“Can we have a note excusing us from homework tomorrow?” Brooklyn asked.
I laughed softly. She had a good point.
“I think you kids should stay home from school until we know exactly what is going on,” Mrs. Prather said.
At first, the thought gave me a snuggly, happy feeling. We could sleep late and drink hot chocolate and
I could pet Jared. Then Brooke and I glanced at each other, a knowing expression on each of our faces.
“We can’t,” Brooke said.
“Not now.” I sat on the bed beside Jared. “With Jared out of the picture for goodness knows how long, we have to try to figure out what is going on. Why some of the kids at school are acting so strange. What is going to happen that required Jared be taken out of the picture. We need to know.”
Cameron nodded from his seat in the corner. Brooke kneeled beside him to administer first aid to him.
He had some nasty cuts and bruises as a result of the most recent smack-down. “She’s right. We need to get back in the thick of it all.”
“I don’t know,” Grandma said, a worried expression lining her face. “Don’t you think today was enough? We need to lie low awhile.”
Lie low? First texting and now lie low? Who was this woman?
“I agree with Cameron,” Sheriff Villanueva said. “These kids are our best shot at figuring this out.”
“I like the lie-low idea,” Glitch said, casting his vote.
“Bill,” Grandma said, fixing a beseeching expression on him. “We can’t just send them back out there.”
“No, we can’t, but pix doesn’t seem to care what we can and can’t do.” He turned to look at Brooke’s parents. “Maybe you’ll have better luck with Brooklyn.”
“I’m going,” Brooke said, a hand on her hip. “I’m in this, Mom. You guys keep saying that if this war is what we think it is, we’re all dead anyway. So what does it matter?”
The Prathers supported the Order of Sanctity and its mission 100 percent, so I wasn’t terribly surprised when Brooke’s mom gave in with a nod. “Okay, but you kids need to get some rest.”
“I think we need to get some pizza,” Glitch said.
Cameron brightened with the thought.
Mrs. Prather turned to the sheriff. “I need some kind of guarantee Cameron can stay with them all day.”
“I’ll see to it.”
I wondered just how he was going to manage that, but the last thing I wanted to do was leave Jared.
“Can I stay down here with him?” I asked Granddad, taking a long, meandering gaze at Jared.
He bit down, clearly not wanting me near him even now. “For now, until we get something warm inside you kids.”
“Like pizza?” Glitch asked.
Mrs. Prather smiled. “I was thinking soup, but pizza it is.”
“Sweet,” Glitch said.
Soon, all the adults were gone and we sat in the room in relative silence. I had the sudden urge to collapse into a heap that may or may not have resembled a washed-up, redheaded jellyfish.
I couldn’t stop staring at Jared. Sometimes it was so hard to remember he was a supreme being. And that he had just tried to kill me. He looked like a little boy. His breathing was deep and rhythmic. His face softened by the solace of sleep.
I leaned in and whispered into his ear. “I really like you, Azrael.”
“You realize he kissed Tabitha Sind,” Brooke said.
With a satisfied smirk, I said, “But he was under a spell of darkness. Why else would anyone kiss her?” I gave her my best look of bravado even though I couldn’t help the niggling in the back of my mind, the one that said she was better for Jared than I was.
Brooklyn, who was sitting on the arm of the chair Cameron was reclining in, holding an ice pack to the back of his head, asked him, “Would you kiss Tabitha Sind if you were under a dark spell?”
I looked back at him, my brows raised in interest.
He cleared his throat. “No. No way. Tabitha who?”
We chuckled and Brooke socked him on the arm. He feigned injury, rubbing it.
Glitch rose to his feet, averting his gaze. “I’m going to check on the pizza.”
As Glitch left, Brooke leaned over and kissed Cameron on the cheek. “That’s for saving all our lives.”
When she went to pull away, he wrapped a hand around her neck and placed his mouth on hers. I was a little shocked, but she let him.
And let him.
And let him.
It was getting embarrassing. And rather tongue-y.
“Brooke, have a little self-respect,” I said, trying really hard not to giggle.
She pulled back, her breaths a little fast.
With a grin, he said, “I figured I deserved more than just a peck on the cheek for saving your life.”
“You figured that, huh?”
“Pretty much.”
“So, I’m all paid up.” She scooted out of the seat and went to the attached bathroom to put away the ice pack, humor playing about her mouth.
He threw a towel at her as she walked away. “Actually, you still owe me for saving everyone else’s lives. I’ll put it on your tab.”
She stuck out her tongue.
“You guys make such a disturbing couple,” I said.
“This coming from the girl dating the Angel of Death.”
I glanced down, remembering the kiss he gave Tabitha again. “We’re not dating, in case you forgot.”
Seeing Jared kiss her had been painful, no matter how I played it in front of the others. I’d never felt pain like that. Now I knew what all those country songs were talking about.
Of course, he did try to kill me. That was pretty painful, too.
SHADOWS IN THE BASEMENT
“So, what do you think is really going on?” Brooke asked me as she took her turn to wash her face and get ready for bed. We’d left the boys downstairs on guard duty.
“I think there’s a stupid war coming and everybody thinks I am somehow going to stop it. How can we do anything without Jared?”
“That was amazingly brave what you did in the vault. Which, by the way—” She stepped out of the bathroom, her face white with soap. “—did you know that was an actual vault?”
“I had no idea.”
“And they made it for you.” Brooke shivered. “That’s just eerie.”
“We have to figure out what’s going on and we have to do it fast. And I think I might know who can help.”
Intrigued, she rinsed her face, then came back while drying it with a towel. “Who?”
“My grandpa Mac.”
“Grandpa Mac?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I had to call him something besides ‘paternal grandfather.’ But he grew up with this stuff.
He might know something we don’t.”
“If he is actually alive, he probably knows a lot of somethings we don’t.”
“Agreed.”
After I took my turn at guard duty while Cameron took a shower in my bathroom, Glitch, Brooklyn, and
