Unearthly (12 page)

“Oh lord,” laughs Tucker. “She's got you on old Sassy.”

I promised myself that I was going to cool it around Tucker today for Wendy's sake, no matter what he throws at me. No rude remarks. No comebacks. I'm going to be on my best behavior.

“I like her.” I lean forward and stroke Sassy's neck.

“She's the horse we put little kids on.”

“Tucker, shut up,” says Wendy.

“But it's true. That horse hasn't moved faster than a snail in about five years, I think. Sitting on her is practically like sitting in a chair.”

Well, we'll show him.

“Good girl,” I say to Sassy, very softly in Angelic. Her ears whip around to listen to my voice. “Let's run,” I whisper.

I'm surprised by how quickly she obeys. In seconds we're in a full gallop, whipping across the far side of the pasture. For a moment the world slows down. The mountains in the background glow a peachy gold, lit by the setting sun. I savor the cool spring air caressing my skin, the strong, dusty feel of the horse under me, her legs stretching out like she's pulling the earth underneath us as she runs, the in-and-out huff of her hay-scented breath. It's wonderful.

Then a gust of wind blows my hair across my face and for one panicky moment I can't see, and everything is going much too fast. I picture myself being thrown off and landing face-first in a pile of manure, Tucker falling all over himself laughing. I toss my head wildly, and my hair is suddenly out of my eyes. My breath catches. The fence is rushing toward us, and Sassy shows no sign of slowing down.

“Can you jump it?” I ask, still whispering. She is, after all, a pretty old horse.

I feel her gather under me. I say a little prayer and lean over her neck. Then we're in the air, barely clearing the fence. We come down so hard my teeth clatter together. I turn the horse toward the barn, pulling back on the reins a bit to slow her. We trot up to Tucker, Wendy, and Mr. Avery, who are all staring at me with their mouths hanging open.

So much for being on my best behavior.

“Whoa,” I say, and pull up the reins until Sassy stops.

“Holy smokes!” Wendy gasps. “What was
that
?”

“I don't know.” I force a laugh. “I think it was mostly the horse's idea.”

“That was amazing!”

“I guess she still has a bit of sass in her after all.” I glance triumphantly at Tucker. For once he's speechless.

“That was sure something,” says Mr. Avery. “I didn't know the old girl had it in her.”

“How long have you been riding?” asks Tucker.

“This is her first time, isn't that amazing?” says Wendy. “She's a natural.”

“Right,” Tucker said, meeting my gaze steadily. “A natural.”

“So, have you asked Jason Lovett to prom yet?” I ask Wendy as we're brushing down Sassy in the barn a few minutes later.

She's immediately the color of a beet. “It's prom,” she says with forced lightness. “He's supposed to ask me, right?”

“Everyone knows he's the shy type. He's probably intimidated by your stunning beauty. So you should ask him.”

“But maybe he has a girlfriend back in California.”

“Long-distance relationship. Doomed. Anyway, you don't know that for sure. Ask him. Then you'll find out.”

“I don't know—”

“Wen, come on. He likes you. He stares at you all through English. And I know you've got the hots for him, too. What is it with you and Californians, anyway?”

It's quiet for a minute, the only sound the steady breathing of the horse.

“So what's going on with you and my brother?” asks Wendy. Completely out of the blue.

“Your brother? What do you mean, ‘going on'?”

“It seems like there's something going on there.”

“You're joking, right? We just like to mess with each other, you know that.”

“But you like him, don't you?”

My mouth falls open. “No, I—” I stop myself.

“You like Christian Prescott,” she finishes for me, arching an eyebrow. “Yeah, I could tell. But he's like a god. You worship the gods but you don't go out with them. You only like guys like that from a distance.”

I don't know what to say. “Wendy—”

“Look, I'm not pushing you on my brother. It kind of gives me the creeps, truthfully, my best friend dating my brother. But I wanted to tell you, in case you
were
interested, that it'd be okay. I could get over it. If you wanted to go out with him—”

“But Tucker doesn't even like me,” I sputter.

“He likes you.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“In grade school, didn't you ever have a boy punch you on the arm?”

“Tucker's a junior in high school.”

“He's still in grade school, trust me,” she says.

I stare at her. “So you're saying Tucker's such a jackass because he
likes
me?”

“Pretty much.”

“No way.” I shake my head in disbelief.

“The thought never crossed your mind?”

“No!”

“Huh,” she says. “I won't stand in the way or anything. It's okay.”

My heart's beating fast. I swallow. “Wendy, I don't like your brother. Not that way. Not in any way, really. No offense.”

“None taken,” she says with a casual shrug. “I just wanted you to know I'm okay with it, the you-and-Tucker thing, if there's ever a you-and-Tucker thing.”

“There's no me-and-Tucker thing, okay? So can we talk about something else?”

“Sure,” she says, but I can tell by the pensive look on her face that she has more she wants to say.

Chapter 9
Long Live the Queen

“Can I get into this thing by myself?” I ask.

“Put on as much as you can,” Angela calls back, “and I'll help you with the rest.”

