“A glory sword is more than a simple weapon,” Dad’s saying. “I have talked about a sword being an extension of your arm, imagining that it’s part of you, but a glory sword is more than a metaphor. The glory is part of you; it grows from the light inside you, that energy, that connectedness to the power that governs all life.”
We’re on the deserted beach again, because he decided that place is less distracting for us to train than my backyard in Jackson. It’s dusk. Christian and I are sitting near the waterline, our toes buried in the sand, while Dad gives us a mini lecture on the composition of glory and its many uses.
And here I thought I was on spring break. We’ve been training every day since we got back to Jackson. At least today we’re hitting the beach.
Dad continues. “There is nothing, not on earth, or in heaven, or even in hell, that can overcome that light. If you believe this, then the glory will shape itself into anything that you need.”
“Like a lantern,” I say.
“Yes. Or an arrow, as you’ve also seen. But the most effective form is a sword. It’s quick, and powerful, sharper than any two-edged blade, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
Now he’s gone all poetic on us.
I remember how Jeffrey reacted to the idea of a glory sword. “What about a glory gun?” I ask. “I mean, this is the twenty-first century. Maybe what we should really be trying to shape is a glory semiautomatic.”
“Which would require you to create what, a glory stock and barrel, a firing mechanism, glory gunpowder, glory shells and bullets?” Dad questions, his eyes amused.
“Well, it sounds dumb when you put it that way. I guess a sword is good.”
Dad makes a face. “I think you’ll find the sword more useful than anything else. And tasteful.”
“An elegant weapon, for a more civilized age,” I joke.
He doesn’t get it, but my geekiness makes Christian smile, which counts for something.
“Why?” Christian asks suddenly. “Why would a sword be more useful, I mean?”
“Because the enemy uses a blade as well,” Dad says, his eyes serious. “Fashioned from their sorrow.”
I sit up straighter. “A sword made of sorrow?” I try not to think about Christian’s vision, about the blood on my shirt, about how scared I am, like every minute, that what he’s seeing is my death. But I haven’t worked up the courage yet to ask Dad for his interpretation of the future.
“Typically it’s shorter, more like a dagger. But sharp. Penetrating. And painful. It injures the soul as well as the body. It’s difficult to heal,” Dad says.
“Well that’s … great,” I manage. “We have a glory sword. They have a sorrow dagger. Yay.”
“So you see why it’s so important that you learn,” he says.
I get up, brush sand off my shorts. “Enough talk,” I say. “Let’s try it.”
About an hour later I drop back down to the sand, panting. Christian is standing next to me with the most beautiful blade of glory in his hand, perfect and shining. I, on the other hand, have made a glory lantern a few times, a glory arrow of sorts (more like a glory javelin, but it’d do the trick in a pinch, I think, which is not nothing, I point out), but not a glory sword.
Dad is frowning, big time. “You’re not concentrating on the right things,” he says. “You must think of the sword as more than something physical that you can hold in your hand. You must think of it as truth.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t a metaphor.”
“I said it was more than a metaphor. Let’s try something else,” he suggests. The sun is fully down now, shadows stretching across the ground. “Think of something you know, absolutely, to be true.”
I say the first thing that comes to mind. “I know I’m your daughter.”
He looks pleased. “Good. Let’s start there. Think about the part of you that knows that fact. That feels it, in your gut. Do you feel it?”
I nod. “Yes. I gut-feel it.”
“Close your eyes.”
I do. He steps up beside me and takes my wrist in his hand, stretches my arm out in front of me. I feel him draw glory around us. Without being asked, I bring my own to meet it, and his glory and my glory combine, his light and mine making something greater, something brighter. Something powerful and good.
“You are my daughter,” he says.
“I know.”
“But how do you know you’re my daughter? Because your mother told you so?”
“No, because … because I feel a connection between us that’s like …” I don’t have the right word for it. “Something inside me, like in my blood or whatever.”
