Noah scowled at Shea. “Woman still hasn’t answered me.”
Shea raised one eyebrow. “I’m still thinking about it.”
Oh. Sorry I asked.
“But maybe now that Brielle is back, and you don’t think I’m crazy for thinking she’s still alive, I can think harder.” Her voice softened at the end as she looked into Noah’s eyes.
Oh.
Shame burned on Noah’s cheeks as he looked at me. “I’m sorry. I just wanted everyone to move on and stop hurting.”
Through Lucifer’s portal, I’d seen Noah in the parking lot with a drunken Lincoln, so I knew some of what he’d been through to hold everyone together. Whether he knew it or not, Noah was the glue when it came to our little family.
Reaching out, I grabbed his hand. “It’s okay. You did the right thing.”
Luke thrust his phone in my face. On it was a wallpaper of him and Donnie kissing. “Screw her engagement, I’m totally dating Donnie!” he squealed.
Laughter burst out of me. “Aww, you are?”
I’d missed so much.
Chloe rolled her eyes. “Eww, they are so gross. Sickeningly in love.”
My mom and Mikey opened the trailer door then, and the smell of fresh pizza wafted over all of us.
“How many people can fit in this trailer?” Shea laughed.
“About to find out,” Chloe answered as she crossed the space, and took a slice from my mom.
“Thanks, Momma Atwater.” She hip-bumped my mom.
I chuckled. “Momma Atwater?” I asked Shea, who stayed in the back room with me.
Shea’s face grew dark. “When you… left, we all stuck together. Your mom fed us every night, and we slept at her apartment for months, just grieving and figuring it out together.”
My heart clenched as I watched my mom hand out the pizza to all the kids. She’d lost her child, and still she took care of the others. It was such a mom thing to do.
“Did she find work?” I whispered to Shea. When I’d left last, she was trying to find employment, which could be hard as a once-demon-bound Necromancer.
Shea winced. “Not really. Raph gives her jobs here and there around campus, but Lincoln takes care of her. He pays for the apartment, electricity, and has a monthly grocery delivery service bring her food.”
Tears welled in my eyes and my throat tightened with emotion at her words. I’d been gone a year, with no possibility of coming back, and yet Lincoln still took care of my mother as if she were his own. If it was possible, it made me both love him, and grieve even more because he wasn’t here right now.
After composing myself, Shea, Noah, and I joined everyone else, and we spent the night talking about everything except my capture and escape. We talked about Mr. Hensley from Marlee’s tattoo shop asking my mom out on a date, and about Mikey accidentally shifting in class and then shifting back to find he was naked in front of everyone. No one mentioned Lincoln or anything sad, and for a short moment I was stuck in this little happy bubble with my reunited family.
That soon faded with each look around at Lincoln’s home. His guitar was covered in a thin layer of dust, telling me he hadn’t used it in a while. His poetry book was missing, so I assumed he’d taken it with him. I looked back at the bed where we first made love, and tears started to well in my eyes again. One by one, my friends noticed and quieted.
“All right, guys, I think Brielle needs to get some rest,” my mom told the group.
They each hugged me, until it was just Shea and my mom left.
“Want me to stay over, honey?” Mom smoothed my hair.
I nodded, letting the tears fall down my face.
I needed her.
Shea bent down and kissed my forehead. “I can stay too, if you need me.”
I waved her off. “No it’s all right, but stay on campus, okay? Don’t go to Noah’s. Lucifer can see you there.”
She looked at me with alarm but nodded. “I’ve been living with Noah for six months, but I’ll see if Raph can open up some extra dorms for us. Don’t worry, okay?”
Panic seized me. “Promise me you’ll sleep on campus?”
She held out her pinky. “I pinky swear.”
Exhaling, I smiled, taking her pinky like when we were kids.
After she left, I took a quick shower, having a minor breakdown when I used Lincoln’s body wash. Smelling him made the dull ache in my chest turn into a painful stabbing, but I got through it. Then I slipped into his bed and my mom slid in next to me, holding me and patting my back. She started to sing a lullaby from when I was younger, and I smiled, but my thoughts quickly turned dark, thinking of Lincoln once again.
“What’s on your mind, baby? You can tell me anything,” she offered.
“Lincoln,” I croaked.
She nodded. “That man loves you, Bri. With a fierceness I didn’t realize before.”
