by Blaise Lucey
Carlos turned off the TV and crossed his arms. “Nice work. I assume the angels swooped in?”
The Scale nodded.
“Perfect. As long as you keep distracting them, I can keep looking for the Portal without interference. While you were out there, I waited by Lumen’s house. She sent the Feather to the river, but she flew somewhere else. Somewhere around Pearlton High School. I haven’t found anything yet, but I know that I will. Now get some rest, you’ve earned it.”
“No!” Claire snapped, her mind still seared with Jim and Sydney, like the image had been stamped onto her heart like a brand, burning hot.
Carlos raised an eyebrow. The rest of the Scale gaped at her. There was a good chance she was the first person to defy Carlos, ever. She didn’t care. She needed more. She had lost that feeling of power and she wanted it back. Now. “Tossing humans overboard is just a game,” she said, staring at Carlos evenly, not breaking his gaze. “We need to do more.”
Carlos regarded her for a moment. She thought she saw a twinkle of pride in her father’s eyes. “What did you have in mind?”
“The angels are probably still flying back from the city. They cut our time at the cruise ship short. I want to fight fire with fire.” She leaned closer and told the Scale her new plan.
24
“I still can’t believe you hit some of those humans,” Jim said to Leo, flying with the others back to Sydney’s house.
“What else was I supposed to do?” Leo exclaimed. “I just gave them a little friendly tap. Otherwise, they’ll go yapping about how someone with wings saved them. This way, they’ll think it was a dream of a guardian angel, and if they tell anyone they’ll just get laughed at.”
Jim shrugged. His arms still hurt from lifting people out of the water and carrying them to the beach. Leo had been the one to smack them all in the head, until Sydney reasoned that most of them were too drunk to be taken as credible sources of information anyway. “The police and reporters will think strong winds carried them overboard and they’ll think the same winds pushed them to shore,” she said.
“The Pearlton Feather,” Leo had proclaimed. “Heroically breaking wind.”
Jim had laughed, but Nora and Sydney had glared at both of them and they’d gone quiet. Without Miles acting as the resident jokester, the Feather felt empty, less light-hearted and more grim. Jim remembered Miles’s face when they had left him behind. The reality of his injury was setting in for everyone. It would be months before Miles was back to his full strength. And at this rate, who knew what would happen by then?
The crown of trees circling the lake came into view. Clouds hovered in the sky, gray blurs backlit by starlight. As they got closer, Jim noticed that one of the houses was growing brighter than the others, burning a bright orange in the night. Just when he was about to ask Sydney what the light was, he saw the smoke.
“Sydney!” he cried, pointing frantically. “Your house!”
Sydney gasped. “The Scale!” she shouted. “Quick, my mom could be in there!”
“Miles!” Nora shrieked.
The four of them dove down over the trees. As they got closer, the roar of flames filled the air. Sydney’s house was consumed by fire, smoke billowing from the open windows to twist like gray snakes into the sky. Nora landed on the porch outside the living room and ripped open the door.
“Miles!” she screamed.
“Nora, don’t!” Sydney reached for her.
But Nora jumped into the blaze, flying above the flames and into the smoke. Jim hesitated for a moment, then burst into the house after Nora, hearing Sydney shout his name behind him.
Inside, the churning smoke was billowing into noxious clouds. The staircase had collapsed, and the couches and the rug had curled into blackened husks. There were empty gas canisters scattered about the room. This fire was no accident.
Nora flitted back down from the stairs, coughing into her hand. “He’s not up there!” she screamed.
A beam above them groaned loudly as fire rippled across it. Jim looked up at it, then down at the flames licking at his feet. They probably had about a minute before the whole house collapsed. He hovered over the trail of flames that crackled along the hallway rug and ducked into Sydney’s room, then General Lumen’s. There was no sign of Miles or Lumen in either.
“Jim!” He heard Nora’s voice in the kitchen, and shot out to find her.
“He’s here!” Nora crouched on the marble counter in the kitchen, yanking Miles up by the arms from some hiding spot by the cupboards. Miles was conscious, but barely. His head lolled back and forth. In the living room, there was a huge crash as a beam caved in, taking part of the roof with it.