“Flesh of my flesh,” he says. “Blood of my blood.”
“Now you’re getting weird.”
He chuckles. “Focus on that feeling. Believe that simple truth. You are my daughter.”
I focus. I believe. I know it to be true.
“Open your eyes,” Dad says.
I do, and gasp.
Right before my eyes is a vertical bar of light. It’s definitely glory, that light, a rippling mix of golden warmth and cool silver, the sun and moon combined. I can feel its power moving through me. I glance down at my outstretched arm, watch the glory curl around my elbow, down my forearm, to where I’m grasping the light like it has a kind of handle; then I sweep my gaze up the length again, to the tip, and it seems to have an edge to it. A point.
Yep. It’s a sword.
I look over at Christian, who grins and gives me a mental thumbs-up. Dad lets go of my wrist and steps back, admiring our handiwork.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he says.
“Yeah. Now what do I do with it?”
“Whatever you want,” he says.
“Do I have to be careful with it? Can I cut myself?”
Dad responds by forming his own glory sword and swinging it at Christian, so fast that he doesn’t even have time to move, let alone duck out of the way, before the sword cuts through him. I bite back a scream, sure I’m about to see my best friend cut in half, but the blade passes through like a sunbeam cutting through clouds. Christian stands there totally shocked, his own glory sword abruptly gone from his hand, then looks down at his stomach. A long section of his T-shirt flutters to the ground, cleanly severed. But there’s not a scratch on his body.
“Holy …” Christian lets out a breath. “You could warn a guy before you attack him like that. I liked that shirt.”
“If you were a Triplare,” Dad says matter-of-factly, “you’d be dead.”
I frown. “He is a Triplare.”
“One of theirs, I mean,” Dad clarifies. “Those with the dark wings.”
“So we can’t hurt each other?” I ask. “I mean, if we spar with glory swords, they’ll pass through like that?”
“As long as you are aligned with the light, glory will not harm you,” Dad answers. “It is part of you, after all.”
Christian’s chewing on his bottom lip, which is not like him. “My wings aren’t all white,” he confesses, meeting Dad’s eyes. “They have black specks. What does that mean?”
“It happens when a child is born from a white-winged mother and one of the Sorrowful Ones,” Dad says thoughtfully. “It’s a mark the Black Wings leave to identify their Triplare children.”
“But our wings are a reflection of our souls, right?” I ask, confused. “You’re saying that Christian’s father marked his soul?”
Dad doesn’t answer, but his grim look says it all.
Christian looks like he’s going to be sick to his stomach.
Time for some stress relief, I think.
I move my arm slowly back and forth, watch the way the light lingers in the air, trailing my movement. It’s almost dark now, the sky a deep navy, and the sword against it reminds me of sparklers on the Fourth of July. On an impulse I write my name with it. C. L. A. R. A.
“Come on,” I say to Christian. “You try.”
He recovers himself and focuses until a bright blade appears in his hand, then starts writing his own letters in the air. We start to goof around, turning circles, making patterns, then taking swipes at each other’s exposed arms and legs. Just as Dad said, the blades pass right through. The warmth and power of the glory makes me a bit giddy, and I keep laughing as I maneuver the sword. For a minute I forget about the visions. There’s nothing that can touch me, with this. Nothing to fear.
“I’m glad you understand now,” Dad says, and there’s relief in his voice. “Because this is our last session.”
Christian and I both drop our arms and look at him, startled. “The last session?” I repeat.
“Of your training,” he says.
“Oh.” I lift the sword again. My heart is suddenly heavy, and the sword dims in my hand, flickers. “Will we be—will I be seeing you around?”
“Not for a long while,” he says.
