“You look lovely, Clara,” Billy says when I come into Mom’s bedroom in my prom dress. Just for her sake I do a twirl, the layers of my red silk ball gown ballooning around my legs. The dress is a little extreme. Plus it cost a small fortune, but when Angela, Billy, and I saw it in the mall in Idaho Falls last week, it kind of called to me. Wear me, it said. Then Billy said something like what the heck, it’s your last formal dance of high school, go out with a bang. The theme of prom this year is Paradise Found—yep, organized by seniors who were forced to read Paradise Lost with Mr. Phibbs this year. My favorite book of all time.
It’s either this or a fig leaf.
I tried not to fixate on that spot in front of the GNC where I first felt Samjeeza’s gaze on me. I used to find it mildly funny that I saw a Black Wing at the mall. I tried to picture him shopping, drifting through the bookshelves of Barnes & Noble with the latest Dan Brown novel, in Macy’s fingering the ties, perusing the underwear, because even angels need underwear if they’re going to walk among us, right? I remember laughing about it with Angela, and when I think about that now, how we could joke about it, I think, man, we were dumb. We knew Black Wings were terrifying and powerful, we knew Mom’s face went sheet white that day in the mall, we were scared too, but we had no idea. So I tried not to look at where he stood and I tried not to remember the way his voice rasped into my ear telling me not to be afraid. The way he thought of me as something he could take. And almost did.
The other off thing about this mall trip was that this time, Mom wasn’t there. She sent Billy. It feels like Billy is already stepping in for Mom, always in the house these days, cracking Mom-style jokes, taking me shopping, and now it’s Billy and not Mom who helps me fix my hair for prom. It’s Billy who tells me how lovely I am, while Mom lays back against the pillows, watching with tired eyes.
“Doesn’t she look amazing, Mags?” Billy prompts when Mom doesn’t say anything. “Red’s your color, Clara.”
“Yes,” Mom agrees faintly. “You’re beautiful.”
“Trust me, Tucker’s jaw is going to drop when he sees you,” Billy says, ushering me out of the room so Mom can rest. “He’s going to feel like a millionaire with you on his arm.”
“I’m arm candy, is that what you’re saying?”
“Tonight, yes,” Billy says. “Own it.”
I have to go pick Tucker up, since this year he’s rideless—the old ranch car finally kicked the bucket. Wendy’s riding with us too, since Jason Lovett’s car broke down two days ago, so she agreed to meet him there. Not the most romantic arrangement for any of us, but I’m sure we’ll make it work.
Billy stops me on my way out the door to spritz some amazing, yummy perfume in the air and has me walk through it.
“Home by twelve thirty or I’ll come looking,” she says, and I can’t tell if she’s serious.
“Yes, Mom,” I mutter.
She smiles sympathetically. “Have a good time at the dance.”
I plan to. Spring is passing too quickly, marching relentlessly toward the cemetery and summer and college and all the other things I don’t want to think about. This night might be the only good time I get for a while. I’m going to live it up.
The dance this year is at the Snow King ski lodge. The prom committee has done up the place like a jungle, fake trees, big fake flowers, even a giant apple tree in the corner with a plastic snake coiled in the branches.
Last year was classier.
But it doesn’t matter. This year, I’m with Tucker. Normally, in his cowboy clothes, his boots and T-shirts and tightish jeans, his flannels and Stetson, he’s unbelievably attractive. There’s a ruggedness about him that’s crazy sexy. But then there are times like these, when he shaves and puts on a rented tuxedo, wears a tie and everything, combs his hair just so, when he’s like a movie star.
“They’re looking at you,” I whisper as we pass through the lobby, and a group of girls turns around to stare.
“Nah,” he says. “They’re looking at you. That is one amazing dress.”
We dance. Tucker’s not a great dancer, but what he lacks in skill he makes up for in jokes. He has me laughing the entire time. He tries to teach me to two-step at one point, then to western swing. Then a slow song starts and I lay my head on his shoulder and try to savor the moment, like it’s just him and me here, no worries, no work schedules, no impending calamities, no future plans at all.