“The front door!” Jim helped Nora carry Miles through the kitchen. Both of them were coughing hard. Jim felt like his lungs were going to burst. Just as he was about to lunge for the door’s handle, a shudder ran through the ceiling and the walls, like an earthquake. He looked up, puzzled.
“No!” Nora tugged him back just as the ceiling in front of him caved in, burying the front door in an avalanche of plaster, dust, and smoke. A splintered wooden beam stuck out from the wreckage like a broken bone, glowing with red-orange flames.
Jim shielded his eyes with his forearm, coughing and squinting into the cloud of black smoke. “We have to get back to the living room!” he choked. He felt dizzy, unable to flap his wings. He wondered in an almost abstract sort of way how much it would hurt to burn alive. There was a ringing in his ears, blackness prickling along the edges of his vision.
“Get to the floor!” Nora urged.
Jim followed her lead, dropping to his hands and knees. The smoke chugged above them, swirling like dragon’s breath. The heat made his skin prickle. Something else was creaking around them, but Jim wasn’t sure what it was. All he knew was that they had to get out of the house as fast as possible. He grabbed Miles’s right wrist and Nora grabbed his left. They dragged Miles along with them to the hallway, keeping their heads under the heaviest smoke. The carpet was blackened with ash and crunched under their feet. Something collapsed in General Lumen’s room, erupting with a deafening boom that echoed throughout the house.
Nora looked toward the source of the noise. He thought he saw tears at the corners of her eyes.
“We can do this!” Jim told her. The edge of the hallway leading to the living room was alight with flames. “We’re going to have to fly through it,” Jim said. “Are you—”
Part of the roof sagged and tumbled into the living room with a resounding crash. The fire roared over it. Nora screamed and started to sob beside him. Jim couldn’t see the porch anymore, just smoke and wreckage. Behind them, the fire had traveled from the broken ceiling in the kitchen and licked at the other end of the hall.
“Take my hand!” Jim commanded, reaching for Nora and scooping up Miles in his left arm. Nora grabbed his hand, closing her eyes. With all the strength he had left, Jim jumped and flew at the same time, carrying Nora and Miles along like two dead weights.
They spun through the flames burning down the doorway. Jim strained to keep all three of them above the fire in the living room, trying to carry them above the wood and shingles and plaster that burned all around them. “Nora, you’ve got to help me with this!” he said.
Nora weakly flapped her own wings, crying and grappling at his hand. She screamed Miles’s name.
They flew into the cloud of smoke. Jim held his breath, knowing that if he breathed it in, he would get dizzy, maybe even pass out, and all three of them would die. His eyes burned mercilessly and his lungs stung. He couldn’t see anything in front of him. No matter how high he flew, the smoke was everywhere, dragging him down, wrapping around him like hands made out of shattered glass.
He let himself take one, sharp breath, then did the only thing he could think of: dove down as fast as he could and hoped that he hit the porch door, instead of the ro
aring fire below. His vision was turning black, his strength draining away. His shoulder felt like it was being ripped from its socket. With one final tug, Jim dove, pulling Miles and Nora with him, past the remnants of the living room and the fire crackling in his ears.
Everything howled in his ears as the suffocating blackness took over. Then something shattered around him and he realized he’d pulled them through a window. Jim rolled across the porch and slammed hard into the railing on the far side, dazed and spluttering. His head was spinning. Somewhere beside him, he heard Nora hacking through a cough and Leo calling Miles’s name.
Jim winked in and out of consciousness. Someone scooped him up, carried him through the air, and placed him on cement. Jim’s skin screamed with memories of the fire and he coughed violently, the smoke still tangled in his lungs. He watched with half-opened eyes as the deep blue clouds of evening passed overhead, feeling like he was watching another universe drift by him.
A cool hand found his forehead, and he blinked at a fuzzy face. “Sydney?”
Her face lit up when she saw that he was awake. “You were quite the hero back there.”
