A Touch Menacing by Leah Clifford Page B

been observing Madeline from a distance, had brought them together. The years since had seen herself and Madeline somewhere between friends and adversaries but never outright enemies. Despite their differing loyalties to Upstairs and Down, she respected Madeline. She’d thought Madeline did the same. She’s been watching me, Kristen realized. The idea of Madeline’s spies catching a glimpse of her when she’d been weak sickened her.
    Madeline fiddled with a garish earring, the stone an impressive fake, but far too large to be real. The green only intensified her eyes—deep, wet forest colors. “Can we take a walk?” she asked. “We have a problem.”
    They strolled away from the open grave, threading through the tombstones and crypts. “This is far enough,” Kristen said, stopping between two crypts, out of sight of any stragglers left in the cemetery.
    Madeline gradually slowed. “So I told my Siders about the angels. I held this big dramatic thing,” she said with a flourish of her hand. “Called everyone in and told them about the Fallen and the Bound.”
    “They took it badly?” Kristen guessed. Her own Siders had reacted with stunned surprise, though honestly they’d handled it better than she expected. All things considered, she wasn’t sure why it should be such a stretch for a room full of immortals to believe angels existed. Of course, telling them those angels wanted them exterminated was a different story.
    “Not exactly,” Madeline said. “They did pretty well with the whole holy war issue. The problem is . . .” She trailed off for a moment before she rocked uncomfortably, snow crunching under her high-heeled boots. “Look, I don’t want to piss you off, but here’s the deal. They aren’t happy about being”—Madeline raised her hands in air quotes—“paraded around in front of the enemy.”
    “That’s ridiculous. You know I didn’t invite Gabriel. He wouldn’t harm them anyway!”
    “You can’t guarantee that. But they weren’t talking about Gabriel.” Madeline mirrored her frown. “They were talking about you.”
    “Me?” Kristen scoffed. A cloud of breath hovered in the air between them as the words sunk in, her anger slowly replaced with confusion.
    “They started asking questions—how I knew about the Bound and how I knew we were being targeted—so I tried to explain that you were close with Gabriel, but all they seemed to hear was you’re on the side of those that want to kill us.” She stared off into space for a moment, her brow wrinkled in thought. Finally, she shrugged. “They’re scared, Kristen. Can you blame them?”
    This is how it starts, Kristen thought. She twirled a ring around her middle finger, her nail clicking against the stones. She’ll draw the others away, turn them against me. When Kristen spoke, her voice didn’t have the bite she’d wanted. “You threw me under the bus.”
    “I told them what I thought they could handle. They need time.”
    Her head snapped up. “You could have mentioned I’m not the only one close to Gabriel. And we don’t have time,” she said, fighting to keep her emotions in check. “Everything is already in place. Erin’s coming from Staten Island. She agreed to a truce with Vaughn, if we can find him.”
    Erin had left her territory in Manhattan when she heard Vaughn was selling Touch to mortals and had torn down the whole operation. If Vaughn and Erin were able to set aside their differences, they understood the direness of the situation. And yet here Madeline stood, calm and collected, prattling on about how her Siders weren’t coming.
    “I made sure Vaughn knows about the ball,” Madeline said. Kristen shot her a look, but Madeline didn’t clarify how she knew where to find him. She didn’t need to. Her spies had apparently been busy as of late. “None of us are enemies now, right?” Madeline’s grin didn’t exactly set Kristen at ease. “Stop being paranoid.”
    Kristen glared. “Stop being