I feel Christian watching me before I see him. He’s dancing with Ava Peters on the other side of the dance floor. I lift my head and peek over Tucker’s shoulder at him expertly maneuvering Ava through the crowd. Ava laughs up at him, says something coy while looking at him through her false eyelashes.
I press my cheek back into Tucker’s shoulder, close my eyes. But when I open them again I still automatically look for Christian, and when I find him, he looks right at me, meets my gaze and holds it.
Will you dance with me, Clara? he asks. Just one time tonight?
Before I can answer, Tucker pulls away. He lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses it, thanks me for the dance. I smile at him.
“Let’s get something to drink,” he says. “It’s hot in here.”
I let him lead me over to the punch bowl and get me a glass. We stand for a few minutes by the door, the cool air washing over us.
“You having a good time?” he asks.
“Super.” I grin. “But I was wondering, where are your other dates?”
“My other dates?”
“If I remember correctly, last year you brought three different women to prom. Where’s the elusive Miss Allison Lowell?”
“This year I only have eyes for you.”
“Good answer.” I loop my arms around his neck and sneak in a kiss.
“Ah, ah, ah, people,” says Mr. Phibbs, clearing his throat.
Chaperone. I give him my best go-away look.
“Chastity is a virtue,” he quips.
“Yes, sir,” says Tucker with a respectful nod. Mr. Phibbs nods back and moves off to find some other couple’s bliss to break up.
I slip into the bathroom to powder my nose and happen to bump into Kay Patterson. She’s examining herself with approval, reapplying her lipstick. She looks ravishing, wearing a long black mermaid-style dress, sparkling with what I hope are fake jewels.
“I’m sorry to hear about your mom,” she says.
I meet her big brown eyes in the mirror. I don’t think she’s uttered a single word to me since last year, back when she and Christian had just broken up.
“Uh, thanks.”
“My dad died of colon cancer,” she says flatly. “I was three. I don’t remember it.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
I can’t think of anything to say, so I start washing my hands at the next sink. She finishes perfecting her already perfect face and returns her lipstick to her bag. But then she stands there staring at me. I brace myself for an insult.
“Most people don’t know. I have a stepdad, and everybody assumes that he’s my father.”
I nod, unsure why she’s telling me this, and glance at the door.
“Anyway,” continues Kay, “I want to offer my condolences. Whatever that’s worth.”
I murmur thanks again and start waving my hand in front of the paper towel dispenser to get the infrared mechanism to spit out the paper. Nothing happens. Kay hands me a paper towel from a stack on the counter.
“Christian’s worried about you,” she says. “I can tell. He lost his mom when he was young, too. That’s one of the first things that we understood about each other.”
“I know,” I say to Kay smugly. Meaning: he told me too.
She nods. “You should go easy on him. He deserves to be happy.”
“He’s not my boyfr—”
“You’re looking at him,” she says. “You might be all snuggly-wuggly with your boyfriend, but you’re looking at him.”
“I am not.”
She rolls her eyes. After a moment, she says, “He dumped me for you, you know.”
I stare at her, a deer caught in the headlights.
Her mouth purses up for a minute like she’s suppressing a smile. “He didn’t say that to me, of course. He gave me a bunch of phony lines about being fair to me and what I needed and acted like he was doing me a favor. Not that I didn’t see it coming. He’d been acting weird for a while. Not himself. And I saw how you looked at him and how he looked at you.”
“He didn’t look at me,” I protest.
She scoffs. “Whatever.”
“Christian and I are friends,” I try to explain. “I have a boyfriend.”
“Maybe you do,” Kay says with a shrug of her bare shoulder. “But you still look at him.”
My face must be the color of beets.
Then she looks me up and down, taking in my dress. “You’re going to have to step it up if you want to be with him.”
“Mind your own business, Kay,” I say then, pissed, and storm out.
And plow straight into Christian. Just as another slow song begins to play.
I’m starting to think that prom is forever cursed for me.