The sword goes out. I turn to him, stricken, fearful that I haven’t been taught enough. I’ve learned so much in this small amount of time: how to fly better, how to fight, how to cross and transport others, which has already come in handy when I need to get Christian and me to the beach on our own, how to almost instantaneously call glory and shape it, and use it more efficiently for healing. He’s also taught us to speak to each other in our minds one-to-one, so that we can talk silently without being heard by anyone else, not even angels, which I’m sure every now and then he regrets doing, when it’s clear that Christian and I are talking about him behind his back. It’s been harder work than any of my courses at Stanford, but I’ve loved the training, truth be told, as scared as it makes me feel. It’s brought me closer to my dad, more a part of his life. It’s made me feel closer to Christian. But I don’t feel ready for any kind of Black Wing–Triplare battle. He didn’t even teach us to use the actual glory swords until today. “How long?”
He puts his hand on my shoulder. “You’ve got some trials ahead of you, I’m afraid, and I can’t help you. I can’t interfere, as much as I’d like to.”
That doesn’t sound good. “Any more hints you’d like to give me?”
“Follow your vision,” he says. “Follow your heart. And I’ll be with you again soon.”
“But I thought you said not for a long while—”
He smiles almost embarrassedly. “It’s a matter of perspective.”
He turns to Christian. “As for you, young man, it’s been a pleasure getting to know you. You have a fine spirit. Take care of my daughter.”
Christian swallows hard. “Yes, sir,” he says.
Dad turns back to me. “Now, try again with the sword, on your own this time.”
I close my eyes and try again, going through the steps carefully, and it works. The sword fills my hand. Dad draws his own, and we all spend a little more time there, just a little more time, together on the beach, Christian and Dad and I, writing our shining names onto the air.
“I heard about Angela,” Wendy says as we walk out of the Teton Theatre in Jackson a few days later. I called her, like I promised, asked her to hang out, and since I picked her up it’s been like old times, her and me joking around, shooting the breeze, and I’ve done an admirable job, I must say, of not showing that I think about Tucker every single time that I see any of his expressions cross her face.
Sometimes it really sucks that they’re twins.
“What did you hear?” I ask her.
“That she had a baby.”
“Yep, she did, a boy,” I say a bit guardedly. I’m protective when it comes to the subject of Angela and her baby. Maybe because I feel like they don’t have anybody else to protect them, and there is so much in this world that they might need protecting from, starting with the nasty gossip that’s surely going around about them in Jackson. Word here travels fast.
“That’s tough,” Wendy says.
I nod. Last time I called Angela, I could hear Web wailing the whole time in the background, and she said, “What do you want, Clara?” all monotone, and I said, “I’m calling to see how you are,” and she said, “I’m a clueless teen mom whose baby never stops freaking crying. I’m covered in milk and puke and crap, and I haven’t had more than two hours of sleep in a week. How do you think I am?” And then she hung up on me.
She obviously hasn’t come around to seeing how she’s blessed.
“She’ll get through it,” I say to Wendy. “She’s smart. She’ll figure it out.”
“I never thought she’d be the kind to …” Wendy trails off. “Well, you know. She’s not exactly the motherly type.”
“She has her mom to help her,” I say.
We head toward the square, where the antler arches greet us at the four corners. I think about how long ago it feels since I first came here and stood under one of those arches, when my hair started to glow and my mom decided we needed to dye it. Just to get me by until I learned to control it, she’d said, and I’d laughed and said something like, I’ll learn to control my hair? and it had felt crazy, saying that. Now I can control it. If my hair started to glow at this moment, I’m fairly certain I’d be able to put it out pretty quick, before anybody noticed.
I’ve grown up, I think.
We walk into the park and take a seat on a bench. In one of the trees over our heads there’s a small dark bird staring at us, but I refuse to look closely enough to see if it’s a bird or a particularly annoying angel. I haven’t been seeing as much of Sam these days, only twice since February, and neither time he spoke to me, although I’m not sure why. I wonder if I offended him, last time. I take a sip of the soda I got for the movie. Sigh.
“It’s nice to be back,” I say.
“I know,” Wendy says. “You haven’t talked much about what’s going on with you. How’s Stanford?”
