Blest (19 page)

When the Scale finally came home after burning Sydney’s house, the kitchen was empty and silent. The ticking of a clock echoed strangely through the house. Beyond the kitchen, Carlos’s slim, imposing figure cut a shadow in the darkened living room. He had his back turned to them. Claire realized he was staring across the lake at the fire the Scale had started, which burned against the night like a fallen star. She approached him cautiously.

“Your work?” Carlos didn’t turn around. He held something in his hand. A piece of paper.

“My idea,” Claire said. She gestured at the demons behind her, who were murmuring in victorious whispers in the kitchen “All of our work.”

“Bold,” Carlos said. “How did you distract General Lumen?”

“I broke some windows and she chased me,” Gunner explained, coming up to join Claire. “She didn’t catch me, though. Too slow.”

Claire knew that wasn’t totally true. General Lumen had surprised everyone with her speed and her strength. She had exploded out of the house to chase after Gunner as the rest of the Scale crept into the kitchen with the gas cans. Gunner had fled to Shane’s house, and she hadn’t followed him there. Claire had only heard stories about Shane’s dad, Derek Morrisey, but she knew that no angels wanted to get near him. Even Carlos didn’t seem to be friends with him.

“Perfect,” Carlos said. “You hit them where it hurt and this . . . shouldn’t alarm the Tribunal.”

Claire wondered what would actually be enough to get the Tribunal’s attention. If it wasn’t almost drowning humans or setting fire to a general of Glisten’s house, then it must be killing an angel.

“I have some bad news,” Carlos continued. “About your mother.”

Claire startled back to attention. Carlos turned around and offered them the piece of paper that had been in his hand. Claire and Gunner exchanged a glance as Claire took the note. Together, she and Gunner read it from the light of the moon:

Gunner, Claire,

I love you both so much. I don’t agree with your choices, but I know they’re yours to make. But with Carlos back, I can’t stay here. I’ve left Pearlton and don’t plan on coming back. Please, make me proud. Keep me in your thoughts. You’ll always be in mine, whatever happens.

Love,

Mom

Claire stared at the paper, holding it at arm’s length. Gunner snatched it out of her hand and ripped it into shreds, scattering the scraps across the floor. “What a coward!” he spat. “She doesn’t even understand what we’re trying to achieve.”

Carlos had turned back to the window. His reflection watched Gunner’s reaction, his careful, steady gaze following each movement, each word with interest. Gunner ended the tirade with a huff. He breathed violently, in and out, muttering under his breath.

“Gunner,” Carlos said evenly. “Your mother is stronger than you think. She’s just wasting her strength, and her energy, fleeing the cause instead of fighting for it. She’s afraid of being banished to Slag.” He sighed. “I understand. Her parents, your grandparents, were both imprisoned there when she was young. Fear is natural. But you’re wasting your strength and your energy on her cause, not ours. To become a true demon, you have to direct the anger, to channel it. Not let it consume you.”

Claire’s eyes drifted to the scraps of paper at her feet. She thought of all the times she had been pulled out of school by her mom, all of the rushed packing and quick getaways in the moving vans. The neighborhoods and friends and houses left behind, fading in the rearview mirror. But then she thought about the time Gloria had seen Jim, and hadn’t said a word to the Scale. She had kept Claire’s secret when no one else would have. In the end, she had just wanted Claire and Gunner to be safe, to be hidden from the demons and angels forever.

“Claire?” Carlos asked, as if he were waiting for her to have her own outburst.

“I think she wasted her energy and her strength on a lost cause,” Claire said, keeping her voice steady. “All she wanted was to hide from you, over and over again. But if you just keep running from something, you’re eventually going to stumble and it will catch you. The only way to deal with it . . .” She thought of Jim again. “The only way to really deal with it is to face it. To prepare yourself for it, and look your fear in the eye.”

Carlos nodded curtly. “Good. And—”

Abruptly, a cork popped behind them in the kitchen. Ben had found a champagne bottle. “Here’s to burning angels’ houses!” he cheered, grabbing a coffee mug from the cupboard and pouring champagne into it. “Anyone? Anyone?”

“Are we really going to toast to this in coffee mugs?” Julia asked.