“Hi,” he says. “Dance with me, Clara?”
We belong together, springs to my mind. I can’t tell if it’s him or me who thinks it.
Insert fluttery panicky feeling in my chest.
“What . . . I . . . God,” I stammer, then sigh in exasperation. “Where’s Ava?”
“Ava’s not my date. I came stag.”
“Stag. You. Why?”
“So my date wouldn’t get offended when I wanted to dance with you,” he says.
That’s when I notice Tucker about five feet away, listening. “You’re forgetting one thing,” he says, moving to my side and slipping his arm around my waist. “Clara has a date. Me. So your tough luck.”
Christian doesn’t look fazed.
“It’s one dance,” he says. “Clara and I are friends. What’s the big deal?”
“You had your chance,” Tucker replies coolly. “You blew it. So go step on someone else’s toes.”
Christian hesitates. Looks at me.
Tucker shakes his head. “Dude, don’t make me knock you around in here. I don’t want to mess up my tux.”
A muscle ticks in Christian’s cheek. I get an I-could-kick-your-sorry-butt-if-I-wanted-to vibe from him, clear as day.
God. Men.
I step between them.
“No offense, Tuck,” I say, turning to him, “but I am not a piece of meat, okay? Stop growling over me. I can handle this myself.”
I turn to Christian. “No,” I say simply. “Thank you for the offer, but I have a date.”
I decide where I belong, I tell him silently.
He nods, takes a step back. I know.
Then I take Tucker’s hand and lead him away to the dance floor, leaving Christian standing there alone.
The dance isn’t much fun after that. I expend a huge amount of energy trying to block Christian out, while at the same time trying not to think about him at all, which turns out to be impossible. Tucker and I are both tensed up for the rest of the night, quiet, pressing close as we dance, holding on like we’re afraid we might slip away from each other.
We don’t talk on the way home.
Before I moved here, I never got the whole love-triangle thing. You know, in movies or romance novels or whatnot, where there’s one chick that all the guys are drooling over, even though you can’t see anything particularly special about her. But oh, no, they both must have her. And she’s like, oh dear, however will I choose? William is so sensitive, he understands me, he swept me off my feet, oh misery, blubber, blubber, but how can I go on living without Rafe and his devil-may-care ways and his dark and only-a-little-abusive love? Upchuck. So unrealistic, I always thought.
Joke’s on me, I guess.
But Christian and I were kind of assigned to each other. He’s not interested in me because of my devastating good looks or my winning personality. He wants me because he’s been told to want me. I feel things for him because he’s like this big mystery to me, and because I’ve been told to want him, and not by just my mother but by the higher powers, the people upstairs, the Big Guy. Plus Christian’s hot, and he always seems to know the right thing to say and he gets me.
Joke’s really on me.
And why—this is what I can’t understand—do the people upstairs care about who I love when I’m seventeen years old? Tucker is my choice. My heart, making its own decisions.
I suddenly feel the urge to cry, the biggest surge of sorrow I’ve felt in a long time, and I think, God, will you just leave me alone?
“Everybody okay?” Wendy says, nervously, from the backseat.
“Peachy,” I say.
And then Tucker says, “What’s that?”
I stomp on the brakes and we screech to a stop.
Someone’s standing in the middle of the road. Waiting for us, it seems. A tall man wearing a long leather coat. A man with coal-black hair. Even from fifty yards away, I know who is it. I can feel it.
Not my sorrow, then.
Samjeeza’s.
We’re toast.
“Clara, who is that?” Tucker asks.
“Bad news,” I mutter. “Everybody buckled in?”
I don’t wait for an answer. I don’t know what to do, so I go with my gut. I slowly take my foot off the brake, and move it to the gas. Then I floor it.
We pick up speed fast, but at the same time we are in slow motion, creeping along in some alternate time as I clutch the steering wheel and focus on Samjeeza. This car, I figure, is my only weapon. Maybe if I knock him into next week with it, we’ll be able to get away, somehow. It’s our only chance.
