Crescendo

“They’ve been better.” Realizing there was a good chance Rixon would pass anything I said along to Patch, I quickly added, “I’m on the upswing. But can I ask a personal question? It’s about Patch, but if you don’t feel comfortable answering, I’m seriously okay with it.”

“Shoot.”

“Is he still my guardian angel? A while back, after a fight, I told him I didn’t want him to be. But I’m not sure where we stand. Is he no longer my guardian simply because I said that’s what I wanted?”

“He’s still assigned to you.”

“How come he’s never around anymore?”

Rixon’s eyes glinted. “You broke up with him, remember? It’s awkward for him. Most guys don’t relish the idea of hanging around an ex any longer than they have to. That, and I know he said the archangels are breathing down his neck. He’s bending over backward to keep things strictly professional.”

“So he’s still protecting me?”

“Sure. Just from behind the scenes.”

“Who was in charge of matching him to me?”

Rixon shrugged. “The archangels.”

“Is there any way to let them know I’d like to be reassigned? It’s not working out very well. Not since the breakup, anyway.” Not working out? It was tearing me up inside. All this touch and go, seeing him, but not being able to have him, was devastating.

He ran his thumb along his lip. “I can tell you what I know, but there’s a good chance the information’s dated. It’s been a while since I was in the loop. Ironically—you ready for this?—you have to swear a blood oath.”

“Is this a joke?”

“You cut your palm and shake a few drops of blood into the dust of the earth. Not carpet or concrete—dirt. Then you swear the oath, acknowledging to heaven that you’re not afraid to shed your own blood. From dust you came, and to dust you go. In saying the oath, you give up your right to a guardian angel and announce that you accept your fate—without heaven’s help. Keep in mind, I’m not advocating it. They gave you a guardian, and for good reason. Someone upstairs thinks you’re in danger. I’m going with my gut on this one, but I think it’s more than a paranoid hunch.”

Not exactly a news flash—I could feel something dark pressing against my world, threatening to eclipse it. The phantom behind my father’s reappearing ghost, most notably. I was struck by a thought. “What if the person who’s after me is also my guardian angel?” I asked slowly.

Rixon gave a yap of laughter. “Patch?” He didn’t sound like it was even a possibility. No surprise there. Rixon had been through everything with Patch. Even if Patch was guilty, Rixon would stand by his side. Blind loyalty above all else.

“If he was trying to hurt me, would someone know?” I asked. “The archangels? The angels of death? Dabria knew when people were close to death. Could another angel of death stop Patch before it’s too late?”

“If you’re doubting Patch, you’ve got the wrong guy.” His tone had cooled. “I know him better than you. He takes his job as guardian seriously.”

But if Patch wanted to kill me, he’d crafted the perfect murder, hadn’t he? He was my guardian angel. He was charged with keeping me safe. No one would suspect him….

But he’d already had his chance to kill me. And he hadn’t taken it. He’d sacrificed the one thing he wanted most of all—a human body—to save my life. He wouldn’t do that if he wanted me dead.

Would he?

I shook off my suspicions. Rixon was right. Suspecting Patch was ridiculous at this point.

“Is he happy with Marcie?” I clamped my mouth shut. I hadn’t meant to ask the question in the first place. It had spilled out in the moment. A blush brushed my cheeks.

Rixon watched me, clearly giving his answer some thought. “Patch is the closest thing I’ve got to family, and I love the guy like a brother, but he’s not right for you. I know it, he knows it, and deep down, I think you know it too. Maybe you don’t want to hear this, but he and Marcie are alike. They’re cut from the same cloth. Patch should be allowed to have a little fun. And he can—Marcie doesn’t love him. Nothing she feels for him is going to tip off the archangels.”

We sat in silence, and I struggled to stuff my emotions deep down. I’d tipped off the archangels, in other words. My feelings for Patch were what exposed us. It was nothing Patch had done or said. It was all me. According to Rixon’s explanation, Patch had never loved me. He’d never reciprocated. I didn’t want to accept it. I wanted Patch to have cared about me as much as I cared about him. I didn’t want to think I’d been nothing more than entertainment, a way to pass the time.

There was one more question I desperately wanted to ask Rixon. If Patch and I were still on good terms, I would have asked him, but that was a moot point now. Rixon was just as worldly as Patch, however. He knew things other people didn’t—particularly when it came to fallen angels and Nephilim—and what he didn’t know, he could find out. Right now, my best hope at finding the Black Hand was through Rixon.

I moistened my lips and decided to get the question over with. “Have you ever heard of the Black Hand?”

Rixon flinched. He studied me in silence a moment before his face blazed with amusement. “Is this a joke? I haven’t heard that name in a long time. I thought Patch didn’t like to be called it. Did he tell you about it, then?”

A slow freeze gripped my heart. I’d been on the brink of telling Rixon about the envelope with the iron ring and note claiming the Black Hand killed my father, but found myself grasping for a new response. “The Black Hand is Patch’s nickname?”

“He hasn’t gone by it in years. Not since I started calling him Patch. He never liked the Black Hand.” He scratched his cheek. “Those were back in the days when we took jobs as mercenaries for the French king. Eighteenth-century black ops. Enjoyable stint. Good money.”

I might as well have been slapped across the face. The whole moment felt unbalanced, tipped on its side. Rixon’s words ran over me in a blur, as if he was speaking in a foreign language, and I couldn’t keep up. I was immediately bombarded with doubts. Not Patch. He hadn’t killed my dad. Anyone else, but not him.

Slowly the doubts began to fall by the wayside, replaced by other thoughts. I found myself picking through facts, analyzing for evidence. The night I gave Patch my ring: The moment I’d said my dad had given it to me, he insisted he couldn’t take it, almost adamantly so. And the mere name the Black Hand. It was fitting, almost too fitting. Forcing myself to hang on a few more moments, holding my emotions carefully in check, I selected my next words carefully.

“You know what I regret most?” I said, my tone as casual as I could make it. “It’s the stupidest thing, and you’ll probably laugh.” To make my story convincing, I pulled a trivial laugh up from someplace deep inside me that I didn’t even know existed. “I left my favorite sweatshirt at his house. It’s from Oxford—my dream school,” I explained. “My dad picked it up for me when he went to England, so it means a lot.”

“You were at Patch’s place?” He sounded genuinely surprised.

“Just once. My mom was home, so we drove over to his place to watch a movie. I left my sweatshirt on the sofa.” I knew I was walking a dangerous line—the more details I revealed about Patch’s house, the higher the chance something wouldn’t match up, and my cover would be blown. But along the same lines, if I was too vague, I was scared it would tip Rixon off that I was lying.

“I’m impressed. He likes to keep his home address off the radar.”

And why was that? I wondered. What was he hiding? Why was Rixon the only person allowed into Patch’s inner sanctum? What could he share with Rixon, but no one else? Had he never allowed me inside because he knew something I’d see there would unravel the truth—that he was responsible for murdering my dad?

“Getting the sweatshirt back would mean a lot to me,” I said. I felt somehow removed, as if I was watching myself converse with Rixon from several feet away. Someone stronger, more clever and contained was saying the words rolling from my mouth. I was not that person. I was the girl who felt herself crumbling into pieces as fine as the sand beneath her feet.

“Head over first thing in the morning. Patch leaves early, but if you’re there by six thirty, you should catch him.”

“I don’t want to have to do it face-to-face.”