Angel Burn (19 page)

We watched the rest of the show, chatting sometimes about the guest stars and the jokes. When it was over, we went to sleep. It felt weird sliding under the covers with Alex in the next bed — so intimate, even though he was about ten feet away. Once we were both settled, he switched off the light, and the room plunged into blackness.

We lay there in silence for a while. The absence of light was so total that I couldn’t even see his bed. “Alex, do you think the angels are right?” I said quietly. “Do you think I really can destroy them somehow?”

His voice sounded deeper in the darkness. “I hope so. God, I really hope so.” There was a pause, and then he said, “Good night, Willow.”

“Good night,” I echoed.

I lay awake for a while, listening as his breathing grew slower, more regular. As I fell asleep, my hand seemed to creep up of its own accord to touch my arm, stroking the softness of his T-shirt. I drifted off feeling the warmth of Alex’s energy wrapping gently around me.

THE NEXT MORNING, Alex and I headed back to the garage to find out about the car. Though it was only ten o’clock, the day was sticky with humidity already; my hair up under the baseball cap felt damp and heavy. As we walked the half mile or so, we talked about the heat, whether the car would be ready that day, the too-sweet motel donuts we’d had for breakfast. Neither of us mentioned how things had shifted between us, but it was there, anyway. Things just felt a lot more relaxed, as though we didn’t actually hate each other now.

But then, as we started to cross the concrete forecourt to the garage, a feeling of foreboding gripped me and I stopped short. “Wait a minute,” I said, touching Alex’s arm.

He glanced down at me. He was wearing a burgundy T-shirt, and the hair at the nape of his neck was curling slightly from the heat. “What?”

I shook my head, still gazing at the garage with its bright sign and plate-glass windows. It had seemed fine yesterday, but today I had the weirdest feeling about it — nothing I could put my finger on, just a really strong sense that I shouldn’t go inside. “I — I better go back to the motel,” I said, taking a step backward. “I’ll wait for you there, OK?”

Alex’s eyebrows drew together. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. Just — I don’t think I should go in there.”

He glanced over at the garage, frowning. “OK, here.” He dug in his jeans pocket for the plastic card key. “I’ll be as fast as I can.”

“Thanks.” I took the card key. “Listen, have them check out the Mustang’s air filter while they’re at it, OK? I think it might need a new one.” Then I turned and started walking hurriedly back up the road, glad for the sunglasses that covered half my face.

It was so quiet out, with only the occasional car speeding past. After I’d been walking for about five minutes, I heard a new noise: rhythmic footsteps striding behind me, growing closer. Hugging my elbows, I peered over my shoulder. It was Alex. I felt my shoulders relax; I waited for him to catch up.

“You were right,” he said as he fell into step beside me. “There was a guy in there wearing a Church of Angels cap.”

I heaved out a breath. “Oh, God. Do you think he saw me?”

Alex shook his head. “I don’t think so; he was talking to the mechanic when I went in. The Mustang won’t be ready until around noon tomorrow,” he added. “He found a garage that has the right bolts, but he won’t be able to get them until this afternoon.”

Tomorrow. I rubbed my arms. “So  . . .  I guess we’ll just wait in the motel room, then.”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Alex. He was walking with his hands stuck in his back pockets; his legs were so much longer than mine that he took two steps to my every three. “It’s not exactly safe for us to go sightseeing, even if there was anything worth looking at around here.”

We got the motel room for another night and headed back to it. As Alex swung open the door to the room, something occurred to me. “Hey, what’s your last name, anyway? I just realized I don’t know.”

With a wry smile, Alex took his wallet out of his jeans pocket; opening it, he pulled out a few pieces of ID and handed them to me. “Here, take your pick.”

I flipped through in amazement. A California license for Alexander Stroud  . . .  a Michigan license for Alex Patton  . . .  an Ohio license for William Fraser  . . .  I started to laugh. “God, you’re like James Bond,” I said, handing them back to him. “What’s your real, actual last name?”