Tucker starts to yell and clutch at the seat. My head gets cloudy with sorrow, but I push through. The beam from the headlights falls on the angel in the road, his eyes glowing like an animal’s catching the light, and in that last crazy moment, as the car bears down on him, I think I see him smile.
For a second everything is black. There’s white dust floating around my head, from the air bags, I think. Beside me, Tucker suddenly comes to, inhales deeply. I can’t see him too well in the dark, but there’s a bright silver web of cracked glass on the passenger window. He groans.
“Tucker?” I whisper.
He lifts a shaky hand to his head, touches it gingerly, then looks at his fingers. His blood looks like spilled ink against the sudden whiteness of his skin. He moves his jaw back and forth, like someone punched him.
“Tucker?” I hear the note of panic in my voice, almost like a sob.
“What the heck were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry, Tuck. I—”
“Man, those air bags really hit you, don’t they?” he says. “How about you? You hurt?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Wendy?” he calls.
I crane my head around so I can look toward the backseat, but all I can see from this angle is a bit of her long hair in front of her face. Tucker starts wrenching on the door, trying to get out, to go to her, but it’s partly crushed and refuses to open. I try my door—same problem. I close my eyes, try to clear my head of the fuzzy cobwebs that are collected there.
Do this, I tell myself.
I grasp the door handle firmly and pull it, then press my shoulder into the door and push as hard as I can. There’s a pop, then metal shrieking, giving way, and suddenly the door comes completely off its hinges. It falls to the ground. I unbuckle my seat belt and slide out, hurry to the other side of the car, pull the door smoothly off for Tucker, throw it into the weeds at the side of the road. He stares up at me for a second, his mouth slightly open. He’s never seen me do anything like that before.
I’ve never seen me do anything like that before either.
I hold out my hand. He grabs it, and I pull him out of the car. He moves straight back to Wendy’s door, which opens easily. He tries to pull her out, but something’s keeping her there.
“Her seat belt,” I say.
He curses, still dazed, and fumbles around for the latch, then lifts her out. She doesn’t make a sound as he carries her to the side of the road, lays her gently on the gravel at the shoulder. He takes off his tuxedo jacket and slips it beneath her head and back.
“Wake up, Wendy,” he orders her, but nothing happens. I kneel down next to him and watch the rise and fall of her chest. I listen for the beating of her heart, slow and steady, the most welcome sound in the world.
“She’s breathing,” I tell Tucker. “Her pulse is strong.”
He bows his head in relief. “We have to call 9-1-1. Right now. Where’s your phone?”
Back to the car I go. It’s totaled, the whole front end completely mangled like I hit a telephone pole at eighty. No sign of the angel. Maybe he poofed himself back to hell. I go back to the driver’s side and start digging around in the mess for the small black clutch with my phone in it. I can’t find it anywhere. This feels so surreal, like it’s not even really happening, a bad dream.
“I don’t know where it is,” I cry. “I know I had it when we left.”
“Clara,” Tucker says slowly.
“Just give me a minute. I know it’s here.”
“Clara,” he says again.
Something in his voice stops me. It sounds like it did that day in the mountains when we hiked to see the sunrise, when the grizzly bear came out of the brush. Don’t run, Tucker had said, exactly that way. I move like molasses back out of the car, straighten up, look toward his voice, and freeze.
Samjeeza is standing next to Tucker. There’s not a scratch on him. My car looks like it’s been through a compactor, but here he is, smiling slightly, his posture all casual, like he and Tucker are merely hanging out at the side of the road. He’s holding my cell phone.
“Hello, little bird,” he says. “Good to see you again.”
That name sends a jolt of fear and revulsion straight to the pit of my stomach. My entire body starts to tremble.
“You hit me with your car,” he observes. “Is this your boyfriend?”
He turns to Tucker as if he wants to shake his hand, but Tucker looks away, at the ground, at the car, anywhere but into the angel’s burning amber eyes. His hands clench into fists.
