Sanctum (Guards of the Shadowlands, Book 1) (38 page)

“Fine, then,” I laughed breathlessly, “I order you to kiss me again.”

He raised an eyebrow and said his next words against my lips, sending chills rocketing through my body. “Yes, ma’am.”

I would like to thank Kathleen Ortiz, my incredible agent, for guiding me through this process, cheering me on, calming me down, and for being real (and realistic), hilarious, patient, and relentlessly
T. rex
-ish when necessary. Becky Yeager, for pulling my manuscript from the slush and honoring it with the term “nightmare fuel.” Nancy Coffey, for a pep talk I’ll never forget, and Joanna Volpe, for support and strategery. Courtney Miller, for giving Lela a chance, and for being this story’s fearless advocate. Jayne Carapezzi, for making it better. And to The Black Rabbit, who brought me to tears by capturing the entire story in a single, powerful image.

I could not have survived without my writing friends. My beloved beta readers: JD, Jaime Lawrence, Jenn Walkup,
and Stina Lindenblatt—thank you for tough love and constant encouragement. My favorite teen critic: Leah Block, please continue to set me straight. Online buddies who have become close friends: Lydia Kang, who is grace in electronic form, and Brigid Kemmerer, the ace of the talk-down, who sends me the literary equivalent of eye candy whenever I need it. You have all made this writing thing more rewarding than I ever anticipated.

And finally, thank you to the people who hold me together in “real” life. Paul Block, for being a better mentor than I deserve (and also for having an endless supply of M&M’s in your office), and Liz Cantor, for simply being cool. My beautiful sisters, Cathryn and Robin, for delighting me by being who you are (and for being willing to claim me as your big sis). My mother, Julie, for being the best listener in the world, and my father, Jerry, for your wisdom, and for the thousands of hours you spent reading to your little girls. Joey, for tolerating me when I transformed from sane person to crazy writer almost overnight…and never changed back. And to Asher and Alma, who taught me how fierce love can be. Without all of you, I couldn’t have done this.

My captor paced the entryway with heavy footsteps while I sat in a wooden chair backed against the wall. My heart beat hard against my ribs, keeping time with my primitive, animal thoughts: escape escape escape.

My rational side, dwarfed by all my instincts, somehow managed to get a few words in edgewise:

It’s not like this is a life-threatening situation
.

I’ll get out of it alive
.

I hope
.

I leaned forward and planted my feet on the floor, eyeing the door, estimating the number of seconds it might take me to bolt from this chair and make it through, wondering if I was fast enough to get away.

The fierce gaze of my jailer told me she was thinking the same thing. She halted in front of the door and crossed her arms over her chest. “Don’t even think about it, Baby. I’m responsible for you. This is a big deal.”

I leaned my head back and banged it softly against the wall. “Only because you made it one.”

Diane made her all-purpose
mm-mm-mm
sound of disapproval. “You’ve just gone through something big, and now—”

I was saved from a lecture by a knock at the door, but the knowledge of who it was sent my heart rate skyrocketing. I stood up on shaky legs as Diane turned the knob and swung the door open wide.

I was still getting used to seeing him in regular clothes rather than armor and fatigues. It was only yesterday that he showed up at my school, looking like an ordinary high school student instead of a deadly Guard. Well, “ordinary” probably wasn’t the right word. He couldn’t look ordinary if he tried. And he was trying. Tonight he wore jeans and a grey, zipped-up hoodie. His face, angular and stark, olive skin and ink-black hair, eyes so dark they looked like solid ebony circles, was arranged in an expression I’d seen once before.

He was doing his best to look harmless, but he wasn’t good at it. He still looked like he could kill someone without breaking a sweat.

Probably because he could.

“Ms. Jeffries?” Even though he spoke perfect English, every consonant was harder, every vowel deeper, resulting in this clipped, precise accent that perfectly matched his appearance. He held out his hand. “Malachi Sokol. So nice to meet you.”

I drew up alongside Diane in time to see her eyebrows nearly hit her hairline. She’d spent her entire career working as a guard and administrator down at the medium-security prison, so she had a pretty keen sense of danger, and Malachi had obviously triggered her alarms. She shook his hand and stepped back to allow him into the entryway. “Nice to meet you, too. Lela said you just arrived here in the States?”

