Hallowed (7 page)

“It’s nothing major,” I say.

We get into the car. I slide the key into the ignition. But then I stop.

“Mom, what happened between you and Samjeeza?”

She doesn’t even look rattled by my question, which surprises me. Then she answers it, which floors me even more. “It was a long time ago,” she says. “He and I were . . . friends.”

“You were friends with a Black Wing.”

“I didn’t know he was a Black Wing at first. I thought he was a regular angel.” I can’t imagine mistaking Samjeeza for a regular angel. Not that I’ve met any regular angels.

“Right. Are you friends with lots of angels?” I ask sarcastically.

“A few.”

“A few,” I repeat. How can she keep blowing my mind like this? I mean, really—she knows
a few
angels?

“Not many.”

“Angela thinks Samjeeza’s some kind of leader,” I tell her.

“Ah,” Mom says, nodding.
“The Book of Enoch?”

“Yeah.”

“That much is true. He was the leader of the Watchers, a long time ago.” Wow. She is actually telling me this.

“And what do the Watchers do, exactly?” I ask. “Other than, I assume, watch stuff.”

“The Watchers gave up heaven so they could be with human women,” she says.

“I take it God doesn’t dig the idea of angels hooking up with humans.”

“It’s not that God doesn’t like it,” she explains. “It’s that angels don’t live in linear time like you and I do, which makes having a relationship with a human woman nearly impossible, since that would require the angel to stay grounded in the same time for a sustained period.” Oh. The time stuff again.

“It’s difficult for us to fully understand how they live, moving between the different planes of existence, through space and time. Angels don’t simply sit around on clouds looking down at us. They are constantly at work.”

“Married to the job, huh?” I quip.

A flicker of a smile passes over her face. “Exactly.”

“And the Watchers did what? Quit?”

“Yes. And Samjeeza was the first to put in his two-week notice, so to speak.”

“And then what happened?”

“The Watchers married human women, had children, and for a while, everything was fine.

I imagine they felt some sorrow, being away from heaven, but it was manageable. They were happy. But they never truly belonged on earth, and their children lived a long time and kept multiplying, until there were more Nephilim than humans on the earth. Which became a problem.”

I think about Angela’s story from
The Book of Enoch
. “So God sent the flood,” I deduce.

“Yes,” she says. “And Samjeeza . . .” She stops. Thinks about how much she should tell me. “Samjeeza couldn’t save his family. His children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, every single one of them drowned.”

No wonder the guy’s pissed.

“That’s when the Watchers joined the other Black Wings and declared war against heaven,” she says.

“The other Black Wings?”

“Satan and his crew.”

I laugh at the idea of Satan having an entourage, even though I know it’s not funny.

“They fight the sovereignty of God and try to ruin heaven’s plans whenever possible,” she explains. “But their desire doesn’t stem from grief, it’s just pure evil, being contrary for their own sakes.”

“Uh-huh. How do you know all this?” I ask her.

“Sam told me.”

“Because you were friends.”

“Yes,” she says. “Once upon a time.”

Still can’t get my head around that one.

“He’s in love with you, you know,” I add, just to see her reaction.

She smoothes her scarf down against her hair. “How do you know?”

“When he touched me I could feel him thinking about you. Well, first he was thinking about me. But after you showed up, he was completely distracted by you. I saw you, in his mind.

You looked different. You had short brown hair and”—I stop myself from mentioning the cigarette—“a lot of lipstick. He’s definitely obsessed with you and your lipstick.” Her hand rises like she wants to touch her neck where, if she was a normal person, there might still be bruises from Samjeeza choking her. “Lucky me,” she says.

I shudder, remembering the feeling of his cold hands moving underneath my shirt.

“If you hadn’t shown up when you did, he would have . . .” I can’t finish the sentence.

She frowns. “Rape is not a Black Wing’s style. They prefer seduction. They want to win you over to their side.”

“What about Angela’s mom?” I point out. “She was raped.”

“Yes, so she says.”

“You think that’s not true?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

“Well, I think Samjeeza was planning on it with me,” I tell her. “He didn’t exactly try to charm me.”

“He was behaving strangely that day,” she says. “The way he talked, all melodrama and clichés, like he was playing a part. It wasn’t like him. It was as if he was trying to prove something.”

