An angry buzzing rang in my ears. I opened my eyes and found I was alone in my bed. The first rays of the dawn were peeking from beneath my curtains, and the whole house was still. It was Sunday morning, but barely. I rolled over at the noise on my nightstand. My phone was vibrating its way to a seizure.
I picked it up and tried to focus on the screen to see what time it was and who in the world would call me so early. I prayed the call had nothing to do with Jo.
5:30 AM
HUNTER
She must be up with the nuns for disciplinary breakfast duty. Knowing Hunter, it wouldn’t be the first time . . .
Before I could even say hello, Hunter started whispering frantically, “Maren! Is that you? You’ve got to help me. I’m in so much trouble!”
The desperation in her voice kicked me awake. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything!” she said. “Oh, Maren! He was such a nice guy, he was only trying to help me, and they killed him. They killed him! Then they came after me”—she started to sob—“and I ran to the first place I could find . . .”
“Hunter, Hunter . . .” I tried to sound soothing while my body prickled with fear. She was freaking me out. Hunter was anything but a crybaby. “You’re talking too fast. I can’t understand you. Who’s ‘they’?”
“The guard, the demons, and then these shadows. Everyone! They’re all after me!” Her crying escalated in passion but quieted in volume, as if she’d put her hand over her own mouth.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“In the church. It was down the street. They couldn’t follow me in.”
Sanctuary. She had been chased by darkness, just like in my dream. I crept to the window and cracked it open. Gavin was sitting on the ledge of the roof, about ten feet away. I motioned for him to come back inside.
“Slow down,” I said. “First, are you safe?” Gavin settled next to me on the window seat. I tilted the phone so he could hear too.
“I think so; as long as I stay inside, anyway. But you’ve got to help me, Maren! I’ve no one else to call!”
“Of course,” I answered, unsure of exactly what I could do. “But what happened? Start at the beginning. And calm down. You’re fine. You’re going to be fine.”
She took a deep breath and tried to stop crying. She managed, mostly, but little wheezy hiccups still snuck into each sentence.
“I knew I shouldn’t have gone—hh-huh-hh,” she said, “but I wanted so badly to prove I was good enough for the Abbey—hh-huh-hh—and they must have seen me looking at the drawings, because—hh-huh-hh . . .”
“What drawings?” I interrupted.
“The ones from your mom’s—hh-huh-hh—book,” she exhaled.
Gavin’s look reminded me I’d sworn I hadn’t shown anyone. I scrunched up my face into a contrite expression and mouthed the word Sorry. I’d have to tell him about Hunter and why I’d sent her the secret pictures; how she was an Abbey orphan too, and that I’d wanted to help her land her dream job.
“I recognized one of the buildings, so I decided to go check it out,” she continued. “The square castle with the turrets. It’s the Tower—hh-huh-hh—of London.”
Even though I didn’t know what it looked like, I did know what the Tower of London was: the infamous fortress where prisoners like Henry VIII’s wives were kept before they were beheaded.
I instantly regretted not telling Hunter I’d been to one of the demon strongholds myself and had barely gotten out alive. I thought about Jo in her hospital bed, her body wracked with poison. Why didn’t I warn Hunter when I’d had the chance? My stomach turned sour. It was all my fault. I brought this evil to Britain with me, thanks to my mom’s journal, and now two of my friends were in danger of dying at the hands of demons. I had to do something.
“Maren? Are you there?” Hunter asked, jolting me out of my thoughts.
“Yes, Tower of London. So what happened?”
Hunter took a deep breath. “This terribly ugly guard started bothering me, pushing me on the shoulder, and telling me I was in trouble. He tried to take my phone away, and this nice bloke—this tourist, I think—he came to my defense. He was really lovely, Maren, not as handsome as you said Gavin is, but very good—”
“Okay, I get it. Then what?” I interrupted, now mortified that Gavin was listening in. I leaned away from him a bit, but he followed, moving closer to me. I was pretty sure I saw him smile out of the corner of my eye.
“Then this other guard came—he must have been a superior or something. He was amazingly good looking too, but he got into a fight with the tourist, and then he . . .” She started crying again.
“He what, Hunter? It’s okay. It’s not your fault.” It’s my fault.
“Th-th- they started swinging at each other,” she gasped, “an-and the new guard punched th-the guy in the face, and his n-n-neck snapped.” She was back to sobbing.
