Hush, Hush #1 (27 page)

“That information is sacred and private, and not predictable. The events in this world shift from moment to moment depending on human choices

—”

“One name, Dabria.”

“Promise me you’ll forget about
The Book of Enoch
first. Give me your word.”

“You’d trust my word?”

“No,” she said, “I wouldn’t.”

Patch laughed coolly and, grabbing a toothpick from the dispenser, walked toward the stairs.

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“Patch, wait—,” she began. She hopped off the bar stool. “Patch, please wait!”

He looked over his shoulder.

“Nora Grey,” she said, then immediately clamped her hands over her mouth.

There was a faint crack in Patch’s expression—a frown of disbelief mixed with annoyance. Which made no sense since, if the calendar on the wall was correct, we hadn’t met yet. My name shouldn’t have sparked familiarity. “How is she going to die?” he asked.

“Someone wants to kill her.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” she said, covering her ears and shaking her head.

“There’s so much noise and commotion down here. All the images blur together, they come too fast, I can’t see clearly. I need to go home. I need peace and calm.”

Patch tucked a strand of Dabria’s hair behind her ear and looked at her persuasively. She gave a warm shudder at his touch, then nodded and shut her eyes. “I can’t see … I don’t see anything … it’s useless.”

“Who wants to kill Nora Grey?” Patch urged.

“Wait, I see her,” said Dabria. Her voice turned anxious. “There’s a shadow behind her. It’s
him
. He’s following her. She doesn’t see him …

but he’s right
there
. Why doesn’t she see him? Why isn’t she running? I can’t see his face, it’s in shadow… .”

Dabria’s eyes flew open. She sucked in a quick, sharp breath.

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“Who?” Patch said.

Dabria curled her hands against her mouth. She was trembling as she raised her eyes to Patch’s.

“You,” she whispered.

My finger moved off Patch’s scar and the connection broke. It took me a moment to reorient myself, so I wasn’t ready for Patch, who wrestled me into the bed in an instant. He pinned my wrists above my head.

“You weren’t supposed to do that.” There was controlled anger in his face, dark and simmering. “What did you see?”

I got my knee up and clipped him in the ribs. “Get—off—me!”

He slid onto my hips, straddling them, eliminating the use of my legs.

With my arms still stretched above my head, I couldn’t do more than squirm under his weight.

“Get—off—me—or—I’ll—scream!”

“You’re already screaming. And it isn’t going to cause a stir in this place. It’s more of a whorehouse than a motel.” He gave a hard smile that was all lethality around the edges. “Last chance, Nora. What did you see?”

I was fighting back tears. My whole body hummed with an emotion so foreign I couldn’t even name it. “You make me sick!” I said. “Who are you? Who are you
really
?”

His mouth turned even more grim. “We’re getting closer.”

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“
You want to kill me!
”

Patch’s face gave away nothing, but his eyes grew cold.

“The Jeep didn’t really die tonight, did it?” I said. “You lied. You brought me here so you could kill me. That’s what Dabria said you want to do. Well, what are you waiting for?” I didn’t have a clue where I was going with this, and I didn’t care. I was spitting words in an attempt to keep my horror at bay. “You’ve been trying to kill me all along. Right from the start. Are you going to kill me now?” I stared at him, hard and unblinking, trying to keep tears from spilling as I remembered the fateful day he’d walked into my life.

“It’s tempting.”

I twisted beneath him. I tried to roll to my right, then to my left. I finally figured out I was wasting a lot of energy and stopped. Patch settled his eyes on me. They were blacker than I’d ever seen them.

“I bet you like this,” I said.

“That would be a smart bet.”

I felt my heart pounding clear down in my toes. “Just do it,” I said in a challenging voice.

“Kill you?”

I nodded. “But first I want to know why. Of all the billions of people out there, why me?”

“Bad genes.”

“That’s it? That’s the only explanation I get?”

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“For now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” My voice rose again. “I get the rest of the story when you finally break down and kill me?”

“I don’t have to break down to kill you. If I’d wanted you dead five minutes ago, you’d have died five minutes ago.”

I swallowed at the less-than-cheerful thought.

