Reaching up, she patted at it and felt nothing, no barrier or resistance. It was there, though. The mirror might have been an antique, but it worked just fine—
Creaking overhead brought her eyes to the ceiling. Someone was walking around up there, the footfalls uneven—either because the path was obstructed or…
Grabbing the angel’s cane, she rushed out. She wasn’t sure where the way up was, but she was damn well going to find it.
So many doors. Into bedrooms. Another sitting room. Bathrooms. She kept going, passing by the main staircase, and finding much of the same on the other side—
Down at the far end, light glowed around the jambs of a shut door, and she knew before going over and opening it that there would be a set of stairs going up.
“Adrian?” she called out.
Abruptly the lights flickered, browning briefly as if from a power surge—and it nearly dissuaded her from going up. When they stayed on, however, she decided to ascend.
“Adrian…?”
Breathing in, she smelled the most amazing bouquet of flowers, the scent a complex, multilayering of fragrance that put to shame those liner papers big-time. And then she heard chanting, soft, repetitive, insistent.
She tiptoed up the rest of the way, peering around the rough-cut balustrade at the top.
The flames of black candles waved lazily in invisible currents, bathing the attic from rafter to floorboard in soft, warm light. Cedar blanket chests and antique Louis Vuitton traveling trunks cast shadows, while hanging rods of old clothes appeared to move in the fluctuating illumination. Cobwebs hung in gossamer strings, undulating as if by the breath of ghosts, and the wind whistled through cracks somewhere.
But none of that really registered.
Halfway down the expanse, Adrian was sitting cross-legged, and rocking back and forth with his eyes closed. Stretched out before him, on a bed of mismatched blankets, was what she guessed had to be a body. A white sheet covered the person from head to toe, nothing showing of what was underneath.
The mourning was obvious in the tenor of the song, the painful tension in Adrian’s face—
The angel stopped abruptly, his head ripping around to her.
“I—I’m sorry,” she said, holding out his cane. “You left this downstairs. I thought … you might need it.”
There was a good distance between them, twenty feet or so, but she saw the tears on his cheeks before he swept them away with a brisk hand.
“Leave it there,” Adrian answered in a voice that cracked.
“Who is that?” she asked.
“None of your business.”
“Is it your brother?” A man like that wasn’t going to be upset over just anybody, and that certainly wasn’t a woman under there. Way too big. “Is it?”
Adrian turned back to the shroud. “Close enough.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“So am I.”
Sissy was careful with his cane, laying it on top of one of the chests and making sure it didn’t roll off. It seemed like the only way she could take care of him.
“Did she take him from you?” she asked.
No reason to specify the “she.”
“Yeah, she did.”
As Sissy stared across what seemed like miles as opposed to yards, she found the tableau of loss painful to look at. This was what her family was living through, her mom and her dad, her sister … her friends, her roommates and teachers at Union, her old teammates.
All because of that demon.
How many? she wondered. How many lived with the aftermath of what she had done?
She remembered Jim sitting in that bathroom, weeping by the tub.
“Was he an angel, too?” she asked gruffly.
“More like a saint.” Adrian reached out and tugged at the sheet, smoothing the tiniest wrinkle. “Eddie was the very best of all of us. That was why she killed him.”
“When did this happen?”
“No more than a week ago.” Adrian rubbed his face again. “I was right beside him, I should have heard or seen … something. It just happened so fast.”
“I need to help.” As his head came back around, Sissy crossed her arms over her chest. “Whatever it takes to get her, I need in on it.”
The angel stared at her for the longest time. Then he returned to his friend. “I’m getting an idea why Jim thinks you’re special.”
“Wha …?” She couldn’t have heard that right.
“And if you want to go after Devina? You want to ingest that poison and maybe die again from it?” He nodded. “That’s your right. I won’t stop you.”
Sissy exhaled. “Thank you.”
“Not something you should be grateful for, honey. Now … if you don’t mind?”
“Your cane’s right here.” She laid a hand on it even though he wasn’t looking. “Right here.”
“Thanks.”
Sissy whispered her way down the steep stairwell and closed the door silently. Then she tiptoed back to her own room.
Inside her skin, she was not quiet, however.
Her anger was roaring.
Chapter
Thirty-six
Jim left Nigel where the archangel lay. Not like the guy needed to go anywhere—and Devina couldn’t touch him now that he was gone.
Back at the tea table, he stared at the four empty seats and knew he was getting nowhere wasting time up here. And yet he couldn’t seem to leave, his feelings a complex interplay of guilt, mourning, and anger—
What the fuck?
Far across the lawn, off in the distance, a cloud had gathered close to the ground, something the size of a car or truck. At first it seemed as though it was smoke, but then as it started to move, he realized it was made up of countless—
A swarm.
It was a swarm of what seemed to be black wasps.
And it began to head his way, rushing forward in an accelerating wave pattern, surging with coordinated menace.
Jim bolted, heading for the moat. Thighs pumping, arms up, he ran the shit out of the grass, great strides taking him to the water source—
He didn’t make it.
The impact was like getting pelted with cobblestones all over the back of his body, and then he was engulfed, the stings blanketing him, assaulting him from every angle while he was dragged back from the water that might have saved him. He swung his arms like a crazy man, trying to bat the attack away, but there were so many of them…
He was spun around and elevated, the pricking pain fuzzing out his brain and dulling his response as his feet left the ground. And then there was a great suction, the pull so violent he felt as though his skin was going to go with it.
