Hallowed (28 page)

Thanks,
I say to Christian silently. I look over at him. He nods slightly.

My empathy blinks on like one of those fluorescent bulbs that takes a minute to charge up.

Sorrow descends on me like a cloud moving over the sun. Loneliness. Separation, always this sense of separation from everything good in this life. The field where Samjeeza stands is full of sunshine, but he can’t absorb its warmth. He can’t smell the new grass at his feet, the fresh rain from this morning’s spring shower. He can’t feel the breeze. All of that is beauty, and it belongs to the light. Not to him.

I should be used to it by now, the way he pops up and plays with my head.

He’s here again, isn’t he?
Christian again. Now worried.

I give him the mental equivalent of a nod.

What should we do?

Nothing. Ignore him. There’s nothing we can do.

But it suddenly occurs to me that maybe that’s not true anymore. I sit up. I raise my hand and ask Mr. Anderson for a hall pass, suggest in a vague way that I need to use the restroom, possibly for female reasons.

Where are you going?
Christian asks, alarmed, as I gather up my stuff.
What are you
doing?

Don’t worry. I’m going to call my dad.

I call my house from the phone in the office. Billy picks up.

“Trouble?” she asks immediately.

“Can I talk to my dad?”

“Sure thing.” Silence as she sets the phone down. Muffled voices. Footsteps.

“Clara,” Dad says. “What do you need?”

“Samjeeza’s here. I thought maybe you could do something.” He’s quiet for a moment. “I’ll be there in a minute,” he says finally.

It literally takes him a minute to get here. I barely have time to sit down on one of the hall benches to wait for him before he comes striding through the front door. I stare at him.

“Did you fly here?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Wow.”

“Show me.” There’s a fierceness in his eyes that strikes me as familiar, like I’ve seen this look on his face before. But when? I lead him outside, across the parking lot, to the field. I hold my breath as he steps without hesitation over the fence and onto unprotected ground.

“Stay here,” he orders. I do.

Samjeeza is standing, in human form, on the far edge of the field. He’s afraid. It’s his fear that I’m remembering, I realize, from the day of the fire. Mom suggested that someone was going to come looking for her, and Samjeeza pictured two white-winged angels, one with red hair, the other blond, glowing and fierce, holding a flaming sword.

My dad.

Samjeeza doesn’t move or speak. He stands perfectly still, his fear radiating out of him along with the sorrow now, and humiliation, that he would be so afraid.

Dad takes a few steps toward him, then stops. “Samyaza.” The man suit Samjeeza wears seems transparent, false, next to Dad’s solid radiance.

Dad’s hair glitters in the sunlight. His skin glows. Samjeeza wilts before him but tries to sneer.

“Why are you here, Prince of Light? Why do you care about this weak-blooded girl?” He’s going to be playing the part of super-villain in today’s performance.

“I care about her mother,” Dad answers. “I warned you about that, before.”

“Yes, and what is your relationship with Margaret, I wonder?” Dad’s joy wavers. “I promised her father I would look after her,” he says.

Her father? Good grief. So there’s more stuff I don’t know.

“Is that all?”

“You’re a fool,” Dad says, shaking his head. “Leave this place, and don’t bother the child, or her mother, again.”

“Don’t you mean the children? There’s a boy too, isn’t that right?”

“Leave them be,” Dad says.

Samjeeza hesitates, although I know he has no intention of fighting Dad. He’s not that crazy. Still, he lifts his chin, meets the quicksilver of Dad’s eyes for a few seconds, and smiles.

“It’s hard not to fall in love with them, isn’t it? There’s a Watcher somewhere in you too, Michael.”

The glow around Dad brightens. He whispers a word that feels like wind in my ears, and suddenly I see his wings. They are enormous and white, a pure sweet white that reflects the sun so it’s hard to look directly at them. I have never seen anything so magnificent as my father—my throat closes on the word—this creature of goodness and light, standing there protecting me. He is my father. I am part of him.

“I will crush you under my heel,” he says in a low voice. “Go. And do not come back.”

“No need to get excited,” Samjeeza says, taking a step back. “I’m a lover, not a fighter, after all.”

Then he simply closes his eyes and disappears.

Dad’s wings vanish. He walks back across the grass to me.