He brushed his thumb over my birthmark. His touch was deceptively soft, which made it all the more painful to endure.

“What about Dabria?” I asked, still breathing hard. “She’s the same thing you are, isn’t she? You’re both—angels.” My voice cracked on the word.

Patch rotated slightly off my hips, but kept his hands at my wrists. “If I ease up, are you going to hear me out?”

If he eased up, I was going to bolt for the door. “What do you care if I run? You’ll just drag me back in here.”

“Yeah, but that would cause a scene.”

“Is Dabria your girlfriend?” I could feel each ragged rise and fall of my chest. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear his answer. Not that it mattered.

Now that I knew Patch wanted to kill me, it was ridiculous that I even cared.

“Was. It was a long time ago, before I fell to the dark side.” He gave a hard smile, attempting humor. “It was also a mistake.” He rocked back on his heels, slowly releasing me, testing to see if I’d fight back. I lay on 280

the mattress, breathing hard, my elbows propping me up. Three counts went by, and I hurled myself at him with all the force I had.

I shoved against his chest, but other than swaying back slightly, he didn’t move. I scrambled out from under him and took my fists to him. I hammered his chest until the bottoms of my fists began to throb.

“Done?” he asked.

“No!” I drove my elbow down into his thigh. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you feel anything?”

I rose to my feet, found my balance on the mattress, and kicked him as hard as I could in the stomach.

“You’ve got one more minute,” he said. “Get your anger out of your system. Then I take over.”

I didn’t know what he meant by “take over,” and I didn’t want to find out. I made a leaping run off the bed, with the door in sight. Patch snagged me midair and backed me against the wall. His legs were flush with mine, front to front down the length of our thighs.

“I want the truth,” I said, struggling not to cry. “Did you come to school to kill me? Was that your aim right from the start?”

A muscle in Patch’s jaw jumped. “Yes.”

I swiped a tear that dared escape. “Are you gloating inside? That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Getting me to trust you so you could blow it up in my face!” I knew I was being irrationally irate. I should have been terrified and frantic. I should have been doing everything in my power to escape. The most irrational part of all was that I still didn’t want to believe he would kill me, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t 281

smother that illogical speck of trust.

“I get that you’re angry—,” said Patch.

“I am ripped apart!” I shouted.

His hands slid up my neck, searing hot. Pressing his thumbs gently into my throat, he tipped my head back. I felt his lips come against mine so hard he stopped whatever name I’d been about to call him from coming out. His hands dropped to my shoulders, skimmed down my arms, and came to rest at the small of my back. Little shivers of panic and pleasure shot through me. He tried to pull me against him, and I bit him on the lip.

He licked his lip with the tip of his tongue. “Did you just bite me?”

“Is everything a joke to you?” I asked.

He dabbed his tongue to his lip again. “Not everything.”

“Like what?”

“You.”

The whole night felt unbalanced. It was hard to have a showdown with someone as indifferent as Patch. No, not indifferent. Perfectly controlled. Down to the last cell in his body.

I heard a voice in my mind.
Relax. Trust me.

“Omigosh,” I said with a burst of clarity. “You’re doing it again, aren’t you? Messing with my mind.” I remembered the article I’d pulled up when I Googled fallen angels. “You can put more than words in my head, can’t you? You can put images—very real images—there.”

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He didn’t deny it.

“The Archangel,” I said, finally understanding. “You tried to kill me that night, didn’t you? But something went wrong. Then you made me think my cell phone was dead, so I couldn’t call Vee. Did you plan to kill me on the ride home? I want to know how you’re making me see what you want!”

His face was carefully expressionless. “I put the words and images there, but it’s up to you if you believe them. It’s a riddle. The images overlap reality, and you have to figure out which is real.”

“Is this a special angel power?”

He shook his head. “Fallen angel power. Any other kind of angel wouldn’t invade your privacy, even though they can.”

Because other angels were good. And Patch was not.

