Devil's Advocate Read online

  CHAPTER 17

  Scully Residence

  6:43 A.M.

  When Dana padded barefoot into the kitchen, she found Gran was at the table, hands pressed to the sides of a steaming cup of tea, buttered toast sitting cold on a plate. It was rare for Gran to be up much before noon. The radio was on, playing some old songs from World War II that Dana didn’t know.

  “Hey, Gran,” said Dana as she came over and kissed her grandmother’s cheek. Even though Gran’s face was wrinkled, it was always so soft. She smelled of soap and Dorothy Gray face powder.

  “There’s coffee made,” said Gran, though that wasn’t true. The coffeemaker stood empty. Dana didn’t comment, though. The teakettle was still hot enough, and she made herself a cup. Peppermint. Gran had a saying for that: “Chamomile to calm down; peppermint to perk up.”

  She brought it over to the table and sat down. Gran smiled at her and pushed the toast across.

  “You’re letting it get cold.”

  Dana nodded as if that made sense, took a piece, bit off a corner, and munched it. She pushed the plate back to Gran. Outside there seemed to be a thousand birds in the trees, all of them joining voices to proclaim that spring was well and truly here. It was nice. Loud, but nice.

  “Gran…?” she asked.

  “Yes, sweetie?”

  “What are angels?”

  Her grandmother’s eyes were rarely clear and usually seemed to wander, unfocused, as if she had forgotten how to look at things. But now they clicked over to study her, and they were as clear and blue as the sky after a good rain.

  “Why do you want to know about angels?”

  “I keep dreaming about them.”

  Gran sipped her tea, her eyes intense and unblinking for a long moment. Then she looked down into her cup. “Are you afraid of those angels?”

  “A little,” said Dana, softening the truth.

  Gran nodded. “You should be.”

  “What?”

  Those blue eyes glanced up again. “What do you think angels are?”

  “Um … God’s messengers, I guess.”

  “You guess.”

  “That’s what they told us in Sunday school.”

  Gran made a face. Unlike her daughter and grandkids, she rarely went to church. “Well, then it must be true.”

  “That’s why I’m asking you,” said Dana.

  The wall clock ticked through half a minute before Gran said anything. Dana knew this pattern. When Gran was lucid, it was best to wait her out, to let her work up to whatever she wanted to say. Speaking too soon, or interrupting, seemed to throw a switch and send her back into the disconnected haze where Gran spent most of her days.

  Gran nodded as if agreeing with her own thoughts. “There are all kinds of angels,” she began slowly. “The name means ‘messenger,’ and a lot of people think they’re just God’s errand boys. Ha! Hardly. People think they stand around all day shouting ‘hosanna’ and playing harps and looking like hippies in long robes. But that’s just silly, isn’t it? People pray to angels as if they only exist to come help you get through a bad day. They pray to them like they’re saints, but the saints, at least, used to be people. Angels never were.”

  “What are they?” urged Dana.

  “They’re dangerous is what they are,” said Gran, her voice clear and sharp. “Think about it, girl. The first angel mentioned in the Bible stood guard at the entrance to the Garden of Eden with a fiery sword. He wasn’t there to protect Adam and Eve, you can believe me. Guardian angels are in the Bible, but they’re not there to protect us. All through the Bible angels act like God’s hit men, showing up to punish, to destroy.” She shook her head. “Don’t forget, Lucifer was an angel.”

  “Oh … right…”

  “And they’re not pretty, either. They’re monsters.”

  “Monsters?”

  “The seraphim are large six-winged snakes that fly. Cherubs aren’t those cute rosy-cheeked babies you see in paintings. Hardly. They’re winged lions. Not exactly the kind of creature you want watching over your baby’s crib. Why do you think every time an angel appears to a human in the scriptures, they say, ‘Do not be afraid’?

  “Let me think, now. There was a quote about it in Ezekiel, but don’t ask me chapter and verse. Something about them having two sets of wings and hooves … How’d it go? ‘The face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they had the face of an ox on the left side; and also the face of an eagle.’ That’s not it exactly, but close enough to be going on with.”

