Earth Angel (13 page)

“I’m sure it’s not easy to give them away,” Abby said.

“It’s not.”

“You could give them to the animal shelter,” Abby suggested.

Gwynne frowned at her. “Bunny killers.”

“Not that you have an opinion or anything.”

“The people at the shelter do their best, but they always have more rabbits than they can find homes for.”

Abby’s lips flattened with something that looked an awful lot like pity. “You’re going to hate me for saying this, but if there are too many of them…”

“They didn’t ask to be born.” Her throat tightened at the thought of all the death she’d seen all too recently, and her voice became rough. “The least we can do is try to give them a good life.”

Abby slid the roll of duct tape off Gwynne’s wrist and taped a flyer to the next lifeguard stand. “You’re a good person.”

I’m not
, Gwynne wanted to say, but then Abby would ask why, and it was better if she didn’t. And hadn’t they been over this already? Abby thought Gwynne was a good person for not hating her ex, Megan thought she was a good person because Megan saw the best in everyone, and Dara thought she was a good person because Dara was blind—a judgment that proved right there that Gwynne was no Mother Teresa.

They walked some more in silence, the distant sounds of partying from the remaining wedding guests lost in the crash of waves. Abby drifted closer, seemingly drawn like a magnet to Gwynne’s hastily erected force field that should, if this were
Star Trek
, have kept her at bay. Couldn’t she tell Gwynne was poor company? Didn’t she care? Or maybe she simply wasn’t aware that she was standing in Gwynne’s space, dangling her high heels by their skimpy straps an inch from Gwynne’s thigh, swinging her arm with a motion that would have been hypnotic if her footwear weren’t so dangerously close to impaling a body part. Her face, after all, was turned away, toward the dark ocean. She could be completely oblivious.

Great, Gwynne. Walk a little closer to her, why don’t you? And be sure to tell yourself that’s not what you’re doing.

“I wanted to ask you…” Abby’s voice was hesitant, directed toward the horizon.

“Yes?” She’d almost forgotten that Abby invited her out here to talk.

“You can see auras, right?”

Gwynne groaned. Auras. Abby knew she didn’t do energy healing anymore and ought to know she didn’t like talking about this stuff. Except how could she know the topic was on Gwynne’s do-not-discuss list when Gwynne went and opened her mouth about seeing the unseen? She’d never been particularly good at restraining her natural tendency to be a blabbermouth, and she hated hearing Abby question her own sanity, so it had slipped out.

“What do you want to know?”

“Is there anything unusual about my aura?”

“Like what?” she said carefully.

“So it’s not obvious? Nothing jumps out at you?”

Besides how beautiful her aura was? Too many people’s auras were muddy, but Abby’s was bright and clear, the colors lit from within.

“Can’t you see auras yourself?” If she could see angels…

“Sometimes,” Abby said. “Not that well. Not well enough to know if my aura looks normal.”

Normal. What was normal? “Everyone’s aura is different. It’s the same structure, but it’s individual. Besides, it changes with your health and your emotions and your stress level.” Gwynne sighed. There was something Abby wasn’t telling her, some question she was building up to. She blocked Abby’s path and faced her full-on. “What do you really want to know?”

Abby reluctantly met her gaze. “If you see anything weird about me on the energetic level.”

Weird. Normal. Unusual. How many words was Abby going to come up with to ask her the same vague question?

“The information’s not right there on the surface,” Gwynne said. “I’d have to take a closer look to see anything.” Like she wasn’t tempted to take a closer look every time they were in the same room together. But she wasn’t going to admit that she already knew exactly what her aura looked like. “You have to get into the right mindset. It’s like figuring out what ingredients go into a morning glory muffin. You have to savor it to decide—is that apple I taste, or pear?”

Abby swept her hands in tumbling, impatient circles, motioning that she got the point and could they please get on with it. “Can you look at it?”

It wouldn’t be hard to take another look and make her happy. Not hard at all. She stopped walking and stared at her, let her eyes lose focus. Abby’s inner light blazed in the darkness. At her core was a thin strand of silver-white light, and looking into it was like falling into a bottomless well that fractured into a kaleidoscope of mesmerizing, ever-changing colors. Her aura
wasn’t
normal, but she wouldn’t call it weird. It was unique.

