Chapter 29
Miles followed Gabriel into the dance, his shields buckling beneath the weight of so many people and such heightened emotions.
The music felt louder than before, thumping through him, making his bones quake.
It was more crowded too, the air growing sticky and hot in the short time he’d been outside.
He scanned the dance floor, which was predictably twenty percent rhythmless jumping, eighty percent blatant grinding.
The chaperones weren’t even bothering to try and break it up.
Gabriel had wandered around the edge of the dance floor, attention fixed on the twinkling clouds and shimmering stars hanging overhead. “The fruits of your labor. It looks better than I expected,” he commented. “Though that might be because all the lights are off.”
Miles couldn’t force himself to laugh. The fake nonchalance in Gabriel’s voice made his skin itch, too close to when Gabriel had his mask up.
He was upset and hurting, blaming himself for not being able to help Edmund, or for not warning him about their mother. Detachment was the only shield he had.
Miles had been in a similar place once, when Charlee’s dad had died and sharing her pain was all he could offer her. He’d clung to the hope that if he waited long enough with her, she’d start to get better. It chewed him up and picked his bones clean.
“Listen,” he tried, “why don’t we go where we can actually talk?”
“Don’t you understand that I don’t want to talk about it? About any of it?” Gabriel wouldn’t meet Miles’s gaze. “All I wanted to do was come to this dance with you and forget for a while.”
“Acting like everything’s okay isn’t going to change it. It’s just going to hurt worse when you can’t pretend anymore.”
Gabriel flinched.
“But if that’s really what you want right now, what you need, let’s go grab punch and a table. I’ll stay as long as you want.”
The music changed to a slow song, the dance floor shifting on cue as everyone grabbed a partner to sway with. Laughter echoed across the gym. Gabriel’s eyes went glassy, shiny like the stars hanging above them.
“No,” he murmured. Miles had to lean in to hear. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have come here. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
He was thinking that he’d suffocate if he didn’t get out of that house. That he’d scream if he had to look at Edmund in that bed any longer. That he could escape it all for a little while in loud music and flashing lights.
“It’s okay,” Miles reassured him. He couldn’t imagine the hell Gabriel had gone through today. “None of this is your fault.”
Gabriel laughed like Miles had said something funny, the sound swallowed up by the music. He laughed like Miles had never seen before—big, punched-out sounds that shook his whole body.
Then his expression crumpled. Miles didn’t realize what was happening until he saw the tears. Until Gabriel covered his face, shoulders heaving. “I need to get out of here,” he choked out.
The path to the entrance was too far away, too crowded with dancers, so Miles took his arm and led him out the side door and into the hall where he’d hauled supplies to the storage room earlier. The white lights were harsh compared to the dimly lit dance, but it was empty.
Gabriel slumped against the row of blue lockers, gasping and crying, trembling hard enough that he should’ve fallen apart right then and there. Miles didn’t know what to do, so he kept his grip on his arm, holding him upright.
“It is my fault,” Gabriel confessed wetly, the words pulled straight from a painful, guttural place in his chest. “I knew about my mother, about the curse, about the dark magic, and I didn’t tell him. I didn’t warn him. Edmund’s going to die because of me.”
Not caring if anyone walked out and saw, Miles wrapped his arms around Gabriel and held him tight. If Gabriel was to blame, then so was Miles. This burden wasn’t his to carry alone.
“We thought we were keeping him safe,” Miles told him, biting back his own tears. “We didn’t know.”
They were empty, meaningless words, but they were all he had. If he thought he’d been helpless earlier, it was nothing compared to now, or to the feelings eating Gabriel from the inside out.
Gabriel was trying to pull himself together with deep hiccupping gulps of air, but the tears won out for another minute, long enough that the shoulder of Miles’s jacket grew damp.
“Tell me what you need,” Miles murmured. “How I can help.”
Gabriel pulled away with a low sniffle, face splotchy and red, his eyes bloodshot. “Will you take me home? I shouldn’t have left Bram there without me.”
“Of course.”
He didn’t move. “Tell me Edmund’s going to be okay. Tell me we can fix this.”
“If there’s a way, we’ll find it.” Miles couldn’t bring himself to lie to Gabriel, even when he was pleading for it. “We’re not going to give up and leave him to die, okay?”
