Blest (9 page)

Claire nodded and hopped off the roof, sailing to a patch of brown grass nestled between two sharp corners of the gym. She sprinted past the tennis courts and pivoted as she came to the front steps of Pearlton High School, leading to the lobby and taking the stairs two at a time.

Luckily, no one was in the hallways. She already heard classes starting and teachers droning against closed doors. She charged down the stairs leading to the basement level and sprinted across the hall, her backpack heaving against her shoulders. Her heart practically stopped when she barreled through the doorway. Everyone else was already at the lab tables, paired off in partners. The only table with one person at it was Jim, who looked equally breathless.

Mr. Webb clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Perfect! Let’s mix you two together again, eh?” He waggled his eyebrows. “We’ll be looking at sparrow skeletons today. Maybe you can figure out why different wings make birds act different.”

For a moment, Claire stood in the doorway like she had turned to stone. She could feel Shane and Maria watching her. Jim kept his head down. It took all the effort Claire could muster to crack her face into a sneer as she approached him. “I can’t believe I got partnered with him,” she muttered to Shane.

“That’s freaking awful,” Shane agreed. “We shouldn’t have to be within a ten-foot radius of them.” Maria stayed quiet, her eyes darting from Claire to Jim and back again.

Mr. Webb burst out of the supply closet with trays full of rattling bones. “Okay, class! We’re going to sketch the wings here and see how they’re connected to the bird’s spine.”

“Some things with wings don’t have spines,” Shane said behind them.

Jim gritted his teeth, but he didn’t make a sound.
Just one lab period
, Claire told herself, fighting the urge to reach out and take Jim’s hand. She was a demon, not an angel, and right now she had to play the part.

She glanced at Mr. Webb and wondered what he was really thinking. What was his story? How had he come to be the resident wing remover or whatever? Was he really human, or had he come from Glisten or Slag long ago?

The hour-long lab was painful. Claire’s face hurt from trying to act disgusted whenever Jim approached her. She kept reminding herself that he knew she was putting on an act, but faking it for so long was still hard. Every time Jim came close, it was like a flurry of little arrows pierced her skin, making her ache all over.

Through her lab goggles, she could occasionally catch his eyes, just briefly. She itched to pass him a note, to reassure him that it was all an act, but she could hear Shane and Maria whispering behind her. Mr. Webb told them to pick apart the wings from the vertebrae. Claire moved her gloved hand to the sparrow’s left wing, but she was shaking. In fact, she shook so hard that she pushed the tray off the counter and sent it flying onto the floor.

“Crap!” she blurted, and bent down to pick up the little pieces of bones scattered across the tiles. Jim dropped to his knees to help. Their hands brushed as they both tried to pick up the tray. She jumped back to her feet, feeling like her heart was going to explode. Behind them, Shane and Maria had stopped what they were doing to look at her.

“He’s really freaking clumsy,” Claire managed. That seemed to satisfy Shane, who snorted his agreement. Maria lingered, watching her for a moment before returning to work. Jim quietly arranged the sparrow’s bones again and placed them back on the tray. He rose from the floor, catching her eyes. She let out a long breath. How long could they keep this up?

Jim never thought he would be grateful for the chance to exercise until he was too tired to think, but the school day had done it for him. When Sydney had texted him saying to come to her house, that they would have to start training even harder than before, he hadn’t even asked why.

In Sydney’s driveway, there was a two-story building she called a “garage.” The first floor housed her mom’s SUVs, but the second floor had a bedroom, an office, and a gym. There were no stairs to the second floor. Instead, there was simply a door that opened out into the air. When she’d pulled her car into the driveway, Sydney leapt up and flew to the door, opening it and flying inside in a single fluid motion. Jim and the others quickly followed. Inside the room, there were four pull-up bars.

“Okay. Do as many pull-ups as humanly possible,” Sydney instructed.

“Don’t you mean as angelically possible?” Jim ventured.