“It’s all about capacity, baby,” Ben said, waggling his eyebrows. “Capacity for chaos, right?” He saw Carlos looking at him and shrunk back a little, his hands dropping to his side, still holding the bottle and the mug. Claire couldn’t tell, but she thought she saw a flicker of amusement in Carlos’s eyes.

“Yes,” Carlos said. “It’s about capacity for chaos.” He strode over to the kitchen and opened another cabinet, finding real champagne glasses. “But you should never sacrifice class for capacity. Dignified chaos shows that you have control over it.” He stuck a champagne glass out to Ben expectantly.

“Uh . . .” Ben looked up into Carlos’s eyes and flinched. “Uh, right. Yeah. Dignified chaos.” He poured the champagne into Carlos’s glass.

Carlos raised the glass and turned in a circle. “Everyone gather around. I want to toast to my son and my daughter, and the rest of you brave demons, for all of your work today. You’ve done more in one night than many demons do in a lifetime.”

This was the time to ask Carlos more about Slag, Claire realized. She wanted to learn everything he knew, and how to do the things he did. But as she opened her mouth to ask, the kitchen door burst open. In the doorway, shoulders heaving, stood the short, red-haired angel, Nora. Her blue eyes shot across the room, as if she was trying to decide who to attack first.

Maria tottered around the counter, champagne glass in her hand. “What are you doing here, angel scum?”

“I’m here, because you nearly murdered my brother!” Nora screamed, her voice hoarse. “You all deserve to go to Slag right now. I hope the Tribunal takes you all!”

Behind the counter, Carlos didn’t change his posture. He leisurely brought his glass to his lips and took another sip, looking at the wall.

“I’m sorry,” Maria said, frowning, and walked toward the door. She used her extra few inches to look down at Nora, whose white wings wavered in the breeze from outside, as if she was ready take off. Maria took a deep breath. “I’m sorry . . . that he didn’t die.”

Nora howled and shoved Maria, hard. Maria staggered back, the champagne glass flying out of her hand and shattering on the floor. “His wings are so burned that he might as well be dead!” Nora screamed.

“Good!” Maria laughed hysterically. “Miles deserves everything that happens to him, after what he did to Shane!”

“Shane?” Nora said in a strangled voice. A guitar squealed in a little solo from the speakers on top of the kitchen cabinets, the notes slicing the emptiness. Nora clenched her fists. She was a short girl, but she was sturdy. She didn’t back down as she gritted her teeth. “Shane
deserved
to die. He brought his death on himself. He should have known better than to challenge my brother.”

Maria lunged and grabbed Nora’s hair, but Nora punched her in the stomach. The Scale rushed to surround the two of them, trying to figure out what to do. Carlos still didn’t move, still didn’t look at the pair. He took another sip of champagne as Nora and Maria shrieked and smacked at each other.

When Nora shouldered Maria away from her, Maria stumbled backward and reached for the Shredder at her belt. Suddenly, Carlos appeared beside her, as if he had been there the whole time. His hand gripped Maria’s wrist, keeping her knife in her belt.

“Not here,” he said. “Not tonight.” His gaze fell onto Nora. “You have five seconds to get out of here, angel.”

“No!” Nora yelled. “You’ve basically broken the Pact already, why don’t you just stab me? Or are you afraid of the Tribunal, still? Is that it, Carlos?”

Carlos’s face remained blank. “Five.”

“I heard how they got together to push you into Slag. How you crumbled underneath them. It’s a story I grew up on.”

“Four.”

“We tell it to remind everyone that, no matter how bad things seem to be on the Field, Glisten will help us if it gets desperate. The angels will always win.”

“Three.”

“Always!” Nora screamed.

“Two.” Carlos’s hands had gone white. Maria whimpered under his grip.

With a flutter of her wings, Nora whirled and flew out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.

The sound faded through the kitchen along with the soft notes of jazz. The demons all exchanged glances. Claire desperately wanted to know more about Carlos’s banishment to Slag, to understand anything that would explain the power he held. As she leaned back against the counter, she saw that a small tornado was whirling in her champagne glass, the liquid swirling in a miniature vortex. Gunner pointed at his glass, where there was another tornado. Julia and Erik’s glasses of champagne were also swirling. Their eyes all rested on Carlos, who still stared at the door, expressionless, unblinking.