“Thanks,” I say.

He looks sad. “Don’t thank me. I’ve just put you in more danger than you know. Now,” he says in a completely different tone of voice. “I would like it very much if I could meet your boyfriend.”

We wait around until the bell rings. People flood the halls. They part around us, giving Dad a wide berth, staring at him.

Dad looks a bit strained.

“Are you okay?” I ask. I wonder if that bit that Samjeeza said, about Dad being like a Watcher, got to him.

“Fine,” he says. “It’s just that around so many people I have to work harder to hold back the glory. Otherwise they might all fall down on their knees and worship.” He sounds like he might be joking, but I know he’s not. He’s completely serious.

“We don’t have to stay here. We can go.”

“No, I want to meet this Tucker kid.”

“Dad. He’s not a kid.”

“Don’t you want me to meet him?” he asks with the hint of a smile. “Are you afraid I’ll scare him off?”

Yes.

“No,” I say. “But don’t try to scare him off, okay? He’s been pretty cool with all the crazy stuff so far. I don’t want to push it.”

“Got it. No threatening his life if he doesn’t treat my daughter right.”

“Dad. Seriously.”

Jeffrey appears at the end of the hall. He’s talking with a buddy of his, smiling. He sees us.

The smile fades from his face. He spins around and walks the other way.

Dad stares after him.

“He’ll come around,” I say to Dad.

He nods absentmindedly, then says, “So, lead the way. I promise I’ll behave.”

“Come on, then. His locker’s this way.”

Down the hall we go to Tucker’s locker. He’s there, as I thought he would be, fumbling around with his notes. Last-minute studying for a makeup test in Spanish.

“Hola,”
I say, leaning up against the locker next to his. I’m suddenly a bundle of nerves.

I’m about to introduce my dad to my boyfriend. This is huge.

“Hi,” he says, not looking up. “What happened in government? You just left.”

“I had something I had to take care of.”

“What’s the Spanish word for slacker?” he says wryly.
“Mi novia, la chica hermosa que
huye
.
”
Translation: My girlfriend, the beautiful girl who runs away.

“Tuck.”

“Sorry,” he says, still not looking up from his notebook. “I am panicking over this test. I swear, my palms are sweating and my heart’s going and I’m this close to an anxiety attack. I think. Never had an anxiety attack before. But I have under three minutes to fill my brain with useful information.”

“Tuck, can you just stop for two seconds? There’s someone I want you to meet.” He glances up, sees my dad standing behind me. Freezes.

“Tucker, this is my dad, Michael. Dad, this is Tucker Avery.” Dad smiles, holds out his hand. Tucker swallows hard, staring, then shakes it.

“Sir,” he manages. He looks at me. “Your dad?”

“He showed up yesterday, to help us, since Mom . . .”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Dad says warmly. I think Dad says pretty much everything warmly. He’s a warm guy. “I’ve heard so much about you. Sorry to take you from your studies, but I wanted to meet this young man who stole my daughter’s heart away from her.”
Stole
being the operative word. I give Dad a sharp look.

“Pleased to meet you, too, sir,” Tucker says. “You’re a physics professor at NYU, right?” I swing around to look at Dad. I haven’t asked him about that particular falsehood yet.

“I’m on sabbatical,” Dad says.

Smooth. Very smooth.

“Well, um, geez, nice of you to show up to help,” Tucker says haltingly. He doesn’t know what to say. “I, uh, really admire your daughter.”

This is not going well. Tucker’s face is beyond pale now. It’s actually getting green.

There’s a sheen of sweat on his forehead. I worry that Dad’s barely suppressed glory is going to make him throw up. Time to bail.

“So, I wanted to introduce the two of you, and now I have, and Tucker’s got a big test in a minute, so we should go.” I loop my arm in Dad’s and pull him away, shoot Tucker a look that I hope he understands as an apology for springing all this on him. “Call me later, okay?”

“Okay,” he says. He doesn’t go back to his Spanish. He leans against his locker, long after the bell rings, catching his breath.

Chapter 16

Square Ice-Cream Cones

Angela is practicing her violin when we come in. She likes to do it on the stage at the Pink Garter, under the lights, letting the music fill the empty theater. It’s not a song I recognize, but a beautiful, haunting kind of tune that winnows its way up to my dad and me as we stand at the entrance. When the last note fades away, we clap. Angela lowers the violin and shades her eyes to peer out at us, unable to see beyond the stage lights.

