Finale

eye. Vee’s evident relief only made the lie feel that much uglier inside me. I was an awful friend. I knew it, but I didn’t know how to set it right.
I refused to put Vee in harm’s way.
    “What’s the story with the dude in the flannel shirt?”
    What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her.
“Before Patch got kicked out, he warned me to stay away from the guy in the flannel shirt. Patch said he knew him, and he was
trouble. That’s why I asked you to find out his name. I kept catching him watching me, and it made me nervous. I didn’t want him to follow me home, if that’s what he planned on
doing, so I decided to cause mass chaos. I wanted us to be able to leave the Devil’s Handbag without making it easy for him to pick us out and follow us.”
    Vee exhaled, long and slow. “I believe you broke up with Patch. But I don’t believe for one minute the other story.”
    I flinched. “Vee—”
    She put her hand up. “I get it. You’ve got your secrets, and one of these days you’ll tell me what’s going on. And I’ll tell you.” She arched her eyebrows
knowingly. “That’s right. You aren’t the only one with secrets. I’ll spill when the time is right, and I figure you will too.”
    I stared at her. This wasn’t how I’d expected our conversation to go. “You have secrets? What secrets?”
    “
Juicy
secrets.”
    “Tell me!”
    “Would you look at that,” Vee said, tapping the clock on the dash. “I believe it’s your curfew.”
    I sat openmouthed. “I can’t believe you’re keeping secrets from me.”
    “I can’t believe you’re being such a hypocrite.”
    “This conversation isn’t over,” I said, opening the door reluctantly.
    “Not easy on the other side, is it?”
    I said good night to my mom, then locked myself in my bedroom and called Patch. When Vee and I fled the Devil’s Handbag, the brown Chevy van had no longer been parked at
the curb. It was my guess that Patch had left before the fallen angels’ surprise invasion, since he would have stormed inside the club if he’d believed I was in danger, but I was more
curious to know if he’d picked up Cowboy Hat. For all I knew, they were having a conversation right now. I wondered if Patch was asking questions or making threats. Probably both.
    Patch’s voice mail kicked on, and I hung up. Leaving a message seemed too risky. Besides, he’d see the missed call and know it was from me. I hoped he still planned on coming over
tonight. I knew our messy confrontation had been staged, but I wanted the reassurance that nothing had changed. I was rattled, and needed to know we were still at the same place emotionally that
we’d been before the fight.
    I dialed Patch’s cell once more for good measure, then went to bed feeling restless.
    Tomorrow was Tuesday. Cheshvan began with the rise of the new moon.
    Based on tonight’s grisly free-for-all, I had a feeling fallen angels were counting down the hours until they could unleash their wrath in full.
    I awoke to the sound of floorboards creaking. My vision adjusted to the darkness, and I found myself staring at two rather large, muscled legs clad in white tracksuit
bottoms.
    “Dante?” I said, flailing an arm toward the nightstand, hunting for the clock. “Uuhn. What time is it? What day is it?”
    “Tuesday morning,” he said. “You know what that means.” A ball of workout clothes landed in my face. “Meet me in the driveway at your convenience.”
    “Really?”
    In the dark, his teeth gleamed with a smile. “Can’t believe you fell for that. Your butt better be outside in T-minus five minutes.”
    Five minutes later I trudged outside, shivering against the chill of mid-October. A light wind stripped leaves off the trees and creaked their branches. I stretched my legs and jumped up and
down to get the blood flowing.
    “Keep up,” Dante instructed, and he took off sprinting into the woods.
    I still wasn’t wild about traipsing through the woods alone with Dante, but I rationalized that if he was going to hurt me, he’d had plenty of opportunities yesterday. So I raced
after him, looking for the occasional streak of white that alerted me to his presence. His eyesight must have put mine to shame, because while every now and then I tripped over logs, lost my
footing in natural potholes, and smacked my head on low-hanging branches, he navigated the terrain with flawless accuracy. Each and every time I heard his taunting chuckle of amusement, I jumped