by Cynthia Hand
Now it’s my turn to stop myself. I don’t want to dredge up his ex or that horrifying scene in the cafeteria last year when he dumped her in front of the entire school. Kimber was clearly not his soul mate. She was a cute girl, though. Nice, I always thought.
“Kimber was the one who called the police on me, I think,” he says. “I guess I shouldn’t have told her I started the fire.” I open my mouth to bombard him with questions, but he doesn’t let me get them out. “No, I didn’t tell her what I am. What we are. I only told her about the fire.” He scoffs. “I thought she would think it was badass or something.”
“Oh, she did. She really did.”
We’re quiet for a minute, and then we both start laughing quietly.
“I was kind of an idiot,” he admits.
“Yeah, well, when it comes to the opposite sex, it’s hard to keep your head on straight. But maybe that’s just me.”
He nods, takes another drink of OJ. Looks at me hard.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Tucker,” Jeffrey says then, which catches me off guard. “It’s not fair to him, what happened. I’ve been putting some money aside. It won’t be a lot. But something. I was kind of hoping you’d give it to him, once I get it together.”
I don’t fully understand. “Jeffrey, I—”
“It’s to help buy a new truck, or put a down payment on one. A new trailer, a saddle, trees to plant on his land.” He shrugs. “I don’t know what he needs. I just want to give him something. To make up for what I did.”
“Okay,” I say, although I don’t know if it will work for me to be the one who gives it to him. Last night between Tucker and me did not go well. But Tucker has a right, I remind myself, to be mad at me. And I never even apologized for what I did. I never tried to make it right. “I think that’s a great idea,” I tell Jeffrey.
“Thanks,” he says, and I can see in his eyes how he knows it isn’t enough, given all he’s taken from Tucker, all we’ve taken, but he’s trying to make amends.
Maybe my brother’s going to turn out okay, after all.
After breakfast I head back to Stanford, full of carbs and deep thoughts. I plan to have a nice, low-key kind of day, maybe take a nap, get started writing a paper I’ve been procrastinating on all week. But I run into Amy as I pass by the Roble game lounge, and she ropes me into a game of table hockey. She rants about how the administration has canceled the Full Moon on the Quad—which is where students meet up around midnight on the night of the full moon and kiss each other while a local band plays romantic music in the background, basically a ritualized-and-thereby-socially-acceptable, well-lit make-out session—because they’re afraid we’re going to spread mono all over campus.
“I don’t see how they can stop us, though,” she’s saying. “I mean, there’s still going to be a full moon and the quad’s still going to be there and we’re still going to have our lips.”
I nod and grumble agreeably about how unfair it is, but I could care less. I’m still ruminating on the conversation at breakfast: Jeffrey with a new set of opinions and a new love interest and a new vision.
“Well, I think it’s kind of gross,” Amy says. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s so much older than she is.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about. “Wait, who’s older?”
“You know. The guy Angela’s hooking up with.”
I stare at her. The puck clatters into my goal. “What? What guy?”
“I can’t remember his name, but he’s definitely older. A senior, probably. Oh my god, what is his name—I know this!” Amy scoffs at herself in disgust. “I swear, my brain is so crammed full of random facts for my philosophy exam on Monday that it can’t hold any more information. Seriously, it’s on the tip of my tongue. Starts with P.”
I feel immediately guilty that I didn’t call Angela last night after my dad told me to watch out for her. My mind whirls. Why would Phen come here? What could he want? What happened to we’re just friends and we know it’s impossible for us to be together and it’s temporary and all that other crap he fed to Angela this summer? I know I probably shouldn’t be butting into Angela’s love life—not again, anyway—but this is seriously bad. Phen claims that he’s not on the side of evil, but he’s definitely not, from what I saw this summer, on the side of good. Angela deserves something better. I’ve always thought so.
“Pierce!” Amy bursts out, relieved. “That’s it.”
Hold up. “Pierce? The PHE? That’s who you think is involved with Angela?”
