“Demons are trying to climb over,” Blake informed us, opening the back doors, and ferrying Elodie and her son inside.

Darren’s eyes looked misty. “Brielle. God, I’m so glad you’re okay.” His gaze ran over my body as if looking for injuries. The black demon blood probably threw him.

“I’m fine. Take me to Lincoln! To Shea!” I shouted, before jumping in the back of the van.

Something dark crossed Darren’s face, but it was quickly replaced with a smile. “Shea is going to shit herself. Everyone is.”

We spent the twenty-minute drive in relative silence. The boys would ask me a question about my time down there, and I’d look at Elodie with her son, and tell them I’d fill them in later. It was a lot of talking in code, but they finally realized I couldn’t speak in front of them.

“How’s Lincoln?” I finally got the balls to ask. “If he’s dating someone else, you can just tell me. I don’t care. I just want him to be happy,” I lied, then prepared myself for the devastation that would come if he had indeed moved on from losing me.

Darren frowned. “He’s not dating anyone else. No way. He’s okay. He’s actually on a special mission for the army.”

Silence descended upon the van, and I suddenly didn’t want to know anything about Lincoln. Not here in the car with strangers. I wanted to ask what mission and where, but I was afraid I’d burst into tears if they said it was too dangerous. Still, the casual way at which Darren said ‘no way’ to him dating anyone else made my heart race.

Instead, I sat back in shock, and stared at the gates of Fallen Academy as they came into view.

I had imagined my reuniting with Lincoln a hundred times. Every day in Hell, it was all I thought about while in there. He’d be on the beach with the boys during the beach games. I’d shout his name, and he’d turn to look at me, eyes wide. Then he’d scream my name into the wind and run toward me. We’d crash into each other and share the most passionate kiss of our lives.

Never in a million years did I imagine him not here when I returned.

“So is Lincoln due back later tonight, then?”

Special mission. Darren’s words were starting to sink in like bricks on quicksand. Lincoln wasn’t here. He was out there somewhere.

“I texted Noah. He doesn’t believe me.” Blake showed me his phone, both he and Darren ignoring my question.

Blake: Brielle is alive! We just found her!

Noah: Screw you, liar. Sick joke.

I gave them a small smile, trying to jump back into the life of texts and joking, but really I wanted to bawl my eyes out right there.

Lincoln isn’t here.

“Hey, can I use your phone to call Lincoln? I’m sure if he hears my voice he’ll believe it, and come home early.” I reached for Blake’s phone.

Blake let me grab it but spun around to face me, absolute horror in his gaze.

“Brielle… I’m so sorry. He’s undercover, so he doesn’t have a phone or anything.”

When Elodie’s gentle hand rested on my back, I lost it. Tears sprang from my eyes, and I burst into sobs.

“Mom?” The boy clung fearfully to his mother in the wake of my breakdown, and I knew I had to pull my shit together.

“I’m okay,” I told him after a moment, wiping the tears from my face. “I just miss my friend, that’s all.”

He nodded. “I know how that feels. I miss my mommy all the time.”

I wasn’t sure how it was possible, but my heart broke a little more at his words. “Your mommy is an amazing woman,” I told him, picking up on the fact that he called Elodie ‘Mom’ and Raksha ‘Mommy.’

Darren parked the car at the edge of the school parking lot, and I saw Noah at the top of the school steps.

“Can you guys please take my friends to Raphael’s office? I’ll meet you there after I’ve seen Shea and my mom,” I asked the boys.

They nodded, and Blake reached out to squeeze my hand. “It’s so good to see you, Bri. Seriously. I’m so happy.”

“You too. Thank you. And call my mom, please,” I added.

They both nodded, then led Elodie and her son away from the van.

The second I stepped out of the SUV and started to walk toward the school steps, Noah swayed on his feet, clutching the stair railing. But his shock was short-lived, because after a second, he broke into a run.

“Bri!” His voice was raw with emotion.

I burst into tears again and limped toward him. I was injured, covered in black demon blood and totally disgusting, but he didn’t care. He crashed into me, picking me up, and spun me around.

“Thank you, God!” he screamed, his voice catching with emotion. When he set me down, he pulled back and grabbed my face with both hands. “How?”

“A healer demon healed my neck. Then after months down there, I broke out,” I explained.

He pulled me in for a second hug, and then tugged my hand, yanking me toward the quad.

I started to run with him, knowing I didn’t have to ask. He would take me right to Shea.

We jogged across campus until we reached the gymnasium. Noah didn’t wait, simply burst through the doors where a battle class was in full effect. The second the doors opened, the entire room spun to look. I saw Tiffany’s mouth drop open, and Mr. Bradstone’s hand flew to his mouth, but Shea, she was the one I wanted to see.

