I laid back and peeled up my tank top, tucking it into the bottom of my bra. Every single pair of male eyes flicked to my abdomen for a brief second, even Lincoln’s, and then they turned their backs, a few of them clearing their throats uncomfortably.
“Oh come on, it’s just a belly button. Turn back around.” They did as told, keeping their eyes on my face that time.
“It’s a pretty cute belly button,” Darren offered.
That brought a smile to my lips. “I was thinking that when I start school tomorrow, it might be nice to hide some of my freakiness. I have the black wings, and it would be nice not to parade the four tattoos everywhere.”
Marleen frowned. “I want to tell you that college is better than high school, and bullying doesn’t exist, but I’d be lying. Fallen Academy is like high school on steroids.”
Nervousness ripped through me at her comment, but I tried to play it off. “I grew up in the hood with a bunch of demons. I’m sure I can handle some rich Barbies, who think they’re better than me.”
I’d done it. I’d succeeded in making Lincoln smile, and damn, he had dimples. The second he caught me looking, he expertly turned his smile into a scowl, trying to cover it up. But I saw it. He thought I was funny.
Score.
Oh wait, no, I hate him. I’d forgotten how mean he was because he’d spent the last hour healing me. It was messing with my mind, playing tricks on my emotions.
The tattoo gun turned on again and I braced myself. My mom was going to have a major hissy fit over the tattoos, but I was hoping the knowledge that I would’ve exploded without them would ease her pain. Agony flared to life on my side and I muttered a curse word.
“Why!” I shouted and gripped the edge of the massage table. “Isn’t angel blood holy or something? Couldn’t it have Novocain in it?” From my toes, up my tailbone and into my scalp, red-hot needles drilled pain into the very corners of my soul.
Marleen smirked. “You’re not the first to ask.”
Lincoln’s hand slipped over mine again, warm, soft, and gentle. I swallowed hard as heat built in my gut. Orange light covered my palm and then the pain lessened.
Sigh.
Shea wasn’t going to believe my day. I wasn’t even sure how to describe to her what had happened. The fact that I’d had about five hours of sleep and still had an entire work day ahead of me was starting to hit me. Right after my tattoos, I needed to report to my new boss. My mom’s boss. He ran a business of reanimating the dead, and I wasn’t a Necro, which meant I would probably be given the shitty jobs at his ‘clinic’ until I graduated Fallen Academy and learned to use my powers.
Then what? Fight against the Fallen Army? Fly into battle and kill one of the people in this room?
Oh God, what have I gotten myself into?
When Marleen was halfway through my third tattoo, I fainted.
“What’s wrong?” Lincoln asked, worried, as I’d regained consciousness.
“It’s a lot of power, magic, tying itself to her soul. I’ve never done four before,” Marleen explained.
“Finish. Then food,” I’d managed to say.
Lincoln frowned. “Order her a pizza,” he barked at Noah, who’d been reading magazines in the corner of the room and regrowing his shoulder flesh the entire time.
Marleen was now drawing the last line of the last tattoo, and Darren was feeding me small bites of pizza.
“It’s 11:14 a.m,” Lincoln informed, as Marleen finished and pulled the gun away.
The room spun as I sat up too quickly. “I gotta get back. Today’s my first day with my mom’s boss. He’ll make her life hell if I’m not there.” I pulled my shirt down and tried to stand, but the room did a somersault and then I was falling.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Lincoln caught me. “You can’t drive or go to work like this.”
My eyes found his. “I have to. Nothing about my life is a choice.”
He flinched at my words. “Okay… then let me do one more healing on you before you go. I’ve had my first officer bring your car out front. There’s GPS inside. It’ll guide you back.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“Be back tomorrow at six. You’ll study with the four of us until your first class at eight.”
I frowned. “Six is kind of painful. Can we do seven thirty?” I gave him my best sweet girl smile.
“No,” he barked with a glare.
I groaned. “Fine.”
Lincoln nodded.
Noah had come from his place in the corner of the room, and was watching Lincoln keenly. “Are you sure about this last healing?”
I was clutching my rib cage and swaying like a drunken chick at prom.
“Yeah, bro, I got it,” Lincoln told him.
Suddenly, both of his hands lit up a glowing deep carroty color, and I stared at the light, mesmerized. He took one step closer to me and placed his hands on my head. The moment the light touched my skull, I felt my pain and fatigue lift. A jolt of energy zipped through my body, like I’d just chugged two cups of coffee. Looking up, I saw Lincoln wincing in pain, and sweat bead his brow. His knees suddenly gave out, and he collapsed to the floor as his hands ceased their glowing.
“What’s wrong?” I asked frantically, bending down to try and help him.
Noah looked down at Lincoln with an unreadable gaze. “Celestials with Raphael’s healing power don’t heal wounds on other people. They take the pain into themselves, and then heal it from within. He’ll be okay after a day’s rest.”
Oh God. He… took my pain and now he’s feeling it?
“Why would you do that?” I asked Lincoln, perplexed.
He was panting on the floor, holding his rib cage. “Go,” was all he said.
Darren gripped my arm and hauled me outside. The last thing I saw was Lincoln sitting on the floor, in pain, and it changed the way I felt about him.
It changed everything.
Chapter Six
I was in a mild state of shock, and barely remembered the drive across the city border to my mom’s office at the reanimation clinic. I was seven minutes late and hoping my new boss wouldn’t notice. I didn’t want to tell Lincoln, but I’d only learned to drive barely three months ago, in my mom’s beat-up Volvo, with no power steering. I took the bus everywhere, so I didn’t need to learn but my mom had insisted. Now, I was throwing a brand new, fifty thousand dollar SUV into park, outside of a Necro clinic where I was most likely going to wash dead bodies.
Joy.
As I jogged through the front door, I could feel some mild burning at the site of my tattoos, but nothing as major as it’d been before. Lincoln had taken everything from me so I could get through my shift reanimating the dead.
Why would he do that?
“You’re late!” Master Burdock screeched from behind the desk.
I skidded to a stop, clutching my chest. Dude had come out of nowhere, as Brimstone demons often did. I knew better than to offer excuses. “Sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”
He peered at me from behind his glowering black beady eyes, his horns casting menacing shadows on his face. When he got really pissed, the tips smoked. It was beyond freaky. In the hierarchy of demons, Brimstones were up there. Rumor was, they were almost directly under the Prince of Darkness himself. In his inner circle.
“Did you learn anything at your fancy school?” He leered at the tattoos on my arms.
I wasn’t sure what answer would please him, so I offered the truth. “Not really, sir.”
He nodded and stepped out from behind his desk, careening to his full seven-foot height. “My source says you’ll learn enough to control your powers in the first year. After that, you’ll be with me full time.”
Terror flushed through me. “Oh, but it’s a four-year course,” I mumbled.
He stepped closer and crouched down. The ends of his horns started to smoke, and I nearly pissed myself at the smell of sulfur. My mom said he could breathe fire when really mad. I hoped I wasn’t going to experience that firsthand.
“You’re mine. Don’t forget that. You think I’m going to allow them to initiate you into the Fallen Army and have you working against me? Not on your life, child. One year, that’s all you get.”