Claire bit her tongue so hard that it felt like it would start bleeding. She almost hoped that it would. What if Miles had actually died in the fire? How badly had he been burned? Carlos always talked so much about controlling chaos . . . but how could you tell if you were controlling it or if the chaos was controlling you?

On Monday, the bus was strangely empty and quiet. Gunner, Maria, and, of course, Claire weren’t on it. This time, Jim was the only one on it that knew anything about angels and demons.

He put his chin in his hand and watched the orange-and-green trees flash by outside his window. The morning sky was dark and gray, and wind tore through the streets, pressing against the bus window. Jim watched leaves dance down sidewalks almost enviously, wishing he could spread his wings and fly away. Far away from all of this. Miles had already lost his wings. He had almost lost his life. Who would the demons target next? This time, Jim barely even noticed the tunnel, flipping his phone flashlight on and off without even thinking.

The burst of light reminded him of Claire, and he felt a lurch in his stomach. He didn’t want to know what part she had played in burning down Sydney’s house. There was no doubt in his mind that she had been there. Technically, that made her responsible for Miles’s wings, too. And almost responsible for killing three angels. That was the scariest part—Jim couldn’t tell if the demons had just been trying to burn down the house or trying to kill them. Had they known that Miles was inside? When they set the fire, the Feather was still out in St. Louis, cleaning up the mess of the riverboats. They had to have thought the house was empty—there was no way they were actually trying to kill Miles and break the Pact. Right?

The bus slowed down before they pulled up to the entrance. “Um,” the bus driver said through the crackly speaker. “Looks like we’ve got some kind of emergency, folks. I’m going to have to let you off here.”

Murmurs swept through the students. Jim pressed his face against the window and saw the flashing lights of police cars up ahead. Caution tape flapped in the wind. There were blue barriers set up to keep the crowds from getting any closer. He tried to get a better view, but there was a long line of school buses backed up through the parking lot.

Jim felt a sudden and inexplicable surge of dread. He got to his feet and shouldered his way to the back of the bus, ignoring the protests from the other kids, and forced his way out the emergency door. By the time he was on the pavement, he was in a full sprint. He shoved and slid his way through the sea of students gathered by the barriers, his panic rising. Police vans and an ambulance were parked by the curb. People whispered around him. A few stifled sobs.

When Jim reached the front of the crowd, his heart sank. A white sheet had been placed over her body, but Jim would recognize that red hair anywhere. “Nora,” he said in disbelief. He knew she had flown to Claire’s house in a rage—all the angels had seen her leave. But she’d texted them all later to check in. What had happened after that?

Blood was spattered across the cement steps leading up to the school, and blossomed in red spots across the white sheet covering her body. There was another body covered in a white sheet next to Nora—Maria.

“Stabbed to death at seventeen,” an officer muttered to one of the paramedics. “In Pearlton?”

“I don’t know what’s been happening,” the paramedic crouched over Maria’s body muttered. “A suicide a few weeks ago. Grand theft auto in Pearlton and St. Louis last night, probably connected. And then arson in Lakewood Drive.”

“Gangs,” the officer suggested.

“They don’t look like gang members to me,” the paramedic said.

“Attention, students!” a teacher cried over the crowd. “We’re having an emergency assembly, please report to the gymnasium immediately.”

In a daze, Jim floated along with the stream of students, keeping his eyes ahead and trying not to listen to the rapid-fire gossip shooting around him from all angles. Everyone had a theory, but none of them were right. He knew Nora had been trying to get vengeance. Maria, too. She had been looking for a reason to attack the Feather ever since Shane’s death. Now they were both gone.

Jim hovered near the doorway of the gym, trying to squeeze his way through and failing. Principal Lumen had set up a microphone in the center of the basketball court. He watched silently as she lied to everyone at Pearlton High School without breaking a sweat. She said that gang activity had been increasing steadily around the St. Louis area and that a few students were trying to prove themselves to top gang leaders. Then again, that wasn’t far from the truth. If Carlos wasn’t a violent gang leader, Jim wasn’t sure who was.

As she spoke, Jim caught a glimpse of the Scale. They stood on the other side of the gym with their arms crossed, leaning against the wall by the door that lead out to the coach’s office. Claire and Gunner watched the speech without expression for a moment, then slammed open the hall door, leaving the gym. General Lumen pretended not to notice. As soon as the demons disappeared, Jim saw familiar faces weaving through a group of students in front of the bleachers. Miles was shoving people aside, his face red. Sydney and Leo chased after him. They disappeared through the door, too.