He coughed again, doubling over as he scrabbled onto his elbows. “Nora . . . Miles . . .?”
Sydney’s smile vanished. “Nora is okay. Miles is . . . He’s . . .” She looked away.
Jim sat up straighter, looking around in a panic. “What? He’s what?”
Sydney covered her face in one hand and pointed with the other. A few feet away, Nora was hovering over Miles and crying softly. Her clothes were fried around the edges and burnt away in places, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was too busy mourning. But . . . but Miles was alive. Jim could see his chest rising and falling as he breathed.
Slowly, Jim got to his feet and hobbled over to them
“No, no, no,” Nora whispered in a small, broken voice.
As Jim stepped closer, he realized that Miles’s wings had been burnt black. They lay splayed out on the cement behind him, shriveled and useless. Jim couldn’t even match the picture with what Miles had always been before. His wings looked like trees that had lost all their leaves.
“Angels . . . aren’t Durable against fire,” Sydney said quietly. “Miles may never fly again.”
Nora let out a gut-wrenching cry. Jim thought it was a little strange. Shouldn’t she be happy that her brother had even survived the inferno? He looked over his shoulder. Sydney’s house had folded in on itself like cards, the living room flattened and crumbled and smoking. Somewhere, he heard the scream of a fire engine.
Miles opened his eyes sleepily and he smiled weakly at Nora, telling her in a gentle voice that he was okay. The reassurance didn’t stop Nora’s tears. Even Sydney looked like she had gone into shock. Jim remembered them calling his dad a Wingless, telling him that Wingless were even lower than humans. He wondered if that was still true if you lost your wings in battle, not just if you chose to have them removed.
“I’m going to kill them,” Nora said, her face streaked with tears and hardened with a determination Jim had never seen before. “I’m going to find them, and I’m going to make them pay.”
25
When the Scale finally came home after burning Sydney’s house, the kitchen was empty and silent. The ticking of a clock echoed strangely through the house. Beyond the kitchen, Carlos’s slim, imposing figure cut a shadow in the darkened living room. He had his back turned to them. Claire realized he was staring across the lake at the fire the Scale had started, which burned against the night like a fallen star. She approached him cautiously.
“Your work?” Carlos didn’t turn around. He held something in his hand. A piece of paper.
“My idea,” Claire said. She gestured at the demons behind her, who were murmuring in victorious whispers in the kitchen “All of our work.”
“Bold,” Carlos said. “How did you distract General Lumen?”
“I broke some windows and she chased me,” Gunner explained, coming up to join Claire. “She didn’t catch me, though. Too slow.”
Claire knew that wasn’t totally true. General Lumen had surprised everyone with her speed and her strength. She had exploded out of the house to chase after Gunner as the rest of the Scale crept into the kitchen with the gas cans. Gunner had fled to Shane’s house, and she hadn’t followed him there. Claire had only heard stories about Shane’s dad, Derek Morrisey, but she knew that no angels wanted to get near him. Even Carlos didn’t seem to be friends with him.
“Perfect,” Carlos said. “You hit them where it hurt and this . . . shouldn’t alarm the Tribunal.”
Claire wondered what would actually be enough to get the Tribunal’s attention. If it wasn’t almost drowning humans or setting fire to a general of Glisten’s house, then it must be killing an angel.
“I have some bad news,” Carlos continued. “About your mother.”
Claire startled back to attention. Carlos turned around and offered them the piece of paper that had been in his hand. Claire and Gunner exchanged a glance as Claire took the note. Together, she and Gunner read it from the light of the moon:
Gunner, Claire,
I love you both so much. I don’t agree with your choices, but I know they’re yours to make. But with Carlos back, I can’t stay here. I’ve left Pearlton and don’t plan on coming back. Please, make me proud. Keep me in your thoughts. You’ll always be in mine, whatever happens.
Love,
Mom
Claire stared at the paper, holding it at arm’s length. Gunner snatched it out of her hand and ripped it into shreds, scattering the scraps across the floor. “What a coward!” he spat. “She doesn’t even understand what we’re trying to achieve.”