“Noooo!” I breathed.
“Yes, I swear. He killed the guy. In one blow. And then it was absolute chaos. The guy’s friends all ran off, the guards tried to grab me, and I just ran. It was horrible. It was like a call went out to every demon in the country, and they came after me. They were like shadows, pushing and tripping me. I fell and bashed my knee.” Just like in my dream. “I even lost my necklace, Maren,” Hunter wailed, “the one from my mum. But I just kept running. I must have run a mile when I saw the church dome all lit up. They chased me all the way. I barely made it in.”
“How are you still there?” I asked. “It’s five thirty in the morning. Did they give you permission to stay overnight?”
“No, I hid until all the visitors left, and I’ve been hiding ever since. I could live in this place for a year and no one would find me,” she said. “Crap! My phone’s about to die. It took me forever to find a signal in here . . . You have to come get me! I can’t even step outside—they’re out there waiting for me. I can hear them!”
“No, of course, of course, I’ll leave right away,” I said. Gavin was vigorously shaking his head in the negative direction, but I ignored him.
“Thank you.” Hunter sounded like she wanted to start crying again, but discovered she was too tired. “I knew I could count on you.”
“Wait!” I said before I lost her to the empty battery. “Where are you?”
“St. Paul’s,” she answered. “Hurry!”
The line clicked and went dead.
I turned to Gavin, panicked. “St. Paul’s? That’s all we’ve got to go on? St. Paul’s? There must be a million St. Paul’s churches!”
“Actually,” Gavin answered, “when it comes to London, there’s only one.”
St. Paul’s, it turns out, is the largest cathedral in London. I should have recognized the name, because it’s where Princess Diana married Prince Charles. My mom wasn’t sentimental about things, except when it came to Princess Diana. My mom told me that when Diana died, she called in sick to work and lay on the couch in front of the live television coverage, crying for two straight days. When I was born, she gave me the middle name Diana in tribute to the real-life princess who had to navigate a not-so-fairy-tale world.
Now Hunter was hiding there. Five minutes after she hung up, I got a single text from her. She must have tried to send it out before she called, but it had been delayed. It was ominously short, just five words: “STUCK IN ST PAULS. PLEASE HELP!” I was glad I had gotten to speak to her, because the message alone would have freaked me out, but it did underscore the urgency. I had to get to her quickly.
“How long is a plane ride down to London?” I asked Gavin, already moving around my room and throwing things into a small backpack.
“With heightened security at the airports, the train is faster,” he answered. “Only four hours from Glasgow to London. But for you, it’s zero.”
“What do you mean, ‘zero’? Are we going to drive there or something?”
“No, I mean there’s zero chance that you’re going,” he answered. “Why would you?”
I stopped packing and studied his face to see if he was joking, but he looked pretty serious. Which made me pretty furious.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I said.
“It’s too dangerous,” he answered.
“Well, I don’t care.” The words tumbled out of my mouth. “She’s my friend, and she’s in trouble, and it’s all my fault, and she doesn’t have anyone else.”
“Well, I do care, Maren,” he answered. “And it’s not happening.” I loved when Gavin said my name in his thick accent. My heart melted like summer snow. Until he ruined it with the whole telling me what to do part.
“‘Not happening’?” I said. “You’re not the boss of me. It is happening.” Did I really just say, “You’re not the boss of me”? Now I was acting like the kindergartener who teased the boy she liked. Ridiculous. He made me act like this. He made me crazy.
“What exactly is your plan?” he asked, far too smugly. “You’re going to race down to London, go to St. Paul’s, and then what?”
“We’ll find Magnificat,” I said. “I’ll turn in my mom’s stuff, get the antidote, and we’ll all be safe.”
“How are you two going to leave the church when there are demons outside who’ve surely recorded Hunter’s heartbeat?”
“I don’t know.” I threw up my hands, anger rushing through me. “I honestly have no freaking idea about anything!” I hissed, wanting to holler but not wanting to wake up my grandparents any further. To my extreme frustration and embarrassment, my eyes brimmed with tears. But there was no holding them back. There was no holding anything back. “Is that what you want to hear? I don’t know! All I know is I lost my mom—who apparently kept her entire life a secret from me—and I’m alone in the middle of nowhere. My only two friends in the whole world are either on their deathbed or trapped in a church. All because of me. And I have to try to do something about it. I don’t know what, I don’t know how, but I have to try.” Tears rolled down my face, but I didn’t care.