“You have more colors. Really beautiful ones that blend into all these amazing shades.” She’d never noticed quite how many different colors Abby had. She’d never allowed herself to go this deep. The sheer complexity of it…the sheer beauty of it…“You have…so…many…colors.” Her words slowed as she was drawn further in. “That must be why—” She didn’t finish her sentence aloud.
Why I’m so fascinated by you.

Abby’s gaze was steady and serious, waiting for more. Gwynne stared back, lost in the swirling vortex of color.

“That must be why…” Abby prompted with a smile of encouragement.

That smile. It sparkled in her eyes with an intimacy that didn’t belong there, a closeness they didn’t have, a connection Gwynne had been hoping for even though it was too soon. Abby leaned toward her and Gwynne’s chest warmed with the certainty that Abby was going to touch her. Brush her arm. Take her hand. Not let go. Her throat constricted. Abby’s smile deepened, like she could tell that all rational-sounding responses had fled Gwynne’s brain and found it adorable.

Gwynne swayed closer, only marginally aware of what her body was doing, feeling like she was going to…what? Kiss her? Could she? Could she really kiss her? She could. She had to. Abby’s smile faded and her gaze fixated on Gwynne’s mouth. Gwynne’s lips felt heavy with need. She really was going to—

A flash of fluttering angel wings dive-bombed the space between them, momentarily blinding her before vanishing. The intrusion snapped her out of her trance and she pulled out of her collision course with Abby’s mouth.

Abby gave a sharp shake of her head. Her chest lifted with a deep intake of breath. She looked rattled. “Remember that angel you saw talking to me earlier?”         

Oh, no. Abby was going to pretend nothing happened. That time hadn’t stood still before they were pointlessly interrupted. That their friendship hadn’t been about to change. How could she do that? She must have felt
something
. Or had Gwynne imagined that moment of connection, that feeling of being on the verge of something important?

Abby shot a furtive glance at the spot where their dive-bombing guest had disappeared. “This is going to sound bizarre, but she claims I’m an angel born into human form.”

“What?” Gwynne’s throat clenched with irritation at the interfering ways of angelkind, all thoughts of kissing her—and of not kissing her—pushed aside. Of all the ridiculous, dangerous things to tell someone…

“I don’t know whether to believe her,” Abby continued. “How would I know if she’s right?”

Now Abby’s insistent curiosity about her aura made sense. If she
were
an ang—

Except she wasn’t. But if she
were
, Gwynne might be able to detect it.

“You look like a human being to me,” Gwynne said, making her voice as firm as possible. The angel’s claim had to be a mistake. It had to be. “It’s not an angel’s aura.”

As if to prove her point, Abby’s aura fluctuated again, and in that moment it reminded her of her sister’s very human aura, which used to be the bright vibrant green of young grass shoots, back before Heather messed with it.

Crap. Now she was thinking of Heather again, remembering how they had chased each other through the weedy lawn that thirteen-year-old Gwynne was supposed to be mowing with their impossibly heavy mower because her father had moved out. Gwynne had danced away from her sister, hiding behind a tree, doing a fake-out, then racing to the other end of the yard, slowing at the end to let Heather catch up, then slowing even more to let herself get tagged.

“Ha.” Heather forced the word out with the last of the air in her little lungs before throwing herself on the ground to catch her breath. She eyed her big sister suspiciously. “Did you let me tag you?”

“Why would I do that?”

Heather got up from the grass and planted her hands on her hips. “You can’t let me catch you,” she commanded. “You have to try to get away.”

Gwynne lifted one foot as high as her knee and then stretched her leg in Heather’s direction, balancing dramatically on one leg and flashing monster claws. “I’ll get you.”

Heather giggled and scooted back a few steps. “It’s not monster tag.”

“It’s not?”

“No.”

Gwynne did her monster roar. Heather shrieked and Gwynne had chased after her…

“Do you see anything?” Abby asked, jarring her back to the present.