“That’s the guy,” she confirms. “The one who helped me with my ankle that time. He’s a senior, right?”
This I do not believe. Angela’s all wrapped up in her purpose right now, even more obsessed than usual, it seems. No way would she take time out to mess around with some random guy. Something is wrong, I think. Something weird is going on.
“Why do you think Angela’s been hooking up with Pierce?” I grill Amy.
“Well, because she’s been going out all of a sudden, like almost every night. And two nights this week she didn’t come back to the room at all, and Robin saw her this morning coming out of his room,” Amy reports. “Hair all messed up. Not wearing her shoes. Same clothes she was wearing the night before. Post-hookup, definitely.”
My mind whirls some more. It’s like a Category 5 hurricane inside my brain.
“Pierce is the dorm doctor,” I say after a minute. “Maybe Angela wasn’t feeling well.”
“Oh,” Amy says. “I didn’t think of that. She has been looking kind of worn-out lately.” She shrugs. “I guess she could have been sick.”
“See, let’s not jump to conclusions. There could be another explanation,” I say, but I can tell Amy doesn’t buy it.
I don’t buy it, myself. Angela’s not sick. I know this better than anyone.
Angel-bloods don’t get sick.
“What are you so upset about?” Christian asks later when I fill him in on the Angela situation. We’re sitting in the CoHo (the Stanford Coffeehouse) drinking coffee, our usual Saturday afternoon ritual. “What, Angela’s not allowed to hook up with anybody?”
I really, really wish I could tell him about Phen.
“I think it’s a good thing if Angela’s seeing somebody,” Christian goes on to say. “Maybe it will help her get out of her own head a little.”
I take a sip of my latte. “It’s not like her, that’s all. She’s been acting weird for weeks, but this—a guy, staying out all night—is really not like her.”
But then, come to think of it, maybe it is like her. That’s what happened in Italy. Once she reconnected with Phen, she pretty much disappeared every night, sneaking back to her grandmother’s house in the mornings before anybody else woke up.
“Angela dated guys back in Jackson,” Christian reminds me.
I shake my head. “Not so much. She went to parties sometimes. And prom. But she never even kissed anybody, she told me. She said boys were a complete waste of time and energy.”
Christian’s dark eyebrows furrow, and I can feel him remembering that one party back in eighth grade where they played spin the bottle and he and Angela went out on the back porch and kissed. Then his eyes meet mine and he knows that I know he’s remembering this, and his face starts to get red.
“It wasn’t anything,” he mutters. “We were thirteen.”
“I know,” I say quickly. “She said it was like kissing her brother.”
Christian stares into his coffee cup. Finally he says, “If you want to find out what’s going on with Angela, you should ask her.”
“Good idea.” I pull out my cell and dial Angela’s number for like the twentieth time today, put it on speaker so Christian can hear as it goes straight to voice mail. “I’m busy right now,” Angela’s voice says in the recording. “I may or may not call you back. Depends on how much I like you.”
Beep.
“Okay, okay,” Christian says as I hang up
. “I don’t know what to tell you. It’s a mystery.”
I let out a frustrated breath. “I’ll see her in class Tuesday,” I say. “Then we’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“Tuesday is three days away—you sure you can wait that long?” Christian asks playfully.
“Shut up. And anyway, it’s probably nothing. I bet you ten bucks it has to do with her purpose, not some guy. Something about ‘the seventh is ours.’”
“‘The seventh is ours’?”
“It’s what Angela says in her vision. She’s been driving herself crazy trying to figure out what it means. She keeps going to the church to make herself have the vision, but she hasn’t got much beyond the location on campus where it’s going to happen and ‘the seventh is ours,’ at least not that she’s told me lately.”
“That’s cryptic.” Christian’s eyes are thoughtful. “Wait,” he says, officially catching up. “What’s this about church? Angela makes herself have the vision? How?”
