A Gift of Wings (4 page)

Aidan’s eyes narrowed further. When he spoke, his voice was very soft. “You got lost in it, didn’t you? You couldn’t tell what was you and what was the song.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but at his murmured “Don’t bother denying it,” she pressed her lips together without saying anything.

“How old are you, Lucky?”

“W-what?” Lucky was embarrassed at how inarticulate she was being, but Aidan’s words kept knocking her off balance. Everything he said was so unexpected. She felt like she was trying to tread water while waves kept crashing over her head.

In a patient voice, he repeated, “How old are you?”

“Seventeen. I’ll be eighteen later this month.”

“Hmmm….” Suddenly, all the intensity went out of his expression, and nodding toward her glass, he gave her a carefree, flirtatious smile. “Hence, the club soda?”

“Hence, the club soda.” She gestured toward the beer in his hand. “And you, I take it, are over 21?”

He nodded and took a long drink from the glass before responding. “Barely, but yes.”

He swallowed the rest of the beer and rose to his feet as he set the empty glass on the table. “I better get back up there. See you after the second set.” His eyes catching and holding hers, he added, “I wonder if you’ll find it equally… moving.”

Before she could respond, he had left her side to make his way back up onto the stage.

“Tell me again that he’s not interested,” Mo hissed in her ear.

Lucky rolled her eyes.

“Well, I don’t care if Mr. Gorgeous is all about the shy, quiet type.
I’ve
got a date with Eric.” Mo waved at the long-haired young man who’d just seated himself behind the drum set. He grinned at her and saluted with one of his drum sticks.

Lucky laughed. “Mo, you’re unbelievable. How did you manage to get a date with someone you’ve known less than twenty minutes?”

Mo’s hazel eyes sparkled with mischief. “I told him about the whole country club dance thing. He said he’d like to see my mother’s face when she sees me, so I told him he could—if he would come as my date.”

“And he agreed?”

“Yep,” Mo snapped her fingers, “just like that. He gave me his number, and I’ve already got him on speed-dial.”

Lucky shook her head. “You never cease to amaze me.”

“Yeah, well, you must have been taking lessons, ’cause the beautiful Aidan is looking all kinds of intense at you.”

“Shut up,” Lucky poked Mo with her elbow. “He is not.”

But when she glanced toward Aidan, she found that Mo had spoken the truth. When her gaze touched his, he looked away, and then the music started up again.

Lucky couldn’t just relax and enjoy the music, no matter how much she wanted to. Every time she started to get caught up in a song, she’d begin to feel that voice trying to weave its way into her, so that she had to shore up her defenses. Each time it happened, she found that Aidan’s eyes were focused on her with a look of concentration. Again, she sensed that he was trying to hold something back, trying to lessen the effect his voice was having on her. Crazy as it sounded, there really did seem to be some kind of weird connection between the two of them.

Despite the mental effort it took, she managed to enjoy the show. She knew some of the songs and liked all of them. Listening wasn’t a problem, as long as she kept a part of her mind focused on resisting the mysterious pull of Aidan’s voice.

But during the last song, her shield crumpled. The song was the band’s signature piece, called “Icarus Falling,” and it was one of her favorites. As she recognized the first notes from the guitar, she unconsciously dropped her guard, and she was defenseless when Aidan began to sing. His voice enveloped her, and all her mental and emotional edges blurred. Some small part of her was still Lucky, but she was also Aidan’s voice, and perhaps a little of Aidan himself, and she was Icarus too. She felt the weight of the wings, the freedom of flight, the blazing heat of the sun. She even felt the touch of burning wax on her back—though the part of her that was still her argued that the wax wasn’t even mentioned in the lyrics.

She grabbed on to that protesting thought and concentrated, trying to pull herself free. Focusing her gaze on the stage, she stared in shock. Rising from Aidan’s back and stretching across the stage was a pair of wings, made not of feathers, but of many tongues of flame, flickering red-gold. She gasped for breath as he sang of flying and falling, of the sweet freedom in flight that was worth the price of death.

The last notes faded away, and she pushed her hair back off her face with a trembling hand, her breathing ragged. She could still see the wings in a sort of transparent shadow. It must have been some kind of lighting effect, something to bring the show to a spectacular close. Somehow, her merging with the song must have magnified that too.

Everyone around her was applauding and whistling. Chairs were scraped back as the crowd began to stand. She felt a little unsteady as she rose to stand beside Mo, who turned to her with a wide smile.

“That was amazing, wasn’t it? Just amazing,” Mo shouted over the applause.

Lucky nodded, smiling back as brightly as she could. “Incredible.”