  The blue of her eyes seemed very bright in the morning sunlight, and there was no hint of a troubled mind. That, as much as what Gran was saying, chilled the whole kitchen.

  Gran shook her head. “If you’re having dreams about angels, Dana, then you need to be careful. Not all ugly angels are bad, and not all beautiful ones are good. They’re not human, and you can’t judge them the way you judge a human. That’s how people get hurt. Everything about them is different from what it seems.” She laughed. “Maybe that’s how the devil came to be called the prince of lies. If he’s an angel, then nothing about him is the simple truth.”

  “How can I tell if it’s real or just a dream?” asked Dana.

  Gran considered the question, but as she thought about it, her face began to change, and Dana’s heart sank. She saw the cloudiness of confusion steal the clarity from those blue eyes as surely as if the pall of a storm had rolled in front of the sun. It happened quickly. In the space of a few seconds, Gran retreated back into the shadows of her own mind.

  “Gran…?” asked Dana cautiously.

  Her grandmother smiled. “Oh, good morning, Melissa,” said Gran brightly. “There’s coffee made.”

  Dana got up and walked around the table to kiss her grandmother on the cheek. That soft cheek.

  “I love you, Gran,” she murmured.

  “I love you, too, Margaret. Be sure to clean your room before you go out with that Scully boy. He’s a scoundrel.”

  Margaret was her mother’s name.

  “I will,” said Dana.

  “Dana…?” called her mother from the hall. “Is Gran with you?”

  “We’re in the kitchen.”

  Her mom came in, and her dad followed a few moments later. Charlie came in, too, but he was clearly not completely awake and still wearing the superhero mask he obviously slept in. He sat down and stared with unblinking eyes at a bowl of cornflakes. It was a rare thing for the Scullys to have breakfast together, but Dana didn’t comment on it. There was a palpable tension in the air. Mom and Dad set about making coffee and preparing breakfast, neither saying much of anything. Gran retreated further into herself and Dana went back to her chair. Melissa came in yawning, too, dressed for school but with her hair still tousled. She gave wordless grunts and poured some of the fresh coffee, ladled in four spoonfuls of sugar, and thumped down on her chair. Her coffee was half gone before she blinked her eyes clear and looked around.

  “What’s with everyone this morning?” asked Melissa.

  Mom put a plate of eggs and toast in front of her. “Here you go. Hurry up and eat or you’ll be late.”

  Melissa cut a look at her father, whose mouth was locked into a tight line, then over at Dana. They didn’t have to say a word to each other to know what was going on. Mom and Dad had had another fight. That seemed to be happening more often since moving here.

  Breakfast proceeded with arctic coldness.

  Only Gran was smiling as she thoroughly buttered both sides of her toast.

  CHAPTER 18

  Francis Scott Key Regional High School

  7:27 A.M.

  “Glad they didn’t suspend you,” said Eileen.

  “I thought they were going to expel you,” said Dave. “That’s what everyone was saying.”

  The Minderjahns had intercepted the sisters in the hall, and the four of them were clustered together around Melissa’s locker.

  “Well, then everyone’s stupid,” growled
Melissa, instantly coming to Dana’s defense.

  Teens moved like currents up and down the hall, and a lot of them gave Dana looks. Anger, amusement, curiosity, and contempt, all in equal measure.

  “It’ll pass,” said Eileen with confidence.

  “Yeah,” said Dave. “Everyone’s hurt and scared right now, so you freaking out gave them something else to focus on. Otherwise they’d have to deal with their own stuff. What’s it called? Transference? Something like that.”

  Melissa nodded. “Right. And anyone who doesn’t get over it, anyone who keeps holding it against you, well … I guess it’s safe to say they’re not your real friends.”

  “I don’t have any real friends,” said Dana. Then she gasped as she realized how hurtful that sounded, but Eileen gave her a motherly smile and a pat on the arm.

  “We’re your friends,” she assured her.

  “Yeah,” said Dave, though he was looking at Melissa when he said it.