Samjeeza gives a short laugh. “He’s considering whether or not he should hit me. After you struck me with your car, he still thinks that maybe he should fight me.” He shakes his head. The motion has that strange blur to it, like there are really two of him, one laid on top of the other, a human body, and some other creature. I’d almost forgotten about that. “Humans,” he says with cheerful amusement.
I swallow so hard it hurts my throat. I refuse to look at Wendy lying there. I can’t look at Tucker, either; I can’t be afraid for him right now. I have to be strong. Find a way to get us all out of this. “What do you want?” I ask, fighting to keep my voice steady.
“An excellent question, one I’ve asked myself for a very long time. I was angry with you, little Quartarius, since you . . .” He turns his head and lifts his hair to show me his ear, which even in the dark looks misshapen. It’s growing back, I realize. I pulled it off last summer, when I had the glory in my hands, and all this time he’s been growing it back.
“I didn’t try to . . . ,” I say. “I didn’t mean . . .”
He waves his hand at me dismissively, turns back. “Of course you did. But it’s not worth getting upset over.”
“Why are you here?” I ask. “Let’s just skip to that part, okay? If you’re going to destroy me, do it already.”
“Oh no,” he says, like the idea offends him, like the last time I saw him he didn’t try to do exactly that. “I want to talk to you. I’ve been watching you, and you seem unhappy, my dear. Conflicted. I wondered if I could help.”
“You don’t want to help me.”
“Oh, but I do,” he says. “I’ve found you very interesting, fascinating even, ever since I first came upon you. There’s something your mother’s hiding about you, I think.”
“She told me all about you,” I say.
His eyebrows lift. “All about me? Really. Well, that’s a good story, but not so relevant to you. What interests me more is what you’re expected to do. Your purpose. Your visions. Your dreams.”
“My purpose doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
He shakes his head. “Or is it something else?” I feel him prodding around in my brain. “She hasn’t told you,” he says, disappointed. “I would feel it on you if you knew.”
The dumb thing is, I’m curious. I want to know what he’s talking about, and of course he knows that, which is why he’s smiling, and now I’m playing right into his hands because I’m thinking about what he’s saying instead of how to get us away from him.
I can’t help it. “She hasn’t told me what?” I ask.
He holds out my phone. “Let’s ask her.”
Do something! I need to come up with a strategy, bring the glory, which feels impossible with the heavy cloak of his sorrow around me. The cobwebs in my head won’t go away, his sorrow clouding everything.
Think.
“Is this some kind of plan to take me hostage? Because I’m sure Mom will think that’s super romantic.”
His expression darkens. “Don’t make me do something I’ll regret,” he says, and steps closer to Tucker.
I meet Tucker’s eyes. He swallows, a jerk of his Adam’s apple. He’s scared. Samjeeza’s going to kill him, I think. This is why he’s not in the cemetery. It would be so easy for Samjeeza—it would only take a moment, a flick of his wrist. Why am I so stupid? Why didn’t I see this? All those months I spent trying to think of how to protect him, then dismissing it all when I found out about my mom, and now it comes to this.
I wish I could tell him I’m sorry to have drawn him into my insane life.
“Go on, call her,” Samjeeza says.
I nod, then walk toward him to take the phone, one step and then another. I try to block the sorrow as I suddenly reach that invisible radius around him, this bubble made of pain. Tears burn my eyes. I blink them back. Keep walking. Stand right in front of him and look him in the eye.
Samjeeza puts the phone in my hand.
I press the number two. It rings for a long time, so long I think it’s going to go to voice mail, but then I hear Mom’s voice.
“Clara?” I know by the sound of her voice that she knows something’s wrong.
“Mom . . .” For a moment I can’t make my throat work to form the words, the words that will bring her here to Samjeeza and who knows what kind of fate. “Samjeeza’s here.”
“Are you sure?” she asks.
I feel Samjeeza’s eyes on me, his presence in my head poking around, not pushing me, exactly, but trying to read me or listen in or something. “He’s standing right here.”
Silence on the other end. Then she asks, “Where are you?”
