The scent of freesia wafted past me, a fragrance I knew only too well. My sister appeared in the doorway and looked at Xavier with concern. Ivy appeared as angelic and composed as ever, but the uncharacteristic crease in her brow betrayed her. I could see she was overcome with worry.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked Xavier gently.
“No, thanks,” he replied. He sounded distracted, as if his mind were far away, and he barely raised his head.
“Gabriel’s gone back to visit the Knox place,” Ivy continued. “He thinks he might pick up some clues.”
Xavier was too lost in his own brooding thoughts to reply. Ivy came to stand beside him. Reading his mood, she placed a tentative hand on his arm. He jerked at her touch, not allowing himself to be comforted.
“We mustn’t lose heart. We’ll find her.”
Xavier raised his head to look at her. His face was paler than I’d ever seen it and there were circles under his bright blue eyes. His lips were pressed into a hard line. He looked forlorn, consumed by his grief. I wanted to reach out and take his face in my hands, to tell him that I was okay — trapped, lonely and miserable but otherwise unharmed. I might not be in his arms where we both wanted me to be, but I was coping. I was surviving.
“How?” he said after a long interval. He struggled to keep his voice even. “We have no idea where he’s taken her … or what he’s doing to her.” That last thought proved too much and his voice cracked.
I felt a cold lump of dread rise in my throat. If they had no idea where I was, what hope did they have of ever finding me? Neither Gabriel nor Ivy had actually witnessed my disappearance so all they had to go on was Xavier’s sketchy report of what he’d seen before Jake had run him down. As far as they knew I might be held hostage in some remote corner of the globe.
“Gabriel’s working on it,” Ivy said, trying to sound confident. “He’s good at figuring things out.”
“Shouldn’t we be there with him?” Xavier said helplessly.
“He knows what to do, what signs to look for.” There was an awkward lull in their conversation when all that could be heard was the ticking of the hall clock.
“It’s my fault,” Xavier said finally. Saying the words out loud seemed to offer him some relief. “I should have been able to protect her.” His eyelashes looked wet with tears, but he brushed them away before Ivy could see them.
“No human stands a chance against that sort of power,” said my sister. “You can’t blame yourself, Xavier. There’s nothing you could have done.” Xavier shook his head adamantly.
“Yes, there is,” he said through gritted teeth. “I could have stayed with her. If I hadn’t been fooling around down at the lake, none of this would have happened.” He curled his hands into tight fists and swallowed hard. “Don’t you see? I promised I’d look after her and I let her down.”
“You didn’t know. How could you know? But you can help Beth now by not falling apart. Be strong for her sake.”
Xavier squeezed his eyes shut and nodded.
“Gabe’s back,” said Ivy, way before the key even turned in the lock. Xavier rose from his chair and seemed to falter forward. Minutes later Gabriel appeared in the kitchen. Even though he was my brother and I knew him as well as anyone could, his radiance still made me gasp. His perfect, marblesculpted features were severe. His silver eyes were solemn and his face grave.
“Any luck?” asked Ivy.
“I think I found something,” Gabriel said hesitantly. “It may be a portal. I could smell sulfur on the highway near the Knox house.”
“Oh, no.” Ivy moaned and sank into the nearest chair.
“Why is that important? A portal? What’s a portal? A portal to where?” Xavier asked his questions in rapid succession, but Gabriel answered in a measured voice.
“There are openings in this world,” he said, “that lead directly into other realms. We call them portals. They can appear randomly or they can be conjured by someone powerful enough.”
“What kind of realms? Where’s Beth?” There was a rising panic in his voice. I’m right here, I wanted to call out but my voice failed me.
“The asphalt on the highway was burned,” Gabriel observed, sidestepping the question. “And everything around it scorched. There is only one place that can leave behind marks like that.”
Xavier took a breath as if to steady himself. I could see the moment when the truth behind Gabriel’s words dawned on him.
“That can’t be true,” he said weakly, his rational mind still struggling to comprehend.
“It’s true, Xavier.” Even Gabriel had to turn his face away in order not to witness the effect he knew his words would have. “Jake has dragged Bethany into Hell.”
Xavier looked as if his worst nightmare had been realized. The news hit him like a slap in the face. His jaw dropped and his eyes stared fixedly at my brother, as if he were waiting for him to burst out laughing and reveal the whole thing was a bad joke. He stayed that way for several long minutes, as though he had turned to stone. Then suddenly his whole body seemed to shudder with anguish. My ghostly self, as insubstantial as vapor, grieved alongside him. We made a sad and sorry pair — the human boy and the apparition he could not see but who loved him more than anything in the world.
Everyone it seemed was behaving out of character in my absence. Gabriel did something then I’d never seen from him before. He crossed the room and knelt down before Xavier, his hand resting lightly on his arm. It was a sight to behold — an archangel kneeling before a human in an expression of humility.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” Gabriel said, looking him directly in the eye. “I’m not sure how to help Bethany now.” These were the words I most dreaded hearing. Gabriel never glossed over the harsh truth. It wasn’t in his nature. What he was doing now was preparing both himself and Xavier for the worst.
“What are you talking about?” Xavier cried. “We have to do something! Beth didn’t choose this. She was kidnapped, remember? That’s actually a criminal offense in my world. Are you saying it’s okay in yours?”
Gabriel sighed and replied as patiently as he could. “There are laws that govern Heaven and Hell that have existed since the beginning of time.”
“What is that even supposed to mean?”
“I think what Gabe is trying to say is that we don’t make the rules. We have to wait for instructions,” Ivy said.
“Wait?” echoed Xavier, growing more frustrated at their lack of resolve. “You can wait till doomsday if you like, but I don’t plan to just sit around.”
“We don’t have a choice,” said Gabriel sternly. They could not have been more different, angel and mortal, polarized by their opposing views of the universe. Gabriel, I could see, was losing patience. Xavier’s incessant questions were draining him. He longed for solitude in order to commune with the powers above. Xavier on the other hand was not going to feel better until he was offered a plan of action. He was applying the rules of logic that state for every problem a solution can be found. Ivy, who was much more aware of Xavier’s emotional state than Gabriel, gave my brother a look that suggested he should tread carefully.
“Rest assured, if there’s a way, we will find it,” she said more encouragingly.
“It won’t be easy,” Gabriel qualified.
“But not impossible, right?” I could sense that Xavier was clutching desperately to any hope, however slim.