He’d go up to Felicity and demand answers, threaten to spill her nasty family secrets. He’d open the grimoire and look for a spell himself, risks be damned. He’d do anything. Whatever it took.
The hallway bulbs flickered overhead. The gym door they’d come through clanged loudly.
Gabriel wiped his cheeks and straightened. “What was that?”
Miles tried the handle. “It’s locked.”
Around his neck, his charms grew hot enough to burn.
The lights died at the end of the hall, plunging it into darkness. Unnatural darkness, the kind that hurt Miles’s eyes and made the nape of his neck tingle. Something was looking at him, he could feel it.
A rattling groan came from the shadows.
Miles took an involuntary step backward.
The next section went out, and the next, a yawning black rush coming at them like a hungry mouth. Metal clanged like a war drum, a racing heartbeat, the lockers rattling as they flew open.
Miles grabbed Gabriel’s arm, yanking him down the hall. “Run!”
It was coming behind them, getting closer, shadows nipping at his periphery. A phantom wind whipped around them, like the darkness was inhaling a great breath to suck them in.
Miles hit the door at the end of the hall, bouncing off it. He shoved at the bar, but it wouldn’t budge. They’d been locked in.
“No, no, no.” It was a dead end, all other doors behind them already swallowed by the darkness. Another light went out, only one left between them and the void.
“What do we do?” Gabriel demanded.
Panic had its teeth at Miles’s throat. He backed up and charged the door with all his strength, smashing into it with his shoulder. Pain exploded, shooting down his entire arm, but the exit flew open.
He pushed Gabriel through, the night air cold enough to ache when he hissed through his teeth. The courtyard grass was slick, Miles almost falling twice as he bolted behind Gabriel to the parking lot.
“C’mon, Charlee’s car is over here.” Miles locked his jaw against the throbbing pain, digging the keys out of his pocket. He could see the silver Honda from here.
Gabriel’s fingers bit into his wrist. “Look.”
Behind them, the door they’d come through was hanging open on busted hinges. Darkness swirled inside, creeping over the threshold to prod at the pavement. As they watched, the security lights mounted above the door exploded, black tentacles extending along the shadowed grass.
“What is that?” Gabriel breathed.
“I don’t know. And I really don’t want to find out.”
They made it to Charlee’s car, Miles lowering into the driver’s seat with a groan. Pain so intense he was woozy with it pulsed down his arm to his numb fingers. He couldn’t move it enough to get the keys to the ignition, resorting to his left hand.
“You’re hurt.” Gabriel reached for his shoulder, then seemed to think better of it.
“Yep.” Dislocated shoulder, if he had to guess.
His dad had gotten one a few years ago after a poltergeist tried to throw him through a wall.
Miles bit his tongue and reversed. Across the courtyard, the darkness crept closer, avoiding the glow of the dance and snuffing out the lampposts illuminating the path.
“We have bigger things to worry about right now.”
Throwing the car into drive, he didn’t swing it far enough and swiped the green truck parked beside them with a screech. Fuck. If he wasn’t currently fleeing from shadows of death, he’d get out and leave them a note. A mental apology would have to do.
The headlights illuminated a writhing black mass for a brief second, all the shadows peeling away from the surface of the courtyard and forming together. It didn’t have any discernable shape or face, but Miles could sense it turn to watch as they drove away.
He hit the gas, taking the right out of the parking lot too fast and gasping in agony as they hit the curb. There was no one at the stoplight, so he ignored the red and blew through, Gabriel clutching his seatbelt.
The next turn jostled his shoulder. Black spots swam across his vision. “If I pass out, grab the wheel,” he croaked at an ashen Gabriel. “Is it still following us?”
He twisted in his seat. “I don’t know. I can’t see anything.”
Miles wasn’t taking any chances. It looked like the shadows that had tried to take Gabriel in the tunnels, times a hundred. If it got ahold of them, things were going to get really ugly, really fast.
“We’re going to my house.” He raced through another red light, cars honking at him. “My parents will know what to do. Plus, it’s warded. Nothing bad can get in.”
In the rearview mirror, streetlights started blipping out on the stretch of road behind them.
“It’s coming.” The speedometer crept up as they raced through town. “Once I park, run for the house. Go straight inside, don’t stop, okay?”
“Be right behind me so I don’t have to.”