“I don’t know.” I glance around, disoriented. I can’t remember where we are, and all I see are dark fields, telephone poles stretching out into the distance.
“Coltman Road,” Tucker says under his breath.
I tell her. “I crashed the car,” I say, because some stupid part of my brain needs to confess just how much I’ve screwed up.
“Clara, listen to me now,” she whispers. She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “You know I can’t come to you.”
I did know that. Still, shock reverberates through me. I know she’s too weak to fly, too weak to even walk upstairs without getting winded, but in my heart, some tiny part of me believed she would come anyway, in spite of everything.
“What does she say?” asks Samjeeza, stepping close to me, his mouth almost against my ear. He’s excited. He thinks she’s going to rescue me, like last time. The idea pleases him so much, seeing my mother again, looking at her face, hearing her voice. He is practically dancing around with anticipation. He has a plan now, something that will redeem him with the others, a plan that will keep my mother with him forever. In hell.
Only she’s not coming.
I think now is the part where we’re officially screwed.
“What does she say?” Samjeeza asks again, his mind pressing down on mine, trying to find the information himself. I push back against him and find it surprisingly easy this time to keep him out of my thoughts. I’m stronger, mentally, than last time. I can force him out. Which is good, considering that now I have to lie.
“She’s on her way.”
“Be brave, my darling,” Mom says to me then. “Remember what I said about fighting him with your heart and your mind. You’re stronger than you think. I love you.”
“Okay.” I hang up the phone. Samjeeza holds out his hand, and I try to contain my trembling as I put the phone back into it.
“Now we wait,” he says. He nods like a nervous schoolboy, smiles. “I’ve never been very good at waiting.”
Panic rises like a fluttering bird in my chest, but I squash it back down.
Stall for time, I think. Figure out a way to get him away from Tucker and Wendy so you can bring the glory.
“We need to call an ambulance for my friend.” I gesture to Wendy, laid out at Tucker’s feet like a rag doll in a black velvet dress. My dress. My responsibility.
Samjeeza glances down at my phone, closes his fingers around it possessively. “I don’t think so.”
I swallow. “She’s hurt. She needs help. It won’t matter to you, anyway. We—or you and me and Mom, I mean—could be gone long before the paramedics arrive.”
“Please,” Tucker asks, and there’s no mistaking the genuine plea in his voice. “She’s my sister. She could be dying. Please, sir.”
Maybe it’s the “sir” that gets him. The sorrow around me pulses, and in it I feel a glimmer of something human, compassion maybe. Something conflicted. He glances down at my phone again, opens it. His eyes scan over the buttons, but he doesn’t seem to know which one to push. He doesn’t know how to use a cell phone, I realize.
“I’ll do it,” I tell him. “You can watch me. I’ll only dial 9-1-1. If I do anything else, you can crush me or whatever it is that you do.”
He smiles. “But if I crush you I won’t get what I came here for, will I? How about this? You call, and if you try any funny business, I’ll crush him.”
He cocks his head to indicate Tucker. A cold ripple of fear washes over me. “Okay,” I whisper.
“Make it quick,” he says.
He hands me the phone. I dial, hold it to my ear with a shaky hand.
“9-1-1, what is your emergency?” a woman answers.
“There’s been—” I clear my throat and start again. “There’s been a car accident on Coltman Road. Please send an ambulance.”
She asks for my name. I can’t tell her that, because then, when the paramedics arrive, they’ll expect to find me here, and I won’t be here. But maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe I’ll be too dead to care by then. “I, uh— I’m—” I stammer.
Samjeeza holds out his hand. I’ve done what I said I would do. I called. I give the phone back to him. The operator’s still talking, asking questions, wanting to know the extent of the injuries.
“Hello,” Samjeeza says, his voice solemn, but there’s something else in his eyes.
“Hello?” I hear the lady say faintly. “Who is this?”
“I’ve just come upon the scene. Terrible, terrible accident. I’m afraid the girl’s unconscious now. And a young man. They look like they’re dressed for a dance. Please hurry. They’re both badly injured.”
