Finale

out on me. He might as well have slapped me, the
betrayal stung that bad. I couldn’t believe he was going against me on this. I started to turn away, too enraged to speak, but he caught me by the wrist.
    “I respect your opinion, but I’ve been doing this a lot longer,” he said, his voice low and serious and heartfelt.
    “Don’t patronize me.”
    “Blakely isn’t a nice guy.”
    “Thanks for the tip,” I said bitingly.
    “I wouldn’t put it past him to infect you with something. He’s been messing around with devilcraft far too long to have any sense of decency or humanity left. It has hardened
his heart and put ideas into his mind—crafty, malicious, dishonorable ideas. I don’t think he’s making blind threats. He sounded sincere. He sounded dead set on carrying out every
threat he spoke. If I don’t meet him tonight, he’ll throw away the antidote. He’s not afraid of showing us what kind of man he is.”
    “Then let’s show him who we are. Tell me where he wants to meet. Let’s grab him and bring him in for questioning,” I challenged. I glanced at the clock. Five minutes had
passed since Patch ended the call. Blakely wouldn’t wait all night. We had to get going—we were wasting time.
    “You’re not meeting Blakely tonight, end of story,” Patch said.
    I hated how infuriatingly
alpha
he was being about this. I deserved an equal say, and he was brushing me aside. He didn’t care about my opinion—that was just a thinly veiled
platitude. “We’re going to miss our chance to catch him!” I argued.
    “I’m going to make the trade, and you’re staying here.”
    “How can you say that? You’re letting him call the shots! What has happened to you?”
    His eyes locked with mine. “I thought it was quite obvious, Angel. Your health is more important than getting answers. There will be another time to get Blakely.”
    My mouth hung open, and I shook my head from side to side. “If you walk out of here without me, I’ll never forgive you.” A strong threat, but I believed I meant it. Patch had
promised we were a team from now on. If he cut me out now, I’d view it as a betrayal. We’d been through too much for him to coddle me now.
    “Blakely is already on edge. If anything feels off, he’ll run, and there goes our antidote. He said he wanted to meet me alone, and I’m going to honor his request.”
    I shook my head fiercely. “Don’t make this about Blakely. This is about you and me. You said we’d be a team from now on. This is about what
we
want—not what he
wants.”
    There was a knock at my bedroom door, and I snapped, “
What?
”
    Marcie pushed the door open and stood in the entrance, arms folded snugly over her chest. She was wearing a baggy old tee and boxer shorts. Not what I pictured Marcie wearing to bed. I would
have expected more pink, more lace, more skin.
    “Who are you talking to?” she wanted to know, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. “I can hear you yapping all the way down the hall.”
    I swiveled my attention back to Patch, but it was just Marcie and me left in my bedroom. Patch had vanished.
    I snatched a pillow off my bed and flung it against the wall.
    Sunday morning I woke with a strange, insatiable hunger clawing at my belly. I pushed myself out of bed, skipped the bathroom, and headed straight to the kitchen. I opened the
fridge, eyeing the shelves greedily. Milk, fruit, leftover beef stroganoff. Salad, cheese slices, Jell-O salad. None of it looked remotely appealing, and yet my stomach twisted with hunger pangs. I
stuck my head in the pantry, raked my eyes up and down the shelves, but every last item had the appeal of chewing polyester. My unaccountable cravings intensified at the lack of food, and I started
to feel nauseated.
    It was still dark out, a few minutes before five, and I lugged myself back to bed. If I couldn’t eat my pains away, I’d sleep them off. Trouble was, my head felt perched on a
Tilt-A-Whirl, vertigo reeling me up in its madness. My tongue was dry and swollen with thirst, but the thought of sipping something even as bland as water made my insides threaten to heave in
revolt. I briefly wondered if this could be an aftereffect of the stabbing, but I was too uncomfortable to do much thinking.
    I spent the next several minutes rolling around, trying to find the coolest part of my sheets for relief, when a silky voice whispered in my ear, “Guess what time it is?”
    I let out a genuine groan. “I can’t