“I’m going after Lincoln. I leave tomorrow,” I blurted out to her.
She nodded as if expecting it. “I’ll go with you.”
A heavy sigh made its way through my lips. “It’s super dangerous, and we have to go undercover.”
She shrugged. “I don’t give a shit, I’m going. Noah will want to come too. He’s been pining over Lincoln being gone for a long time.”
I swallowed hard. “How long has he been gone?”
Shea blew air through her lips. “About five weeks.”
“No word from him?” I asked, bitting the inside of my cheek.
She shook her head. “He’s undercover as a Dark Mage. Shaved his head and everything. He… he totally lost it after you…”
“I understand.” I didn’t want to hear about Lincoln’s dark days. It tore at my heart.
Shea took my hand in hers. “We’ll find him and bring him home. Together,” she declared.
I squeezed her palm. “Good, because we’re never parting again. Ever.”
She smiled as we exited the cafeteria hand in hand to find Emberly.
Chapter Nineteen
Emberly’s roommate informed us she was in one of the small gyms training.
“How did she get into Fallen Academy so young? She’s like fifteen, right?” I asked Shea as we walked across the campus, nearing the gym.
Shea shrugged. “I heard her powers started getting uncontrollable. Her dad tried everything to contain them until she could come of age, but eventually it just wasn’t enough…”
“Whoa” was the only intelligent thing I could think of to say.
Shea nodded and then stopped, grabbing my arm. “Just a heads-up. She’s… different-looking.”
Okay…
“Different how?”
“Her eyes… glow. Actually, her skin glows too, and her hair. Oh, and she has these swirly glowing tattoos of light where her dad tried to contain her power. Basically everything glows. She’s like a lamp. And she’s, like, sickeningly beautiful. I want to be her.”
Whoa. I guess a human and an angel creating a child can be unpredictable.
With that warning, Shea trudged forward, and opened the door to the gym.
I stepped in gingerly behind her and scanned the room. There, off in the corner punching a speed bag like a prized boxer, was a glowing girl.
Emberly.
Like her father, her skin had a luminescent glow, but her hair was like silver moonlight. It shook with each pounding of her fist, but it was her wings that transfixed me the most. They were silverish gray, and along the tops they were bound with leather and metal-plated armor. I remembered then what Noah had told me the night before; that they’d been broken or something, and she’d needed braces for them.
This girl must’ve gone through a lot in her short fifteen years.
“Can I help you?” She’d obviously noticed my staring, and had stopped her workout to question me.
She also had a fair amount of sass in her voice, which only made me smile and remember myself at fifteen.
“Hey, Emberly. Remember me?” Shea stepped forward.
Emberly squinted. “Shea, right?”
My bestie nodded. “That’s me. This is my best friend, Brielle. She—”
“Brielle, as in black wings, Brielle?” Emberly started to walk closer to me, unstrapping her gloves.
I chuckled, letting my wings pop out, and her mouth dropped open. “Half-black now,” I corrected her.
When she reached me, she did a full circle, checking me out, amazed. As she did, I stared in fascination at the moving silver tattoos of light that danced and stirred under her skin. It looked like we were equally enamored with one another.
“My dad’s spoken about you at dinner a couple times,” she started, stopping to stand before me. “I thought you were dead, or in Hell or something.”
I shrugged. “Broke out yesterday, which is actually why I came to see you. I need your help.”
Her eyes widened. “You? Need my help?”
Good, I was going to play on that if I had to.
I nodded. “I sort of made a deal with the Devil that I didn’t want, and now the archangels are afraid Lucifer could control my mind. I need someone with mind control to train me to withstand it.”
Her eyes widened even more, to the point I thought they might pop out of her head. “Why on Earth would you make a deal with the Devil?” she asked, shock evident in her tone.
Shea put a hand on her hip. “When you’ve spent a year in Hell, we’ll see if you don’t break a little down there.”
Emberly winced. “Sorry, I just meant—”
I waved her off dismissing it. “It’s okay. So you’ll help me?”
She shrugged. “What’s in it for me?”
I knew that line was coming. It’s what every sane fifteen-year-old would ask.
Shea gave her the stare-down, but I just smiled. “A hundred bucks a week.”
Her mouth popped open. “Four hundred bucks a month to make you bark like a dog, and watch you try to resist it? Hell yeah, I’ll do it!”
The fact that she could, in fact, make me bark like a dog scared the crap out of me. I hoped I’d still be getting my Fallen Army salary or I wasn’t going to be able to afford this.
I extended my hand and she shook it. “All right, we’ll start when I get back from San Francisco.”
