“She can’t do it,” I told Michael.

He nodded. “But you can.”

Oh Lord. This is going to be a long night.

Michael looked at me compassionately. “I was told that you’re not the greatest at studies of light, is that correct?”

I chuckled. “That’s putting it nicely.”

He walked toward me. “Everything is energy, light. If you can feel that, you can do anything. When you learn to feel Sera’s energy, and use your inner light to call to her, very little can keep her from you.”

I chewed my bottom lip, pretty sure Michael knew about my… problem, the fact that I had Lucifer magic in my blood, and most likely his wings. “Umm… what if I don’t have any light?”

Now it was the archangel’s turn to chuckle. “Nonsense! I can see your light, and it’s the brightest I’ve ever seen in a human.”

His words shocked me. I wasn’t technically a human, but I knew what he meant. “How… how can that be? I have black wings, and dark magic shoots from my mouth and strangles people!”

He didn’t seem surprised at the truth bomb. He just shrugged. “You’re like a bug zapper.”

I frowned. “Huh?”

Michael placed a hand on each of my shoulders. “Those of us with greater inner light attract the most darkness. Don’t ever forget that.”

I wouldn’t. It was the first time since I’d learned that I was essentially Lucifer’s spawn that I’d been given hope.

Maybe I wasn’t evil, destined to be evil, or whatever I was afraid of.

Maybe I was the brightest light Archangel Michael had ever seen in a human.

Yeah, I’ll go with that.

Chapter Twenty-One

It took me three days to learn to call Sera from across the room. Michael had taught me as much as he could that night, and then only by sheer exhausting practice had I been able to do it three days later. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to do it in a life-or-death situation, or in a room crowded with demons, but I’d keep practicing nevertheless, as it was a good skill to have.

Now, it was the day of the gauntlet, and I’d already thrown up twice. I’d always carried my nerves in my stomach, but once I’d puked, I was pretty unshakable.

I left the bathroom for the third time and joined Luke, Chloe and Shea in our dorm room.

Shea made a face. “You okay?” She knew what was going on.

“I’m good now. Got it all out,” I told her.

We’d all been delivered letters at six that morning. ‘Choose your team of four to go through the gauntlet. Choose wisely. If one of you fails, you all fail.’

It was three o’clock, and classes were suspended for the day. Chloe had her long thick black gloves on, and her hood covered up her bright red hair. We’d pulled closed the light-blocking curtains in our room so she could enter, and now she was pacing the floor.

“We’ve got this. We knew it was going to be a team thing, and we’ve all been practicing accordingly,” she assured us.

Luke looked terrified. “If one of us fails, we all fail,” he quoted ominously. “I can’t go back to living with my parents. I can’t.”

I held my hands out in a placating gesture. “No one’s failing. Trust me, Shea and I are homeless if we don’t pass. We’re banned from Demon City, and we have no money, so a lot’s riding on this for all of us.”

Chloe stopped pacing. “If we fail, I’m sure my dad will give us jobs at the club. We can all share an apartment or something.”

A little bit of relief ebbed into me, and I saw the others’ expressions settle a little.

“Yeah. Good plan,” Shea offered.

“We’re not failing,” I told my team. “Luke, you’re strong and powerful. Chloe you’re strong and fast. Shea is a badass, who can open and close portals to Hell, and I can freaking fly. We are not failing!” I shouted.

Everyone stopped and looked at me.

Chloe grinned. “And that’s why you’re team leader.”

We’d never officially talked about having a leader, or who it should be in the event that we were teamed up. I chewed on my lip nervously at the idea of being in charge of our fates at the academy.

“Definitely,” Shea echoed, and Luke nodded.

A knock came at the door and we all froze. The gauntlet wasn’t for four more hours. We were to meet in the parking lot and get loaded onto buses and go to God knows where.

Luke started for the door, but I jumped up to intercept him, my intuition was screaming, though I couldn’t pinpoint why.

“Hang on,” I urged, then stepped in front of him, and leaned against the door. “Who is it?”

“Delivery. Cloud Nine Donuts,” a young female voice answered.

I grinned, chastising myself for being paranoid, and pulled open the door to a young woman, wearing a Cloud Nine Donuts hat with a box and card. Luke snatched the box out of her hands, and I took the card.

“It’s all paid for,” she told me, then turned and left.

I ripped open the card.

Good luck today, babe. You got this.

Love,

Lincoln

Babe? Love? Lincoln didn’t talk like that. We hadn’t said ‘I love you’ yet, and he didn’t call me ‘babe.’ He’d send something like:

Woman, remember your training or I’ll kill you. You have to pass.

