Beside me, on his own rope, swung Leo. We were rocking back and forth, like unbalanced pendulums, back and forth, crossing close to each other at the bottom of the arcs.
“This imagery sucks,” I said, my words echoing like a beating drum.
Below me, the witch circle that trapped Hayyel and Sabina flamed high. It bore some resemblance to Evangelina’s demon-binding circle, though with different colors. The green and orange flames told me that it belonged to the witches working with Mainet.
“Who wants to bind and control an angel and a true-dead vamp?” I asked.
“You know this answer,” Sabina said.
“No. I don’t. Tell me what you want me to know.”
As if the command gave him permission to speak, Hayyel said, “They will soon complete the binding and Sabina and I shall be lost.”
“What will they do with you bound?” I asked. “Bargain with God for redemption?”
“Something far less saintly,” Sabina said.
“Yeah, yeah. Destroy the arcenciels. Or invade heaven. Or fix time to suit them. Everyone wants control of the timelines.”
“You must save us, Jane Doe Yellowrock,” Sabina said, making a yanking gesture. “It is your destiny.”
Something pulled in my chest, as if she ripped a vital part from me.
The weight on my chest grew. I couldn’t breathe. Pain bruised my ribs as if I was being beaten.
Waking, I grabbed at the thing holding me down. “AntJane. Wake up,” Angie said. Something slapped my face, hard. “Wake up!” My eyes flew open to see Angie sitting on my chest, her legs bent and her bare feet poking into my ribs under my arms, which were gripping her. I released her shoulders, which I had surely bruised in my grab. She patted my cheeks with both hands, again, not more gently.
“Owww,” I gasped. “Stop that.” I picked her up and moved her to the side so I could take some much-needed breaths. My hands were human-shaped. I was in my suite at HQ. Bruiser wasn’t here, his side of the bed unwrinkled and fresh. He hadn’t come to bed. I took all that in as I sat up and met Angie’s petulant gaze.
“You wouldn’t wake up,” she said with a grown-up tone of asperity. She looked at the door, then back to me, and whispered, “Hayyel is close by. I can feel him, but he’s hurt.” Angie’s glance at the door meant she wasn’t supposed to be in here.
I remembered the angel’s broken, bloodied wings. Sabina yanking something inside of me, or... stealing something from inside of me—part of my skinwalker power? Had that thief been the latent soul of Sabina or Gramma? Had she succeeded in getting everything she wanted? Would she be back? Had it been only a dream or something more powerful than a dream? I shook my head, hoping to find some wits.
Angie was wearing nightclothes, a purple and white striped stretchy onesie that had built-in footies. Too cute. And so she had snuck out of bed and through HQ, where hungry vampires roamed and cameras recorded everything, and past my guards and into my room. And no alarms had gone off. No one stopped her. The powerful brat was going to get herself killed.
After checking to see that I had gone to bed wearing some version of jammies—T-shirt and shorts—go me—I swung my legs over and sat on the side of the bed beside her. My hair was a tangled black nest, but I shoved it out of the way, using the time to figure out what to say and what to ask. Before I did anything else, I sent out a group text that Angie was with me, in my suite, and safe. This way, though Angie would get caught by her parents, andthat would be my fault, at least I wouldn’t die from a misplaced spell thrown by a terrified Big Evan when he came searching. There was no instant reply from the Everharts.
I put my cell away and started with the simple question. “Did you make your parents go into a deep sleep so you could sneak into my room?”
She frowned at me so hard I thought her face might break. “That’s Everhart business. Don’t tell,” she ordered.
“We’ve talked about this before. They aren’t stupid, Angie Baby. How do you know that Hayyel is in trouble?”
She blew out a sigh that sounded like one of Molly’s irritated breaths. “I think it was a dream, but it wasn’t a nighttime dream, you know? I have dreams sometimes in the middle, halfway awake and halfway not. When I was little, I called it thebetweenplace.”
I used to call the space between being human-shaped and being Beastthe between. “Like a vision?”
She frowned. “I guess. They come to me when I’m going to sleep sometimes, and I don’t remember much about them. But the ones like today, the half-awake ones, are different. I see them and I know stuff, and then they stop and I’m standing by the bed awake. Except this time, in the dream part, I put Mama and Daddy asleep and then I was standing in the hallway outside your door.”
I leaned down and looked at the bottoms of her onesie footies. A little dirty, exactly the way they should look if she walked here. As opposed to transported here. So that was one tiny piece of good news.
She looked down at her hands and shrugged again. “You’re gonna be mad. But I made your guards go to sleep too. On purpose.”
“I see.”
“And then I came in and I whispered, and then I yelled but you wouldn’t wake up. So I got on top of you and hit you.”
“I remember.”