Her words made a whimper form in my throat. This just wouldn’t do, lying here every day pining over him and wondering if he’d ever come back. Having him go out and die with the Fallen Resistance, never knowing I’d returned.
“Mom?” I started to get sleepy.
“Hmm?”
“You know I have to go after him, right?” If I needed to drive up to San Francisco and join the Fallen Resistance myself, I’d do it. Life didn’t feel worth living without Lincoln by my side.
She sighed. “I know, baby. I know.”
Chapter Eighteen
The next day, I sat in Raphael’s office. He’d called a ‘casual meeting,’ in his words, with all the archangels. They wanted to know everything they could about my time with Lucifer. Having to recount it again after just explaining it to all my friends the night before was painful, but I did it anyway. Raphael seemed especially interested in hearing about the times Lucifer spied on my mom and Shea, and how he wasn’t able to see inside the school.
“I put up special protections ever since he showed up on school property and took you. Looks like they’re holding.” He looked proud, and even Gabriel clapped him on the back.
“Can you do them for the apartment complex? Otherwise I can’t send my mom and Shea back there. He’ll go after them to get to me.” My words came out in a panicked rush.
Raphael put both hands on my shoulders. “I can do better. I can put a protection over you, Noah, Shea, Mikey, your mom—anyone who you think will be in danger. It’ll follow you wherever you go.”
I frowned. “Are you allowed to do that?”
Wouldn’t that be against his ‘do not intervene’ plan?
He sighed, looking forlorn. “Going home is no longer important to me. Protecting humanity is.”
Whoa. I didn’t know what to say. For as long as I’d known Raph, he’d been all about not getting involved, not intervening, so he could go home. Now he’d given up on that?
Michael cleared his throat. “No judgment here, Brielle, but tell us more about the deal you made with Lucifer. When you touched the glowing bone.”
My cheeks burned with shame and I placed my head in my hands. “I’m sorry.” The tears started to fall. “I needed him to trust me, and he’d threatened Shea. I was trying to get closer to Sera and… it seemed casual, like I was just agreeing to help him, but then it turned into some kind of… spell.”
I told them everything I could remember.
Michael shared an interesting look with Raphael, then asked me, “What color was the bone when it glowed?”
All four angels leaned forward as I recalled the memory. I’d never forget anything about it. “It was a sickly dark green color, almost black,” I admitted.
Michael cursed under his breath and my eyes bugged out their sockets.
An archangel legit just said a curse word. This must be bad.
“I messed up bad, huh?” I asked them, my lip quivering.
Before Michael could speak, and probably confirm that I had indeed messed up very, very badly, Raphael stepped forward.
“You did your best given the circumstances.”
That wasn’t an answer.
I looked to Michael. “What does it mean?”
He was a straight shooter, no sugarcoating. I imagined it was what made his daughter so badass, if the rumors were true.
Michael’s blue eyes found mine and he exhaled forcefully. “Eventually, Lucifer will come back for you, and you’ll have no choice but to help him do what you’ve promised. He’ll control your body and mind, because you’ve agreed to it.”
Oh fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!
The room started to spin and I stumbled backward, falling onto the small sofa in Raph’s office.
Uriel, the quietest of the bunch, suddenly stepped out of the shadows. “Maybe not. Maybe she can fight him.”
Michael seemed disbelieving. “An agreement made with Lucifer of her own free will? Who on Earth could fight that?”
Uriel shrugged. “I could. You could. Raph and Gabriel could.”
Michael sighed. “We’re angels. We’re Lucifer’s equals.”
Uriel pointed at me. “She’s part us, part him.”
“Part human as well,” Michael added, but his facial features had changed. It seemed as though he was looking at me in a new light.
“I believe she can. With the right teacher,” Raphael offered. “Someone who knows the weakness of a human mind, but also has the power of mind control to test her.”
Michael’s eyebrows shot up. “Emberly?” Now he was rubbing his chin, clearly intrigued.
“Yes. Emberly would be a wonderful teacher,” Raphael admitted.
Michael laughed, and the room filled with light. “Someone else will have to ask her. Anything I ask her to do is met with an eye roll and a ‘no way, Dad.’” He said ‘no way, Dad’ like a sassy teenage girl, and it made me grin.
I raised my hand. “I’ll ask her. I mean, young woman to young woman, maybe she’ll help me out.”
Michael raised an eyebrow. “Good luck.” He winked.