“Good. Stanford is good.”
“Good,” she says.
“Stanford is great, actually.”
She nods. “And you’re going out with Christian Prescott?”
I nearly spit out my soda. “Wendy!”
“What? I’m not allowed to ask you about your love life?”
“What about your love life?” I counter. “You haven’t said anything about that.”
She smiles. “I’m dating a guy named Daniel; thanks for asking. He’s studying business communications, and we were in the same English composition class last fall, and I helped him with some of his papers. He’s cute. I like him.”
“I bet that’s not all you helped him with,” I tease.
She doesn’t take the bait. “So what’s going on with you and Christian?”
I’d rather have my teeth pulled than have this conversation, her staring at me expectantly with her version of Tucker’s hazy blue eyes.
“We’re friends,” I stammer. “I mean, we’ve been on a date. But …”
She quirks an eyebrow at me. “But what? You’ve always liked him.”
“I do like him. He makes me laugh. He’s always there for me, whenever I need him. He understands me. He’s amazing.”
“Sounds like a match made in heaven,” she says. “So what’s the problem?”
“Nothing. I like him.”
“And he likes you?”
My cheeks are getting hot. “Yes.”
“Well.” She sighs. “It’s like my daddy always says. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”
I don’t know what she means, but I have the distinct feeling that she’s getting at something Tucker-related. I laugh like I get it, and look off across the street, where there’s a sudden flurry of noise and movement. Some kind of show is being put on. They’ve blocked off part of the road, and a number of costumed guys are standing in the middle of it, shouting something about how the notorious Jackson gang has robbed a bank in Eagle City.
“What is this?” I ask Wendy.
“You’ve never seen this before?” she asks incredulously. “Cowboy melodrama. One of the other great things about this town. Where else on earth can you go and witness a good old-fashioned Wild West shoot-out? Come on, let’s go have a look.”
I follow her across the street toward the action. The cowboy actors are quickly drawing a crowd from the tourists on the boardwalk. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I notice that the actors all tote rifles or pistols.
Wendy turns to me. “Fun, right?”
“Consider me entertained.” I turn, laughing, pressed in by the people around me, when suddenly I see Tucker farther up the boardwalk, coming out of what appears to be the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum, another place I’ve never been to even though I’ve considered Jackson my home for more than two years. He’s smiling with his dimples out, his teeth a flash of white against his tanned face. I can hear the faint sound of his laugh, and I can’t help it, it makes me smile to hear it. I love his laugh.
But he’s not alone. Another second and Allison Lowell, the girl from the rodeo, the girl who was one of his dates at prom the year I went with Christian, the girl who’s had a giant crush on him pretty much her whole life, follows Tucker out of the building, and she’s laughing too, her long red hair in a fish-tailed braid over her shoulder, peering up at him exactly the way I know I used to look at him. She puts her hand on his arm, says something else to make him smile. He folds his arm around her hand, like he’s escorting her somewhere, always the perfect gentleman.
Shots ring in the air. The crowd laughs as one of the villains staggers around melodramatically, then dies and lies twitching.
I know how he feels.
I should go. They’re coming this way, and any second he’s going to see me, and there isn’t even a word for how awkward that’s going to be. I should go. Now. But my feet don’t move. I stand like I’ve been frozen, watching them as they walk along together, their talk easy, familiar, Allison glancing over at him from under her lashes, wearing a western-style shirt with those vees on the shoulders, tight jeans, boots. A Wyoming girl. His type of Wyoming girl, specifically.
I can’t stop thinking about how much better she’d be for him than I am.
But I also kind of want to tear her hair out.
They’re close now. I can smell her perfume, light and fruity and feminine.
“Uh-oh,” I hear Wendy say behind me, noticing them at last. “We should—” Get out of here, she’s about to say, but then Tucker glances up.
The smile vanishes from his face. He stops walking.
For all of ten long seconds we stand there, in the middle of the crowd of tourists, staring at each other.