Patch braced his hands against the wall behind me, one on either side of my head. “I put a thought in Coach’s mind to redo the seating chart because I needed to get close to you. I made you think you fell off the Archangel because I wanted to kill you, but I couldn’t go through with it. I almost did, but I stopped. I settled for scaring you instead. Then I made you think your cell was dead because I wanted to give you a ride home. When I came inside your house, I picked up a knife. I was going to kill you then.” His voice softened. “You changed my mind.”

I sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t understand you. When I told you my dad was murdered, you sounded genuinely sorry. When you met my mom, you were nice.”

“Nice,” Patch repeated. “Let’s keep that between you and me.”

283

My head spun faster, and I could feel my pulse beating in my temples.

I’d felt this heart-pounding panic before. I needed my iron pills. Either that, or Patch was making me think I did.

I tilted my chin up and narrowed my eyes. “Get out of my mind.
Right
now!
”

“I’m not in your mind, Nora.”

I bent forward, bracing my hands on my knees, sucking air. “Yes, you are. I feel you. So this is how you’re going to do it? Suffocate me?”

Soft popping sounds echoed in my ears, and a blurry black framed my vision. I tried to fill my lungs, but it was like the air had disappeared.

The world tilted, and Patch slipped sideways in my vision. I flattened my hand to the wall to steady my balance. The deeper I tried to inhale, the tighter my throat constricted.

Patch moved toward me, but I flung my hand out. “Get away!”

He leaned a shoulder on the wall and faced me, his mouth set with concern.

“Get—away—from—me,” I gasped.

He didn’t.

“I—can’t—breathe!” I choked, clawing at the wall with one hand, clutching my throat with the other.

Suddenly Patch scooped me up and carried me to the chair across the room. “Put your head between your knees,” he said, guiding my head down.

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I had my head down, breathing rapidly, trying to force air inside my lungs. Very slowly I felt the oxygen creep back into my body.

“Better?” Patch asked after a minute.

I nodded, once.

“Do you have iron pills with you?”

I shook my head.

“Keep your head down and take long, deep breaths.”

I followed his instructions, feeling a clamp loosen around my chest.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

“Still don’t trust my motives?”

“If you want me to trust you, let me touch your scars again.”

Patch studied me silently for a long moment. “That’s not a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t control what you see.”

“That’s kind of the point.”

He waited a few counts before answering. His voice was low, emotions untraceable. “You know I’m hiding things.” There was a question attached to it.

I knew Patch lived a life of closed doors and harbored secrets. I wasn’t 285

presumptuous enough to think even half of them revolved around me.

Patch lived a different life outside the one he shared with me. More than once I’d speculated what his other life might be like. I always got the feeling that the less I knew about it, the better.

My lip wobbled. “Give me a reason to trust you.”

Patch sat on the corner of the bed, the mattress sinking under his weight.

He bent forward, resting his forearms on his knees. His scars were in full view, the candlelight dancing eerie shadows across their surface. The muscles in his back heightened, then relaxed. “Go ahead,” he said quietly. “Keep in mind that people change, but the past doesn’t.”

Suddenly I wasn’t so sure I wanted this. On almost every level, Patch terrified me. But deep down, I didn’t think he was going to kill me. If that was what he wanted, he would have done it already. I glanced at his gruesome scars. Trusting Patch felt a lot more comfortable than slipping into his past again and having no idea what I might find.

But if I backed out now, Patch would know I was terrified of him. He was opening one of the closed doors just for me and only because I’d asked for it. I couldn’t make a request this heavy, then change my mind.

“I won’t get trapped in there forever, will I?” I asked.

Patch gave a short laugh. “No.”

Summoning my courage, I sat on the bed beside him. For the second time tonight, my finger brushed the peaked ridge of his scar. A hazy gray crowded my vision, working from the edges in. The lights went out.

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I WAS ON MY BACK, MY CAMI SPONGING UP MOISTURE

beneath me, blades of grass poking the bare skin on my arms. The moon overhead was nothing more than a sliver, a grin tipped on its side. Other than the rumble of distant thunder, all was quiet.

I blinked several times in succession, helping my eyes hurry and adapt to the scant light. When I rolled my head sideways, a symmetrical arrangement of curved twigs poking up from the grass solidified in my vision. Very slowly I pulled myself up. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the two black orbs staring at me from just above the curved twigs.