by Blaise Lucey
He flushed as he floated the rest of the way down, coming to a cautious landing on the sidewalk. Claire caught his eye and gave him a smile that disappeared so quickly that he almost thought he’d imagined it.
Jim craned his neck so he could squint at the roof of Sunner Tower. It seemed almost impossibly high. Nora and Miles gathered next to him. A few feet away, Sydney paced back and forth, tugging at her braid.
“Is it true, what Shane said?” he asked, trying to pinpoint where Gunner and Leo were standing.
“Is what true?” Nora asked. “That stuff about the Tribunal having a double standard?” She shrugged. “I’ve heard stories that demons can get banished to Slag for stupid things, things that have nothing to do with the Pact, but those are all myths that the demons make up to make themselves feel legitimate about their cause.”
“Right,” Jim said. It was hard to know whether the angels or the demons were telling the whole truth about anything. Obviously Shane would exaggerate anything that could give credit to the demon’s cause. But what would happen if the Tribunal found out about him and Claire? Would it be worse for her? Would she be banished to Slag while he was left on the Field and stripped of his wings?
“There they are!” Miles exclaimed.
Everyone followed his finger. Leo was little more than a lump against the tattered clouds of the night sky, his white wings a blur. Gunner’s crimson wings reflected the tower’s lights, looking like two bloody teardrops. Jim held his breath. No one said a word. The street was silent. In the distance, he could hear traffic and murmured voices of people far away.
With almost no warning, Gunner and Leo both took steps from the ledge—and fell, their wings furled tight against their bodies. He heard Claire gasp sharply. He wanted Leo to win, but he didn’t want anything to happen to Gunner, for her sake.
Gunner and Leo fell at almost the same exact speed, shooting like bullets toward the earth, headfirst. Gunner’s dark hair wavered and rippled as the wind tore through it. Both of them had their wings tucked tightly behind their backs, accelerating faster and faster in complete free-fall.
“Let’s do it, Leo!” Miles shouted. Jim tried to join in, but his mouth was dry. He felt the urge to cover his eyes, but he knew everyone would laugh at him for it.
“Get him, Gunner!” Shane roared.
Gunner and Leo came into the flickering radiance of the streetlight, their faces grim and shiny with sweat. Thirty feet . . . twenty feet . . . fifteen feet . . .
“Leo’s going to break soon!” Maria said gleefully.
At what seemed to be the very last instant, Gunner’s wings burst out behind him, unfolding and catching the air, blasting him up a few feet. Leo did the same, but about a half-second later. Jim could barely believe it. Leo had beaten Gunner.
“You freaking did it!” Miles howled, jumping off the ground and flying to Leo, smacking his hand in a high five.
Leo thanked him breathlessly, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm. “It was about as easy as it looked,” he panted.
Jim flew up to join them. “Great job, man,” he managed, his voice almost a squeak.
“That was so freaking stupid!” Shane shouted, grabbing his hair. “No, no, no!” He didn’t even look at Gunner, who seemed to be in a state of shock that he had lost, drifting quietly to the sidewalk and staring at nothing.
“You!” Shane called, his finger aimed like a lance. “You, I challenge you to a Drop!”
Jim realized Shane was pointing at him. He turned pale and felt like the world suddenly shrank, as if there was only just him, Shane, and Shane’s pointing finger.
“What, too scared?” Shane challenged. “Gunner’s had his wings just as long as you have.”
Jim fluttered back to the sidewalk. He could feel everyone’s eyes burning into him. “I’m—” His palms were sweaty. No, he thought. He couldn’t do it. But he had to. “I’ll do it. I can do it.”
“I’ll do it for Jim,” Miles said, flapping to the sidewalk. “There’s no way he’s ready yet. Just like Gunner wasn’t ready.”
“No,” Jim said. “I—”
“Fine, Miles!” Shane said. “I’d rather it be you, anyway—I want it to really mean something when I win.”
Maria clasped her hand around Shane’s arm. “Babe, are you sure you want to—”
“Yes!” he snapped, tearing his arm away. “Gunner hasn’t had his wings for very long, he’s still training. But me? Me?” His voice grew frantic.