I can’t breathe. Oh man. Please don’t let me start crying, I think.
Then Wendy pulls on my arm, and my feet magically work again, and I turn and run—oh yes, I’m that dignified—and I’m about three blocks away, around the corner, before I slow down. I wait for Wendy to catch up to me.
“Well,” she says breathlessly. “That was exciting.”
She’s not talking about the gunfight.
We take the long way getting back to my car. When we’re both seat-belted in, ready to go, she suddenly reaches and takes the keys out of the ignition.
“So you’re still in love with my brother,” she says, and when I try to grab the keys, she adds, “Oh no, we’re going to talk about this.”
Silence. I fight the humiliating urge to cry again.
“It’s okay,” she says. “Let’s get it all out in the open. You still love him.”
I bite my lip, then release it. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve moved on, and he’s moved on. Clearly he’s with Allison now.”
Wendy snorts. “Tucker is not in love with Allison Lowell. Don’t blow stuff out of proportion.”
“But—”
“It’s you, Clara. You’re the only one, from the first day he saw you. He looks at you exactly the same way my daddy looks at my mom.”
“But I’m not good for him,” I say miserably. “I have to let him go.”
“And how’s that working out for you?”
“We’re not meant to be,” I murmur.
This gets another snort. “That,” she says, “is a matter of opinion.”
“Oh, so it’s your opinion that Tucker and I, that we—”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “But I do know that he loves you. And you love him.”
“I’m at Stanford. He’s here. You said yourself that long-distance relationships don’t work out. You and Jason—”
“I didn’t love Jason,” she says. “Plus, I didn’t know what I was talking about.” She sighs heavily. “Okay, so I probably shouldn’t be telling you this. I know I shouldn’t be telling you this, as a matter of fact. He’d kill me. But Tucker applied to college this year. And he’s going, in the fall.”
“What? Where?”
“UC Santa Clara. You see, don’t you, why this is important?”
I nod, stunned. UC Santa Clara just so happens to be in my part of California.
My heart is in my throat. I try to swallow it down. “You suck.”
Wendy puts her hand on mine. “I know. It’s my fault, partly. I kind of threw you two together that summer with the boots.”
“You really did.”
“You’re my friend, and I want you to be happy, and he’s my brother, and I want him to be happy, too. And I think you could make each other happy, if you’d give it a real chance.”
If only it were so simple.
“I think you should talk to him again, that’s all,” she says.
“Oh yeah? And what should I say?”
“The truth,” she says solemnly. “Tell him how you feel.”
Fantastic, I think. I’m crying over Tucker. Not very women’s lib of me, I know. It goes against everything I believe about myself, all that my mother taught me—that I am strong, that I am capable, that I don’t need a man to make me happy—but here I am, all curled up on the couch in the fetal position, an uneaten bowl of microwaved caramel popcorn on the floor by my feet, sobbing into the cushions because all I wanted was to watch a stupid movie to get my mind off things and all Netflix has lined up for me is romantic comedies.
I’m replaying that moment on the boardwalk over and over, Allison Lowell looking up at Tucker, her brown eyes all doe-like and alluring and crap, and how she touched him the way I’ve touched him. How she smiled.
And he smiled back at her.
But he’s also apparently going to college about twenty miles from me. The possibility of that, Tucker nearby, expands into an aching, hopeful, confused mess in my soggy brain.
He might want for us to be together.
I might want for us to be together.
But nothing else has changed, has it? I’m still me, still a T-person, still Little Miss Glowworm, still having creeptastic visions that I might not survive, and if I do survive, I’m still meant for someone else. He’s still him, funny, warm, gorgeous, kind, perfectly normal and yet so extraordinary, but when I kiss him too enthusiastically, I make him sick. Because he’s human. And I’m not, mostly. When he’s eighty, I’ll look like I’m thirty. It’s not right.
Except Dad told me to follow my heart.
