“You did care for him,” I say carefully.
“I loved him,” she whispers. “He was my sun and moon for a time. I was crazy about him.”
And now he’s crazy about you, I think. Emphasis on crazy.
She clears her throat. “It was a long time ago.”
And yet we both know that time can be a tricky thing.
“That must be uncomfortable for you to hear,” she says, seeing my frown. “Me saying I loved a man who’s not your father.”
“But I know you love Dad.” I remember Mom and Dad together in her last days, how obvious the love was between them, how pure. I smile at her, bump my shoulder into hers. “You loooove him. You do.”
She laughs, pushes back against me. “All right, all right, I’ll marry him. I couldn’t very well refuse him now, could I?” She suddenly gasps. “I have to go,” she says, jumping up like Cinderella late to the ball. “I’m supposed to meet him.”
“On the beach at Santa Cruz,” I say.
“I told you about it?” she asks. “What do I say to him?”
“You just kiss him,” I tell her. “Now go on before you’re late and I cease to exist.”
She moves to the edge of the rock and summons her wings. I’m startled by how gray they are, when normally, when I knew her best, they were so piercingly white. They’re still beautiful now, but gray. Undecided. Uncertain.
She hesitates.
“Go,” I say.
There are tears in her eyes. I don’t want to leave you, she says in my mind.
Don’t worry, Mom, I answer, calling her Mom for the first time since I came here. You’ll see me again.
She smiles and caresses my cheek, then turns and takes off, the wind from her wings blowing back my hair, and glides toward the ocean. Toward the beach, where my father is waiting.
I wipe my eyes. And when I look up again, I’m back in the present, like this entire afternoon has been some kind of beautiful dream.
19
SOUTHBOUND TRAIN
Two minutes to midnight.
For real, this time.
The vision hasn’t prepared me for the sheer enormity of this moment. I feel like I’m going to jump out of my skin. I feel each tick of my watch’s second hand like an electric charge pulsing through me again and again.
I can do this, I tell myself, fiddling with the zipper of my black hoodie.
Tick, tick.
Tick, tick.
The northbound train comes and goes. Samjeeza arrives, claims the lamppost, squawks at me.
But Christian’s not here.
I turn a slow circle, looking for him, my eyes lingering on every empty space, every shadow, hoping to find him, but he’s not here.
He’s not coming.
For a minute I think my fear is going to eat me up.
“Caw,” says the crow impatiently.
It’s midnight.
I have to go. With or without him.
I face the stretch of pavement that will take me across the tracks. One step at a time, my heart going like a rabbit’s, my breath coming in shallow gasps, I cross the tracks.
On the other side Samjeeza unfolds himself into a man. He looks pleased with himself, excited, the fox-in-the-henhouse kind of excited, a wicked gleam in his eye. My skin prickles at the sight of him.
“A fine night for a journey.” He glances around. “I told you to bring a friend.”
“Do you have any friends who’d go to hell for you?” I ask, trying to keep my bottom lip from trembling.
His gaze is piercing. “No.”
He has no friends. He has no anyone.
He tsks his tongue like he’s disappointed in me. “This will not work without someone to ground you.”
“You could ground me,” I say, lifting my chin.
The corner of his mouth turns up. He leans forward, not touching me but close enough to envelop me in the cocoon of sorrow that’s always enclosing him. It is a deep, gut-wrenching agony, like everything beautiful and light in this world has slowly withered and died, crumbled to ash in my hands. I can’t breathe, can’t think.
How did Mom ever manage to get close to this creature? But then, she didn’t have the way with feelings I have. She couldn’t know how black and bone-chillingly cold he truly is inside, how shattered.
“Is this what you want to be bound to?” he asks in a rumbling voice.
I step back and gasp when I’m able to get my breath again, like he’s been choking me.
“No.” I shudder.
“I didn’t think so,” he says. “Ah, well.” He looks down the tracks, where in the distance I can hear the very faint whistle of an approaching train. “It’s probably for the best,” he says.
I’m going to miss my chance.
“Wait!”
I turn to see Christian hurrying across the tracks, wearing his black fleece jacket and gray jeans, his eyes wide, his voice ragged as he calls, “I’m here!”
My breath leaves me in a rush. I can’t help but smile. He reaches me and we hug, clutching at each other’s arms for a minute, murmuring “I’m sorry” and “I’m so glad you’re here” and “I couldn’t miss it” and “You don’t have to do this” back and forth between us, sometimes out loud, sometimes in our heads.
Samjeeza clears his throat, and we step back from each other and turn to him. He cocks his head at Christian.
“Who is this?” he asks. “I’ve seen him hanging around you like some lovesick puppy. Is he one of the Nephilim?”
Christian inhales sharply. He’s never seen Samjeeza before, never been this close to a Black Wing. I wonder for a moment if he wasn’t wrong about seeing Asael. Asael and Samjeeza look enough alike that maybe he confused the two. It’s possible. This could still be his vision, I think.
“He’s a friend,” I manage, grabbing Christian’s hand. Immediately I feel stronger, more balanced, more focused. We can do this. “You said I needed a friend, and here he is. So now you can take us to Angela.”
“Forgetting something, are we?” Samjeeza says. “Your payment?”
What payment? Christian demands in my head. Clara, what payment? What did you promise him?
“I didn’t forget.”
The train is approaching, a dull red light at its head, advancing down the tracks. I’ll have to make this fast.
“I have a story,” I tell him. “But I’ll show you.”
With my free hand I reach up and touch Samjeeza’s cheek, which is smooth and cool, inhuman. His sorrow floods me, making Christian gasp as it reverberates through me and into him, but I surge against it, squeeze Christian’s hand tighter, and focus on today, the hour with my mother on the top of Buzzards Roost. I pour it all into Sam’s shocked and open mind: her voice telling the story, the wind blowing her long auburn hair, the way she felt as she told it, the warm soft clasp of her hand holding mine, and finally, the words.
I lied.
I loved him.
Samjeeza flinches. It is more than he expected. I feel him start to tremble under my hand. I step back and let him go.
We wait to see what he will do. The train’s approaching the station. It’s different from the northbound one; this one is smudged with dirt or soot or something black and nasty so that I can’t read the words on the sides. The windows are crowded with black shapes. Gray people, I realize. On their way to the underworld.
Sam’s eyes are closed, his body absolutely still, like I’ve turned him into stone.
“Sam …,” I prompt. “We should go.”
His eyes open. His eyebrows push together, the space between them wrinkling like he’s in pain. He regards Christian and me like he doesn’t know what to do with us anymore. Like he’s having second thoughts.