Maria stepped away from him, mumbling something.
Miles took a few steps toward Shane and stretched his arms. “You’re in a rush to lose, huh?”
“Just shut up!” Shane shrieked. “Let’s do this!”
Shane and Miles jumped into the air. The rest of the Feather and the Scale watched as they disappeared up to the roof. Sydney walked over to Nora, Leo, and Jim and gave Leo what looked like a bone-crushing hug. He grunted in surprise.
“Great job,” she said. She turned to the Scale. Claire and Gunner huddled by a bench. Claire hovered over her brother, her hand on his shoulder. Gunner sat on the bench, his head in his hands. Julia, Erik, and Ben looked back at the Feather evenly. “Are you guys sure you can handle two losses tonight? Gunner and Shane are kind of the leaders, right?” Sydney challenged. “What happens when they both lose to angels?”
“Leo got lucky, there’s no way an angel would beat a fully-trained demon,” Erik said. “Everyone knows that.”
“Yeah!” Maria added. “Shane is totally going to—”
“They’re falling!” Julia exclaimed.
Everyone turned as Miles and Shane jumped off the ledge, their shadows flitting past windows like wild ghosts. Miles bellowed a long, drawn-out cheer as he fell. Shane was locked in place, looking down at his feet as the pavement rushed up to meet them.
Halfway down, Miles stopped making any sound. The wind rushed through Jim’s ears, as if he was falling to the earth, too, as if the air was trying to tell him some big secret.
“They’re going fast,” Maria whispered. “Too fast!”
As they came closer to the ground, Jim could see that Miles and Shane had no expressions on their faces except grim determination. With thirty feet left to go, they showed no signs of slowing. Or moving their wings.
“Come on, Shane, come on,” Maria whispered. It sounded more like a prayer than a cheer.
Fifteen feet. Jim stopped breathing. The wind made him go deaf, screaming all around him. Ten feet. His heart hammered in his chest. Surely they would pull away now. Seven feet.
And then both figures hit the ground. One pulled away at the last second, screaming, and rolled away onto the sidewalk. The other figured stayed still, in a heap.
The silence lasted for an eternity.
Then everyone started moving at once. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” Sydney dashed to the screaming figure. Miles. Miles was the one screaming, Jim realized. Shane wasn’t. They had both hit the ground, but Miles had managed to spread his wings and turn away just in time. As for Shane—
“Shane!” Maria screamed, running to the body lying a few feet from Miles. “Shane!”
Shane didn’t move. Jim’s mind processed everything like an old machine, ticking out information like a typewriter. Shane wasn’t moving. Blood. There was so much blood.
Sydney propped Miles up against the flickering streetlight. She knelt next to him, looking at his leg. Miles had stopped screaming, but his body trembled, as if he was trying to keep all of the pain from bursting out to the surface. His ankle was bent at the wrong angle, swollen and twisted, but he didn’t even seem to feel it anymore. His eyes were fastened on Shane. The demons had crowded around him, but Jim could still see the body. Blood pooled out onto the cement, shining slick in the grainy streetlight. Shane’s eyes were open and blank, staring straight ahead.
Maria sc
reamed hysterically. Gunner slung his arm around her shoulders and brought her close, his eyes resting steadily on Shane’s body. Ben had already called someone on the phone. Nora and Sydney were talking to Miles in whispers. Jim saw Claire hovering by the bench where Gunner had been sitting. She peered in Shane’s direction, but didn’t go any closer. Before he could even think about it, Jim bolted past the demons into a narrow alley between the skyscraper and a convenience store. Sure enough, Claire saw him escape, and followed.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, pulling her into his arms.
“Sorry,” she echoed dully, looking at him with her chestnut-brown eyes. “Sorry for what?”
“If I had just done the Drop like Shane had wanted, then this wouldn’t have happened. He challenged me first.”
Claire shook her head and clasped his wrists in her hands. “No, no. Then that could have been you, Jim. And I don’t think I would have survived that. This is . . .” She kissed him once, a peck that left him aching for more, and then disappeared out of the alley, back to the demons.