  The bell rang for class, and they all went off in different directions. Dana tried to be invisible, but she could feel the eyes on her. At first everyone treated her exactly as she expected, and she was convinced she had a huge winking neon light over her head that said WEIRDO. But the wattage of contempt seemed to diminish after her first class. It wasn’t that anyone rushed up to hug her, but instead they seemed to simply pull away and focus on their own lives rather than hurl mental stones at her. Dave had been right, at least in part.

  On the way to her locker after algebra, two girls came over to her and blocked her way. She recognized them as having been in the gym. Karen something and Angie something.

  Dana braced herself, expecting …

  Expecting what? A punch? To be told what a creep she was? To be threatened in some way?

  None of that happened.

  Instead Karen said, “Were you telling the truth?”

  “What?” asked Dana.

  “Yesterday,” said Karen. “About Maisie. Were you telling the truth? Did you really see her?”

  “I…”

  Karen’s eyes were fierce but also wet. She looked like she was fighting to hold back tears, though her hands were balled into fists.

  “You better tell me, or so help me…,” she said in a tight whisper.

  The other girl, Angie, was shorter and broader and wore a field hockey sweater. She looked like she could break Dana in half, and looked like she wanted to.

  “Tell me,” begged Karen.

  “Yes,” said Dana, her own voice a whisper.

  Karen grabbed her upper arms. “Was she in pain?”

  Dana did not know how to answer. The truth seemed likely to earn her a beating. But so, too, would a lie. She braced herself, ready to use some of the jujutsu she’d been learning or the karate she practiced with her brothers. She wasn’t very good, but she would go down swinging.

  “I think so,” she said. “She was bleeding and … she was screaming.”

  The other girls stared at her, eyes wide, tears falling down. Dana could see that they believed her. Suddenly Karen pushed her back, spun, and ran away down the hall. The stockier girl lingered for a moment, caught between the need to follow her friend and a compulsion to say something.

  “Maisie was her cousin,” Angie said awkwardly. “She tried to talk her out of going to that party.”

  “I—I’m sorry,” said Dana lamely.

  Angie shook her head. “It’s not…” She stopped and started to go, but Dana caught up and touched her arm.

  “What is it? What were you going to say?”

  The girl did not answer. She shook her head and walked away to find her friend. Dana almost followed.

  “What was that all about?”

  Dana turned quickly to see another older girl standing there. One of Melissa’s friends. Anne Hassett. A cheerleader, like Eileen. She had short brown hair and a very Irish snub nose. This was the first time Dana had ever seen her when she wasn’t smiling.

  “Oh. Hi. It’s Anne, right?”

  “And you’re Dana,” said Anne. She wore tight jeans and a shirt with a cartoon mouse on it. The mouse was the only one smiling right now. “What did those girls want?”

  “Why?”

  Anne walked over and stood close. She was the same height as Dana and looked her straight in the eyes. “Because I asked.”

  Dana tried to think of a reason not to tell her, and couldn’t. It wasn’t that kind of day. “The one girl was Maisie Bell’s cousin and—”

  “I know who she is. What did she want?”

  “Well … she asked me about something that happened yesterday.”

  “You mean in the gym?”

  “You heard about that?”

  “Everyone’s heard about it,” said Anne. “What did she want to know?”

  “She, um, wanted to know if Maisie was in pain.”

  Anne’s eyes searched hers. “Was she?”

  “Yes.”

  “You told her that?”

  “Yes.”

  Anne looked past her. “Oh, man…”

  There was a sound, and they both turned and saw a teenage guy standing with his back to them. Dana recognized him as Angelo, who worked at Beyond Beyond. He was dressed in a janitor’s blue pants and shirt. She hadn’t seen him around the school before. Angelo removed the top of one of the hallway trash cans and began emptying it into a larger, wheeled plastic barrel. He didn’t glance their way, but Anne jerked her head and walked a few feet farther down the hall. Dana followed.

