Under Attack

Chapter Seventeen

At just after four o’clock—my second break, and forty-five minutes after hefting an armload of “slightly irregular” skinny jeans to the front of the store—I slumped into a plastic break-room chair and called Nina.

“So, I got the text! How did I know you’d get hired in a heartbeat? So, what are you doing? Where are you working?”

With the excitement of last night—felonious misunderstandings, a rather invasive strip search, and a vampire with a spray tan—I had forgotten to mention my new career in the retail sector to Nina. I tried to call and tell her over the phone, but for some reason I couldn’t make the statement “I work at People’s Pants” come out of my mouth. Besides, didn’t rayon look better in print? Instead, I had shot her a vague text while holding my cell phone under a round rack of extended-size cargo pants.

I held the phone to my ear and looked around at the bank of metal lockers, most etched with cheerful sayings like Mike was here and Hell=People’s Pants. I glanced at the big row of time cards stuck to one wall.

“Well,” I started, “I guess you could say I’m in the fashion industry.”

“Oh my God, I am so dying with envy right now! I would give my soul—if I had one—to work around clothes. You are so lucky!”

“Yeah,” I said, “but I think I’m going to keep looking. Oh, and I’m apparently closed to the occult, says my seventeen-year-old supervisor.”

“Seriously and seriously? You, closed to the occult, and you, with a seventeen-year-old supervisor?”

“I am the lucky one. Look, I’ll meet you at home as soon as I leave here.”

I heard Nina stammering on her end of the phone. “Um, actually ... would you mind meeting me here?”

My stomach clenched. “At UDA?”

“It’s just that I have a project that I need to finish up and I brought the stuff with me and it would just be way easier to hop on the freeway from here. Besides, Dixon’ll probably be gone by the time you get over here. He’s getting a haircut at five-thirty.”

“I don’t know, Neens.” My eyes shifted across the break room to Avery, who stood in the doorway pointing at the tattooed spot on her wrist where a watch would be. “Fine. Whatever. I’ve got to go. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Can’t wait,” Nina said.

The sun was setting outside People’s Pants when Avery officially dismissed me. I locked my terrible blue smock with the trainee name tag in my newly assigned locker—number forty-three, the one etched with Hell=People’s Pants—snatched out my purse, and headed for the door. After yesterday’s strip search, having Avery paw through my shoulder bag didn’t bother me quite so much.

I was sitting in Nina’s visitor’s chair at the UDA when Dixon poked his head in, his wide, slick-as-leather smile going solid and forced when he saw me. “Ms. Lawson.” I’m not sure if it was meant to be a greeting or a question, but the tone of his voice made my hair stand on end.

Nina jumped up, panic crossing her dark eyes. “Sophie is just here to see me. To ride home with me.”

Dixon’s forced smile faltered minimally. “That’s nice.” He gave an odd, stiff nod in my direction. “Nice to see you.”

I gritted my teeth and returned his approximation of a smile.

“Is there anything you need, Dixon?” Nina shimmied impossibly close to him.

“I’m leaving for the day, actually, but thank you,” Dixon said. And then, with a polite glance toward me, “Good night, ladies.”

I waited until Dixon was out of earshot before starting. “He is—”

“I know, fantastic, right? I really think he might be the one.”

I stood up and shut the door softly. “The one? I’m not even sure he’s the one to run the UDA. I mean, what’s his background even?”

Nina shrugged. “I don’t know. French?”

“I mean his business background. What do you even know about him?”

Nina thought for a second. “I know he’s a Leo. You know how well I do with Leos.”

“You also know that he fired me. Your best friend.”

“Relinquishing you to find an amazing job in the fashion industry.”

Amazing. Fashion. People’s Pants. Nope.

I shook my head. “So, back to the plan.”

Nina rubbed her hands together. “I’ve been looking forward to it all day.”

I stood up, my heart beginning to hammer in my chest. “Then this is something we should do? It’s not crazy?”

“Of course it is. But it’s par for the course with the whole demon-slash-angelic world looking at you as some sort of cosmic prize.” Nina clapped her hand on my arm. “Maybe I should take you for myself.”

I gave her a look and she licked her lips, grinned. “Kidding. But as I said before, I love a challenge.”