“Awesome song, Ange,” I call to her.

“Oh, C, it’s you. God, you scared me. I thought you were under house arrest. Not that I’m not glad to see you. I’ve been studying some wild theories this week—this historian who analyzed
The Book of Enoch
back at the turn of the century. Fascinating stuff.”

“I have some news myself. Can you come down?”

She starts down the stairs. Nothing motivates Angela like news. As soon as her eyes adjust to the dimmer light in the audience section, she sees Dad.

“Holy crap!”

“Not exactly.” I have to admit, I enjoy surprising Angela.

“You’re an Intangere,” she blurts out.

“Hello,” Dad says. “I’m Michael. Clara’s father.”

Cat’s really out of the bag now. It seems odd, since he and Mom worked so hard to keep this all a secret, and now he’s going around introducing himself as my dad like it’s the most natural thing in the world. But that’s who he is, I realize. He is simply incapable of hiding what he is.

“Clara’s father . . .” Angela’s eyes are like saucers. “Clara’s . . .”

“Yes.”

“But that would mean . . .”

“We’re putting a great deal of trust in you, Angela,” he says. “You must guard this information from everyone.”

She nods solemnly. “Right. Of course I will.” Smiles. “Wow. Didn’t see that one coming.” She looks at me. “Don’t tell me you’ve known about this the whole time.”

“I found out yesterday. When he showed up.”

“Wow.”

“You’re telling me.”

She turns to Dad all businesslike. “So. What do you think of
Enoch
?” He thinks for a minute. “He was a good man. I liked him. Although he allowed himself to be used in terrible ways.”

She obviously meant the book.

He meant the man.

“So you’re not a Quartarius,” she says then. Something about the tone of her voice makes me look at her. Her face is blank, like she’s trying really hard to hide what she feels.

Jealousy. Wow, jealousy. I feel it without even trying. All this time she thought she was the powerful one of the two of us. She was Dimidius, I was Quartarius, and she liked it that way.

Now . . . she doesn’t even have a name for what I am. And my dad is here, handsome and powerful and good, and he cares about me, and he’s a link to more information than all the dusty old books in the world. Because my dad is older than all the dusty old books in the world.

Her jealousy is like something slimy in my mind.

“Okay, let’s not get all melodramatic or anything,” I say. “It’s not such a big deal.”

“It’s a huge deal!” she exclaims, then sucks in a quick breath. “You were reading me.

You were using your empathy.”

“Sorry. But you’re feeling some pretty stupid crap about me, right?”

“You can’t do that,” she says, then remembers that my dad is right there and shuts up. Her face is alabaster pale, then suddenly a flare of blue light sparks from her hair just once, like a lone firework against the black backdrop of the theater.

“I couldn’t help it,” I say.

Yeah, she’s pissed.

“It was really nice to meet you, Mr. Gardner,” she says, “but I should get back to practicing.” She looks at me. “You know the way out.”

“Fine.” I head for the door. “Come on. We’re done here.”

“Nice to meet you as well, Angela,” Dad says. “You’re just as Maggie described—very impressive for having been alone in this for so long.”

“Thanks,” she says with a bit of a squeak, unable to hang on to her sucky attitude with him around.

Yep, my dad’s a charmer.

He teaches me to become invisible. Well, maybe
teach
is a strong word. It’s a complicated thing, something that involves the bending of light. He tells me all about it like it’s a formula a genius is going to scribble in marker on a window someday. I only half understand, but then he does it. He makes us both invisible, which proves handy for flying around wherever you want, without someone pointing up into the sky and saying,
Look, an angel!
It’s even better than Jeffrey’s white bird theory.

I’m still in a bad mood, after Angela, but it’s hard to stay mad when my dad radiates joy, and then I’m flying with him, the wind carrying me like notes of a song. I haven’t flown in so long I was afraid I forgot how, but it turns out to be as easy as breathing, with Dad. We spiral down, swooping the edges of the trees. We shoot upward, breaking the cloud banks, up and up until the air grows thin around us. We soar.