  “Look, what’s going on?” she asked. “Everyone treats me like I’ve done something wrong here, but I’m not making it up. Maybe I’m losing my mind, but I saw Maisie in the locker room.”

  “How come it was you who saw Maisie?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t.”

  A lot of different emotions seemed to come and go in Anne’s eyes. Anger, resentment, hurt, and others Dana couldn’t label.

  “You know what everyone’s saying about Maisie, right?” barked Anne. “That she was a ‘dumb kid’ and she wrecked her car, and they make assumptions. That’s how it always is. Anything anyone our age does that’s not square is because it’s us acting out or being wild. Like we can’t think for ourselves. Like we don’t matter. Maisie’s dead, and they’ll always say that she did it to herself because she got high, and that’s wrong. It’s … it’s a lie, an insult. It’s just wrong.”

  Dana nodded.

  “And then you come along,” said Anne, “and you don’t even know Maisie and she appears to you for some reason. That freaked everyone out. It’s like a sign of some kind. That’s what I think. That was her trying to tell the world that she didn’t die the way people think she did.”

  “You … believe I saw her?”

  Anne nodded. “Yeah. A lot of people do. I even heard a couple of teachers talking about it. Everyone thinks you’re some kind of freak, but … sure.”

  The knowledge that the other students believed her jolted her, and Dana did not know how to take it.

  “Craiger’s a weird town,” said Anne. “Always been weird. Maisie was weird, too. She went to all those weirdo classes at that stupid hippie shop.”

  “Beyond Beyond?”

  “Whatever it’s called, but yes. Always doing that meditation junk and saying she was walking through veils and—how’d she put it?—connecting with the planetary energetics. Talking with the earth spirit Gaia. Talking about how she was part of the movement to bring everyone into a new age. I don’t know. She went on and on about that stuff, and I usually tuned her out. All that matters is that after she died, she came to you.”

  “Why me, though?” pleaded Dana. “We never even met. Why come to me, of all people?”

  Anne studied her for a moment, her eyes hooded and calculating. “All I know is that if it happened, there has to be a reason.”

  “But what reason? It’s driving me totally out of my mind.”

  “Yeah, like I said, this is Craiger. Welcome to the club.” Anne fl
apped an arm in disgust and then just walked away, leaving Dana alone in the hall. Angelo had gone, too, and Dana felt as if she was miles and miles away from anyone she knew, or anything that made sense.

  She hugged her backpack to her chest and hurried to her next class, which she was already late for.

  CHAPTER 19

  Craiger, Maryland

  8:57 A.M.

  The angel crouched in the shadows, his face and body streaked with paint and blood and grease, his eyes burning in his head, lips moving in a constant prayer that was as formless as his god.

  Praying to the grigori. Praying to his blood father, a true angel born in heaven who sought now to return to earth. To save it. Protect it.

  Rule it.

  Listening to what his god had to tell him. Secrets. Promises. Prophecies.

  Outside there was the sound of a siren screaming its way through the town. He did not care. It wasn’t the right kind of scream.

  CHAPTER 20

  Francis Scott Key Regional High School

  8:59 A.M.

  The biology teacher looked like Albert Einstein—if Einstein had spent a bad weekend in an alley after being enthusiastically mugged. That was how he looked to Dana. Mr. Newton had Einstein’s wild hair, wilder eyebrows, and a mustache that looked like it was about to leap off his face and go burrowing in the forest. He always wore an ugly green or brown suit, and everyone was positive he owned only those two suits. However, he wore an ever-changing series of brightly colored ties. Today’s tie had clockwork gears in twenty shades of gold, bronze, and silver. Everyone called him Two-Suit Newton.

  Dana thought he was great. Most of the other students thought he was a weirdo, but Dana was okay with weirdos. Especially science weirdos. She was starting to think about a career in science, too. Maybe research. Maybe medicine. Maybe something else. She loved math and science, and Mr. Newton challenged her mind.

  Going into his classroom after the double encounter in the hall was like stepping onto the shores of an island after falling overboard from a sinking ship. This was firm footing. She knew who she was here.