Blest (10 page)

“You don’t have to be like her,” Jim said. “My dad wanted me to get my wings removed, but I chose not to. Just because you’re born one way, that doesn’t mean you can’t start down a different path.”

“If I don’t do what she says, my mom tells me that my father will have died for nothing,” Sydney said quietly. Jim was startled to see tears in her eyes.

“That’s totally wrong!” he exclaimed, then lowered his voice. “Your dad is always going to be with you. You’re his
daughter
. He taught you things, he told you things, and those memories make you who you are.” He swallowed heavily. He hadn’t even realized that this was the way he felt about the huge hole where his mom used to be, the empty space in the house where she should be. “You carry him around, every day, because you have those memories, and they still make you do new things.
You
get to decide what he would want from you, not your mom. You’re stronger than you think, Sydney.”

They held each other’s eyes for a long moment. And then, suddenly, Sydney leaned forward and kissed him.

Her lips were light on his, and she reached her hands up over his shoulders. For a moment, he was too stunned to do anything.
Claire
, he thought.
Claire
.

He pulled away, dazed. “Um, I—”

Sydney blinked, and for a second, Jim saw a flash of hurt across her face, but it was gone so quickly he couldn’t be sure it had ever been there at all. “It’s getting late,” she said, slipping off the rock. “Good night.” She spread her white wings and shot through the willow branches. Jim watched the ripples caused by her movement grow wider and wider, spreading into the infinite silence.

Sydney’s lips lingered on his mouth, the ghost of a touch. He couldn’t believe she had kissed him. What would things be like between them now? Part of him felt like he should tell Claire, but he recoiled at the thought.

He shook his head, spread his wings and took off. It was only as he landed in his yard that he realized that Sydney had never actually told him what she had been arguing about with her mom.

“I hope we see those freaking angels,” Gunner grunted from behind the steering wheel of the Range Rover. He pulled angrily at the neck of his suit. They were on their way to the Homecoming Dance, and he’d pretty much been angry all day. “I’ve been pumping weights with Shane. We could take them all on, just us two.”

Claire couldn’t stop herself. “Yeah, that would prove a lot. Beating up a few angels could definitely get us back into Glisten.”

“What?” His eyes flashed dangerously. “Every fight we have with the angels is important. It’s about throwing the balance in our favor, Claire. Don’t you dare turn into Mom.”

She cringed at the anger in his voice. It seemed like Gunner was losing more and more control of himself every day. Lately, Gloria had been locking herself in her bedroom every night, and Claire could hear her crying. She wanted to comfort her, but she was still angry with her mom for constantly trying to run away from their problems. And hiding everything from Gunner and Claire the whole time.

Gunner peeled into the school parking lot, adjusted his tie, and left the car without saying anything to her. She watched him disappear across the lot, joining the crowd of other kids as they flooded into the gym. She pulled out her phone and texted Jim.
Still meeting?
she asked. She had taken his name out of her phone, just in case, but she kept the number memorized. He had done the same with hers.

The response was instant:
Of course.

Butterflies fluttered in her stomach. She was still going to dance with Jim; they just had to do it in secret. They had tried to figure out the plan all week. All she had managed to come up with was going to the football coach’s office, because she knew from Shane that the guy never locked it. She and Jim would have their own private Homecoming Dance.

As long as none of the demons saw them together.

She looked in the rearview mirror and fixed her hair one last time. She had worn a crimson dress, since red was the unofficial color of the demons and she wanted to convince Gunner and Shane that she was on their side. There was a deep cut in the neck, probably a little too deep to be tasteful, but she didn’t care. She was a demon, after all. She might as well play the part.

Claire slipped on her jet-black heels and tottered across the parking lot, feeling like she was walking on stilts. This was the first time she had ever worn heels for a dance—usually she just wore flats. She had never cared before. As she stepped into the glowering radiance of the light outside the gym doors, a few heads turned in her direction. She ignored them and pushed in with the rest of the students as people jostled through the doorway. Everyone seemed desperate to get into the relative safety of the dark gym, where the Pearlton A.V. Club was playing with the red and white spotlights.

