A Beautiful Dark

wanted to isolate me, get me alone. So I could be that much easier to pull away from my old life—everything I once knew. So I would be weak. And Devin had been their pawn. Until he’d stopped following orders and Raven had taken over.
    That’s what I was thinking when my car hit an ice slick on the road and sped wildly out of control. I panicked and shoved the wheel to the right, narrowly missing a huge tree. I fought to turn the wheel to the left to avoid another one coming straight at me. But I couldn’t spin it fast enough. I couldn’t stop this from happening. It was going to, whether I was ready or not.
    My car was smoking.
    I flashed back to the last car accident I’d been in.
    Skye, stay with me.
    Miraculously I wasn’t hurt again. The car wasn’t even totaled—but it didn’t look good. I grabbed my purse from where it had been flung to the floor of the passenger side and got out. It was freezing, an even more biting cold up here in the mountains than in town, where the buildings blocked some of the wind. I reached into the car for my parka, put it on, and zipped it up all the way.
    Aunt Jo had made me program the number for AAA into my phone when I’d gotten a car, so I dug around in my purse for the phone. I pulled it out, went to punch in the programmed number, and froze. No reception. I slammed my palm on door.
    “Do you have any idea how easy it is to block a signal so it doesn’t reach a cell phone? Child’s play,” a sickly sweet voice taunted in front of me. I looked up to see Raven standing among the trees in a white puffy jacket with a furry white hood. “I think it’s sweet that you want to protect your adoptive mother,” she said with a smile. “Because you couldn’t save your real one.”
    “What do you want from me?” I screamed.
    “Well, I think you know that,” she said. “I want you to follow me.”
    “Why should I follow you?”
    “Oh, Skye, when are you going to learn that running from your problems isn’t going to do you any good? You can’t run from your destiny. It follows you everywhere.”
    I swallowed. “Where are we going?”
    Raven smirked. “You’ll find out when we get there.”
    And so, with nowhere else to turn, I followed her.

Chapter 37

    W e entered a clearing at the top of a mountain, not unlike the one I’d practiced in with Asher and Devin. The earth was hard and frosted over. The sky was a violently bright blue above us, and the clouds wisped out into a fog that covered everything. It felt like we were no longer on Earth. I guess, in a way, we weren’t.
    Raven stood just behind me. Before us were two angels I’d never seen before. One had huge ivory wings extending from his back, yellowing in the way that a polar bear’s fur might. He looked strong, though advanced in years. Wrinkles fanned out from the corners of his eyes and mouth, and his hair was a salt-and-pepper gray. From what Asher and Devin had told me about how angels aged, he must have been thousands of years old for him to look like an old man. The other angel’s wings matched Asher’s. They were blackest black. He looked slightly younger than the man beside him, though white patches gave his temples a dignified appearance.
    Devin and Asher stood next to who I assumed were their respective Elders. They avoided meeting my eyes and looked at the ground instead, hands behind their backs as if they were following orders.
    “Well,” said the angel with the white wings in a low, velvety voice. “She’s come.”
    My two messengers looked up, each with a different expression flickering across his face. Asher radiated fury. Devin, fear. I sensed somehow that it wasn’t fear for himself but for me. And they both looked like they were in pain.
    “I am Astaroth, one of the Order’s Gifted. And this”—he motioned with one long elegant hand to the angel beside him—“is Oriax. He is a Rebel Elder.”
    I gulped, and immediately thought everyone had heard. Astaroth raised one gray eyebrow.
    “We seem to have a . . . situation.” His eyes flicked behind me. I whipped my head around.
    Raven. She stood smugly off to the side, her white wings outstretched and her hands clasped behind her back, looking like a delinquent schoolgirl in her little white jacket. When our eyes met, something freezing shot through my veins.
    If you don’t fix this, I’m going to , she’d said to Devin.
    I felt as if I was in one of those dreams where you’re shoved onstage to be the lead in a