“Okay, then,” I said, hands on hips. “I guess we go.”

“Wait.” Nina stood up and upturned her shoulder bag on her desk, the contents spilling out onto the floor. “You can’t just break and enter looking like that.” She gestured to my standard sheath dress distastefully.

“Are you kidding me?” I slumped back into my chair. “There’s a dress code for breaking and entering?”

“Hello? Watched any CSI lately? Black, black, and more black.”

“And let me guess? Ski masks?”

Nina’s hand went to her silky dark hair and stroked a lock. “No. That would mess up my hair. Anyway, I, obviously, am already dressed.” Nina twirled in her black velour Juicy Couture sweat suit, the word Juicy bedazzled in rhinestones across her butt.

“The Juicy is a nice touch.”

Nina wiggled her butt at me and grinned. “I got to dress down because I was helping Dixon redecorate his office. We had to move some furniture.” Nina waggled her eyebrows.

“I’ll bet.”

“Yeah,” Nina said, her eyes trailing over me. “The only problem is that I don’t have a whole lot of black in my wardrobe.”

I gaped and Nina crossed her arms, one hip jutting out indignantly. “I hate it how you all think that just because I’m a vampire that I have an entire wardrobe of black leather dusters and Elvira dresses.”

“I don’t think that. I’ve seen your closet.”

She rolled her eyes. “Black is so stereotypical. I don’t like it. It’s for amateurs. And besides”—she tossed her hair over her shoulders—“it washes me out.”

I raised one eyebrow, focusing hard on Nina’s back to lily-white, bloodless complexion. “You’re right. It’s definitely the black clothing that makes you look so deathly pale.”

Nina rolled her eyes and handed me a heap of black fabric from her desktop. “Just put this on.”

I shimmied out of my dress and stood there in my slip. “You’re kidding me,” I said, when I shook out the dress.

She shrugged. “I told you, it was all I had. And we’re running out of time. It’s either that, your slip, or lurk in the shadows in your Jackson Pollack-on-speed sheath dress.”

I eyed my multicolored sheath and then slipped into Nina’s black dress. “Oh yeah,” I said, ekeing the sequined fabric over my hips, “this is definitely made for B and E.”

The dress was a one-shoulder, bugle-beaded Romona Keveza cocktail gown with a blush-worthy side slit and a foot of fabric that trailed on the ground behind me.

“Wow,” Nina said, examining me, “that dress really is amazing. With the right shoes ...”

“No. An evening gown for breaking and entering is as far as I go. I am not wearing heels, too.”

“Suit yourself.” Nina shrugged. “It would really extend the line though.”

I blew out a sigh and yanked the extra fabric up, tossing it over my shoulder. Then I hiked the skin-tight skirt to mid-thigh. “I said bring a flashlight, too.”

Nina rummaged through her bag again and produced two mini Maglites. “Done.”

“And latex gloves?”

Nina bit her lip.

“You forgot the gloves? Well, that’s okay. We’ll just have to be very careful. If Lucas Szabo reports a break-in, I don’t want anyone to find our prints.”

“Your prints.” Nina waggled her fingers. “I don’t have any. And I said I couldn’t find latex gloves. Besides, they would do nothing for that dress. But I do have gloves. Voila!”

Nina produced two pairs of elbow-length cashmere gloves. She handed me the black pair that had rhinestone-studded ruching up the sides. “Aren’t those to die for?” she asked. “I want them back.” She slid her own delicate hands into a charcoal-grey pair with a tuft of faux fur around the tops, then stretched her arms elegantly. “Lohman’s. After-Christmas sale. Seventy percent off.”

“What every good criminal is after,” I muttered as I gathered my purse. “A sale. Well, are you ready?”

Nina smiled and nodded, then followed me out the office door.

“You know, a French twist would really offset the one-shoulder neckline of that dress... .”

“Nina!” I moaned.

“Sorry!”

She shut the door with a click behind her.

We crossed the bridge in near silence, but once our tires hit the Marin side, I was fairly sure the thunderous beat of my heart was filling the car.

“There’s nothing to be nervous about,” Nina said, not taking her eyes off the road. “Everything is going to be fine.”

“Thanks,” I said, grateful, but unconvinced. “If I had known he lived just a few miles away ...”