“Yes, it’s a brief exchange program. An opportunity to experience American culture before I graduate,” he replied, but his focus had already shifted from Diane.

To me.

His smile stole my breath, a devastating curl of his lips as his eyes hit mine. From behind his back, he produced a small bouquet of flowers, a few yellow and white blooms and several green-white buds, wrapped in thin plastic cellophane. “These are for you.”

It took me a few seconds, but I managed to get my hands and fingers to work together to take the flowers from his hand. “Thanks,” I said, but it came out as a choked whisper.

Malachi’s brows lowered and concern flashed in his eyes before he turned back to Diane. “I’d like to introduce my host father.” He gestured toward the front steps.

The most average-looking man in the world stepped into the entryway and held out his hand. “Ms. Jeffries. I’m John Raphael. Thank you so much for inviting us to dinner. I was so pleased to hear Malachi had already made a friend.”

And then he smiled. It made him look like what I suspected he actually was, transforming his face from forgettable to indelible, from ordinary to angelic. Whenever he smiled I wished I had my camera.

The tension melted from Diane’s body as she shook Raphael’s hand. Her face relaxed into a warm smile. “I was happy to,” she said, which nearly made me laugh, because we’d had a raging argument this afternoon about whether I could go out with Malachi tonight. It was the first time I’d ever asked to go out with a boy, the first time I’d ever mentioned one, actually, and judging by the way she’d clutched at her chest when I did, it really caught her by surprise. Especially because things had been so miserable since Nadia killed herself. Diane couldn’t understand how I’d just “snapped out of” my grief.

She didn’t know I’d followed Nadia into death. That I’d seen my best friend again. That I not only suspected Nadia was in a better place—I knew it at a bone-deep level. I’d made sure of it, in fact.

I’d sold my own freedom to make it happen.

While Diane and Raphael chatted about the joys of parenting teenagers, I went to the kitchen with the flowers, staring at those thinly veined buds while my throat got tight. I opened a
cabinet to pull out a plastic vase, and when I closed it, Malachi was right there.

“You don’t like them?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I love them. It’s just…no one’s ever given me flowers before.” I turned my back, rolling the delicate stems between my fingers. It was one of those cheap grocery-store bouquets. Tegan, who had ascended to the status of resident Queen Bee of Warwick High school since Nadia’s death, would have scoffed at the already-wilting necks, the scraggly little petals. But to me…

Malachi’s fingers skimmed along my shoulder. “I’ve never given a girl flowers before.” He laughed quietly. “I hadn’t actually seen a flower up close in a long time.”

He’d spent the last several decades in a walled city of cement and steel and slime, where the only things that grew were the festering wishes of the dead, sorrowful people trapped there. Nothing green or lush or
real
could grow because it was always dark, always dusk or midnight, never day. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Something had grown between
us
.

I turned back to him and reached for his hand. I wasn’t used to this yet, this permission to touch. His skin was so warm. Real.
Here
.

“Unbelievable,” I whispered.

He grinned and pulled me toward him, but at that exact moment Diane entered the kitchen, and Malachi let me go and stepped back with an awkward throat-clearing noise.

“I hope you like pasta,” she said to Malachi. It sounded friendly enough, but her expression was all warning.

“I suspect I will love anything you cook,” he replied. I had no doubt that was true. He probably hadn’t had a decent meal since he’d actually been alive. Back in the 1930s.

Malachi and I set the table while Raphael poured us each a glass of lemonade. Diane had insisted she meet both Malachi and his “people” before she allowed me to go out with him. She kept giving him these narrow-eyed looks, like she was wondering if he’d come armed. I was wondering the same thing. And also, it was hard to tear my gaze from him. I’d seen Malachi do amazing and deadly things, but I’d never seen him do anything as basic as setting forks on a table. By the way he watched his own hands carefully put each piece of cutlery into place, it was obvious he was thinking about it as well. It made me want to hug him, to ask him what was going on inside his head, to know him better. Maybe there would be time to do that now that we were here, on Earth, and not trapped in hell.

“Where exactly are you from?” Diane asked him as we sat down to eat.

“Bratislava,” he said. “Slovakia.”

“What do your parents do?”