“Kylar,” he said, tossing the wallet onto the dresser. “I don’t have any ID with that on it, though. I don’t exist, as far as the system’s concerned.”

I blinked. “What — really?”

He looked amused at the expression on my face. “Yeah, really. My bank account was under a fake name; it was set up by the CIA. I never got a social security card or anything. Or a real driver’s license.”

I couldn’t think of much to say to this. I had thought I was joking about the James Bond thing; apparently I wasn’t. I sat down on my bed and pulled my shoes off. “Do you have a middle name?”

Alex grinned. “Yeah, it’s James, actually.” Taking his own shoes off, he sprawled back onto his bed, reaching for the remote. As he switched the TV on, a talk show flickered onto the screen.

“You’re just making this up now,” I said after a pause. “Your middle name is
not
James, as in James Bond.”

“No, it’s James, as in James Kylar, my grandfather. What about you? Have you got one?”

“No, just Willow Fields,” I said, stretching out. “I always wanted a middle name; I was the only girl in my class who didn’t have one.”

Alex looked over at me, his eyes interested. “So what was it like? Going to school?”

I glanced at him in confusion and then suddenly realized. “You never went.”

He shook his head. “I grew up at the camp, pretty much. I’ve only seen school on TV. Is it really like that — with homecoming and proms and stuff?”

So that’s why he hadn’t known what a yearbook was called. Feeling sort of dazed, I said, “Yeah, it’s exactly like that. Prom is a
very
big deal, actually. Some of the girls at my school even go into New York City to get their dresses. They spend, like, thousands of dollars on them.”

“Did you?”

I barked out a short laugh. “Uh, no. I never went.”

He rolled onto his side, facing me. “Why not?”

I could feel my cheeks heating up. I stared at the TV, where the talk-show host was sitting next to a guest, both of them dabbing at their eyes with tissues. “Because no one ever asked me.”

Alex’s eyebrows rose. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously. High school is  . . . ” I tried to think how to describe it. “There are all these ruling cliques, and if you don’t belong to one of them, then — that’s sort of that for you. I never really fit in; I was always Queen Weird.”

His eyes were narrowed as he looked at me.

“What?” I said, feeling self-conscious.

“I’m just having a really hard time picturing this,” he said. “Prom is like the big dance, right? At the end of school? And you’re saying that
nobody
ever asked you to it?”

I would have been irritated, except that he sounded so honestly surprised that I found myself laughing instead. “Alex, I’ve never even had a date. You’re really not grasping the extent of the ‘Queen Weird’ thing here.”

“Queen Weird,” he repeated. “Why — because of the psychic stuff?”

I pretended to be deep in thought. “Well, let’s see; there was the psychic stuff and the way I dress and fixing cars  . . . ”

“What’s wrong with the way you dress? You mean like that purple skirt thing?”

I held back a smile at ‘purple skirt thing.’ “Yes, exactly. It’s not in fashion; I bought it at a thrift shop. Most of my clothes are like that.” I thought of a cloche hat from the twenties I had loved and a pair of high-button shoes that I’d worn until they literally fell to pieces. And Nina had threatened to disown me when I’d turned up to school in a bomber jacket once.

Alex was starting to look seriously confused. “OK, so  . . .  maybe girls would notice that kind of thing, but you’re saying that this actually mattered to the
guys
?”

“In Pawtucket, it did,” I said. “The girls who were popular were the ones who wore the right things and had perfect makeup. I hardly even
own
any makeup. I mean, I think I literally have one tube of mascara, and it’s about two years old.”

“Why do you need makeup?” He sounded bewildered.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never really understood it, either. I guess that’s why I’m Queen Weird.”

“Right,” said Alex after a long pause. He gave his head a brief shake, as if he was clearing it. “Well  . . .  if you want my opinion, the guys in Pawtucket are idiots.”

“I always liked to think so.” My face tinged with heat as I glanced at him. “Thanks.”

