Angel looked out the window of the FBI building, arms folded, mouth pinched into a dissatisfied twist. It was raining—storming, actually—but that wasn’t what bothered her.
It was her meddlesome twin that was putting her in such a bad mood. That stupid, goody-two shoes twin of hers who wanted to be normal. Normal. It made her fucking sick just thinking about it.
“Miss Angel.”
She released a heavy sigh, turning to stare at her new right-hand man, Rex. The name fit him, she supposed. Huge and lumbering, but dumb as a sack of bricks. He was a Prophet—or, former Prophet—and slowly she was busting through their ranks and turning each idiotic one of them. “What, Rex? Can’t you see I’m in a bad mood?”
He swallowed hard, and Angel thought the whole situation had a comical twist. This man could pulverize her without breaking a sweat, but she had a greater a power; a power that would keep him from getting anywhere near her. And this was why he cowered. This was why everybody cowered, because they were no match. And she loved it that way.
“Some of your . . . people, are wondering when we will strike the Ellie Armstrong girl. We’ve known where she’s been for a couple months now, but you aren’t doing anything.”
Angel flexed her shoulders, popping her neck. “Tell them to screw themselves, Rex. I make the decisions around here. If they’re tired of waiting, they can leave.”
“But—”
“Do me a favor and look around you, Rex. Tell me what you see.”
She already knew what was all around her. Carnage. A bunch of well-trained FBI agents lying scattered through the building, all dead. And those who weren’t were well under her influence. It was amazing, how easily people could be manipulated. “Dead people,” Rex finally said, voice slightly hoarse. “I see a whole lot of dead people.”
“Good boy. That will be you, or anybody else, who dares question my authority or stand in my way.”
Another audible gulp. “Yes, ma’am.”
“How is our prisoner?”
A flicker of a smile appeared on Rex’s lips. His hostility and blood-thirsty nature were two of the real reasons she kept him around. “Well kept, Miss Angel. Would you like to see him?”
She nodded. “Yes. Take me there.”
So Rex led Angel through the maze of lifeless corpses; through the stairwells and to the makeshift holding cell in the bottommost bowels of the building. The room was cleared out, holding nothing but a man shackled to the wall and a meager light bulb flickering overhead. Angel smirked.
“Leave us,” she said, and Rex promptly walked out.
Angel clicked forward in her heels, smiling coolly down at the old man crumpled against the wall. His hair was grey and scraggly, hanging in rattails around his face. He smelled of blood and sweat. She curled her nose.
“You’re a sad old man,” she commented, stopping a couple feet away. “Sad and pathetic.”
Jim Grayson lifted his head, lips pulling up as he flashed her bloody teeth. “Insult me all you want,” he rasped. “You’ll never be anything like her.”
Her blood boiled, but she concealed her rage. “You’re right. She’s weak. I’ll never be that.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Angel crouched down, tilting her head to the side. “Do elaborate, old man.”
Jim spat a glob of blood by her shoe. “You will fall, and she will be the one to strike you down. Believe you me. Evil cannot last in this world.”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed, long and hard, at the pure absurdity of his statement. “You are foolish! This world cannot thrive without darkness. When given light, we are miserable. Don’t you see? We can’t live without something to fight against; without an evil to blame for our misgivings. That is why it wins. That is why I’ll win.”
“No.”
“Yes.” She narrowed her eyes, and with the single movement Jim hunched forward, coughing up blood. Angel grinned. Stomach hemorrhaging. She liked to be creative.
“Doesn’t . . . matter . . . what you do . . . to me,” he gasped. “You’ll still . . . lose.”
Angel stood, releasing an annoyed breath. “You’re a pain in my ass,” she muttered. “Okay. I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m going to leave a little present for my sister; just a small warning to let her know what happens if she doesn’t turn herself into me. And then I’m going to terrorize the hell out of her until she does.”
Despite everything, Jim laughed. “You and I both know . . . she’ll destroy you.”
Her eyes flashed. “Not unless I break her first.”
~*~*~*~
“It’s a what?”
“A surprise party.”
I looked around at all the decorations, and the big chocolate cake taking up the entire space of the table. Jessica, Blake, Ryan, and August all stood around with big smiles and confetti poppers. “Oh,” I muttered.
Jessica frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just . . .” I scratched my head. “I don’t even know when my birthday is.”
“Well, August said you thought it was sometime in the fall, so here we are. Happy sometime-in-November birthday!”
Everybody cheered and released their confetti poppers. I flinched, resisting the urge to cover my ears. I had been in this house with these people for four months, and sometimes I found I still wasn’t used to all the noise and commotion. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it!” Ryan exclaimed, slinging in arm around my shoulders. “So, Ellie. Tell us. How does it feel to be nineteen?”
I shrugged. “The same?”
He sighed. “Ah, yes. Nineteen was such a pointless year, wasn’t it?”
“Um . . .”
“Lay off, Ryan,” August chuckled, shoving him away. He handed me a small wrapped package. “Here, Ellie.”
A grin spread across my face before I could stop it. “For me?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Wow.” I shook it around a little bit. “Nobody’s ever gotten me a birthday present before.”
Ryan groaned. “Oh, no. You’re not going to tell one of your depressing childhood stories are you? Because, today is supposed to be happy. I don’t want to be sad.”
Jessica rolled her eyes and walked over to August, wrapping her arms around his waist. I forced myself to look away, unable to completely accept the fact that sometime over the course of fourth months, they had become a couple. I’d heard snippets between them of past occurrences, and Blake had told me they knew each other as kids and had a history. They all did. This left me feeling a little out of the loop, because I was the newbie and the outcast and the freak.