General Lumen uttered a few final words and said that Pearlton High School would be closed for the next two days for investigation, and that students should take the time to reflect. “Think about what kinds of things you actually believe in,” she said into the microphone.

“Awesome, bro, a day off!” a student beside Jim said, high-fiving someone else.

Jim ran toward the door where the angels and demons had disappeared. He felt like he was swimming upstream, elbowing his way through the herd of students as they lurched toward the doors leading outside. Finally, he reached the door and tore through it. He slammed straight into Miles. His friend was tense and shaking. Tears blurred his eyes. A few feet away, the Scale had formed a half-circle facing him.

“This is your freaking fault!” Miles screamed at them. He had his Sky Knife in his hand, and he waved it in their direction.

“It’s not our fault Nora bit off more than she could chew!” Ben spat.

“Just leave it,” Sydney whispered to Miles, putting her hand on his shoulder. “The Tribunal—”

Miles ripped himself away as if her touch had burned him. “The Tribunal obviously can’t do much, if they let my sister get stabbed in cold blood!”

“Cold blood?” Claire asked incredulously. “She was the one who started it. She tried to stab Maria in my house!”

“Stop
lying
!” Miles lunged at Claire with his knife. Without thinking twice, Jim tackled him, tearing him away. The knife fell onto the tiled floor with a clatter, spinning. Miles writhed in Jim’s arms, but Jim’s training had paid off. He kept Miles pinned against the wall.

“Get out of here!” Jim snarled at the demons.
Nora was dead
, he thought.
Dead
.

The demons stared back at him. Claire’s look lingered. It was an unreadable gaze, as if she was reassessing him.

“Let’s go,” Gunner said, jerking his head. “The last thing we need is more angel blood spilling around Pearlton High School.”

The group disappeared around the corner, but Miles didn’t stop bucking and thrashing. If anything, he got even angrier when they were out of sight.

“You murdered my sister!” he screamed after them. Tears streamed down his face. “You
murdered
her!”

As Sydney helped Jim restrain Miles, Jim couldn’t help but wonder if Nora had really been murdered by Maria, or Maria murdered by Nora. Or if they had both been murdered by the cause itself.

• • •

That afternoon, the Feather went to Miles and Nora’s house for a funeral. Their house was along a river a few miles away from Lakewood Drive. The angels gathered outside, huddled together against the biting November winds.

Frank and Kacey, Miles and Nora’s parents, were both small-framed. Frank wore big glasses and had curly red hair and freckles. Kacey had brown hair cut short, and warm, brown eyes that were drowning in tears. She spent most of the ceremony with her head buried on Frank’s shoulder, shaking with sobs.

Above them, the overcast sky glowered into a dark evening. A wind whipped through the backyard, shaking two swings hanging from a rotting swingset and stirring the river into white-capped waves. Frank had set up a firepit with Miles. Everyone gathered around it and watched the flames snap and dance in the wind.

Jim couldn’t help but watch Miles’s gaze as he stared into the fire. His wings hung like shriveled bats from his back, charred black and twitching in the wind. Miles had said that they hurt, like having two charred limbs—he’d gone to see Mr. Webb today, to see if there was any hope, but Mr. Webb had said the only way to stop the pain was to get them removed completely. “I’d rather be a crippled angel than a wingless one,” Miles had told Jim.

The ceremony started when General Lumen handed each person one of Nora’s feathers. According to angel tradition, Sydney had explained to Jim, the way to honor one of the fallen was to burn her feathers. “So that the ashes can spread on the wind and rise back to Glisten,” she had whispered.

Jim held one of Nora’s soft white feathers in his hand and ran his thumb up and down it. Everything since Shane’s death had felt unreal. Sometimes, he thought that this was all a terrible dream, that he would suddenly wake up and everyone would still be alive. He and Claire would still be together. Miles would still be flying circles around the rest of them. And Nora . . . He chewed on his lip. Everyone said a few words and threw their feather into the fire, one by one. Then it was Nora’s father’s turn to speak.