Gavin, however, did. He inhaled sharply, like he didn’t know what to do with my burst of emotion. “I’m sorry,” he said gently, placing a hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t mean to make you upset. I just . . . I just don’t want to see anything bad happen to you. I’ll take care of it. I was waiting for you to wake up to tell you that I was going to go to Magnificat anyway.”
“What you mean?” I asked, wiping at my cheeks. My fury dissipated like clouds in the sun. Gavin somehow had the ability to make me instantly happy no matter what the circumstance.
“The village decided I should go to Magnificat to see if there’s an antidote,” he replied.
“So they believe my mom’s encryption?”
He nodded. “We knew something was being planned. Now we know what.”
“Why you?” I asked. “Why are you going?”
“Because it’s my assignment. This is my town, my time,” he said, pride illuminating his eyes.
“Well, I’m coming with you,” I said.
“No, you’re not,” he answered.
I wasn’t going to get mad again. I had to stay focused. I turned away and continued filling my backpack. I got my mother’s journal, carefully wrapped it in a scarf, and zipped it inside.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Packing,” I said simply.
“Why?”
“You’ve got your duty, and I’ve got mine. You’re going to London. Great. I’m going to get Hunter. Maybe I’ll see you there, maybe I won’t.”
“You’re serious?” he said. “You’re going to go?”
“I’m sorry, but I have to. I started this by sending Hunter pictures from my mom’s book. I’ve got to go finish it.”
Gavin sat sullenly in the overstuffed chair while I finished getting my things together. Short of locking me in a closet, which I was pretty sure was against his “angel rules,” he knew he couldn’t stop me. And I guessed that since I was going and he was going, he would just go with me. But he wasn’t going to be happy about it.
I peppered him with questions, hoping he would forget to be in a bad mood. “Who’s going to watch over Aviemore while you’re gone? Are they going to send another angel?”
“Aye,” he mumbled.
“Just one?”
“One’s not enough?” he asked, arching one eyebrow in an incredibly sexy way.
“I’m sure it is, I mean, you are . . .” I stammered, trying to regain my composure. “But why does each town only get one angel? It seems like there should be more.”
“For bigger towns, there is,” he said with a shrug. “But there are a lot of areas to cover all at once. We’re spread pretty thin.”
“Are you going straight to Magnificat, or to St. Paul’s first?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
“I suppose I’m following you to St. Paul’s,” he sighed.
I stopped packing and perched on the arm of the chair. “I know you’re this huge Warrior and I’m upsetting your mission, but there’s no reason we can’t work together.” I flashed my sweetest smile. “Isn’t that what they do at the Abbey? Angels and humans work together?”
“We don’t work for the Abbey,” he reminded me. “I’m not supposed to be interacting with humans at all, let alone sitting in their bedrooms watching them pack.”
For balance, I rested my right hand on my knee. With his forefinger, he began tracing the outline of it. It tingled so deliciously, my entire being focused on his one finger lightly brushing against my skin. Every nerve ending tickled, and I could feel laughter all the way down to my toes. It was an unexplained but glorious electricity. I could hardly bear it.
Suddenly, he stopped, as if he only just noticed what he was doing; as if he’d lost control of himself and didn’t mean to. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, changing his mind. He yanked his hand away from mine, and stood up quickly, almost knocking me off the chair’s arm as he did.
“All right, let’s go,” he said, abruptly.
So much for this love story.
There was no way I could tell my grandparents I was taking off on an emergency trip to London in order to help a teenage orphan they’d never met battle demons. But I couldn’t just disappear, either. I needed a good cover story.
By the time the sun rose and they woke up, I had it ready. I was headed to London with the after-school choir, I told them. That with all the worry of Jo being in the hospital, I’d completely forgotten to tell them about the London competition. I had my phone, I assured them, Gavin the trustworthy tutor was waiting to drive me to the train station, and I had to run.
I don’t think they bought it, but they didn’t stop me from going. They exchanged a few glances I thought might qualify as worried, but my grandmother set her lips into a thin line, nodded her permission, and I was out the door.
I felt terrible about being so dishonest with them, but what else could I do? I knew lying was a sin, a commandment even. But it wasn’t going to hell after I died that worried me. It was going there beforehand.