-L

“Stop!” I shouted as Luke licked his fingers, having finished one off already. The girls had the donuts poised at their mouths. “I think it’s a trap,” I told them, and Chloe and Shea dropped their donuts.

Luke looked positively green before he hunched over and started to moan.

“What’s wrong?” I ran to him.

“My stomach!” he cried out, before bolting for the bathroom.

Just then I heard giggling at the door. A very, very familiar, and annoying laugh.

Tiffany.

“I’m going to kill her!” I shouted, going for the door.

Shea reached out and stopped me. “Let’s not get suspended right before the gauntlet. We need to let it go. I’ll work on a counter spell to the sick spell Luke took. Let. It. Go.” That was real rich coming from Shea. She was always down for a fight.

“She’s right,” Chloe added. “We can’t do anything to compromise passing this test. Only 65 percent of Fallen Academy students pass their first year.”

I hated logic and reason. I’d already had the fight with Tiffany five times in my head, and it was going to be good.

“Let’s focus on getting Luke feeling better,” Chloe urged me.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

‘I could blind her. Just go out into the hall and hold up the knife,’ Sera egged me on.

I was pretty sure that, for an angel weapon, she had no angelic conscience.

‘Let’s let it go. For now,’ I told my partner in crime.

“How do we help Luke?” I asked Shea, deciding to take the high road.

She walked to the bathroom door. “Luke, I need to know more about what’s happening, so I can make a counter spell.”

His muffled voice came back through the door. “Imagine explosive diarrhea, and then multiply that by ten!”

Shea winced. “Okay. Got it! Hang tight.”

She paced the room, mumbling to herself, pulling out books, and checking jars of dried herbs. The healing clinic was freaking closed today, of course, the entire staff having moved to the gauntlet site. Most of the teachers were off campus too. If Luke was going to get help, it was going to be from us.

“Okay. Chloe and Bri, you need to go to Mr. Claymore’s office and ask him for one ounce of dried carob, two ounces of agrimony, and three ounces of barberry. If he’s not there, break in and get them.”

My eyes widened. “Don’t you have a key? You’re his assistant.”

She shook her head. “He took it away after I read that book and opened the portal.”

Damn.

“What will all those herbs do?” Chloe asked, nervously eyeing the bathroom.

Shea rolled up her sleeves. “I’m going to constipate the shit out of him. No pun intended.”

“I’m dying!” Luke screamed from the bathroom.

“I’m going to fix it!” Shea yelled back. “Go!” She shooed us.

“One carrot, two alimony, three burur. We got this!” Chloe said confidently.

Shea’s eyes bugged out. “Oh my God, no. Let me write it down or you’ll kill him.”

She scribbled it on a piece of paper and then we left the room. I told myself that if Tiffany was in the hallway, it was meant to be and I should give her a beatdown, consequences be damned. But she wasn’t. Damn.

I turned left to go out into the common room when Chloe grabbed my arm.

“It’s still light out, so I can’t go outside. This way.” She pulled me toward the back of the hall, somewhere I’d never been.

I’d forgotten about the sun allergy and what it must’ve been like to live in constant fear of going outside during the day.

“If the sun hits you…?” I started.

“A few seconds will give me hives, but more than ten minutes and I’ll die of anaphylaxis,” she explained casually, like it was no big deal.

“Oh God,” I muttered, horrified. I hadn’t known it was that bad.

She shrugged. “It is what it is. I get strength and speed, and you should see me jump off a twenty-foot roof. Barely hurts.”

I gave her a sly smile. “You have a way of looking on the bright side.”

We’d reached a tall black lacquered door with a big moon symbol on it when she looked back at me. “My whole family are Nightbloods, so it doesn’t faze me.”

Pulling out a key from around her neck, she unlocked the door. It creaked open, a damp smell hitting me almost immediately.

“Is it true the tunnels are underground?” I asked, suddenly claustrophobic.

Chloe nodded and grabbed my arm. “Come on. Luke needs us, and the gauntlet is in three hours!”

Right. For Luke. I stepped into the hallway and the door closed behind us, sealing out all light.

“Can you see in this?” I asked her, reaching out before me. It was literally pitch-black, not even a glow from underneath the door.

“Yeah, can’t you?” her voice came back to me from somewhere up ahead.

“No.” I was starting to feel a panic attack coming on.

She grabbed my hand. “Ten steps down,” she explained.

I counted them slowly as I walked. Holy crap, it’s so freaking dark.

When we reached the bottom, she informed me that we were now underground, and then dragged me through the twisting tunnels.

“Hi, Melee!” Chloe greeted, and my eyes widened.

“There’s someone here?” I asked. It only occurred to me then that I could use my phone’s flashlight. I pulled it out of my pocket and turned it on.