I contemplate the gown and all of its many parts, which are hanging from a hook in the backstage dressing room at the Pink Garter. It looks complicated. Maybe we should have gone with the Angels of Mons idea.

“How long am I going to have to wear this tomorrow?” I call, pulling on the silk stockings and tying them with ribbon under the knee.

“Not long,” answers Angela. “I'll help you put it on right before class and then you'll wear it during the entire presentation.”

“Just so you know, this may kill me. I may have to sacrifice my life for us to get a good grade on this project.”

“So noble of you,” she says.

I struggle into the corset and the long crazy hoops of the petticoat. Then I grab the hanger with the dress on it and march out onto the stage.

“I think I need you to tie up the corset before I put the rest on,” I say.

She jumps up to help me. That's one thing about Angela: She never does anything halfway. She yanks the laces.

“Not so tight! I still have to breathe, remember?”

“Quit whining. You're lucky we couldn't find any real whalebone for this thing.”

By the time she slides the dress over my head I feel like I have on every item of clothing at the Garter. Angela walks around me pulling on the pieces underneath to make sure they look right. She steps back.

“Wow, that is good. With the makeup and the hair right, you'll look exactly like Queen Elizabeth.”

“Great,” I say without enthusiasm. “I'll look like a pasty-faced tart.”

“Oh, I forgot the ruffs!”

She hops down from the stage and runs over to a cardboard box on the floor. She pulls out a stiff round collar that looks like the things you put on dogs to keep them from licking themselves. There are two more for the wrists.

“No one said anything about ruffs,” I say, backing away.

She jumps toward me. Her wings come out with a flash and beat a couple of times, carrying her easily to the stage, then disappear.

“Show-off.”

“Hold still.” She puts the final ruff on the end of my sleeve. “My mom's a genius.”

As if on cue, Anna Zerbino comes in from the lobby with a stack of table linens. She stops in the aisle when she sees me.

“So it fits,” she says, her humorless dark eyes looking me up and down.

“It's great,” I say. “Thank you for all your hard work.”

She nods.

“Dinner's ready upstairs. Lasagna.”

“Okay, so we're done with the fitting,” I say to Angela. “Get me out of this thing.”

“Not so fast,” whispers Angela, glancing at her mom over her shoulder. “We haven't done much of our
other
research.”

She's so predictable. Always with the angel research.

“Come on,” I whisper back. “Lasagna.”

“We'll be right up, Mom,” says Angela. She pretends to fiddle with my collar until her mother leaves the theater. As soon as we're alone again, she says, “I figured out something good, though.”

“What is it?”

“Angels—full-blooded angels, I mean—are all male.”

“All male?”

“There are no female Intangere.”

“Interesting. Now help me get out of this dress.”

“But I think that angels could appear female if they wanted to. I believe they can change form, like shape-shifters,” she says, her golden eyes dancing with excitement.

“So they can become cats and birds and stuff.”

“Right, but more than that,” she says. “I have another theory.”

“Oh, here we go,” I groan.

“I think that all the stories about supernatural creatures, like vampires, werewolves, ghosts, mermaids, aliens, you name it, could all be angel related. Humans don't know what they're seeing, but it could all be angels taking on other forms.”

Angela has some wild theories, but they're always cool to consider.

“Awesome,” I say. “Now let's eat.”

“Wait,” she says. “I also found something about your hair.”

“My hair?”

“The blaze thing you told me about.” She walks over to the table and grabs her notebook, flips through it. “It's called
comae caelestis
. The Romans used the phrase to describe ‘dazzling rays of light emanating from the hairs of the head, a sign of a heavenly being.'”

“What, you find that on the internet?” I ask with a stunned laugh. She nods. As usual, Angela has taken the nugget of information I've given her and turned it into a gold mine.

“I wish it would happen to me,” she says, twisting a strand of her shiny black hair around her finger wistfully. “I bet it's awesome.”

“It's overwhelming, okay? And you'd have to dye your hair.”

She shrugs like that doesn't sound so bad to her.

“So what do you have for me this week?” she asks.

“What about the concept of purpose?” This is a big one, something I probably should have gotten into a lot earlier, only I didn't especially want to talk about purpose, because then I'd have to talk about mine. But now I've literally told her everything else I know. I even broke out the angel diary and showed her my old notes. Secretly I hope that she, in her infinite wisdom, already knows all about purpose.

“Define purpose,” she says.

No such luck.

“First get me out of this thing.” I gesture to the dress.

She moves around me quickly, loosening and unfastening all the laces and ties. I go into the dressing room and change back into my normal clothes. When I come out, she's sitting at one of the tables drumming her pencil on her notebook.

“Okay,” she says. “Tell me.”

I take a seat across from her.

“Every angel-blood has a purpose on Earth. Usually it comes in the form of a vision.”

She scribbles furiously into her notebook.

“When do you see this vision?” she asks.

“Everybody's different, but sometime between thirteen and twenty, usually. It happens after your powers start to manifest. I only got mine last year.”

“And you only receive one purpose?”