Sydney had laughed, but then her face turned to stone and she marched up to him. “First, do as many as humanly possible. Take a break for five minutes. Then, do as many as angelically possible.”

He thought she was joking, but after his fourth set of pull-ups, he realized Sydney wasn’t going to cut them any slack. When Leo said he was “too robust” for that many pull-ups, Sydney asked if “robust” was a new word for “weak.” When Nora lay down on one of the rubber mats and said she wouldn’t get up, Sydney said that she had ten seconds before “I start plucking out your feathers, one by one.”

The always-hyperactive Miles seemed to be the only one who enjoyed the workout. “This is what makes you a good flier, man,” he explained to Jim a half-hour into their pull-ups. “You wanna be a crappy flier, you don’t work out. But these are muscles your body has, like, never used this way before. So you gotta make them big and bigger and biggest.”

Jim was just grateful for the chance to distract himself from his horrible experience with Claire in Lab. He knew that she had just been pretending to hate him. But, really, was insulting him every five minutes necessary? Couldn’t she have just ignored him instead? He had gotten up at dawn to paint a picture that he wanted her to see. They had such an amazing connection on the roof. And then in Lab, she had acted like any other Pearlton High School bully. It was harder than he thought it would be to keep reminding himself that she was just doing what she had to do.

The repetitive, up-down motion of the pull-ups slowly burned his anxieties away. His mind went quiet as he listened to Miles’s steady breathing on his right and Leo’s panting on his left. He kept his eyes on the orange sunset blushing through the window, burning over the pine trees that sprouted around the lake. All the new words he had learned over the past week tumbled and rolled in his mind. The Tribunal, the Field, the Portals. Guardians, the angels who fought the demons on the Field.

He didn’t even realize the training was over until Sydney came up next to him, grinning. “Hey, iron man. The day’s over. Good work, though.”

He dropped from the bar and shook his arms. His muscles burned from his shoulders all the way up through the back of his arms, but in a good way. He unfurled his wings slightly. An ache shot through him and he winced.

“Short-term pain for long-term gain, right?” she asked.

He nodded and looked around the gym. Free weights were piled in a corner and there were a few machines with different levers and pulleys. “If you didn’t know what these things were, you’d think they were some kind of torture devices,” he said.

“Some people would say that that’s not far off,” Sydney said. “Luckily, you’re not one of them.”

He wiped the sweat from his face with the bottom of his shirt and looked around. Only Sydney and he were left in the gym. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Oh, they’ve been back in the house for like ten minutes. We didn’t want to disturb you, you had a warrior face on.”

“Worrier face, maybe,” he replied.

“You’d be stupid not to be worried,” Sydney said quietly as they drifted down to the ground floor, letting their wings catch the air like parachutes.

“What do you mean?” he asked, catching up to her as she slipped out under the garage door and hopped up the steps leading to the house.

“There’s a good chance that a powerful demon is coming to Pearlton,” Sydney said flatly. “That’s enough of a reason to worry. And this one might be a Planewalker, too.”

He followed her down a long, narrow hallway decorated with big tapestries of medieval battles. Jim’s eyes coasted over them, taking in the yellows and oranges and whites that seemed to dominate the pictures. Each one had armies with white wings pitted against armies with red wings. He wondered if they were all real battles that had taken place between angels and demons. There was so much he didn’t know.

The hall opened up into a broad living room with two couches, a few plush chairs, and a fire crackling quietly in a stone hearth on the other side of the room. On either side of the fireplace were windows that looked out onto the lake. Nora and Miles sat on one of the couches, tapping into their phones. Leo had sprawled out across the other couch, one arm hanging off it like he was a sailor lost on a raft at sea. His eyes were closed and his mouth was open. Every few seconds, a snore gurgled from deep within his throat.

“Can we get off our phones and try to interact like a real Feather?” Sydney demanded, slapping her hand on the doorway.

Leo startled awake. He tried to turn his head from the couch to look at Sydney, but instead rolled off and hit the wooden floor like a rock.