I tell him about the labyrinth and Angela’s theory that it will, under the right circumstances, induce visions. Christian sits back in his chair and stares at me like I’ve told him that the moon is made of cheese. Then he presses his fingers to his eyes as if he has a sudden headache.
“What?” I ask him.
“You never tell me anything, you know that?” He drops his hand and looks at me accusingly.
I gasp. “That is not true. I tell you loads of stuff. I tell you more than anybody. I mean, I didn’t blab to you about this thing with Angela, but it’s Angela, and you know how she is.”
“How she is? What happened to ‘there are no secrets in Angel Club’?”
“You never agreed to that,” I point out. “You had the biggest secret of us all, and you never breathed a word.”
“Is there anything else I don’t know?” he asks, ignoring my very good point about his blatant hypocrisy. “Besides the stuff with this Phen guy that you can’t tell me about?”
“I saw my dad,” I say. “But this only happened yesterday, okay? I was going to tell you today. Right now, as a matter of a fact. See, I’m telling you.”
Christian pulls back, surprise all over his face, his mind reeling with it in a way that makes me feel surprised all over again by what happened. “Your dad? Michael?”
“No, my other dad, Larry. Yes, my dad, Michael. He said he’s been given”—I inflate my voice to sound all authoritative and official—“the task of training me. We went back to my house and spent a couple hours in the backyard whacking each other with broomsticks.”
“You were in Jackson yesterday?” Christian looks dazed. He’s in that phase where he’s repeating everything I say because he can’t process it fast enough. “Training?” he says. “Training you to what?”
I become aware that we’re sitting in a public place and we shouldn’t be openly discussing any of this. I shift to talking in his mind. To use a sword.
His eyes widen. I look away, sip the last dregs of my cold coffee. The enormity of what I just told him—that I’m going to be expected to use a sword, too, to fight, maybe even to kill somebody—is really settling in for the first time.
This is the part where my life becomes all apocalyptic, I think.
Which sucks, quite frankly. I remember how good it felt to help Amy that night, to use my power to fix her ankle even the little bit that I did. How happy I was with the idea that I could use my power to heal hurts and right wrongs. Now it all feels like a silly pipe dream. I’m going to fight. Possibly die.
You were right, I say bleakly. We’re never going to be allowed to live normal lives.
I’m sorry, Christian says. He wishes something better for me, something easier.
I shrug it off. It’s what we’re supposed to do, right? Maybe that’s our purpose, to become fighters. That makes sense, if you think about it. Maybe it’s what all the Triplare are meant for. We’re like warriors.
Maybe, Christian says, although I can sense that he doesn’t want to accept this any more than I do.
Oh. And I asked my dad if you could train with us, since you’ve been seeing yourself wielding a sword in your vision (the sword’s made of glory, not flame, by the way), and he said yes, probably around winter break. FYI.
He gives an incredulous laugh at the idea that he could be taking lessons from the archangel Michael. “Wow,” he says out loud. “That is—thank you.”
“At least we can do this together,” I say, reaching across the table and laying my hand on his, which sends that familiar spark between us.
We belong together. The words come to mind immediately, and this time, instead of fighting the idea or worrying about what it might mean, I accept it. Whatever our fate is, we’re clearly in it together. Through thick and thin.
Come hell or high water, he adds in my mind.
I smile. Preferably high water, right? I have no intention of going to hell.
Agreed. He slides his fingers up through mine so we’re clasping hands. I get a nervous quivery sensation in the pit of my stomach. “In the meantime,” I say to get back to the topic at hand, remembering what my dad said about watching out for Angela, “let’s figure out what’s going on with Angela. Maybe we can help her.”
“If she’ll let us.”
“True, that.” I check my watch. “I should go. I’ve got a paper to write on The Waste Land by Tuesday. Worth twenty percent of my grade, so no pressure there.”
He squeezes before he lets go of my hand. “Thanks for hanging out with me this afternoon. I know you’re busy.”