“But nobody was watching him but us.”

“Somebody was,” she says cryptically. “Somebody always is.” Oh. I guess she means God. Always watching. Gulp.

Her mouth twists into a pained line. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“Me too.”

“Anyway,” she says like she’s relieved to be changing the subject, “I thought we could go into town for some ice cream, maybe do some shopping.”

“Can’t,” I tell her. “I’m supposed to go fishing with Tucker this afternoon.” She tries to hide her disappointment. “Oh.”

“I’ve hardly had a chance to see him lately, because he got a job at Flat Creek Saddle Shop and he’s been working all these hours. . . .”

“No, I understand,” she says. “You should go be with him.” I wonder if she cares about Tucker at all now. If she still disapproves.

“Maybe we can do something this weekend?”

“Sure,” she agrees. “I would love that.”

“Okay.”

Then there’s nothing to do but turn the key in the ignition, put the car in gear, and drive home.

There’s something magical about the way my head fits into the crook of Tucker’s neck. I lie there, breathe in his scent, which is a delightful mix of earth and hay and his own brand of man smell and aftershave, a touch of bug spray thrown in there, and for a minute all my worries evaporate. It’s just him and me, the lull of the water gently rocking the boat, particles of dust floating around in the warm air. I don’t know what heaven’s like, aside from the sense of brightness that Mom described for me once, but if I got to choose my heaven, this would be it.

On the lake with Tucker. I’ll take the mosquitoes and everything.

“I so needed this,” I say, which comes out almost as a yawn.

I feel him smile against my hair. “Me too. Your hair smells like wind, did you know that?”

Yep, me and Tucker, smelling each other.

I tip my head up to kiss him. It starts out as something sweet, slow and lazy as the afternoon sun, but it heats up fast. We pull apart for a second and our breath mingles, and I twist around so I am practically lying on top of him, our legs tangling. He reaches up to take my head in his hand and kisses me again, then does this half groan, half laugh that drives me crazy and drops his hand down to my hip and tugs me closer. I slide my fingers under the collar of his shirt, along the solid breadth of his chest, where I can feel the hammering of his heart. I love him, I think. In that moment I know, if I tried, I would be capable of glory.

He breaks away.

“Okay,” he gasps.

“You still think you’ll get struck by lightning if we . . . you know?” I tease, arching an eyebrow at him and pinning him with my most seductive (I think) look.

He gives me a kind of tortured, bemused smile. “When I was a kid my mom used to tell me that if I had sex before I was married, my . . . junk would turn black and fall off.” That gets a startled laugh out of me. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, and I believed her, too.”

“So you’re not going to have sex before you’re married? What if you don’t get married until you’re thirty?”

He sighs. “I don’t know. I just love you. I don’t want to mess anything up.” This doesn’t make sense to me, but I nod. “So we’ll be good.”

“Right.”

“Because you’re scared.”

“Hey!”

“Okay,” I say with a sigh. “Even though that’s not much fun.” He startles me by flipping me over, pressing me gently back into the blanket at the bottom of the boat. “You don’t think this is fun?” he challenges, and then he kisses me until my insides turn to mush and my head goes all fuzzy.

Much,
much
later, we actually attempt to fish. I find that I still suck at it. And I still like that I suck at it. And Tucker is still some kind of fish whisperer.

“There now,” he says softly as he carefully removes the hook from the lip of a gleaming cutthroat trout. “You be smarter next time.”

He lowers it back into the water, where it darts away in a flash of green and silver. He looks up at me and grins wickedly. “Want to make out with me now?” he asks, holding up his fish-slimed hands.

“Um, tempting, but no,” I answer quickly. “I think we better be good, don’t you think?”

“That’s really funny,” he says, then starts re-tying his fishing line, “. . . so-ho-ho-ho funny.” A cloud moves over the sun, and suddenly it’s colder. Quieter. Even the birds stop singing. A shiver passes through me.

“Want my shirt?” Tucker asks, always the gentleman.

“I’m okay. I’m working on becoming immune to cold.”

He laughs. “Good luck with that. We probably won’t get any more days like this, warm enough to fish out here.” He threads some bait onto his line and casts again. Almost immediately he has a bite. The same fish.