“You woke sleeping beauty,” Nora said, putting her phone into her pocket. “Sorry, Miles and I are trying to figure out how these tornadoes are related to the Planewalker. We’re tracking weather reports across the country.”

Miles peered up from his phone, surprised. “We are? I guess I should stop playing
Minecraft
then.” He looked at Sydney, grinning. “What’s the plan, chief?”

“Just . . . I don’t know. Gossip, or something. Be social.” Sydney backed out of the hall. “I’ll be right back,” she said, her voice echoing.

“She says be social and then retreats to her room,” Nora said. “Typical.”

Jim settled onto the couch Leo had rolled from. Leo still looked groggy as he hauled himself back up. “She’s right, though. Sometimes I feel like we don’t talk enough in school. I mean, we talk, but only about serious stuff.”

“Totally,” Miles leaned forward. “I mean, we can’t even talk in class. Who invented that rule, anyway? They might as well make it illegal to have friends.”

“Jim, who are you bringing to the Homecoming Dance?” Nora asked brightly, folding her hands in her lap.

“W-what?” Jim croaked.

“Forgive her, we call her Nosy Nora in my family,” Miles said, “always with the questions and the blah blah blah’s and who-gives-a—”

“It’s a perfectly valid question,” Nora interrupted. “I saw Jim buying a rose yesterday.”

Jim paled. “Um . . .”

“Oh, man, Jim, you got a girl?” Leo asked eagerly.

“Leo!” Nora said. “No one ‘gets’ a girl. We do not come out of
vending machines
.”

“I was just asking who she was,” Leo replied.

“Then ask that.”

“Jim,” Leo said, rolling his eyes. “Who’s the gir—who’s the lucky lady?”

Nora nodded approvingly. “You’ve got to forgive him, Jim. I’ve been trying to train the bro out of him for at least a year, but with very little to show for it.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend or anything,” Jim said quickly. “I . . . um . . . I didn’t get any roses myself, if that’s any sign of how things went.” That much was true. Really, why didn’t Claire send him a rose?

“Bummer,” Leo said.

“Well, what’s the quote?” Miles said. “Better to have bought a rose for two dollars and funded the school dance than . . . never have spent the two dollars in the first place.”

They all laughed and some of the awkwardness in the room dissipated. Jim still felt strange hanging out with people who had tried so hard, for so long, to make him feel alone. He could remember when Leo had slapped his books out of his hands in the hallway, or when Miles had made fun of every question he asked in Algebra last year. But now everything was different. He knew they felt bad about it, that they were trying to start over with him.

He stared into the fire as the other three talked about the Homecoming Dance. He wondered where Claire was, and if she was thinking of him. He felt too nervous to even text her. What if Gunner picked up the phone? Or Shane? What if Sydney saw a text come in from Claire? He sighed. A relationship shouldn’t have to be like a spy movie.

As Leo told Miles how he had read a bunch of “killer tips” about asking out girls, Jim heard voices bubble up from down the hall. An argument. He waited for any of the other angels to react, but they were too busy talking about the dance. He focused on the sounds, and realized that one of the voices was Sydney. But who was she fighting with?

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Jim muttered, standing and rolling his sore shoulders. He slipped down the hall and stopped in front of a closed door between the kitchen and living room.

“We can’t tell them.” Jim recognized Principal Lumen’s voice. She sounded like she was trying to calm Sydney down.

“We have to! This is important, Mom!”

“Nothing is more important than the mission, Sydney,” Principal Lumen said coldly.

“That’s not true!” The door burst open and Sydney stormed out, almost crashing into Jim. She skidded to a halt and stared at him, her expression unreadable.

He tried to come up with some excuse for hovering outside the door, but no words came. It was obvious he had been eavesdropping. “I—”

“Come on.” Sydney grabbed his wrist. “I want to show you something.” She sprinted up the stairs, tugging him along. They charged up the rickety wooden steps to the attic, bursting into the gloomy room with the force of a hurricane. Sydney wove between old boxes and what looked like piles of clothes. Men’s clothes. Were they Sydney’s dad’s?

