“Oh, El ie.” Beth pul ed away with a hiccup. Using a handkerchief to dab at her face, she managed to look beautiful even with eyes rimmed in red and a nose that had gone raw at the tip. “They won’t Make me, El ie. That was always the plan, that Harry and I, we’d both become immortal and then we’d be together forever, but they said they won’t Make me.”
Elena’s blood ran cold. She’d asked Raphael about Beth, been told that her sister wasn’t biological y compatible. If they tried to infuse her with the toxin that turned human to vampire, she’d either die or go incurably insane. “I’m sorry—”
“You’re an angel now, El ie.” Beth gripped her upper arms, hope a shining beacon in her eyes. “You can Make me. Or you can ask your archangel to.
Please, El ie. Please. ”
Feeling bruised and battered after the argument that had resulted when she told Beth there was nothing she could do, Elena was in no frame of mind to undertake the next task on her list. But—“I’ve been a coward long enough.” She put the key into the heavy yel ow lock and twisted. The first time she’d seen that key, she’d assumed Jeffrey had hired a smal locker to store the pieces of her childhood . . . of her mother—but this was the size of an entire room, complete with a metal rol ing door.
Sara, leaning against the neighboring storage unit, arms crossed over the rich plum of her trim suit, shook her head. “It’s not about being a coward, El ie. You know that. This has to hurt like hel .”
Yeah, it hurt. So bad.
“Forgive me, my babies.”
Anger and sadness and love mixed in a caustic brew inside of her. It was a familiar feeling—her emotions toward Marguerite would never be simple.
“Thanks for coming with me. I know how busy you are.”
“Thank me again, and I’l have to kick your ass.” Sara reached down to fix the thin strap that arched over the top of her three-inch heels. “Though I’m surprised tal , omnipotent, and dangerous isn’t with you.”
“I needed you.” The woman who’d become more family to her than the people with whom she shared blood. “Raphael understands friendship, even if he doesn’t think so.” He’d forged bonds of steel with his Seven, Dmitri in particular.
Lock undone, she held it in one hand as she reached down to push up the door. Light hit the floor within, and then the box nearest the door.
A frayed orange blanket hung over the edge.
Heart in her throat, she tried to continue pushing up the door, but she couldn’t. Her entire body just froze. “Sara.”
Her best friend put her hand on the door. “Which way, El ie? Up or down?”
“Come on, bébé.” Laughing words in that husky voice with its pretty accent. “Climb on board.”
Struggling onto the big bed, her blanket around her shoulders, she squirmed between Ari and her mom.
“Hey!” Ari’s protesting voice before she peppered Elena’s giggling face with kisses. “Little grease monkey.”
“El ie.”
Jerking herself back into the present, Elena pushed down the door, relocking it with fingers that trembled. “I can’t do it.” Her heart was thunder in her throat, her palms damp. “God, I can’t.” She col apsed onto the ground, back to the door.
Sara sank down beside her, uncaring of the damage to her hose. “It’s waited al this time. It’l wait a while longer.” Putting her hand on Elena’s arm, she squeezed. “You’ve had a hel of a lot to process over the past year and a half. Nothing says you have to rush this.”
“I don’t know why it’s affecting me like this. There are good memories in there.” Except sometimes, she suddenly realized, even the best memories could cut like knives. “Sara,” she said, the words tumbling out, “I need to tel you something about my past.”
“I’m here.”
At that simple statement of support, Elena took a deep breath ... and final y told her best friend about the monster who had broken Ari and Bel e until they were macabre dol s in a blood-soaked kitchen; until her mother was a woman who screamed and screamed and screamed; until her father was a stranger who hated his eldest surviving daughter. “I couldn’t tel you before,” she whispered. “I couldn’t even bring myself to think about it.”
Tears streaked Sara’s face. “This is why you used to wake up screaming.”
They’d been roommates at Guild Academy, and after they graduated. “Yes.” Some part of her hadn’t stopped screaming since that murderous day almost two decades in the past.
In spite of Sara’s rock-solid friendship, in spite of the physical release of the intense flying dril s she did later that day, Elena couldn’t shake the melancholy that draped her in emotional black. As she stood in the shower prior to getting dressed for dinner, the events of the day came crashing down on her, an unforgiving rain. Even worse than her effective breakdown at the storage unit was the memory of the look of betrayal on Beth’s face as her sister turned away from her.