When my eyes fell on her caramel skin and curly hair, I started to run. The moment she saw me, a wail ripped from her throat. Her hands flew to her face, bawling her eyes out as she fell to her knees. Shea’s back shook with the force of her cries, and the class collectively backed away, giving us room. My heart, already so fragile, broke at my friend’s emotional display.

I slid to my knees, meeting her right there on the floor.

“I’m here. I’m alive,” I cried, because I knew she needed to hear it. When my arms went around her, she gasped, as if she didn’t think I was real until that moment.

“I knew it,” she said between her tears. “I knew you were alive.”

Pulling her hands from her face, she finally looked at me, really looked at me. And that’s when I noticed the giant diamond ring on her left hand.

Noah. Sweet Noah.

That was a conversation for another time. For now we just sat there, crying and holding each other, with Noah smooshing us in a sandwich hug.

Mr. Bradstone started to lead the students out, giving us privacy when the doors burst open. I peered back to see my mother running inside with Mikey. She was pale and shaking, and Mikey looked in shock as well. I wasn’t sure how much more my heart could take. I was an emotional wreck.

They crossed the room quickly and joined us on the floor, holding on to Shea, Noah, and me. We were in one big hug chain, and all I could feel was love and acceptance. Everything I went through down there, every dark and awful thing, it was all worth it. There had been times I’d wanted to give up on life, but feeling my family holding me now was one of the happiest moments of my life.

Shadowed only by the absence of Lincoln.

Where are you?

We’d all been sitting there for a few moments, just crying, laughing, and holding on to each other, when I felt two very warm, very familiar hands on my back.

Raphael.

I burst from my family’s love cocoon and stood, letting him wrap me in a huge hug. His wings came around to encompass my entire body, and I was enmeshed in the calming, restorative presence of the Archangel of Healing.

“I did bad stuff down there,” I muttered into his chest between my sobs. Raphael had become like a father figure to me, and I felt so guilty about making that promise to the Devil and leaving Sera down in Hell.

“Shhh.” His healing voice filtered down to me, soft and melodious. “None of that matters right now.”

Pulling back, I met his gaze. “Are Elodie and her son in your office? They saved my life. You have to let them stay on campus. It’s the only place that’s safe. Everyone needs to stay on campus. He can’t see us here.” I began to panic. Now that my constant state of fight or flight that I’d lived in the past few months was dying down, I was crashing.

He rubbed my back. “Whatever you need. They can stay here forever. Don’t worry about that right now.”

I nodded, meeting his blue-eyed gaze, and built the courage to ask him what was truly pressing on my heart.

“Raph, where’s Lincoln?”

I could see his heart breaking in the way his face fell, could feel it in the way he tucked my hair back away from my face, preparing me for something awful. “He did not do well with your absence. It broke him, child.”

Tears streamed down my cheeks. “Where is he?”

Raph looked down at his feet, unable to meet my gaze. “He went to San Francisco, enrolled in an elite Fallen Army division called the Fallen Resistance.”

I stopped breathing, and my heart sank into my stomach.

“Why do you look so scared?” I asked him.

Raphael’s eyes grew misty. “Because they rarely make it home.”

Oh God. Lincoln… what have you done?

Chapter Seventeen

I’d totally freaked out when Raphael told me Lincoln joined the Fallen Resistance. Now I was in Lincoln’s trailer, with Shea wrapped around me, and Noah sitting at the edge of the bed. My mom and Mikey were grabbing pizza for dinner, and would meet us soon.

Noah was catching me up on everything. After I’d left, Bernie abandoned the trailer and went in search of me, leaving Maximus with my mom. Lincoln left the apartment, giving it fully to my mom, and moved back into the trailer to be secluded. He’d taken time off from the Fallen Army, pushed Noah and everyone else away for a while.

Shea held me tightly under Lincoln’s denim-blue covers. Just smelling him on the sheets was driving me crazy. “After your funeral, Lincoln and I refused to believe you were dead. We started going on missions,” Shea told me.

Noah groaned. “Missions where Shea created portals, going in with Chloe, trying to find you.”

Chloe. Luke. Angela. I needed to see them.

“It killed Lincoln that he couldn’t cross over there,” Shea confessed.

Yeah, I imagined that would kill me too.

“Where’s Sera?” Noah asked.

Way to crap on my already shitty day. “I had to leave her,” I croaked.

He reached out and grabbed my ankle, giving it a squeeze. “She’ll understand.”

I nodded. Sera did understand, but that didn’t make it any easier.

“Tell me something good. Did anything good happen while I was gone?”

That perked Shea up. She sat up and she moved right in my face, her eyes wide and excited. “Tiffany had a spell go wrong in class, and it singed her hair halfway off.”

I grinned, slightly entertained and comforted to know that some things just hadn’t changed. Tiffany was still a bitch, and we still hated her.