She scrambled up the ladder and disappeared onto the roof. Jim followed just in time to see Sydney dive off the edge, her wings spreading.

He watched as she disappeared against the faded navy-blue sky of early evening. Did she still want him to follow her?

He walked to the edge of the roof, peering down at the driveway. A familiar thrill shot through him as he spread his wings. He ignored the aches in his arms and dropped into the air, catching the breeze. Ahead, Sydney flitted through the sky like a butterfly against the platinum moonlight.

She swooped down and angled her wings so that the right tip skimmed the water, slicing sharp lines into the glassy surface of the lake. Jim dropped low over the water and watched his reflection ripple as he passed, feeling the water spray on his cheeks as the flapping of his wings brought droplets into the air. On the far side of the shore, where there were no house lights, there was a weeping willow, the branches brushing the glassy surface of the water like an old man fishing. Sydney twirled to the right and disappeared under the branches. Jim broke through the canopy a second later.

Sydney leaned against the tree, her arms crossed. Her feet were bare, and her toes curled in the sand. “Thanks for coming,” she said quietly. “Sometimes, I just feel trapped in there.”

“In your house?” Jim asked.

Sydney set her jaw and nodded. “I feel trapped wherever my mom is.”

Jim stayed quiet a moment. “I know what you mean,” he finally said. “I try to stay away from my house as much as I can, too.”

Sydney looked at him with her intense, mint-green eyes. Jim kicked at a rock, sending it tumbling into the water. “Do you come here a lot?” he asked.

“Whenever I need to clear my head.” She paused. “So, yeah.”

Jim tried to ignore the shadows gathering all around them. “I don’t know. Don’t you think it’s a little . . . uh . . . dark?”

“Sure, there are shadows everywhere here. I’m guessing it makes you a little nervous?”

Jim flushed.

“Don’t worry,” Sydney said. “All angels are afraid of shadows. That’s why I come here, though. I know I’ll never see another Guardian around. Especially my mom.”

Jim tried to hold his tongue, but the question came out anyway. “What were you arguing about back there?”

Sydney fell silent. She directed her piercing eyes back to the branches as they rustled in the breeze.

Jim tried to backpedal. “Sorry. It’s none of my business, I—”

“Oh, calm down. It’s fine.” Sydney leaned away from the tree and picked her way around the loose rocks to the shore, staring out at the water. Jim followed her gaze and realized that she was looking at her house, a watery, amber glow on the other side of the lake.

“Yeah, I can tell,” Jim said flatly. “It sure looks fine.”

Sydney gave him a look. Right when he started to wonder if she was going to hit him, she broke into a laugh. “I’m glad you have a sense of humor, Jim.”

“It’s kind of a survival instinct.”

“I wish my mom had gone that route, instead of turning into stone after . . .” She wavered for a moment, then sat on a mossy boulder that was buried in the sand next to the willow.

“After . . . ?”

“After my dad died, in the War of the Broken Wall. We lost a lot of Guardians then. I was little, but I still remember this whole other Mom. A mom who laughed and smiled and . . . showed compassion.” She threw a pebble into the water. “Sometimes, I feel like I lost both my parents in that battle.”

Jim wandered closer, sitting down on the boulder beside her. He thought about the clothes piled in Sydney’s attic—her dad’s clothes, sitting in the dark. “My mom died when I was young, too,” he said. “And I always just kind of hated my dad for being drunk and embarrassing. I don’t even like going to the grocery store with him, because sometimes he’ll be drunk. But I just have to keep reminding myself that he’s still trying to cope with her death.”

“I don’t know if you
can
cope with it,” Sydney said. “But what else can you do? Your dad drinks so he doesn’t have to think about it. My mom only cares about revenge . . . and she wants me to be just as bloodthirsty as she is.”