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I pulled a knee up to my chest. “So even though being psychic is an angel thing, you don’t think it’s weird?”
He shrugged. “Well, the angels would never use it to help anyone,” he said, getting ready to aim again. “So I don’t think you have much in common with them there. ”
Warmth flowered within me. “That’s . . . a nice thing to say. Thank you. ”
Without answering, Alex snapped his arm and threw. He missed and rolled his eyes, pushing the quarter back at me. “That’s what I get for talking to you. ”
He won in the end, anyway, a hundred to ninety-four. “Best two out of three?” he suggested, jiggling the quarter in his hand.
“You have got to be kidding,” I said. “I’ll be seeing quarters in my sleep. ”
He laughed. “Yeah, I’m kidding. ” He tossed the quarter into the cup. “I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead. ”
I got up from the chair and dropped onto Alex’s bed. There were a couple of pieces of pizza left. “Do you want one of these?” I asked, opening up the box.
“Thanks. ” He reached across from the table, and I handed him one. I wasn’t even hungry, really; there’s just something about cold pizza.
For the rest of the night, we watched a movie that was on. Halfway through it, Alex moved to the bed, stretching out on his stomach a few feet away from me. It was an action film, and he kept rolling his eyes, muttering things like, “Man, you would never do that . . . Is this guy trying to get killed, or what?”
I was sitting cross-legged, with my elbows on my knees. “Would you be quiet, please? I’m trying to watch this. ”
Shaking his dark head, Alex fell silent as the hero got ready to confront the bad guys, sliding his gun straight into the waistband of his jeans. “Hey, he’s not using a holster,” I said, glancing at Alex’s on the dresser.
He laughed out loud. “Yeah, I guess he must want to shoot something off. It’d be so great if these things were true to life — the next scene would show him at the hospital, like, clutching himself in agony. ”
I laughed, too, imagining it. “OK, it’s a pretty crappy movie. But we’ve still got to see how it ends. ”
When it was finally over, Alex yawned, reaching for the remote. “Good, the world’s been saved and the guy’s still in one piece somehow. Maybe we should go to bed; it’s after midnight. ”
I started yawning, too. “Stop that — you’re setting me off. ” I stood up; my legs felt stiff and creaky.
“Sorry, I guess it’s contagious. ” He snapped the TV off and looked down again, fiddling with the remote. “You know, it sounds stupid, but this has been a good day,” he said. His cheeks reddened. “I’m usually in these places on my own. It’s sort of nice to have someone to hang out with. ”
My heart tightened. It sounded as if his life had been so incredibly lonely these last two years. “It’s been nice for me, too,” I said shyly.
And the weird thing was, it was true. Even though I’d been sitting in a motel room in Tennessee, today had felt — well, not normal, obviously, but a welcome reprieve from everything that had been going on. Like I’d been able to just put my thoughts on hold for a day. And I knew a lot of it had simply been being with Alex. I’d never really been alone with a boy like this before; I’d never dreamed that it could feel so natural.
“I’m, um . . . I’m really glad that we’re talking now,” I said.
Alex didn’t look up for a moment. When he did, he smiled at me, and I saw that same faintly troubled look in his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “Me, too. ”
That night the dream came back.
“You got my back, bro?”
“Got your back. ”
He’d just turned sixteen and was on a hunt with Jake and a couple of the other AKs in Los Angeles, City of Angels. The jokes always abounded when they were in this place, and, in fact, angels did seem to like it there — on this latest trip, they’d spent over a week getting fixes on angels and hunting them down, killing ten so far. It was a lot, even for Los Angeles . . . because, although no one had realized it yet, the Invasion had occurred. Everything in Alex’s life was about to change, like a spinning coin.
At the time, though, it had just seemed like an unusually busy hunt. The tenth angel they’d brought down had been right outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre; the angel had been about to feed on a tourist taking a photo of Marilyn Monroe’s famous prints in the cement. Even with a silencer, Alex would have balked at pulling his weapon on the crowded street, but Juan, who’d taken over as lead when Cully had his accident, had a genius for somehow not being spotted in plain view. In a matter of seconds, the angel was fragments of light, gently drifting away on the air. The tourist, unsuspecting, snapped his shot and then moved on to Charlton Heston.
“Now, that was just pure class,” said Jake as the four of them moved away through the crowd. He slapped Juan on the shoulder, winking at Alex and Rita. “So that’s ten — time to celebrate, right?”
Juan gave him a sideways look. He was short, but solid muscle, with brown eyes and thick black hair. “What’s this? Celebrate how? You mean miniature golf or something, right?”
Alex laughed out loud. “Miniature golf? Come on, Juan. Se realista. ”
“You’re both underage,” said Juan, shaking his head. Unlike Cully, he actually seemed to care about this.
Alex and Jake rolled their eyes at each other. Alex hadn’t been seriously challenged in a bar in almost a year, and Jake was hardly ever questioned. It wasn’t only their fake IDs; the two brothers just looked older than they were. They were both hard with muscle from working out all the time back at the camp, but apart from that, Alex knew that years spent on the hunt had given them a look that simply didn’t belong to teenagers.
“Underage, right,” he said, shouldering his way through the crowded sidewalk. “But not too underage to give us guns. ”
“Yeah, seriously,” said Jake. “You mean we get to put our lives on the line and we don’t even get a beer for it? Eso no está bien, man. I mean it. ”
“Oh, why not, Juan?” said Rita. She was in her thirties, tall and lanky with a no-nonsense ponytail. “We’re heading back tomorrow, anyway. And you know what it’ll be like then — no fun for a hundred miles. ”
Finally Juan blew out a breath and shrugged. “What can I do with you all twisting my arm? But if you two are arrested, I am just leaving you in the jail to rot. Los zopilotes podrían limpiar tus huesos. ¿Entiendes?”
“Sí, sí,” said Alex with a grin.
“Now, that’s more like it,” said Jake. The two brothers gave each other a high five, clenching hands briefly. Though Alex wasn’t as into bars as Jake was, the thought of a night out on the town was still a welcome one. Things had felt pretty grim since their father’s death five months before; this would be the first time since then that either of them had really relaxed.
As it turned out, the night was a good one, though the next morning Alex felt like death as Rita nudged him awake. “Hey. Move it,” she said, shoving him with her foot. They had only gotten one motel room to save money; he and Jake were both sprawled out on the floor in sleeping bags.
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