Boundless (Unearthly, #3)(65)

“Ange, they’re coming.” I can’t help the frantic squeak in my voice.

“Okay, slow down, C,” Angela says. “Who’s coming?”

“I don’t know. Black Wings.”

“Do they know about Web?” she asks, starting to comprehend some of what I’m saying. “Are they coming for him? How would they know?”

“I don’t know,” I say again.

“Well, what do you know?”

“I know something terrible is going to happen there. You have to leave.”

“And go where?” she asks, still not fully getting it. “No. I can’t go anywhere tonight.”

“But Ange—”

“How long have you been having the vision? Almost a year? There’s no need to rush off all panicked and clueless. We’ll think it through.”

“The vision was different tonight. It was urgent.”

Her voice hardens. “Well, sometimes the visions are like that, aren’t they? And you think you know what they mean, but you don’t.” She sighs like she realizes that she’s taking her issues out on me, and she’s sorry. “I can’t go running off in the middle of the night on a whim, C. I have Web to think about now. We need a plan. Come to the Garter in the morning, and we’ll talk about your vision, okay? Then I’ll decide where to go from there.”

There’s a high-pitched wail in the background. The sound of it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

“Oh, great. You woke him up,” she says, annoyed. “I have to go. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She hangs up on me.

I stare at the phone for a minute.

“What was that all about?” Tucker asks from behind me. “What’s going on?”

I meet Christian’s eyes, and he knows what I’m thinking. “We can take my truck,” he says.

We start moving toward the door. “We’ll go over there and I can put my hand on her and try to show her what I see. Maybe she’ll be able to receive it. We’ll make her understand. Then we’ll pack her and the baby up and take them to a hotel.” I sling my coat over my shoulder.

“Wait, what?” Tucker follows us out onto the porch. “Hold on, Carrots. Explain this to me. What’s happening?”

“We don’t have time.” I look at Tucker over my shoulder as I’m dashing away, and I say, “I have to go; I’m sorry,” and then I climb up into Christian’s pickup and we take off, spraying the gravel in the driveway, off to Jackson, and I get the sinking feeling that the trials my dad was telling me about are really about to begin.





14


ABANDON ALL HOPE


Just before we get to town, I get a text from Angela: trp dr, it says, and I don’t know what that means, but it makes my bad feeling get worse. Then when we arrive at the Garter, we find the front door open a crack. Christian and I both stiffen at the sight. We know that Anna Zerbino keeps this place locked up extra tight in the off hours, ever since an incident last year when a group of drunken tourists broke in and stole a bunch of costumes out of the dressing rooms and went gallivanting in chaps and petticoats all over town. Christian toes the door open enough for us to pass through, and we creep into the front lobby. The room is empty. He takes a moment to inspect the door, but there’s nothing to suggest violence. The lock is intact.

I cross the lobby to the red velvet curtain that separates the front of the house from the auditorium and push it aside. The lights are off. The theater is a pit of blackness straight out of my worst fears, and I can’t look at it for more than a few seconds before I have to turn away.

Upstairs there’s the sound of a muffled voice, a dragging noise like a chair scraping across the floor.

I glance uncertainly at Christian like, What should we do?

He gestures with his head toward the back corner, where there’s a staircase that goes to the second floor. We take the stairs slowly, careful not to make any noise. At the top we stop and listen. This door is closed, a ribbon of bright light glowing beneath it.

I’m tempted by the ridiculous urge to knock, like maybe if I act normal, things will be normal. I’ll knock, and Anna will answer it all serious and ask us what we’re doing here at this late hour, but then she’ll take us back to Angela’s room, and Angela will look up from where she’s sprawled on her bed, reading, and she’ll say, Really, you guys? You’re really so paranoid that you couldn’t wait until morning?

I could knock, and then there wouldn’t be anything evil on the other side of that door.

Christian shakes his head slightly. What do you feel? he asks.

I open my mind. The minute I lower my defenses—which I wasn’t even aware I had up—sorrow floods me, a deep penetrating pain, so fierce it makes me gasp for air. I lean against the wall and try to delve inside the suffering, to identify its source, but all I get is an image of a woman’s body floating facedown in the water, her dark hair spreading out around her head. The angel—oh yes, definitely an angel—is not Samjeeza, that much I know. His sorrow is different from Sam’s, angrier, a rage caught up in an agony that’s centuries old and still red hot, but it’s also more controlled than Sam’s, less self-pitying, like he’s channeling his emotions into something else: a purpose. A desire to destroy.