He smiled, looking a little embarrassed. “OK, take me through a typical day,” he said, straightening up.

“You’re really interested?”

“Yeah, go on.”

I shrugged. “OK. It’s pretty boring, though.” Sitting cross-legged on the bed facing him, I described everything about Pawtucket High — classes, and bells ringing, and homework, and GPAs, and shuffling through the hallways in a crowd, and final exams and lockers, and the cafeteria, and skipping classes sometimes when it got so boring I couldn’t stand it anymore.

Alex listened intently, absorbing every word. When I finished, he was quiet for a minute, his expression thoughtful. “That all sounds so strange. I can’t really imagine it — having to do homework and caring about what grade you get.”

I laughed. “Wait,
my
life sounds strange? God, yours is like something out of a movie.” And then it hit me — really hit me — that I might never go to high school again. I had always sort of hated it, but it was a bizarre thought, anyway; it made me feel so adrift somehow. What was going on there now? Everyone must be talking about me, wondering what had happened.

“What?” asked Alex, watching me.

I managed a smile. “Nothing.”

We watched TV for a while after that, ordering a pizza when we got hungry. Alex turned out to know the plots of half the soap operas that were on. “I can’t believe that you actually watch this stuff,” I said. It was midafternoon by then, and I was lying on my bed, feeling too full and slightly stir-crazy.

On his own bed, Alex was stretched out on his side, looking totally relaxed as he stared up at the TV, like a sleek panther lying in the sun. He shrugged as he took a bite of pizza. “There isn’t much else to do when I’m waiting for a text,” he said. “I get pretty sick of ESPN sometimes, when they’re just showing golf or whatever.”

I found myself just gazing at him for a moment, taking him in. “So how does it work?” I asked, trying to picture what his life must have been like. “Who sends you the text?”

“Someone at the CIA. The information comes from angel spotters.
Came
from angel spotters,” he corrected himself. His expression hardened momentarily, and I knew he was thinking of the angels having taken over Project Angel.

“OK, so — you got a text and then what?” I asked.

“I went to wherever it said. And then did some surveillance, checking the angel out and waiting for it to try to feed. That’s when you have to attack, when they’re in their angel form. You don’t have much time.”

Remembering how quickly he’d reacted when the angel came after me, I didn’t doubt that he was very good at it. I thought of the shards of light falling against the sky. “How does a bullet kill them, though? I mean, they look like they’re just made of light.”

Alex tossed the pizza crust back into the box and shut the cardboard lid. “You have to get them right in the halo. Like I said last night, that’s their heart. We’re not totally sure how it works, but when the bullet hits, the halo’s energy sort of jumps off the rails. It sets off a chain reaction that their bodies can’t handle, and then it just blows them apart.”

And my angel didn’t have a halo. What did that mean? I slammed the thought away. I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to know. “It’s weird that something so small can destroy them,” I said instead.

Alex snorted. “Yeah. Not very good planning for them to come here; I guess they don’t have bullets in their own world.”

“Does it always work?”

He stretched, linking his fingers together. “Usually. Sometimes if you nick the edge of their halo, they just pass out in human form. That’s only happened to me a couple of times, but it’s a bitch when it does — you have to trail them for days to get another chance at them. Plus, they’re aware of you then.”

I couldn’t help staring at him. He was so calm and matter-of-fact about all of this, even though it sounded like his life was on the line every time he got a text. “And  . . .  you’ve been doing this for how long now?”

“Which?” he said, glancing at me. “Hunting angels or getting texts with their location?”

“I don’t know. Either.”

“I’ve been hunting angels since I was eleven,” he said.

“Eleven?”

Alex shrugged. “I’d been in training for years by then. It was different in those days — a bunch of us would go out hunting together, following leads. A hunt might take weeks. We’d be out on the road, staying in different places. Camping sometimes.” A brief wistful look crossed his face, and all at once I knew just how much those times had meant to him.