Is this what he meant?
I blow my nose. I wish Angela were here to tell me to take a chill pill already, to kick my butt back to okay again, but that part of our friendship seems long gone. She’s not going to be in the mood to discuss boy issues. She’d probably kill for my easy little problems right now. So you still have a thing for the cowboy, I can imagine her saying. Big whoop.
Which starts a whole new round of tears for me, because not only is my heart all confused and broken again, but I am totally, indisputably alone.
My cell rings. I sniffle and answer.
“Hey, you,” Christian says softly.
“Hey.”
He hears that something’s not quite right with my voice. “Did I wake you?”
I sit up, wiping at my eyes. “No. I was about to watch a movie.”
“Do you want some company?” he asks. “I could stop by.”
“Sure,” I say. “Come over. We could watch zombies.”
Zombies would be excellent. I scroll through the menu looking for anything zombie, and I feel moderately less devastated and worn-out.
There’s a knock on the door, and I think, Well, that was fast, but then I freeze.
Five syncopated raps.
Tucker’s knock.
Crap.
He knocks again. I stand in the hall and contemplate how quietly I can sneak out the back door and fly away. But I don’t know if I can fly when I feel this way, and Christian will be here any minute.
“I know you’re in there, Carrots,” he calls through the door.
Double crap.
I go to the door and open it. I hate that I look like I’ve been crying, my eyelids puffy, my skin all blotchy. I force myself to meet his gaze.
“What do you want, Tucker?”
“I want to talk to you.”
Cue the casual I-could-care-less shrug, which I don’t quite pull off in a convincing way. Still, I have to get points for trying. “Nothing to talk about. I’m sorry I interrupted you on your date. This isn’t a good time, actually. I’m expecting—”
He puts his hand on the door when I try to close it.
“I saw your face,” he says.
He means earlier. I stare at him. “I was surprised, that’s all.”
He shakes his head. “No. You still love me.”
Trust Tucker to just come right out and say it.
“No,” I say.
The corner of his mouth lifts. “You are such a bad liar.”
I take a few steps back, lift my chin. “You really should go.”
“Not going to happen.”
“Why do you have to be so pigheaded?” I exclaim, throwing my hands in the air. “Fine.” I turn away from the door and let him follow me inside.
He laughs. “Back at you.”
“Tucker! I swear!”
He sobers. He takes his hat off and puts it on the hook by the door. “The thing is, I’ve tried to stop thinking about you. Believe me, I’ve tried, but every time I think I’ve got a handle on my heart, you pop up again.”
“I will work on that. I will try to stay out of your barn,” I promise.
“No,” he says. “I don’t want you to stay out of my barn.”
“This is crazy,” I say. “I can’t. I’m trying to do—”
“What’s right,” he fills in. “You’re always trying to do what’s right. I love that about you.” He comes closer, too close now, stares down at me with that familiar heat in his eyes.
Then he says it. “I love you. That’s not going away.”
My heart flies up like a bird on wings, but I try to clobber it back down. “I can’t be with you,” I manage.
“Why, because of your purpose? Because God told you so? I want to see that written down somewhere, I want to see it decreed, that you, Clara Gardner, can’t love me because you’re part angel. Tell me where it says that.” He reaches behind him, and to my shock he pulls what looks to be a Bible out of the waistband of his jeans. “Because I want to read you this.”
He opens it, thumbs through to find the right passage.
“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. See, right there in black and white.”
“Thank you for the Sunday school lesson,” I say. “Don’t you find it a little silly that you’re quoting the Bible to somebody like me, who receives divine instructions straight from the source? Tucker, come on, you know it’s more complicated than that.”
“No, it’s not,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be. What we have, that’s divine. It’s beautiful and good and right. I feel it….” He presses his hand to his chest, over his heart. “I feel it all the time. You’re in here, part of me. You’re what I go to bed thinking about and what I wake up to in the morning.”