“You don’t know how long he’s lived here. He could have just moved into the area.”

“Or he could have been here all along.”

“Then he’s a huge deadbeat bastard. It’s not nice, but it’s not rare.”

I blew out a sigh, stroked the smooth fabric of my rhinestone-studded breaking-and-entering gloves. “Turn here,” I said.

Nina glided her car down a tree-lined street. The moonless darkness was punctuated by the occasional weak streetlight. We rolled slowly down the street until we found number seventy-one, a well kept but otherwise nondescript house set way off from the street at the arc of a cul-de-sac.

“Here it is.” Nina said.

“Yeah, here it is.”

We parked across the street, then ducked our way to the front of my father’s house, positioning ourselves in a thick bank of rosebushes. We hunched low against the moist dirt, our elegant gloves protecting us from the rosebushes’ thorns.

“See?” Nina said happily. “Better than latex.”

I squinted, frowned in the darkness. “Binoculars. I should have brought binoculars.”

“One step ahead of you,” Nina said as she leaned forward, her face pressed up against a pair of bejeweled opera glasses.

“See anything?”

“Not really.” She glared down at the long-stemmed binoculars. “These aren’t the best for this kind of thing.”

“Imagine that,” I said, my legs aching from my fifteen-minute squat. “This was a bad idea. I don’t think we’re going to find anything.”

“Shh!” Nina’s held out her hand, gloved fingers splayed. “What was that?”

“What was what?” I asked, relenting and flopping down on my butt in the flower garden. “I’ve got human hearing, remember?”

But then I heard it, too. A gentle rustling in the bushes to the left of us.

Nina sniffed at the air, her eyebrows raised. She furrowed her brow, then frowned, sniffing again. “Alex? Is that you?”

“It’s cool and disconcerting that you can do that.”

The bushes rustled again and Alex poked his head out, his skin translucent in the pale moonlight.

“Alex?” I asked.

He had a pair of binoculars—real binoculars—in one hand and was tastefully dressed in black cargo pants, black combat-style boots, and a yummy, formfitting long-sleeved henley shirt. He grinned when he saw me. “I guess we both had the same idea here. Of course, my tux was at the cleaners.”

“Very funny,” I scoffed. “You should be glad I don’t have a closet full of breaking-and-entering attire.”

“You really shouldn’t be here,” Nina said, pointing at Alex. “I could smell you from a mile away.”

“You shouldn’t be here, either.” Alex was looking at Nina but talking to me.

“Vampires don’t have a smell. You have a smell.”

“Sophie has a smell,” Alex said.

“Sophie is right here and not too crazy about people discussing her smell,” I said.

The opening of the garage door silenced our smell discussion. “Look!” Nina hissed. “Who’s that?”

I snatched her opera glasses and peered down at the garage, the yellow glow from the overhead light illuminating my father. My stomach dropped. It was him; it was the man I had seen on the corner on my way to Loco Legs, the man I had seen in a picture that my grandmother kept taped to the back of a picture frame.

It angered me to see him flipping his car keys in his palm. It roiled my blood to see him glide effortlessly to his car, to back out and drive away. Somehow, I had hoped that things were difficult for him. That going out to look for me, to find me, would be impossible due to paralysis or a lame leg or a rattletrap car. But my father was doing fine, gliding down the street in a midnight blue and perfectly well-running Audi.

“We need to get inside his house,” I said.

“We do?” Nina asked.

“Sophie’s right. We’re not going to find out anything out here. Nina, you stand watch, Sophie and I will go in.”

Nina stood up, put her cashmere-covered hands on her hips. “Why do I have to stand watch?”

“Would you rather I asked you to stand smell?”

She stomped out of the bushes and to the curb. “Fine. But I’m smelling from the car.”

Alex turned to me. “Are you ready?”

“For breaking and entering?”

Alex’s gaze was solid.

“I’m ready,” I said.

Alex and I picked our way across the sloping grass, being careful to stay in the shadows. Halfway down, a car drove by and Alex reached behind him, his hand grabbing mine, and we tucked behind a Japanese maple.

It may have been my adrenaline or my hormones on high alert, but the feel of his hand on mine was heavenly, the gentle brushing of our knees while we crouched, sweet.