My throat got tight again as I watched him give Diane a small smile that was huge with sadness. “My father owns a shoe store,” he said slowly. “My mother, she stays at home. She’s a
very good cook.” He bowed his head for a second and then looked back at Diane. “I miss her cooking.”

The sharp edges of Diane’s expression and voice immediately rounded and softened. “You’re homesick, poor baby.”

Malachi swallowed and took a breath. “Always. But I’m happy to be here. And happy to have met Lela.”

“Thank you for agreeing to let Lela drive,” said Raphael, passing the garlic bread to Diane. With gratitude, I realized he was drawing attention away from Malachi to allow him a chance to recover from the mention of his parents, who had died horribly at the hands of the Nazis so many years ago.

“Actually, I think it’s good for Lela to do the driving,” said Diane. She’d told me she wanted me to be able to dump Malachi and drive away if he got “handsy.”

Raphael was a charming dinner companion and had no trouble getting Diane talking about herself, her family, her pride that I was college-bound. As he kept her going, I watched Malachi eat. Another thing I’d never gotten to witness. It was pretty hypnotic. Every bite looked like an act of worship, like he was forcing himself not to shove it all in his mouth at once. He told Diane how delicious it was at least ten times. She probably thought he was kissing her ass, but I knew it for what it was—the absolute truth. The food in the dark city sucked.

“We need to leave soon if we’re going to make that movie,” I said as we finished up. Now that I had drunk deeply of the
well of awkwardness that was this dinner, I was ready to make a break for it.

“Which theater are you going to?” asked Diane. “Not Providence Place, all right?”

Here we go
. “No, but it’s really not a big—”

She gripped her fork like a weapon and glared at me. “You’re not going anywhere near that city until they catch those crazies.”

Raphael wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I saw the news report. The footage was quite grainy. It’s possible it was a dog.”

Diane looked at Raphael like he’d betrayed her. “A dog wearing jeans and sneakers?” She took a bite of pasta, her jaw working harder than necessary. When she swallowed, she said, “I’m not saying it’s a werewolf or whatever. I’m not crazy. But a guy running around on all fours? Probably a meth head. Those people do crazy things. Either way, these two are staying away.”

“The theater is in Warwick, Ms. Jeffries,” Malachi offered, earning him a nod from Diane. We’d rehearsed this part after school, and he looked relieved that he’d gotten it right.

“What are you seeing?” she asked, finally relaxing.

“Night Huntress,” he recited. “It’s gotten great reviews.”

“I heard it was a gore fest,” she grumbled as she began to clear the table.

I held in my half-hysterical giggles as I helped get the dishes into the sink. “Thanks for dinner. And for being cool.”

She shrugged and hmphed. “You’ve earned my trust, Baby. Just keep it up, all right?”

“No problem,” I said. “You don’t have to wait up.”

“Nice try. It’s a
school
night. You’re lucky I’m letting you out at all. Be back by ten.” Diane leaned out of the kitchen and fixed Malachi with a suspicious gaze. “You’d better take care of this girl, young man.”

Malachi closed the distance between us and took my hand. He gave Diane a deadly serious look. “Ms. Jeffries, I swear to you, I will protect her with my life.”

Diane let out a brief bark of laughter. She had no idea he’d already done exactly that at least a dozen times.

She let us go with a minimum of fuss, even though she wouldn’t let Raphael escape without a hug, which he seemed happy enough to give her. No matter what she thought of Malachi, it was obvious she thought Raphael was all right, which would help a lot. As soon as she closed the front door, Raphael turned to us. “Mission accomplished. Have fun tonight, you two. I’m needed back at the house. Summon me if you require my assistance.”

“We won’t,” said Malachi, squeezing my hand. “But thank you.”

“Actually,” I said, “can you help me out with Diane? This curfew…”

Raphael nodded. “When she’s not on the night shift, which should suit your patrol schedule very well, Ms. Jeffries will be sleeping very soundly.”

I bit my lip. I hated to do this to Diane. “Thanks.”

As soon as Raphael pulled his very generic-looking grey sedan away from the curb, Malachi and I got into my beaten-up old Corolla. I sat there for a second, my heart skipping, unable to believe I was sitting in a car with Malachi, overwhelmed by the complete ordinariness of the moment, no matter how bizarre the circumstances. I glanced over to gauge his reaction, only to find his black-brown gaze hard on mine.