She dropped my hand like a rock and stared at me, mouth gaping. “Why would you go to San Francisco? That place is like Hell on Earth.”
“My fiancé is there. I need to bring him back.”
She stared at me for a full minute before finally speaking. “Can I trust you not to rat me out to my dad if I tell you something?” She crossed her arms and glared at me as if to intimidate me.
“What? Of course. Why?” This chick did have a fiery temper.
She glanced around the room to make sure we were alone. “I ran away once, when I was thirteen. Me and my bestie went to San Francisco.”
Now it was my turn to drop my jaw. At thirteen? “How?”
Oh Lord, Michael had his hands full with this girl.
She lowered her voice. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. There are these underground tunnels there. If you have enough money or jewelry to barter your way across, they can get you right into the city. The demons who work in the tunnels only care about money. Pay them enough and they’ll get you in.”
“Geez!” Shea gasped, a hand on her chest. “You did that when you were thirteen? You must’ve given your mother a heart attack.”
I was thinking the same thing. It’s official, we’re old.
Emberly shut down then, her body stiff as something dark crossed her face. “You don’t know what I’ve been through. Don’t judge me.”
Oh damn. Now I felt bad. This girl had clearly been through some shit, and was just trying to help me.
“You’re right. We’re sorry,” I said, looking at Shea, who nodded reluctantly. “I’ll give you two hundred bucks cash right now, if you can draw me a map to the tunnels.”
That could be my way in there. I could find Lincoln faster if I got right into the city.
Emberly grinned—clearly she was money motivated. “And you don’t say a word to my dad?”
I nodded. “Not a word.”
We shook again, and then I turned to Shea. “I need to borrow two hundred bucks.”
My best friend groaned but nodded her assent.
I had to know something. “What did you do when you got there? To San Francisco?”
Emberly beamed. “We stayed out all night singing at this demon karaoke bar. Then we stole a Vespa and drove home.”
God help me, I was never having kids. I’d be fully gray-haired by thirty.
“She was delightful,” Shea commented as we made our way to find Noah and tell him our plan to rescue Lincoln.
I nodded, but something about Emberly made me wonder if she’d been through something dark that had made her so rebellious.
“Seems like she’s grown up fast. By the time she graduates, she’ll be the age we were when we started.” Eighteen and she’d already be a Fallen Academy graduate and soldier.
Shea nodded. “If my daughter ever sneaks out in the middle of the night to go play karaoke with demons, I’ma make her regret being born.” Her Demon City accent was coming out to play, making me grin.
I laughed. “Look at us. All mature and shit.”
I remembered it like it was yesterday, when it was Shea and I sneaking out as young teens to do wild and crazy things.
We found Noah in the parking lot, piling boxes into the back of his car.
Shea let out a catcall whistle and he turned, giving us both a wink. “Hello, beautiful ladies. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
She pointed to me. “We’re going to sneak into San Francisco, using some secret tunnels, and bust Lincoln out of there. Wanna come?”
Noah dropped the box he’d been holding. “Woman, are you crazy!” he shrieked.
Shea put a hand on her curvy hip and stared him down. “Fine. We’ll go alone.”
Noah groaned. “Obviously I’m going with you, but… Jesus, you guys, do you know anything about San Francisco?”
We both shrugged. “Grew up in Demon City. Can’t be that different,” Shea stated matter-of-factly.
Noah chuckled. “That’s cute. Demon City is a freaking unicorn playground compared to San Fran.”
What if Lincoln’s already dead?
No. I couldn’t allow that thought.
“Then tell us. Help us prepare. Because we leave tomorrow,” Shea informed him.
Noah reached up to massage his temples. “Does Raph know?”
I nodded. “And he’s going to help out with the war until you get back.”
A deep sigh escaped the Celestial healer, and suddenly he looked overwhelmed with emotion. “I tried to keep him here. But he left in the middle of the night. I tried.”
Shea and I stepped forward at the same moment, and pulled Noah into a hug. “We’ll get him back,” I said with as much assurance as I could.
Noah pulled away from our three-way embrace, and sat on the hood of his car. “The Bay Area has completely changed. The freethinking hippies who used to inhabit that place are long gone. Now it’s full of demon gangs, drug wars, and human trafficking.”
That sent chills up my spine. “What do you mean, human trafficking?”
He looked at me like I was an idiot.
Okay, stupid question, but I was in shock.
“They steal human kids, teens, and single women from their families, and ferry them into San Francisco to get on boats and planes. Then they’re sent out to different countries and never see their families again.”
Kids. He said kids.
“Oh my God. That’s horrifying.” Shea found her voice before I did.