“Okay,” he whispered, “we’re safe.”

We stood up, but Alex didn’t let go of my hand.

“So,” I said when we had made it to the front porch, “do you have some sort of magically angelic way of getting through locked doors?”

“Yep.” Alex dug in his pocket, revealed a long, skinny tool, and pushed it into the door lock. After a half-second jiggle we heard the lock click and give, and he pushed the door open, slipping the shim into his pocket.

I put my hands on my hips. “Alex Grace, what would God say?”

Alex rolled his eyes and ushered me into the dark foyer.

I went to turn on the light, but Alex stopped me. “Someone might notice it.”

“How are we supposed to see anything?” I asked.

“With my glowing angelic orb.”

“You have one of those?”

“In your world, it’s called a flashlight. Now come on.” Alex clicked on his flashlight and kept the beam low. We edged around the furniture in Szabo’s living room and made our way to the bookcases that lined one wall.

“Look for anything that has to do with the Vessel. We need to know what he knows about ... it.”

I fingered the spine of classics (Moby Dick, Gulliver’s Travels) and figured my dad must have been quite the traveler from his collection of Let’s Go! guides. I passed over the usual stock of New York Times bestsellers and John Grisham novels, then stopped on one book—Stroham’s Guide to Angels. Beside that, Contacting Angels and Communicating After Death.

“I haven’t found anything about the Vessel, but he sure is into angels.”

“Makes sense,” Alex said, turning to me and showing the carved ivory angel figurine he held in his hand.

I turned back to the bookshelf and bumped a small volume that stuck out from the pack. It was simply titled Dark Angels.

I held the book up. “Maybe he was looking for you, too.” I thumbed through the book. “It’s all about fallen angels. It was probably for work though; my grandmother did say he was a professor of mythological studies at one time.”

Alex snorted. “Angels. Mythological. Whatev.”

I grinned. “Don’t get your wings in a bunch.”

Alex scanned the bookshelves, the blue-white light of his flashlight illuminating the spines.

“Communicating with the dead, waking the dead,” he murmured, “your dad was sure death-occupied.”

I crouched down to get a better look at a stack of papers on the bottom shelf. “Well, that’s a plus.”

Alex looked at me, confused.

“I would think Satan would know how to talk to the dead, so maybe Lucas is just ...” I struggled not to say Dad. “A guy.” I snagged a book off the shelf and wagged it in front of Alex. “Also, I don’t think Satan reads Janet Evanovich.”

He grinned. “I guess that’s good news.”

I shoved the book back and continued searching. “Maybe he is just a guy. Maybe he was just trying to contact my mother. Or Ophelia.”

“Why would he want to contact—”

“Ophelia,” I said again.

I held the yellowed Chronicle newspaper clipping in my shaking hands, staring into Ophelia’s eyes. She was young, with a printed jumper and pigtails, but her eyes were still the same, vivid, even through the pixilated and fading print. The last time I had looked into those eyes she had vowed to kill me and now there she was, snuggled up against the man who was supposed to be my father, the man who was supposed to have been photographed with me on his knee.

“Lawson?” Alex whispered.

I dropped the newspaper clipping and took the stairs two by two. I was vaguely aware that Alex was behind me, calling to me, but something drove me. I darted down the hall, pushing open doors as I went. I paused at the last door and sucked in a breath. Closing my hand on the knob, I pushed the door open.

It was a young woman’s room, but still held the pale pink remnants of little-girl life. The frilly lace lampshade was now partly covered by an orange and black Giants baseball cap. The rolling pink teddy bears on the wallpaper were now mostly covered by concert posters, magazine clippings, and photographs of smiling teenagers, their arms entwined, their youth captured forever. The fresh, bright smell of freesias still hung on the air, their sweet scent making me nauseous.

“This was Ophelia’s room,” I said slowly. “This is where she grew up.”

A yearbook was askew on her night table, its binding creased and old, as though someone had leafed through the book often. Alex picked it up and it fell open. He turned the book to face me.

There, with a demure look as she stared over her shoulder, was a full-page photograph of Ophelia. Underneath, it read: In Memory of Ophelia Szabo: a bright light gone out much too soon.

“Oh my God,” I whispered. “Oh my God. She was my sister.”