Jim turned around to watch her go—and stepped back in shock. Sydney had appeared at the end of the alley.
“Jim,” she said coldly. People were screaming behind her.
“Sydney, I—I don’t—”
“You need to end that.” Her voice trembled in rage. “Now.”
What could he say? That he couldn’t help it? That he wouldn’t end it, even if it meant he was kicked out of the Feather?
She walked closer to him and jabbed her thumb in the direction of the shouting. “Don’t you understand how dangerous that is? It’s forbidden for angels to love demons. If she gets really unlucky, the Tribunal will find out and banish her to Slag. If she’s lucky, the demons will kill her first.” She took a breath. “Especially now. They’re not going to let this go, and anyone who’s not with them is going to be against them. She won’t get a second chance if they find out.”
“They’ll . . .” Jim tried to understand, but the words weren’t getting through his head. And how was Slag worse than death?
“They. Will. Kill. Her.” Sydney didn’t blink as she repeated the words. “Mayor Morrisey has powerful connections. Other demons are going to hear about this, and they’re going to come to Pearlton to fill the vacuum. Shane was bad, but he’s far from the worst. End it. If not for your sake, then hers.” She walked out of the alley to join the Feather.
Jim stood alone for what seemed like a lifetime, trying to figure out solution, some way out. He just hadn’t known how dangerous it could be for Claire. The Tribunal. The demons. Did she know what she was risking, for his sake? How could she? He went rigid as he realized what he had to do.
He would rather have her hate him and be alive, than dead because she loved him.
17
In the eerie silence of her room, Claire still heard Maria screaming and crying, as if she could call Shane back from the dead. She still heard the paramedics who had arrived on the scene asking if there had been “any warning signs” for Shane’s “suicide.” She still heard Gunner promising everyone in the Scale that they would get the angels back for what they had done. As if revenge was the antidote to grief.
Claire sat numbly on her bed and stared into the mirror next to her dresser, pretending that the girl looking back at her was another Claire, a Claire without a demon’s crimson wings poking out of her back. And then she saw movement in the window by her bed. A flash of white wings and blond hair.
Jim rapped on the window. Almost immediately, she felt alive again, electric. It felt like Jim had read her thoughts—he’d come when she needed him the most. She fumbled to open the window. “Jim,” she whispered in relief, reaching for him.
He ducked under the mirror and slid by without touching her.
Claire tried not to feel hurt. She reminded herself that everyone had just been traumatized by the Drop. She wasn’t sure how she felt, or even if she felt anything, but she knew she would never, ever be able to erase the image of Shane’s mangled and bloody body, his eyes staring blankly out into space.
Jim shuffled. “Claire,” he said weakly. “We need to talk.”
Her heart jumped. “Okay. About what?’
“The Drop,” he choked. “It . . . it made me realize . . . how brutal and rash demons are.” He avoided her eyes, looking determinedly at his feet. “And . . .”
“And?” she pressed, feeling like she was teetering on the edge of some cliff.
“And we just can’t do this. Sure, you’re okay now. But look what happened to Gunner. You’re going to turn into one of them, I know it.”
Claire couldn’t speak. Her jaw clamped shut and she stood completely still.
“I was wrong about . . . I . . .” He mumbled something.
“Wrong about what?” Anger and hurt whirled through her like a hurricane, making her dizzy. “Jim. Look at me!” Her voice dissolved into a quiet, almost desperate plea. This couldn’t be happening.
Jim lifted his chin, his eyes meeting hers. “I don’t love you, Claire.”
Claire collapsed on the bed, clutching the frame, hoping she had misheard. “You’re lying.”
“No,” he said, his voice getting louder. “You’re just going to turn into Gunner and there’s nothing more disgusting than what happens to demons. Look at how Shane risked everybody’s lives, just to prove some stupid thing. And you’re going to do that, too.”
“How can you say that!” Claire cried, tears painfully pricking against her eyes, her stomach rolling.