The tears start to slip down my face. He makes a noise in the back of his throat and crosses the room toward me, but I stumble back.
“Tuck. I can’t,” I breathe.
“I like it when you call me Tuck,” he says, smiling.
“I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Sudden understanding dawns in his eyes. “That’s what this breaking-up business was all about for you, wasn’t it? You thought I was going to get hurt. You pushed me away to protect me. You’re still pushing.” He shakes his head. “Losing you, that’s the worst kind of hurt there is.”
He reaches out and touches a strand of my hair, tucks it behind my ear, then backs off a little, tries a different approach. “Hey. How about this? You’re home for a couple more days, right? I’m home, as usual.” I see the news of his college situation rise up in his mind, but for some reason he doesn’t tell me about it. “Let’s go fishing. Let’s climb a mountain. Let’s try again.”
I’ve never wanted anything so much.
He sees the uncertainty on my face. “I should have fought for you, Clara, even if I would have had to fight you to fight for you. I should never have let you go.”
I close my eyes. I know that any minute now he’s going to kiss me, and my resistance is going to melt away completely.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I whisper. And then, out of self-protection more than anything else, I bring the glory. I don’t warn him or anything. I don’t damp it down. I bring it. The room fills with light.
“This is what I am,” I say, my hair ablaze around my head.
He squints at me. His jaw juts out a little in pure stubbornness. He stands his ground.
“I know,” he says.
I take a step toward him, close the space between us, put my glowing hand against his ashen cheek. He starts to tremble. “This is what I am,” I say again, and my wings are out now.
His knees wobble, but he fights it. He puts his hand at my waist, turns me, pulls me closer, which surprises me.
“I can accept that,” he whispers, and holds his breath, and leans in to kiss me.
His lips brush mine for an instant, and an emotion like victory tears through him, but then he pulls away and glances toward the front door. Groans.
Christian is standing in the doorway.
“Wow,” Tucker says, trying to grin. “You really know how to cramp a guy’s style.”
His legs give out. He falls to his knees.
My light blinks off.
Christian’s clutching a DVD copy of Zombieland in one hand, the other hand clenched into a fist at his side. His expression is completely shut down.
“I guess I’ll come back later,” he says. “Or not.”
Tucker’s still catching his breath on the floor.
I follow Christian to the door. “He just came over. I didn’t mean for you to—”
“See that?” he finishes for me. “Great. Thanks for trying to spare my feelings.”
“I was trying to prove a point to him.”
“Right,” he says. “Well, let me know how that turns out.”
He turns toward the door, then stops, the muscles in his back tensing. He’s about to say something really harsh, I think, something he won’t be able to take back.
“Don’t,” I say.
Dizziness crashes over me. I hear a strange whooshing sound, like wind in my ears, accompanied by the distinct smell of smoke. Christian turns, his face all scrunched up like he’s confused by what he sees in my head. He looks suddenly worried.
That’s when I pass out.
The black room is filling up with smoke.
I jolt into future Clara in the exact instant that the darkness explodes into light, and in that moment I understand: This light’s not glory. It’s fire. A fireball streaks over my shoulder and strikes the wall somewhere off to the side, behind me. Then Christian screams, “Get down!” and I drop just in time for him to literally leap over my body, his glory sword out and bright and deadly, blinding me. Everything’s a jumble of black-and-white flashing: Christian and the figures circling him, the swift movement of his blade against the dark. I scramble backward until my back hits something solid, glance over my shoulder to see what’s happening with the fire.
The flames lick up the side of the room, igniting the velvet curtains like tissue paper. This place is going to be an inferno in about five minutes. My heart’s hammering, but I swallow and push myself to my knees, then to my feet. I have to help Christian. I have to fight.
No, he says in my mind. You’ve got to find him. Go.
The high-pitched noise comes again, thin and reedy, frightened. Smoke chokes me, the air in here close and hot and heavy in my lungs, but inexplicably I turn away from Christian and what I think must be the exit and stumble toward the fire, coughing, my eyes watering.