He closes the phone.
Both badly injured.
“But my mom—”
“She isn’t coming,” he says, his eyes so knowing. He sounds truly disappointed. “I’ll just have to be satisfied with you.”
He starts to turn toward Tucker.
I look into Tucker’s face, his stormy blue eyes comprehending what Samjeeza means to do. Accepting it. Bracing for it.
Time grinds to a halt.
I have to bring the glory. This is the moment I’ve been practicing all year for. Now.
I look at Tucker but I don’t feel anything but my heart beating, so slowly it’s like a low thump every five seconds, and I can feel the blood it’s pumping through my body, to my lungs, in and out, filling me with strength, with life, and then with a sense of myself and something more than just my body. Something more than human. My spirit. My soul.
Light explodes around me. I turn toward Samjeeza and at the same moment, slowed down twenty times, it seems, he looks at my face and knows what I’m up to. He flares with rage, but doesn’t have time to act on it. He moves with unearthly speed away, out of reach of the glory.
I take a deep breath, let it out slow, feeling the light tingling at my fingertips, shining out of my body, my hair gleaming with it, my chest filling with warmth. A feeling of calm settles over me. I turn again to Tucker. He lifts a hand to shield his eyes from my light. I take his other hand in mine. It feels cool, clammy, against my almost feverish skin. He flinches at my touch, then forces himself to relax, lowers his hand, squints at me like he’s trying really hard to look at the sun. Unshed tears in his eyes. And fear.
I reach up and put my finger against the cut on his head, watch as the light caresses him, the skin knitting itself back together, until there’s no trace of the wound.
“It’s okay,” I whisper.
A laugh pierces my tranquility. Samjeeza, a safe distance away, laughing.
“I keep underestimating you,” he says almost admiringly. “You are a tough little bird.”
“Go away.”
He laughs again. “I want to find out what happens next, don’t you?”
“Go. Away.”
“You can’t hold that forever, you know.”
He said something like that to my mom, that day in the woods. She brought the glory and he said, You can’t hold that forever, and she said, I can hold it long enough.
What is long enough? Even now, after only a few minutes, I feel myself starting to tire. It’s like holding the door to my soul wide open while the wind pushes steadily against it. Sooner or later, that door will close.
Samjeeza closes his eyes. “I can almost hear the sirens. Racing this way. Things will be interesting when they get here.”
I squeeze Tucker’s hand. He tries to smile at me. I try to smile back.
A plan would be nice. Sitting here waiting for my lightbulb to burn out, so not a plan. Waiting for the ambulance to come, adding more people to the mix, also not a plan.
“Why don’t you just drop this nonsense?” Samjeeza says. “Not that I’m not impressed. For someone your age, your dilution of blood, to exhibit glory on your own, it’s rather unheard of. But you should stop this now.”
He’s speaking calmly, but I can feel that he’s getting mad.
I’ve seen him mad before. It’s not pretty. He tends to do things like launch fireballs at your head.
Headlights turn onto the road. My breath freezes in my lungs. I nearly lose the glory. It flickers, dims, but I hold on.
“Come now, enough foolishness,” Samjeeza says impatiently. “You and I must go.”
It’s too late. The vehicle approaches us slowly. Stops, a squeak of brakes. But it isn’t an ambulance. It’s a beat-up silver Honda with a rusty green fender. I strain to look past my own radiance to see the figure inside. A man with white hair and a beard.
Mr. Phibbs.
I’ve never seen a more welcome sight than Mr. Phibbs in his tacky brown polyester suit, strolling toward us with a smile like he’s taking a leisurely walk in the middle of the night. I feel stronger as he nears, like I can do this, whatever I’m asked, whatever it takes. I feel hope.
“Evening,” Mr. Phibbs says, nodding to me. “How’s everybody?”
“She’s hurt.” I point down to Wendy. Still breathing, thank God. “The paramedics are on their way. They should be here soon.”
Samjeeza eyes him.
