by Chloe Garner
She leaned against the door, breathing hard, and then went out into her room.
Her suitcases were there at the end of the bed and Lara’s jewelry box was on the vanity.
She was home.
It was maybe a bit shocking, but she’d known that this would be it; she’d even called it home to the furlings, when she’d spoken to them. It was clean - and it would be cleaner, when she got done with it - and it was safe, and it was hers in a way that Robbie hadn’t even tried to fight. She wondered if he wanted to, or if this was where he wanted her to be, if she was going to be the angel. Surely it made his life better, if she was here keeping the furlings away.
Right?
She was confused. Didn’t know if her logic made sense or if she was throwing huge gaps in and missing them.
She found her brother in the kitchen. It smelled like hot oil and salt.
“There was a bag of frozen french fries in the freezer,” he said.
“Okay,” she answered, and he pointed at the door, not looking at her.
“Walk,” he said. “Be back before the stars come out.”
She nodded, feeling like a child but appreciating that he would tell her what to do, because right now she had no idea.
She went to the door.
Opened it.
Went out.
The plants were alive with noise, sounds that she didn’t remember them having made before.
She looked carefully, and she could see the furlings creeping around through the underbrush, peering at her through leaves and vines. Chaos.
They were chaos.
She shook her head, deciding that they didn’t matter, and she started down the driveway.
There was her car, with the door dented in and a tire under it.
It didn’t run.
That was a lifetime ago.
The sidewalk was marked with cracks for three houses down, then it finally began to even out. She put her hands into her jeans’ pockets and huddled against her shoulders, still feeling cold, but appreciating the sun. She walked toward the main street, over to the grocery store, where she discovered that she’d gone out without her purse and had no money, so she couldn’t buy a soda.
That wasn’t like her at all.
Regardless, she kept going, following the main road and walking on the shoulder until the sun got low enough that the colors in the sky started to change, then she started back.
She was hurrying by the time she got back to Robbie’s street, feeling like she was on the verge of breaking curfew. Robbie was sitting on the porch waiting for her, and he got up to get the door as she came up the walkway.
“Sorry,” she said, and he shrugged.
“It’s okay.”
She went in and sat down on the side couch and he put a plate of french fries in her lap, going to sit on the main couch, where he leaned out over his knees and watched her, resting his elbows on his knees. She ate.
At first she’d been skeptical; fries had so little nutritional value that she only rarely ate them, but the hot salty oil was exactly what she wanted, after she had the first one, and she devoured the entire plate, letting Robbie go back and refill it twice before she put it on the coffee table and sat back.
“What happens now?” she asked, and Robbie shrugged.
“We can play cards or we can watch TV. You don’t go to bed until you’re tired.”
She nodded.
“What did Lara do?”
He shook his head.
“She just took a bath, but she’d been doing this for years before I met her.”
She frowned.
“I didn’t mean to be a burden,” she said and he sighed.
“I know.”
She closed her eyes, then looked around again, feeling like she wasn’t alone.
“You didn’t know,” Robbie said, turning on the television without looking at it. “I always did.”
“I could have helped you,” Lizzie said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t ever want this for you.”
“I wanted to help,” she said and he shook his head, putting his feet up on the table and turning his attention to the TV. She sighed, frowning at him, then pulling her shoes off and curling up on the couch so that she could see, too. There wasn’t much on, but he finally settled on something and they managed to get through a few hours like that. When she looked up, the house had gone completely dark, the high skylights in the front room tinted just dark enough that she couldn’t see the stars.
She stood and went to turn on lights.
“I want to go to the next battle,” she said, coming back to sit on her couch.
“No,” Robbie answered.
“I know you’re just taking care of me, and I appreciate it, but I want to know.”
He shook his head.
“They killed Lara,” he said. “You aren’t going out in the middle of something like that until I know you’re ready.”
“You aren’t ever going to think I’m ready,” Lizzie said and he nodded. Well, she’d at least expected him to argue with her.
“Robbie,” she said. “Robbie.” Finally he turned his head to look at her. “Am I ever going to go home?”
He twisted his mouth to the side.
“To get your stuff. If you want to.”
She nodded. That’s what she’d expected.
“This is where I belong, now. And I have a job to do.”
He gave her an exasperated look.
“I don’t want you here.”
“I know,” she said. “But that doesn’t change anything, does it?”
He looked miserable at her, but he didn’t argue.
“I’m going with you next time,” Lizzie said again. “I’ll stay out of the way, but I want to see it, this time.”
He shrugged.
“We’ll see what Trevor says,” he answered and she nodded. That was a fair compromise.
She went to the kitchen and found a box of ice cream, coming back with two spoons and sitting down next to Robbie. He ate ice cream with her for another hour before she felt sick and put it away, then the door opened.
Trevor went directly to his chair and sat down.