I hit the edge of something hard and wooden right at chest level, hard enough to knock the wind out of me if I had any wind in me to begin with. I figure out what the barrier is at the same time that my eyes finally decide to adjust.
It’s a stage.
I look around wildly to confirm what I already know, but it’s so crazy obvious I can’t believe I never figured this out before. It all falls neatly into place: the slanted floor of the auditorium, the ghosts of white tablecloths along the front, the rows of metal-backed seats. The velvet curtains and the smell of sawdust and paint.
We’re in the Pink Garter.
And in that instant, I figure out what the noise is.
It’s a baby crying.
“Clara!”
I open my eyes. Somehow I ended up on my living room floor, and I don’t quite know how. Two sets of eyes are staring down at me, one blue and one green, both insanely worried.
“What happened?” Tucker asks.
“It was the black room,” Christian says, not a question.
“It was the Garter.” I struggle to sit up. “I need my phone. Where’s my phone?”
Tucker finds it on the coffee table and brings it to me, while Christian helps me over to the couch. I still feel out of breath.
“There’s going to be a fire,” I tell Christian.
Tucker makes a disbelieving noise. “Oh, great.”
I dial Angela’s number. It rings and rings, and each second that ticks by where she doesn’t pick up makes the sense of dread in my stomach grow stronger. But then, finally, there’s a click and a faint hello on the other end.
“Angela!” I say.
“Clara?” She sounds like she’s been sleeping.
“I just had my vision again, and the black room is the Garter, Angela, and the noise I hear—do you remember me telling you?—that noise, which is what gives us away, it’s a baby. It’s got to be Webster. You need to get out. Now.”
“Now?” she says, still half-awake. “It’s nine o’clock at night. I just got Web to sleep.”
“Ange, they’re coming.” I can’t help the frantic squeak in my voice.
“Okay, slow down, C,” Angela says. “Who’s coming?”
“I don’t know. Black Wings.”
“Do they know about Web?” she asks, starting to comprehend some of what I’m saying. “Are they coming for him? How would they know?”
“I don’t know,” I say again.
“Well, what do you know?”
“I know something terrible is going to happen there. You have to leave.”
“And go where?” she asks, still not fully getting it. “No. I can’t go anywhere tonight.”
“But Ange—”
“How long have you been having the vision? Almost a year? There’s no need to rush off all panicked and clueless. We’ll think it through.”
“The vision was different tonight. It was urgent.”
Her voice hardens. “Well, sometimes the visions are like that, aren’t they? And you think you know what they mean, but you don’t.” She sighs like she realizes that she’s taking her issues out on me, and she’s sorry. “I can’t go running off in the middle of the night on a whim, C. I have Web to think about now. We need a plan. Come to the Garter in the morning, and we’ll talk about your vision, okay? Then I’ll decide where to go from there.”
There’s a high-pitched wail in the background. The sound of it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
“Oh, great. You woke him up,” she says, annoyed. “I have to go. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She hangs up on me.
I stare at the phone for a minute.
“What was that all about?” Tucker asks from behind me. “What’s going on?”
I meet Christian’s eyes, and he knows what I’m thinking. “We can take my truck,” he says.
We start moving toward the door. “We’ll go over there and I can put my hand on her and try to show her what I see. Maybe she’ll be able to receive it. We’ll make her understand. Then we’ll pack her and the baby up and take them to a hotel.” I sling my coat over my shoulder.
“Wait, what?” Tucker follows us out onto the porch. “Hold on, Carrots. Explain this to me. What’s happening?”
“We don’t have time.” I look at Tucker over my shoulder as I’m dashing away, and I say, “I have to go; I’m sorry,” and then I climb up into Christian’s pickup and we take off, spraying the gravel in the driveway, off to Jackson, and I get the sinking feeling that the trials my dad was telling me about are really about to begin.