Carlos had turned back to the window. His reflection watched Gunner’s reaction, his careful, steady gaze following each movement, each word with interest. Gunner ended the tirade with a huff. He breathed violently, in and out, muttering under his breath.
“Gunner,” Carlos said evenly. “Your mother is stronger than you think. She’s just wasting her strength, and her energy, fleeing the cause instead of fighting for it. She’s afraid of being banished to Slag.” He sighed. “I understand. Her parents, your grandparents, were both imprisoned there when she was young. Fear is natural. But you’re wasting your strength and your energy on her cause, not ours. To become a true demon, you have to direct the anger, to channel it. Not let it consume you.”
Claire’s eyes drifted to the scraps of paper at her feet. She thought of all the times she had been pulled out of school by her mom, all of the rushed packing and quick getaways in the moving vans. The neighborhoods and friends and houses left behind, fading in the rearview mirror. But then she thought about the time Gloria had seen Jim, and hadn’t said a word to the Scale. She had kept Claire’s secret when no one else would have. In the end, she had just wanted Claire and Gunner to be safe, to be hidden from the demons and angels forever.
“Claire?” Carlos asked, as if he were waiting for her to have her own outburst.
“I think she wasted her energy and her strength on a lost cause,” Claire said, keeping her voice steady. “All she wanted was to hide from you, over and over again. But if you just keep running from something, you’re eventually going to stumble and it will catch you. The only way to deal with it . . .” She thought of Jim again. “The only way to really deal with it is to face it. To prepare yourself for it, and look your fear in the eye.”
Carlos nodded curtly. “Good. And—”
Abruptly, a cork popped behind them in the kitchen. Ben had found a champagne bottle. “Here’s to burning angels’ houses!” he cheered, grabbing a coffee mug from the cupboard and pouring champagne into it. “Anyone? Anyone?”
“Are we really going to toast to this in coffee mugs?” Julia asked.
“It’s all about capacity, baby,” Ben said, waggling his eyebrows. “Capacity for chaos, righ
t?” He saw Carlos looking at him and shrunk back a little, his hands dropping to his side, still holding the bottle and the mug. Claire couldn’t tell, but she thought she saw a flicker of amusement in Carlos’s eyes.
“Yes,” Carlos said. “It’s about capacity for chaos.” He strode over to the kitchen and opened another cabinet, finding real champagne glasses. “But you should never sacrifice class for capacity. Dignified chaos shows that you have control over it.” He stuck a champagne glass out to Ben expectantly.
“Uh . . .” Ben looked up into Carlos’s eyes and flinched. “Uh, right. Yeah. Dignified chaos.” He poured the champagne into Carlos’s glass.
Carlos raised the glass and turned in a circle. “Everyone gather around. I want to toast to my son and my daughter, and the rest of you brave demons, for all of your work today. You’ve done more in one night than many demons do in a lifetime.”
This was the time to ask Carlos more about Slag, Claire realized. She wanted to learn everything he knew, and how to do the things he did. But as she opened her mouth to ask, the kitchen door burst open. In the doorway, shoulders heaving, stood the short, red-haired angel, Nora. Her blue eyes shot across the room, as if she was trying to decide who to attack first.
Maria tottered around the counter, champagne glass in her hand. “What are you doing here, angel scum?”
“I’m here, because you nearly murdered my brother!” Nora screamed, her voice hoarse. “You all deserve to go to Slag right now. I hope the Tribunal takes you all!”
Behind the counter, Carlos didn’t change his posture. He leisurely brought his glass to his lips and took another sip, looking at the wall.
“I’m sorry,” Maria said, frowning, and walked toward the door. She used her extra few inches to look down at Nora, whose white wings wavered in the breeze from outside, as if she was ready take off. Maria took a deep breath. “I’m sorry . . . that he didn’t die.”
Nora howled and shoved Maria, hard. Maria staggered back, the champagne glass flying out of her hand and shattering on the floor. “His wings are so burned that he might as well be dead!” Nora screamed.