“They’ll be here in the morning,” he said.
“It’s too early,” Robbie answered. Lizzie shifted into the corner of the couch, where she could watch both of them at the same time.
“They aren’t going to stay away,” Trevor said and Robbie shook his head.
“I can’t turn you away, but I don’t want all of them here.”
“If you don’t let them in, they’re just going to wait in the front yard. They all want to see her.”
“It’s fine,” Lizzie said, and Robbie’s head snapped to look at her.
“They’re dangerous,” he said and she shrugged.
“Maybe. I don’t know that they are. But they need me.”
He squinted, and she nodded.
“I get it,” she said. “I finally get it. And I can’t fix them, but I can help make it not as bad. So that’s what I want to do.”
“If they get excited…” Robbie said.
“What?” she asked. “Are they going to get violent? The way you did all those years?”
“Yes,” Robbie said. “That’s exactly what they’re going to do.”
“Do you think I have no idea what I’m doing?” she asked. “They’re different. I get that. But I work with people who have a really uncomfortable relationship with reality. Waiting isn’t going to make it any better, and they need to know that I’m here and I’m…”
“The angel,” Trevor supplied. She hadn’t been ready to say it. Not out loud, not in the context of lots of people knowing - believing - it.
She wasn’t the angel.
That made no sense.
It was a strange mythology created around a cult of personality by the man sitting in the corner.
She knew that.
And yet.
She was the angel, and she kn
ew that his friends, her people, need to know it. Relied on it as a staple of survival.
“Let them come,” she said. “We’ll make it work.”
Robbie sighed and threw up his hands.
“We have to take this slowly. She’s going to get herself killed. They’re going to kill her.”
“The furlings don’t kill angels just because they’re bored,” Trevor said. “You know why they killed Lara.”
That struck home, and Robbie stood wordlessly and left.
Trevor watched him for a moment, then came to sit next to Lizzie.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Like I don’t know who I am anymore,” she said and he nodded.
“I can see that. It’s not so bad. We do have a lot of fun.”
She frowned.
“You’re mindlessly destructive.”
She was allowed to say that now. She was one of them.
“Not mindlessly,” Trevor said, faux-insulted. He grinned.
She rubbed her eyes, and he stood.
“Do you want to go to bed?”
She nodded.
“I think it’s time.”
He held out a hand and she looked up suspiciously.
“And exactly what part of my going to bed do you think you’re going to have?”
There was mirth in his eyes.
“I’ve slept in that bed an awful lot more than you have.”
Somehow that hadn’t occurred to her yet. She shook her head.
“Not even your brand of sexy is going to get you into my bed tonight.”
“You think I’m sexy?” he asked and she rolled her eyes.
“Sexy as hell. Get out.”
“How about reason?” he asked. “Will that get me into your bed?”
She raised an eyebrow.
“No, but I’d love to hear what you think passes for reason.”
He grinned, pulling her to her feet. He was stronger than she remembered him being. Either that or she had really lost a lot of her own capability.
“They know you,” he said, putting an arm around her waist and tucking her in close against his side. “They’ve always known you, but tonight for the first time in probably a really, really long time, they know that you know them. And that’s an invitation for fun. It’s what I’d do, and I don’t know anyone who thinks like them as much as I do. You need sleep, and you need someone who knows the furlings well enough to keep them from messing with you while you sleep. So if you want to wake up tomorrow morning without knots in your hair and permanent marker on your face, you want me watching over you.”
“Furlings are like drunk frat guys?” she asked. He frowned.
“I’d say it more that drunk frat guys are like furlings, but then I really wouldn’t know.”
“You’d watch over me?” she asked, feeling very frail in a way she didn’t like to own as vocally as that but at the same time the idea was like home. He nodded.
“As long as you want me.”
“You can’t make that promise,” she said, and he shook his head.
“No, but I wish I could.”
She nodded. It was enough.
“Come on,” she said, and they started down the hallway.
She woke up once. He was having a sword fight with a furling in the window sill, with a plunger doubling as a sword.
She went back to sleep.
***
The morning dawned sunny and warm, with a clean breeze coming in through the window. Trevor was sitting on the floor, his head tipped against the corner, drowsing.
“Some watchdog you are,” she said, sitting up and stretching.
“Sun came up,” he yawned, getting up and getting into bed with her like he belonged there. She didn’t tell him no.
He put an arm around her shoulders and she settled down lower in the bed, resting her head on his shoulder.
“How bad?” she asked. He shrugged.
“They were playful,” he said. “It doesn’t get hard until they’ve got real malice going on.”
She nodded.
Looked at the ceiling.
There was a furling up in the corner, hanging there like a bat.
“Get out,” she said. It yawned at her.
“Been there all night,” Trevor said. “I hit him with a stick a few times, but he seems pretty harmless, for now.”