“If there are two words that could describe Nora, it would be curiosity and compassion,” he said. Beside him, Kacey let out a cry, muffling the noise in Frank’s heavy brown jacket. “She was always asking questions, always exploring new ways to do things.” He pulled Kacey closer and dabbed at a tear underneath his glasses. “We wanted her to join us in the Observatory some day, so she could help defend Glisten and watch the changes between the Planes. Now . . . now she’ll be watching them from somewhere else, and we’ll remember her compassion whenever we’re . . .” He broke down, sobbing. Everyone stood and watched the flames burn, lost in their own thoughts.

Once they had all thrown their feathers into the flames, they filtered to the back porch, which overlooked the rushing river and the dusk-gray pine trees poking out over the water. No one said much, but Jim’s mind crackled with thoughts about angels and demons. Things hadn’t seemed real when Shane had died, but they were slowly becoming too real. This wasn’t a dream he would wake from—this was the new reality.

General Lumen slid open the porch door. On instinct, Jim followed her. She had stopped in the kitchen to grab a bottle of wine. She slammed drawers back and forth until finding a corkscrew, then started to open the wine. Jim paused behind her.

“General?” he asked.

She looked over her shoulder. “Oh. Jim.” She went back to the cork, twisting it with deft, practiced hands.

“When . . . when do you think they’ll stop?”

The cork popped. General Lumen grabbed a glass. “When will what stop?” she asked, not looking at him.

“The killing. The demons. When are they going to stop looking for the Portals?”

“Stop?” Lumen wheeled around, while pouring a heavy glass of red wine. The sapphire-jeweled bracelet around her wrist caught the light, glittering. “They don’t stop, Jim. Now that they know a Portal is in Pearlton, they won’t stop until they find it, or until they’re all dead.”

“How do they know that?”

General Lumen heaved a sigh and had a generous swallow of wine. “I don’t know for sure, but I have my suspicions. It’s one man in particular—a human. He’s helped the angels for years, but I’ve always wondered how much he’s working with the demons. He’s self-serving, and will trade a secret to anyone willing to pay. Luckily, it doesn’t seem that he knows the exact location.”

“Who?” Jim pressed.

“Norman Webb.”

Jim felt lightheaded. Bumbling Mr. Webb, his biology teacher, was a wheeler and dealer of supernatural secrets?

“You have to understand that Mr. Webb has had his uses. He de-winged hundreds of demons during the War of the Broken Wall, and helped us invent new weapons to kill them. In return, we gave him trinkets from Glisten, or sometimes books.”

“But you think he works with demons, too?”

“I think he fancies himself a kind of mercenary,” General Lumen said, taking another sip of wine. “He’s obsessed with angels and demons. He thinks there’s some kind of grand design to the Field, and Glisten and Slag. I suspect that Carlos sought him out.” General Lumen shrugged. “Webb probably heard Carlos had broken out of Slag and he wanted to know how. And, in exchange, he told Carlos that the Portal was in Pearlton.”

“Where is it exactly?” Jim asked. “Is it in danger?”

“I won’t tell you, Jim.” General Lumen tapped her temple. “It’s all up here. Webb probably broke into my office or followed me to find out that the Portal is in Pearlton. That’s why I never risk telling the exact location.” She raised her glass to the ceiling. “You never know who’s watching.”

“But how is the Portal opened? What if the demons just accidentally step through it?” Jim demanded, feeling angry. He was supposed to protect this Portal with his life, but not know anything about it?

General Lumen replied with a deep, throaty laugh. “Portals have to be opened by blood magic.” She held two fingers out. “A death of an angel and a death of a demon. Or, as the Tribunal’s
Book of Tales
says, ‘the mortal blood of chaos and order unlock the door to truth.’” She paused. “If one of the Portals is ever opened, there’s only one way to close it.”

Jim looked at her expectantly.

“An angel’s self-sacrifice,” she said. “An angel must give his or her life in order to close the Portal again. ‘The tension between chaos and order is restored by selflessness, the act that transcends the ego of chaos and the laws of order,’ as the book tells us.”

Jim felt a sudden rush of anger. “Why is it always more death? First Shane, then Maria and Nora. How many have to die to keep the Portals safe?”

“As many as are necessary!” Lumen snapped. “This isn’t about death, Jim, it’s about living. It’s easy to live. You put one foot in front of the other and you’re living. The hard part is living a meaningful life.”