Relationships, obviously, still blew my mind. I wasn’t sure how one transitioned through the stages, but I didn’t dwell on it. Because as far as I knew, I didn’t have time for that kind of stuff. Angel was still out there somewhere, and more Prophets, and that was what I needed to focus on.
“So what are you going to do?” Blake asked, shoving his hands in his jeans pockets.
I shrugged again, supremely uncomfortable. “Go to sleep? I’m actually pretty tired.”
Jessica groaned, leaning playfully into August’s side. “I can’t stand it. Somebody make her have fun. This is crazy.”
“I think sleeping is fun.”
She snorted. “Of course you do, Ellie. Sometimes I forget how weird you are.”
It was said affectionately, but that word would always get to me. And even if I knew I shouldn’t, I always felt hurt by it. “I’ll be upstairs,” I mumbled, turning away to mount the stairs.
“See, look what you did,” I heard Blake muttered. “You hurt her feelings.”
The rest of their conservation faded as I entered my room, plopping down on my bed. Four months was the longest time I had stayed in any one place, save for my time at Oak and when I was tortured by Lana. But I didn’t count those, because they were either nightmarish or fake. And now that I knew everything about my life in my Virginia hometown was fabricated . . . well, I didn’t know what to feel. It was partly a relief to realize why my parents never seemed to give a crap about me, but it also sucked because it meant my life was even further from normal than before.
And Angel. My twin sister. She hadn’t made any appearance since the warehouse, but I knew she was plenty busy. There were no visions or possessions, so at least it was quiet in that aspect. I would admit I tried before to do the same with Ryan a few weeks ago, but no matter how hard I tried I could neither possess him nor send him visions. In fact, I tried so hard I gave myself a nosebleed and passed out.
She was stronger. She knew things I didn’t. She had the advantage, and there was nothing I could do about it.
A knock at the door preceded August poking his head through the crack, lips inching into a lopsided smile. “Hey,” he said.
“Hi.”
“Can I come in?”
I nodded hollowly. He walked through, the door falling shut behind him, hands disappearing in his hoodie pockets. After a moment of standing awkwardly in the entryway, he shuffled forward and sat on the bed beside me. I held the birthday present in my hands, covered in sparkly blue paper with my name written across the top in his crooked scrawl.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek, twirling my finger around the white ribbon encasing the package. “I reacted wrong, didn’t I?”
“What do you mean?”
“Down there, at my . . . my birthday party. I should have stayed, right? And celebrated.”
He shrugged, pursing his lips. “Well, it’s your party. I’m pretty sure you can do whatever you want.”
“August.”
A long exhale left him. “Okay, yeah. You probably should have stayed.”
I placed the small gift between us to lean forward and bury my face in my hands. “Four months. I’ve been completely submersed in normality for four months and I still can’t do it right.”
“You’ll get it, Ellie. You can’t erase roughly nineteen years of all you’ve ever known in four months. It’ll take time.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“I don’t know what to believe. I’m too tired to think.”
“Yeah, about that.” His fingers gripped my chin and he tilted my head up, examining my face. “How are you really? Because, you look terrible.”
I pulled away from his touch, knotting my fingers in my lap. “I’m fine, August. Just tired.”
“Mmhm.”
“Really.”
“Alright.” He grabbed the present between us and deposited it on my lap. “Open it,” he urged.
Gingerly, I untied the ribbon and peeled away the package. Beneath was a white box that fit in the palm of my hand. “What is it?”
“Open it and find out.”
So I did, and sucked in a sharp breath when lifting the lid revealed a necklace nestled in velvet. It was simple, just a silver chain with a teardrop pendant on the end that had the word strength written in it. “Augie,” I whispered, stroking the metal with the tip of my finger. “It’s beautiful.”
“You think so?” he scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “I was out with Jessica and I saw it . . . I just thought it would be good for you to have, you know? So we can tell the difference between you and your tyrannical twin and all.”
I grinned. “Okay. For whatever reason, I love it.”
“Good.”
“Help me put it on?”
“You want to wear it now?”
“Of course.” I removed it from the package, draping it over my hand. “I want to see it on me.”
“Alright.” I turned, and he positioned himself slightly behind me. After gathering all my hair and lifting it up, he grabbed the necklace and struggled with clasping it around my neck. His knuckles brushed my skin and I had to screw my eyes shut tight as chills raced through me. It was manageable, though. And seconds later the necklace was resting against my collarbone and he wasn’t touching me anymore.
You’re good. You’re okay. Everything’s fine.
“Let me see,” he said, already pushing on my shoulder to turn me around. I cleared away any obstructing strands of hair and showed him. A triumphant smile graced his face. “It looks good!”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re sure you like it?”
“Of course, Augie. It’s lovely.”
“Good. Good, that’s . . . good.”
We sat in silence for a bit, listening to the sounds of the other three house occupants moving around downstairs. Ryan was probably eating my cake. The thought brought a smile to my face.
August patted his knees and rose to his feet. “Well, I’m going out with Jessica tonight. There’s a chick flick she wants to see, so . . .”
“Chick flick,” I repeated. “That’s a romance, right?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, Ellie.”
“Oh. Well . . . I hope you enjoy it.”
“Me, too.”
He stayed for a moment more before ducking out the door, leaving me alone. Absentmindedly I traced the tiny pendant on the necklace, and forced the smile to remain on my face.
I would be okay.
All of us would.
Because we didn’t have a choice.
****
FIrst chapter of the second book! VOTE and COMMENT, and let me know what you think! Love you guys! :D
-EJ