The demons clustered by the part of the gym where the red light bounced around, their wings glowing. Gunner and Shane had their heads close together, talking in low voices, their eyes roaming the crowd. Maria picked at her nails. Erik and Ben were arguing about a video game. Julia gave her a wave.

“There you are,” she said. “We didn’t know if you had gotten caught in this sea of hormones and were struggling against the undertow somewhere.”

She smiled. “I made it, thankfully,” she said over the booming bass of some house song. She jabbed her thumb at the speaker. “Do you know if they’re going to play any real music, or is it going to be, like, a Pandora playlist the whole time?”

Julia chuckled. “I know, it’s stupid. But they’re supposed to get some DJ up here.”

“Yeah, DJ Who-Gives-A-Crap,” Erik chimed in. “Probably the cheapest St. Louis nobody they could book.”

“No one’s a DJ anymore, anyway,” Ben added in his know-it-all-voice. “You give some guy a laptop and a soundsystem and poof! He’s a DJ.”

“Shut up, there they are,” Shane said through his teeth. Ben flashed Shane an angry look, but he went quiet.

Claire turned around and saw the angels come through the door in a pack. Sydney led the way in a full-skirted white dress with blue trim, gliding through the other Pearlton students like she could just walk over them. She glanced over at the Scale, but her expression didn’t change. The massive Leo came next, in a big black suit with a blue bowtie. He caught their eyes, looked around, and promptly gave them the finger.

“That fat piece of—” Shane growled, arms flexing against the red stripes of his collared shirt.

Gunner held his arm. “Wait, man. Not yet.”

Claire took a step back as Shane swore at Leo under his breath, practically frothing at the mouth. Shane definitely had some kind of switch in his brain, Claire thought. As soon as he decided someone was disrespecting him, or inferior to him, he went crazy. She hadn’t appreciated just how big he was until just now, when Gunner gripped Shane’s bicep. Gunner, too, had put on muscle really fast. She could see him flexing against the fabric of his Polo shirt. It looked ridiculous. Two guys in ties, trying to figure out if they could get away with beating up some other guys in ties.

She kept an eye out for Jim and finally saw him at the back of the angels, talking with the red-haired guy named Miles. Jim wore a wrinkled white button-down shirt and jeans with faded knees. His blond hair was wavy and unkempt.

“You shouldn’t even legally be allowed to wear what Jim wears in public,” Erik sniffed. Claire shot a glance at him. Erik was always the most well-dressed demon, with slicked-back hair that Shane always mocked him for combing “at least twice an hour.” But he was smart, according to Shane, and his parents were both powerful lawyers who helped push forward Mayor Morrisey’s laws.

Claire’s breathing quickened at the sight of him, but she felt a little suspicious, too. Why was he talking to Miles at all? She had taken pains not to make friends with the demons, not even with Julia, who actually seemed pretty nice. She didn’t want to give into their philosophy of hating the angels. What if Jim wasn’t doing the same? What if he was slowly turning into one of them?

Her doubts dissolved when he looked up and flashed her a knowing smile before glancing back at Miles. Claire breathed a little easier. The angels came to a stop in the middle of the white spotlight. Sydney was talking sternly to Leo. Claire wondered if she was reprimanding him for flipping Shane off. The demons and angels always seemed to be on the brink of breaking the so-called Pact. Claire still remembered Shane’s eager face when he had tried to give her the knife to cut Jim’s wings.

The lights dimmed, and Principal Lumen climbed up a wooden staircase and stood over the microphone. Maria muttered a nasty name as Lumen tapped the microphone and cleared her throat.

“Welcome, everybody!” Lumen said. “Thank you for coming out to the annual Pearlton Homecoming Dance.” A few half-hearted whoops echoed in the gym. Lumen smiled a plastic smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“Even her enthusiasm sounds fake,” Julia whispered. Claire silently agreed. It was weird that the Scale went to a school controlled by an angel. Shane had told them that General Lumen had been in charge of killing dozens of demons and rounding up many more than that, so the Tribunal could banish them to Slag. He had explained that Lumen had slowly spread her influence across Pearlton through parent-teacher groups, community associations, and teachers’ unions. “My dad works as hard as he can to make sure only the strongest humans can stay in business, but Lumen always thinks everything should be equal,” he said. “Even if that means taking stuff away from the strong humans to give to the weak ones.”

