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But it felt as if my lifeline had just been cut away.
I didn’t think I would ever sleep, but I must have dropped off finally. The next thing I knew, it was around three in the morning and the car had stopped. Drowsily, I opened my eyes. At first I couldn’t remember where I was, and then it all came crashing back. I sat up, pushing my hair off my face. We were parked by the side of a road; it was dark.
“Where are we?” I said.
Alex was adjusting his seat so that it leaned back. “Pennsylvania. ” Lying down, he stretched his legs out.
I gazed at the shadows beyond the car. As my eyes adjusted to the moonlight, I could make out pine trees on the side of the road. Everything seemed so still, like we were in the middle of nowhere. I rubbed my arms. “Is it safe to stop?”
Alex gave a soft, derisive snort: obviously safe was relative now. “I pulled off the main road,” he said in a monotone. “I’ve hardly seen any cars for hours. ”
I could just see his face; he had his eyes closed. His lips looked almost sculpted in the silvery light. “What about angels?” I asked.
“Only you. ”
It felt as if he had slapped me. “That’s not funny,” I said in a low voice.
“I wasn’t trying to be,” he retorted. “I’ve been scanning for angels, and each time I did, I saw yours. ”
Without answering, I lay back on my own seat, covering myself with my jean jacket. My angel. As if it was a part of me. I shuddered, pushing the thought away. Staring up at the Mustang’s ceiling, I studied the round plastic dome of the interior light.
“Can I ask you something?” I said after a few minutes.
“Mm,” he grunted.
“How come no one else can see these things? In the church, it was like Beth and the other new members were the only ones who even saw the angel, apart from you and me. ”
Alex sighed; I could feel him rousing himself to answer. “Angels can’t be seen in their ethereal form except by the person they’re feeding from,” he said. “I can see them because I’ve been trained. And I guess you can see them because of what you are. ”
“You really worked for the CIA, didn’t you?” I said quickly, not wanting to think about the what you are side of things.
“Yeah. ”
“How old are you?” I asked, looking over at him. He had his arms crossed loosely over his chest; his dark hair appeared black in the moonlight.
There was a pause; I could feel his reluctance to answer. “Seventeen,” he said.
“So — you must have started pretty young,” I said, feeling dazed. “What about your brother? Does he work for them, too?”
It was the wrong question. Immediately, I could sense the tension coming off him, and my own muscles clenched in response. “Would you let me get some sleep?” he said coldly.
Something about his brother. Suddenly I had an awful feeling that the brother might be dead, and I swallowed, wishing that I hadn’t mentioned him. Though actually, I suspected that almost anything I had said would be the wrong thing, with the unfriendly vibes Alex was giving off. Were we going to have to make the whole drive to New Mexico like this, with him barely speaking to me?
I hesitated, but I had to say it. “You don’t trust me, do you?”
A long silence. Finally he said, “I don’t trust anybody. ”
“Yeah, but especially me. Because —” I could hardly get the words out, could hardly bear to think them. “Because of what I am. ”
A muscle in Alex’s cheek moved; apart from that, he lay motionless. When he spoke again, his voice was hard. “Look, I don’t really want to talk to you if I don’t have to, OK? You’re a half angel; part of you is just like they are. I don’t think we have all that much to say to each other. ”
I was glad that his eyes were closed, because mine were suddenly full of tears. “Fine,” I said, feeling more alone than ever. “Sorry to bother you in that case. It won’t happen again. ”
I rolled over onto my side with my back to him, pulling my jacket over my shoulders. I wasn’t sure why I’d expected anything different; he’d already made it clear that he didn’t want anything to do with me. But even so, it hurt. A lot, actually. My chest ached as I lay there, staring out at the faint shadows of the pines and wishing that they were the arborvitae trees in our back yard.
And that I’d never, ever given Beth Hartley a reading.
When Alex woke, it wasn’t quite dawn yet; through the car windows he could see that the sky was a pale, pure blue, hovering between night and day. He scraped his hand across his face and lay without moving for a moment.
Willow was still asleep on the seat beside him. Turning his head, Alex took in the gentle rise and fall of her breathing, the blond hair that spilled across one shoulder, the slim curve of her body under her jean jacket. He shook his head slightly. Jesus. If he had felt drawn to Willow when he saw her making coffee in her kitchen, it was nothing compared to actually being close to her, traveling with her. He tried to remember if he’d ever felt this attracted to anyone before and couldn’t. There had been a few girls in the past — brief encounters while he was on the road — but now he could hardly remember what they looked like. Though he’d barely even touched Willow, he didn’t think he could ever forget her face, no matter what happened to him.
And she was a half angel.
Alex let out a breath. God, what did that even mean? It shouldn’t be possible, and yet here she was, in the car beside him. Curled up asleep, she looked so completely human. But she wasn’t. If he moved his consciousness up to the ethereal plane, he knew that he’d see the image of Willow’s angel again, calm and serene as it hovered over her. The same angel that had burst into life yesterday when she’d been under attack . . . and that looked almost exactly like the beings that had killed everyone he’d ever cared about.
Unbidden, his father’s death flashed in Alex’s mind; he’d died gasping in agony on a hunt in northern California. Lost in his madness by then, Martin should never have gone on a hunt in the first place but had insisted, striding off on his own with a rifle. The angel had seen him and attacked before the rest even knew it was there, ripping Martin’s life energy away with its long, elegant fingers. They had heard the struggle and come running, but they’d been too late; his father had died from a massive heart attack in minutes, clutching his chest and writhing on the ground. Then, just five months later, it was Jake’s turn. And his mother’s death, years earlier, was what had started everything.
He gazed at Willow. The thought of angel-human offspring was repugnant to him; it was just completely wrong. But what really scared him was how drawn he felt to Willow, anyway. Simply looking at her was enough to make him forget what she was and want to just . . . talk to her. Touch her. Get to know her. He seriously couldn’t deal with it. She was half angel; what the hell was he doing? What he had told her the night before was true; he didn’t want to speak to her any more than he had to — because he had a feeling that if he let his guard down, he’d forget that half of her was like the creatures that had killed his family. And he couldn’t allow himself to forget that, not ever. It was far easier to keep Willow at a distance, “barking orders” at her, as she’d put it yesterday.
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