“Because,” he said through his teeth. “Because that’s just how demons are.”
“Are you—”
“Claire,” he said. Hearing him say her name in such a cold, detached voice made her feel sick. “It’s over. In fact, it never should have happened in the first place.”
She turned on him, a cold anger fueling her, protecting her, keeping her from breaking down. “Get. Out,” she said. “Out! Get out of my room!” She lunged at him, shoving him through the window and slamming it behind him. It caught the tip of his left wing.
Jim took off into the distance. Claire stood there, watching silently as a few white feathers drifted to the floor.
• • •
Claire couldn’t sleep. She lay in bed, shivering and replaying the conversation with Jim in her head. Kleenexes lay everywhere on the floor, the empty box upside-down. Her eyes were swollen and red-rimmed from crying. When she wasn’t thinking about Jim, she was haunted by Shane’s blank-eyed stare after the Drop, the gurney wheeling away his dead body. He had been so passionate to help the demons get into Glisten again that it had killed him. But was that kind of passion so bad? He had cared about the Scale, in his own way, even if he had been horrible to everyone who wasn’t a demon. None of the demons had betrayed her like Jim had. Shouldn’t that mean something?
Outside, the sun was starting to climb over the trees, burning gold and orange across the lake. Even that made her shake, because it reminded her of the sunset she had seen on the water tower with Jim, and the sketch of the two of them floating above the lake which he’d given her. She riffled through her desk for the sketch, then methodically tore it into tiny confetti before throwing them in the trash. She opened the window, trying to breathe in the air to stay calm, and noticed that the wind was growing stronger. The trees on the shore swayed violently, leaves spinning through the water. Above, the dawn sky faded as dark clouds knitted into a frowning gray canopy at unnatural speed, casting all of Lakewood in sudden darkness. The wind gathered at the center of the water, swirling in circles. A tornado, she realized. There was a tornado forming on the lake.
From the clouds, a funnel of wind descended, reaching into the water like a spear. Claire watched in shock as the tornado shot across the lake—right for her house. She scrambled back from the window. “Gunner?” she called, though she wasn’t sure where he and the others
were, or if they were even still here. She turned to run downstairs, shooting one last glance over her shoulder—and stopped in her tracks.
When it hit the dock on the shore, the tornado exploded into a thousand snakes of mist that dissipated into the sky. A man stepped out of the middle and started striding through her yard. He was dressed in a faded leather jacket and his thick, brown hair was wild and unkempt. As he made his way toward the house, the dark clouds broke behind him, revealing spiderweb strands of morning sunlight. He disappeared around the corner and there was no trace of the tornado behind him.
Claire rubbed at her sore eyes. Had she really just seen someone travel through a tornado? She ripped open her bedroom door. Her feet felt like stones, but she kept pushing herself forward. Something was going on, and she needed answers.
Downstairs in the kitchen, the demons were gathered around the man Claire had seen in the yard. He was imposingly tall, with murky, coal-black eyes and sharp features. By the way he turned his jaw as he looked at everyone, she could tell that he was somebody who was used to getting his way. His wings were a dark red, with streaks of black.
All the other demons were talking excitedly over one another. It took Claire a minute to figure out that they were trying to tell this new demon about what had happened to Shane. The man only seemed to be half-listening. When his eyes raked over her, it felt like an icicle shot through her. Before she knew what had happened, he had cut between Erik, Julia, and Ben to reach out for her.
“Claire Morgan,” he said in a deep voice. “I’ve been waiting to meet you for a long time.” He didn’t take his eyes from her. She slipped her hand into his and he practically crushed it in a handshake. “I’m Carlos,” he said, and finally released her hand.
Carlos. Shane and Gunner had mentioned him before.
“I’ve been meaning to come to Pearlton for some time,” he said, looking around at the group. Everyone had gone quiet. Gunner seemed to be the most impressed. His face lit up every time Carlos said a word, like he had just met his personal hero. “But Shane’s death has expedited that process. This Scale needs a leader, and it’s more important now than ever. There’s a Portal to Glisten somewhere in this town.”