“You deserve to be on a dinner plate,” he tells the cutthroat, but releases him again anyway. “Go! Find your destiny. Stay away from the shiny hook-type things.” This reminds me, for some crazy reason, of my talk with the school counselor.

“So, all this work you’re doing lately—” I start.

“Don’t remind me.”

“It’s to buy a new horse?”

“And a new truck, eventually, and by new I mean used, and by used I mean probably on its last legs, since that’s all I’ll be able to swing.”

“You’re not saving for college?” I ask.

Bad question. His eyes stay focused on his fishing pole, which he quickly unties and disassembles. “Nope,” he says with forced lightness. “After I graduate, I’ll stay on the ranch. Dad hurt his knee this spring, and we can’t afford to hire more help, so I thought I’d stick around.”

“Oh,” is all I can think to say to that. “Did you have to go visit Ms. Baxter?”

“Yeah,” he says with a scoff. “She got me set up for some talks with Northern Arizona University next week. I guess I’ll probably go off to school in a year or two, because that’s what’s expected of me.”

“What would you study? In college, if you go?”

“Agriculture, probably. Maybe forestry,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Forestry?”

“To be a ranger.”

I picture him in the green ranger uniform, wearing one of those hats like Smokey the Bear.

Which is totally hot.

“Hey, it’s getting late. Ready to go in?” he asks.

“Sure.” I reel in my line and stick my pole with Tucker’s at the bottom of the boat. He starts the motor, and in a few minutes we’re gliding over the water toward the dock. Neither of us says anything, but he suddenly sighs. He slows the boat to a crawl, then stops us. We’re right in the middle of the lake, the motor idling, the sun sinking behind the mountains.

“I don’t want to leave,” he says after a minute.

I look up at him, startled. “You don’t want to leave?”

He gestures around, at the towering blue mountains behind us, the gray heron skimming the water, the glimmers of the sinking sun on the lake. “This is it for me. This is what I want.” I realize that he’s not talking about today, the lake, this moment. He’s talking about his future.

“I might go to college, but I’m going to end up back here,” he says. “I’ll live and die here.”

He looks at me like he’s daring me to challenge him. Instead I scoot across the boat to him and circle my arms around his neck. “I get it,” I whisper.

He relaxes. “What about you? What do you want to do?”

“I don’t want to leave, either. I want to stay here. With you.” That night as I’m drifting off to sleep, my cell phone rings. At first I ignore it, let it go to voice mail, because I want to get into my dream and figure out who’s dead. But then it rings again. And again. Whoever it is won’t take no for an answer. Which makes me think it’s—

“Okay, Ange, this better be good, because it’s late and—”

“It’s Stanford!” She laughs, a wild happy laugh that I’ve never heard from her before.

“I’m going to Stanford, C. It was the trees—you were so brilliant to suggest I look at the trees.”

“Wow. Big league. That’s great, Ange.”

“I know, right? I mean, I was prepared for it to be anything, even if it was this dinky school that nobody’s ever heard of, because it’s my purpose and that’s more important, but Stanford’s like a school I’d kill to go to even without my purpose. So it’s perfect.”

“I’m happy for you.” At least I’m trying to be. I grew up near Stanford. It still feels like home.

“And there’s something else,” she says.

I brace myself for even more jolting news, like she already has a full-ride scholarship, or that a real-live angel, an Intangere, dropped off with a note for her, carefully detailing her purpose and everything she’s supposed to do at Stanford, a memo from heaven.

“Okay. What?” I ask when she doesn’t come out and tell me.

“I want you to go too.”

“Huh? When?”

“For college, silly. I’m going to Stanford, and I want you to be there with me.” Three a.m. No possibility of sleep. I’ve been thrashing in my blankets all night, unable to quiet all the crazy thoughts bouncing around my head. My mother being friends with a fallen angel. College plans. Christian. Purposes that last a hundred years. A flood that kills all the angel-bloods on earth. Angela wanting me to go to Stanford with her. Tucker staying here, always and forever. Ms. Baxter all hopeful and sweet and completely annoying. And somebody dying, let’s not forget. Somebody. And I still have no clue who.