“Do they have gender?” Lizzie asked.
“If they do, they aren’t telling,” Trevor said with humor in his voice. She smiled and turned her face in against him.
“I guess they don’t reproduce traditionally,” she said, and he laughed, his chest shaking against her head.
“You have no idea.”
She sighed.
“So what happens now?”
“You go out to the living room and you meet your pack.”
“My pack,” she echoed and he nodded, resting his chin on her head.
“Yup.”
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said. And do her hair. And her makeup. And maybe go through Lara’s jewelry once more.
If she was going to be meeting her pack, after all.
He let her go, but didn’t get up. She turned back to look at him, his head resting against the headboard of the bed that she had always associated as hers - what other visitors were Lara and Robbie going to have, after all? - and she shook her head.
“Mmm,” she said. He grinned.
“They can wait,” he said.
She found his leather jacket hanging from a pillar at the end of the bed and she pulled it down, holding it to her face and breathing the smell of it, then tossing it to him.
“I love your optimism,” she said with a wink and went into the bathroom.
She washed her hair and shaved her legs, then brushed her teeth and flossed, getting dressed after several minutes of mild despair, looking at the clothes she had to pick from. She blew her hair dry and then went into the room to sit at the vanity to do her makeup. Trevor didn’t appear to have moved.
“Comfy?” she asked.
“Very,” he answered, shifting to lay on his side to watch her.
“Did you sleep at all?” she asked. He shook his head.
“I like night,” he answered and she grinned at him in the mirror.
“I remember.”
She wanted to go curl against him, make him put his mouth against hers and tune out the world, but if she opened that door, it wasn’t going to close again.
And there were probably people out in the living room waiting for her.
She drew a deep breath and held it, looking at herself in the mirror.
What was an angel supposed to look like?
“They don’t care, you know,” Trevor said. “I mean, really, really don’t care.”
“I know,” she muttered. She just felt like she had big shoes to fill. Lara had been pure elegance.
“It doesn’t matter,” Trevor said, and she looked back at him. He shrugged. “You don’t have to be her. I met an angel in New York with clothespins down the backs of her arms and a knife in her hair. Some of them are like Lara and some of them aren’t.”
“But how many have any of them known?” Lizzie asked, and he nodded.
“Are you sure you want to try to live in her shadow permanently?” he asked, and she turned all the way around in her chair.
“No,” she said, and the corner of his mouth twisted up.
“That’s my girl.”
She shook her head.
“Not yours,” she said, turning back to the mirror and mussing her hair back to the way it normally fell. She didn’t mind going out there in makeup. That was an everyday thing. But grooming like this? He was right. That wasn’t who she was.
He laughed and she smiled at him in the mirror again. His smile widened, showing teeth, and his eyes sparkled. Once more, she wanted to spill into the bed and just tangle with him, so she stood.
“Let’s go,” she said. He s
ighed and rolled onto the floor, sliding into his jacket like a second skin, shrugging it up onto his shoulders and tipping his head at her.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
He came and took her hand, fingers through hers, and she nodded, opening the door. Robbie was leaned against the closed door to his room, waiting for them.
“No one’s going to like the angel being with the demon,” he said.
“I’ve never cared what any of them thought about my decisions before,” Trevor answered, shifting Lizzie closer, and she elbowed him away.
“You can play your power games with someone else. I don’t belong to you any more than I belong to him.”
His hand was up tangled in her hair with a reflex like a snake and he pulled her in close, sucking air through his teeth. She met his eyes and his mean grin with un-concern.
“And that’s what I like about you,” he said. The rush of heat from her core threatened to demolish her, but she stuck a knuckle between his ribs and pushed hard. He bowed around it for a second then let her go.
She wanted to bite him.
She’d never had that impulse before, but there it was. And she suspected that he could see it in her eyes, and he’d only narrowly decided against pushing her to see if he could get her to do it. Robbie sighed dramatically and pushed himself off the door.
“My sister isn’t Cory,” he said, walking past them.
“Much better,” Trevor said, then bobbed his head to the side to look at Robbie’s back. “But don’t tell her I said that.”
“Now you’re in trouble,” Lizzie said, and he grinned at her.
“Am I?”
“Stop being so happy about it.”
He grinned wider and she shook her head, letting him wrap his arm around her neck for just a second before she ducked out and pushed him on ahead of her.
“If you can’t behave…” she warned to the sound of his laugh.
The living room was full. Hooligans perched on every piece of furniture in view, including the coffee table and the counters, and Sybil stood with her nose against the back door, tapping it with her toe. Lizzie looked at her for a long time, then made a shooing motion at the woman in her seat on the side couch next to Dennis. She hadn’t seen her before, and she wondered if that one was Cory.
Trevor’s seat was empty.