Abby’s aura wasn’t as green as Heather’s used to be, and Heather’s had never been as bright, but there was a youthfulness that was the same. If you took an angel’s energy system and forced it into the frequencies of the human system, would it remain the bright, golden sunlight it was before? There was no way of knowing. Maybe it
would
sparkle in swirls of aquamarine, turquoise and teal shot through with streaks of yellow and pure white light, glowing in the dark like the aurora borealis. It was easy to imagine Abby as an angel soaring through the night sky, her freckle-covered shoulder blades rippling with movement, her bra a forgotten memory.

Somehow it always came down to the bra.

Or lack thereof.

“What do you see?” Abby prompted.

Nothing she could say aloud, that was for sure. “Nothing angelic.”

Abby looked disappointed. “I asked Grams about it and she said she has some boxes in the attic I might want to take a look at. It’s not like her. I’m going to take the bus down to Baltimore in a couple days to check it out.”

“You’re taking the bus?” Gwynne said, jumping on the safer topic. “What about your van? There’s only, like, one bus a day.”

“My license was suspended.”

Gwynne burst out laughing. She hated when she did that—like her body was a malfunctioning pressure-release valve. It was so wrong to laugh at things that weren’t funny—at things that called for condolences, or understanding, or a sad face at the very least. She clamped her hands over her mouth, but Abby didn’t seem to have noticed. Maybe Abby thought it
was
funny, since apparently a suspended license was not enough to stop her from driving herself to work or giving Gwynne a ride to their evening’s shindig.

“For what? Drunk driving?” It was the only thing she could think of that would get your license suspended.

“Speeding.”

“Speeding,” Gwynne echoed, letting that sink in. “How fast do you have to drive to get your license suspended for speeding?”

“Pretty fast.” Abby winked conspiratorially.

God, she was cute. And crazy. Just the way she liked her women—cute and crazy.

What a coincidence.

“Sober,” Gwynne confirmed. Because cute and crazy was one thing, and cute and crazy and drunk was another. Although the way hope seemed to spring eternal around her sequin-covered witch, maybe it didn’t matter.

“I don’t have a death wish,” Abby said.

“You must have an incarceration wish if you drive to work on a suspended license.”

“I’m not going to get pulled over when I’m only driving a few blocks.”

“Not in that mom-mobile, anyway.” The rusted, ancient, unreliable-looking minivan was so not what she imagined her driving. She understood why she owned it—because it was big enough to transport her harps—but it clearly wasn’t the vehicle her illegally speeding heart would have preferred. “I’m shocked it’s actually capable of breaking the speed limit.”

“I have a good mechanic.”

“If you ask me, you have a miracle worker.”

“Wow, I thought the M-word was on your never-ever-cross-your-lips, do-not-pass-go, do-not-collect-two-hundred-dollars list.”

How did she know that? It was a little scary, the stuff Abby knew about her.

“I’ll drive you to Baltimore if you want,” Gwynne said. “So you don’t have to take the bus.”

Abby hesitated.

“It’ll be fun.” Yeah, like she didn’t have enough crazy in her life.

“Thanks.” Abby’s aura danced orange and deep, hazy blue, glowing like a breathtaking sunset. “Elle must be telling the truth, right? I mean, she’s an angel.”

“God, I don’t know.” Gwynne pressed her fingers to her forehead. Everyone thought she was an expert, and she really wasn’t. She’d be happy if no one mentioned angels to her ever again.

“She has no reason to lie. Why would she lie? She must think I can help them, or she wouldn’t have asked.”

“Asked what?”

“Um…” A guilty look crossed her face. “She thinks I can help her with something.”

Something Abby apparently didn’t want to tell her about. Not that it was any of her business. She didn’t want it to be her business. She didn’t. Because whatever that angel had asked Abby to do, she was sure she wasn’t going to like it.

Gwynne shrugged, telling herself she didn’t care. “Keyword: think.”

“You think she could be wrong?”

“I think anyone can make a mistake. Even an angel.”

Chapter Nine

When Abby arrived at Dara’s niece’s house for the birthday party the next day, she found Gwynne wearing a top hat and tuxedo, flat on her stomach on the floor of the living room, participating in a nose-twitching competition with two rabbits. Gwynne was talking to them, egging them on, and for someone loud, she had an amazingly soft, gentle way of crooning to her pets. It was a voice that could pull you through your worst fears and make you want to be brave. A private, intimate voice that made Abby’s insides tense with longing.