“As far as I know. Mom always says it's the one thing I was put on this Earth to do.”

“So what happens if you don't do it?”

“I don't know,” I say.

“And what happens after you complete it? You go on to live a normal, happy life?”

“I don't know,” I say again. Some expert I'm turning out to be. “Mom won't tell me any of that.”

“What's yours?” she asks, still writing.

She looks up when I don't say anything. “Oh, is it supposed to be a secret?”

“I don't know. It's just personal.”

“It's okay,” she says. “You don't have to tell me.”

But I
want
to tell her. I want to talk about it with someone other than my mom.

“It's about Christian Prescott.”

She puts her pencil down, her face so surprised I almost laugh.

“Christian Prescott?” she repeats like I'm about to hit her with the punch line to a very silly joke.

“I see a forest fire, and then I see Christian standing in the trees. I think I'm supposed to save him.”

“Wow.”

“I know.”

She's quiet for a minute.

“That's why you moved here?” she asks finally.

“Yep. I saw Christian's truck in my vision, and I read the license plate, so that's how we knew to come here.”

“Wow.”

“You can stop saying that.”

“When is it supposed to happen?”

“I wish I knew. Sometime during fire season is all I know.”

“No wonder you're so obsessed with him.”

“Ange!”

“Oh, come on. You eye-hump him all through British History. I thought you were just enraptured, the way everyone else at school seems to be. I'm happy to find out that you have a good reason.”

“Okay, enough angel talk,” I say, getting up and heading for the door. I'm sure I'm beet red by this point. “Our lasagna's getting cold.”

“But you didn't ask me about my purpose,” she says.

I stop.

“You know your purpose?”

“Well, I didn't know until now that it was my purpose. But I've been having the same daydream thing, over and over again, for like three years.”

“What is it? If you don't mind me asking.”

She looks serious all of a sudden.

“No, it's fine,” she says. “There's a big courtyard, and I'm walking through it fast, almost running, like I'm late. There are lots of people around, people with backpacks and cups of coffee, so I think it's like a college campus or something. It's midmorning. I run up a set of stone steps, and at the top is a man in a gray suit. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he turns.”

She stops talking, staring off into the darkened theater like right now she's seeing it play out in her mind.

“And?” I prompt.

She glances over at me uncomfortably.

“I don't know. I think I'm supposed to deliver a message to him. There are words, there are things I am supposed to say, but I never can remember them.”

“They'll come to you, when the time is right,” I say.

I sound just like my mom.

What's comforting about Angela, I think as I get ready for bed that night, is that she reminds me that I'm not alone. Maybe I shouldn't feel alone, anyway, since I have Mom and Jeffrey, but I do, like I'm the only person in the world who has to face this divine purpose. Now I'm not. And Angela, in spite of her know-it-all nature, doesn't know what her purpose means any more than I do, and no amount of research or theorizing can help her. She simply has to wait for the answers. It makes me feel better, knowing that. Like I suck a smidge less.

“Hey, you,” says Mom, poking her head in my room. “Did you have a good time with Angela?” Her face is carefully neutral, the way it always is whenever the topic of Angela comes up.

“Yeah, we finished our project. We're doing it tomorrow. So I guess we won't be hanging out as much now.”

“Good, we'll have some time for flying lessons.”

“Awesome,” I deadpan.

She frowns. “I'm glad about Angela.” She comes into my room and sits next to me on the bed. “I think it's great that you can have an angel-blood friend.”

“You do?”

“Absolutely. You need to be careful, that's all.”

“Right, because everyone knows what a hooligan Angela is.”

“You feel like you can be yourself around Angela,” she says. “I get that. But angel-bloods are different. They're not like your normal friends. You never know what their real intentions might be.”

“Paranoid much?”

“Just be careful,” she says.

She doesn't even know Angela. Or her purpose. She doesn't know how fun and smart Angela is, all the cool things that I've learned from her.

“Mom,” I say hesitantly. “How long did it take you to get all the pieces for your purpose? When did you know—for absolute certain—what it was that you had to do?”

“I didn't.” Her eyes are mournful for a few seconds, and then her expression becomes guarded, her body going stiff all the way up to her face. She thinks she's already said too much. She's not going to give me anything else.

I sigh.

“Mom, why can't you just tell me?”

“I meant,” she continues like she didn't even hear my question, “that I didn't
ever
know for absolute certain. Not absolute. The whole process is usually very intuitive.”

We hear a blast of music as Jeffrey comes out of his room and tromps his huge feet down the hall and into the bathroom. When I look at Mom again she's her usual sunny self.

“Some of it you have to take on faith,” she says.

“Yeah, I know,” I say resignedly. A lump rises in my throat. I want to ask so many questions. But she never wants to answer them. She never lets me into her secret angel world, and I don't understand why.

“I should sleep,” I say. “Big British History presentation tomorrow.”

“All right,” she says.

She looks exhausted. Purple shadows under her eyes. I even notice a few fine lines in the corners I've never seen before. She might pass for mid-forties now, which is still good considering that she's a hundred and eighteen years old. But I've never seen her look so worn out.