered in seconds. I cursed my mom for kicking Patch out. I needed him. I couldn’t do this on my own. If Patch were here, he’d know what to do.

Baruch traced his tongue along the inside of his lip. “The leader of the Black Hand’s army, and what am I to do with her?”

He plunged into my mind. I felt him do it, but I was powerless to prevent it. I was too exhausted to fight. The next thing I knew, I had crawled obediently over and lay at his feet like a dog. He kicked me onto my back, gazing predatorily down at me. I wanted to bargain with him, but my teeth were clenched so tightly, it was as if my jaw had been sewn shut.

You can’t argue with me,
he whispered hypnotically to my mind.
You can’t refuse me. Whatever I command, you must do.

I tried unsuccessfully to shut out his voice. If I could break his control, I could fight back. It was my only shot.

“How does it feel to be a brand-new Nephil?” he murmured in a cold, scornful voice. “The world is no place for a Nephil without a master. I’ll protect you from other fallen angels, Nora. From now
on, you belong to me.”

I
WOULD
NOT
SWEAR THE OATH. AND I WOULD NOT
allow him to drag the words out of me. No matter how much pain he heaped on me, I had to stay strong. But a resilient defense alone wasn’t going to be enough to endure this. I needed an offense, and fast.

Counter his mind-tricks with a few of your own,
I commanded myself. Dante had said mind-tricks were my best weapon. He’d said I was better at it than almost any Nephil he knew of. I’d fooled Patch. And I would fool Baruch now. I’d create my own reality and shove him so hard inside it, he wouldn’t know what hit him.

Squeezing my eyes shut to block out Baruch’s insidious chant to swear my oath, I catapulted myself inside his head. My greatest confidence came from knowing I’d consumed devilcraft earlier today. I didn’t trust my own strength, but the devilcraft made me a more powerful version of myself. It heightened my natural talents, including my aptitude for mind-tricks.

I fled down the dark, twisted corridors of Baruch’s mind, planting one explosion after another. I worked as quickly as I could, knowing that if I made one mistake, if I gave him any reason to think I was reconstructing his thoughts, if I left any evidence of my presence . . .

I chose the one thing I knew would alarm Baruch. Nephilim.

The Black Hand’s army!
I thought explosively at Baruch. I assailed his thoughts with an image of Dante rushing into the room, followed by twenty, thirty, no—
forty
Nephilim. I leaked pictures of their enraged eyes and hard fists into his subconscious. To make the vision even more convincing, I made Baruch think he was watching his own men being dragged away captive by Nephilim.

Despite all this, I felt Baruch’s resistance. He stood nailed to the spot, not reacting as he should have at being surrounded by Nephilim. I feared that he suspected something was off, and plunged ahead.

Mess with our leader, mess with us—all of us.
I flung Dante’s venomous words into Baruch’s mind.
Nora isn’t going to swear fealty now. Not now, not ever.
I created a picture of Dante picking up the poker from the fireplace toolkit and plunging it into Baruch’s wing scars. I shoved the vivid image deep inside Baruch’s brain.

I heard Baruch fall to his knees before I opened my eyes. He was down on all fours, shoulders hunched. An expression of utter shock seized his features. His eyes glazed, and spittle pooled in the corners of his mouth. His hands reached for his back, grasping at air. He was trying to remove the poker.

I exhaled in weary relief. He’d bought it. He’d bought my mind-trick.

A figure moved near the doorway.

I shot to my feet and snatched the real poker from the fireplace. I raised it off my shoulder, readying to swing, when Dabria stepped into view. In the semidarkness, her hair glowed glacial white. Her mouth was a grim line. “You mind-tricked him?” she guessed. “Nice. But we have to get out of here now,” she told me.

I almost laughed, cold and disbelieving. “What are you doing here?”

She stepped over Baruch’s unmoving body. “Patch asked me to take you somewhere safe.”

I shook my head. “You’re lying. Patch didn’t send you. He knows you’re the last person I’d ever go with.” I tightened my grip on the poker. If she came another step closer, I’d gladly shove it in her wing scars. And like Baruch, she’d be in a near-comatose state until she found a way to dislodge it.

“He didn’t have much of a choice. Between chasing out the other fallen angels who raided your party, and erasing the minds of your panic-stricken friends who are fleeing down the street as we speak, I’d say he’s a little preoccupied. Don’t the two of you have a secret code word for situations like this?” Dabria asked without a crack in her icy composure. “When I was with Patch, we had one. I would have trusted anyone Patch gave it to.”

I didn’t take my eyes off her. Secret code word? My, my, but she was good at worming under my skin.

“In fact, we do have a secret code,” I said. “It’s ‘Dabria’s a pathetic leech who doesn’t know when to move on.’” I covered my mouth. “Oh. I just realized why Patch probably failed to share our
secret code
”—scorn dripped from the words—“with you.”

Her lips thinned further.

“Either tell me what you really came here for, or I’m going to shove this thing in your scars so deep, it will be your new permanent appendage,” I told her.