“Now, I know dances can be awkward,” Lumen continued, “but we need to set aside our differences for one night.” Her eyes drifted from the demons to the angels. “Because there are certain moments in life you won’t get back, especially when you’re young. So try not to spoil the Homecoming Dance by trying to be something that you’re not.” Lumen’s gaze landed on Sydney, who looked away. Claire noticed that Sydney and Jim caught each other’s eyes. Jim gave her a reassuring nod. Claire felt an angry twinge of jealousy and did her best to squash it.

“So with that said, let’s give a warm welcome to DJ Awesome!” Principal Lumen said, before stepping down off the stage.

“Yeah, how about we don’t,” Gunner muttered as a fat bald guy with an iPad under one arm came out of the shadows, waving at the students. “I don’t want to encourage
that
.”

Shane laughed and they high-fived.

Almost immediately, the music pounded out from speakers on top of the bleachers. It was some kind of electronica, like a hijacked casino machine beeping along to thundering drums.

“My God,” Erik huffed. “It’s like nails on a chalkboard.”

“No, no,” Ben said. “It’s worse, it’s like nails being shot into a chalkboard.”

“By a machine gun,” Shane offered.

They all laughed and slouched against the bleachers, arms crossed. All the other students jumped around to it, slowly at first, but they gained momentum as the music grew louder. The angels danced, too. Leo grabbed Nora and they twirled around the dancefloor, laughing. Miles jumped up and down like he was on a pogo stick, bouncing deeper into the crowd. Claire saw Sydney laugh and reach for where Jim had been standing, but Jim had disappeared.

A second later, her phone buzzed. Claire made sure that the other demons were hanging out by the bleachers and slipped her phone from her pocket.
I’m here
, Jim’s unnamed number told her. She squinted through the watery blur of the gym lights and spotted the door to the hallway. Next to the doors, she spotted a table with a bowl of watery punch.

“I’m going to get punch!” she hollered over the music, sliding through the groups and the couples. She stood at the table for a second, watching as the ocean of students lurched around. The angels had taken to the middle of the crowd, where they laughed and tried to square-dance to the techno beat, roping in other people. The further away from the angels, the more antisocial the students became. Until, in the back, Claire could just see the shapes of the demons in the shadow of the bleachers. For the first time, she felt like she belonged with them. Acting careless and goofy had never been her thing.

When the lights went dark for another song, Claire ducked out of the gym into the sudden stillness of the hallway. She clacked down the tiles to the football coach’s office and opened the door. She had barely taken a step when Jim’s arms were around her, pulling her close. He kissed her on the lips, then again on her forehead.

“I missed you,” he whispered, cupping her face in his hands.

“I missed you, too,” she breathed. She lost track of time as his mouth found hers again. They fell against the coach’s desk, scattering papers and pens. Everything else slipped from Claire’s mind as she pressed into him, never breaking the kiss, and he held her. After a few minutes, they came up for air.

Jim stroked her cheek. “You look beautiful.”

“You can’t even see me!” she teased. She could barely make out Jim’s features in the shadows.

“I saw you earlier,” he said, giving her a squeeze. “I like the dress. A lot.”

“Thanks.” She leaned in and they kissed again. He sat up on the desk and grabbed her around the waist with one arm, pulling her to him. She noticed muscles ripple as he moved. Had he always been this strong? It seemed like he had been lifting weights too.

In the silence of the coach’s office, Claire could barely hear the dance. The music sounded like a dull pulse, a throb from some other reality. She felt like she had stepped through a doorway into another world. She wished they could stay here in the darkness all night, thinking about nothing but each other.

Dimly, though, she started to register another sound. Someone was shouting. She broke away from Jim and whipped around. Had someone seen them? Had they been caught?

“What is that?” She squinted against the dull glow of the hallway lights, her heart racing.

“What’s what?” Jim tried to guide her lips back to his, but she backed away from him.

“That shouting,” she said, her panic rising. “It’s coming from the gym. It’s—” She elbowed the door to the hallway open and ran. One of the voices sounded very familiar.