“Christian, there’s nobody on earth, seriously, who I’d rather hang out with than you,” I tell him, and it’s absolutely true. Whatever we are—soul mates, friends, whatever—there’s that.
It isn’t until later that I realize I didn’t tell him about seeing Tucker. But then, I think, he really wouldn’t want to know.
I take a detour on the way back to the dorm to check out Memorial Church on the off chance that I might find Angela there. The church is empty. I make my way up the center aisle to the front of the sanctuary, where the labyrinth is still laid out on the altar. There’s a sign posted that says, SILENCE, PLEASE, WHILE VIEWING THE CHURCH. Somebody right outside is trimming the hedges with a weed whacker, but it still feels quiet in this place, a stillness that transcends noise.
Angela’s obviously not here, but I don’t leave yet. I stand looking at the twisting paths of the labyrinth.
What the heck, I think. I’ll give it a try.
I take a minute to read the pamphlet about the labyrinth, which I find in a small woven basket in the front pew. Does life have you wandering aimlessly in circles? it reads. Embark on a personal journey that’s stood the test of time for thousands of years. I slip my shoes off and position myself at the starting point, then begin to walk. The hems of my jeans scuff against the fabric on the floor. I try to make myself slow down and take deep breaths, the way I learned in happiness class: cleansing breaths from the belly. As you enter the labyrinth, the pamphlet says, let go of the details of your life; shed thoughts and distractions. Open your heart and quiet your mind.
I do my best, but part of me is already tensing, bracing for the vision, the blackness of the room, the terror I feel. I keep walking, trying to clear my head, the way I always do to call glory, which is coming so easily these days. You’d think this would be easy, too, but for whatever reason, maybe because having the vision is a bit like being slapped in the face, it’s not the same.
I reach the center of the pattern. I’m supposed to stop here and pray. Receive, the pamphlet says.
I bow my head. I’ve never learned how to talk to God. The concept seems as far away for me as making a personal phone call to the president of the United States or having a conversation with the Dalai Lama. Which is ironic, I know. I have angel blood in my veins, the strength of the Almighty worked right into my cells, God’s intent for me, His plan. Whenever I call glory, I feel that power, that connection to everything th
at Dad talks about, the warmth and joy and beauty that I know must be where God is. But I don’t know how to communicate in words with that presence. I can’t.
I look up, and there are angels all around, and I feel their eyes on me, solemn and questioning. What are you doing? they ask. What is your purpose?
“What is my purpose?” I whisper back at them. “Show me.”
But the vision doesn’t come.
I wait five minutes, which feels like longer, then sigh and make my way back through the pattern the way I came, faster this time. This is where the pamphlet tells me I’m supposed to enter the third stage: Return. Join with a higher power, come together with the healing forces at work in this world.
I’m so not feeling the healing forces.
I put my shoes on, suddenly exhausted and cranky and frustrated by my failure to connect. I better get back and start working on that nap, I think. The paper can wait. So much for finding Angela. So much for figuring out my vision.
So much for clarity.
The vision hits me as I’m biking home. It’s cloudy and chilly out—not Wyoming cold by any stretch of the imagination, but still cold enough to make me want to get warm and cozy under the covers. So I’m biking pretty fast, hurrying, when I suddenly find myself in the dark room.
This time it’s happening further along in the vision than it’s ever happened before. The noise, that high-pitched sound that echoes around us, is still ringing in my ears. It’s giving us away, I realize. It’s drawing their attention.
There’s the flash of light, as blinding as always.
“Get down!” Christian yells, and I dive for the floor, roll out of the way as he comes from behind me swinging a sword, a flaring, bright, beautiful blade, which he raises over his head and brings down hard. There’s a clashing sound like nothing I’ve ever heard before, worse than nails on a chalkboard, and then a curse and a low laugh. I scramble backward until my back hits something hard and wooden, my heart pounding. It’s still so dark in here, but I can make out Christian fighting, his light slicing the air around him, trying to get at the dark figures closing in on him.