“I see,” Mr. Phibbs says. He turns his attention to the brooding Black Wing. “What seems to be the problem here?”
“Who are you?” Samjeeza asks.
“I’m a teacher.” Mr. Phibbs readjusts his glasses. “These are my students.”
“I have business with the girl,” Samjeeza says almost politely. “We’ll be on our way, and then you can tend to the others.”
“Afraid I can’t allow that,” says Mr. Phibbs. “Yes, you could probably squash me like a bug if you took a mind to. If you could get to me,” he adds. “But I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, whom you have defiled. So slither back into the dark, Watcher.”
I hope, for our sake, that he’s not bluffing.
Samjeeza doesn’t move.
“Are you having trouble hearing me?” Mr. Phibbs asks like this fallen angel is a tardy student. “I see you have some damage to your ear. That your doing, Clara?”
“Um, yeah.”
“Well, good for you.” He turns back to Samjeeza.
“Be careful, old man,” growls the angel. Around him the air starts to crackle with energy. I begin to get very worried that he’s going to zap us into hell.
“Corbett,” I say nervously.
Faster than a blink, Mr. Phibbs holds up one of his hands and the light surrounding us brightens into it, swirling itself into a long, thin shape with a point of fiercely shining light at the end. An arrow, is my first thought, an arrow made from glory, and before I even have time to analyze what that could mean, Mr. Phibbs makes a sweeping motion with his arm and fires the thing straight at Samjeeza.
I watch in slow motion as the arrow arcs through the air like a falling star, then strikes the angel in the shoulder. It makes a noise like a knife sinking into a watermelon. He looks at it, startled, then back at Mr. Phibbs incredulously. The light from the arrow seeps from his shoulder like blood, and wherever it touches it hisses, eating away that second layer that he wears over his true self. He reaches up and closes his hand around the shaft. His brows knit together, then he wrenches the arrow out. He howls in pain as it comes free. He drops it, and it bursts into tiny sparkles when it strikes the ground. Breathing hard, he looks right at me, not at Mr. Phibbs or Tucker but at me, and his eyes are sad. His body suddenly has a transparent quality to it, muted and gray, even his skin, like he’s becoming a ghost.
And then he’s gone.
Beside me Mr. Phibbs exhales slowly, the only indication that any of this was mind-blowingly scary. I finally let go of the glory, and it fades.
“Well, now we know why he’s mad at me, don’t we?” he says cheerfully.
“How did you do that?” I gasp. “That was so cool.”
“David and Goliath, my dear,” he answers. “All it takes is one smooth little pebble to drop a giant. Although, to be honest, I was aiming for his heart. I’ve never been the best shot.”
Tucker stumbles off a few steps into the weeds to throw up. Mr. Phibbs wrinkles up his nose as we listen to him losing his dinner.
“Humans and glory don’t mix well, I’m afraid,” Mr. Phibbs says.
“You okay?” I call to Tucker.
He straightens up and comes back out to the road, wiping his mouth on his tux sleeve.
“Will he be back?” he asks.
I look to Mr. Phibbs, who sighs.
“I’d assume so.”
“But you wounded him,” I say, my voice straining. “Doesn’t it take time for them to heal? I mean, I tore his ear off months ago, and that wasn’t fixed yet.”
Mr. Phibbs nods grimly. “I should have struck at the heart.”
“Would that have killed him?”
“Lord, no. You can’t kill an angel,” he says.
“Look.” Tucker points off in the distance, where we see a police car, followed by an ambulance and a fire truck, tearing along the highway toward us.
“Took them long enough,” I say.
Mr. Phibbs kneels to examine Wendy, his fingers touching lightly at her neck. Her eyes flutter, but she doesn’t wake. She moans. It’s kind of a beautiful sound.
“Will she be okay?” Tucker asks, his face still a bit green.
“Oh yes, right as rain, I think,” Mr. Phibbs answers.
Then we’re all quiet as the sirens get closer, the pitch changing as it draws near, until we’re bathed in the red and blue flashing lights of the clueless people coming to help.