As people milled around chatting, Lucky bolted down the remainder of her club soda as well as the last of Mo’s, trying to calm herself, to still her spinning thoughts. At least, no one seemed to notice her odd behavior. Some more of Josh’s friends had shown up, and he was preoccupied with talking to them. And Mo was focused on Eric, who had come back to their table as soon as the song had ended. Lucky captured Josh’s attention long enough to motion that she was going outside for some air. When he nodded his acknowledgement, she headed for the door with a feeling of relief.

Outside, the chill of the evening sharpened her senses. She slid her arms into the sleeves of her jacket, and leaning back against the outside wall of the bar, she drew in a few deep breaths. When a masculine hand holding a bottle of water appeared in front of her, she followed the curve of the arm up to see Aidan looking down at her with concern.

“Hey,” he said softly.

Her response was a grumpy, “Hey, yourself,” but she took the offered water and lifted it to take a drink, looking out at the street and the passing cars.

After a few moments of silence, she turned back to Aidan. “That wing thing is quite something.”

“What?”

It seemed as though she had knocked him off balance this time.

“That special lighting effect thing—you know, where you grow flaming wings during ‘Icarus Falling.’ Pretty amazing stuff.”

“Oh, that.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, our lighting and special effects guy is top-notch. That one’s copyrighted—or whatever you call it with those things. I could tell you how he does it, but then I’d have to kill you.”

She managed a weak smile. “Seriously, it was incredible. The whole show was great. You probably hear this all the time, but your voice… well….” She shrugged.

He acknowledged her half-spoken compliment with a tilt of the head. “Thanks. I’m glad you… enjoyed it.” Another moment of silence passed, and then he took a deep breath. “So, when exactly is this upcoming birthday of yours?”

She frowned. “Next Sunday, if you must know. Why are you so concerned about my age and my birthday?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Maybe I just want to make sure you’re legal before I ask you out.”

“You’re going to ask me out?” she asked, with no small share of skepticism.

He shrugged. “Maybe.” Then he gave her a rakish grin. “When you’re old enough.”

Lucky rolled her eyes. “Right.”

“It could happen.”

She regarded him in silence for a few moments. Then, shaking her head, she muttered, “This is going to make me sound like I’m nuts.” She paused before continuing. “Your voice—it does something strange to me.” She searched his eyes, a crease between her brows. “But somehow I think you know that.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say anything, they were surrounded by laughter and conversation as Josh, Ben, Mo, Eric, and the rest of the band joined them. Everyone said their good-byes, and then Lucky, Josh, and Mo started down the block to find their car. When Lucky glanced back over her shoulder, Aidan was still standing there watching her.

***

Aidan watched Lucky and her friends walk away from him with the uncomfortable sense that his life was about to change—and not for the better. From the first song of the evening, when he’d felt the power go out of him and realized that it focused solely on the solemn-looking, dark-haired girl, that no one else in the room was affected, he’d known she heralded nothing but trouble. Anyone who could evoke the Gift he kept hidden in his human life could mean nothing else. Watching her, though, he’d seen the shock in her unusual green eyes, and he had realized she wasn’t drawing his power intentionally. She didn’t understand what was happening. He’d tried to rein it in then, to lessen the impact, but with limited success.

She was a Sensitive—she had to be—and she had no idea what she was. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. She had seen his wings, or at least the shadows of them. In the last few days he had begun to feel them again, had realized they were being returned to him—whether he wanted them or not. So far, he had been deluding himself into believing that if he ignored them, they would go away. Now he was forced to admit that such a response was out of the question. Even if he could just ignore the reinstatement of his wings or reply with some kind of cosmic “Return to Sender,” there was the problem of the girl. He couldn’t ignore her. She was going to be eighteen soon, and if she reached her birthday without knowing what she was, without realizing what was happening to her, if she came into the full force of her power without someone there to help her, she could well lose her mind, or even her life. To survive the process intact on her own, she would have to be very “lucky” indeed.

By all that was holy and unholy, he did not want to be drawn back into that world, but he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t do whatever he could for her. He really had no choice; he had to contact Zeke.

Cursing under his breath, he turned and went back into the bar.

***

Lucky was flying. She could feel the wind on her face, the sun on her hair, the muscles of her back flexing with every beat of her wings. She was surrounded by nothing but blue sky and wispy, white clouds. She felt as light as air. She threw her head back and laughed at the delightful sense of freedom. Someone touched her hand, and she saw that Aidan was flying with her, great white wings beating against the air. She laughed again as they flew higher and faster, as if the pull of gravity was near non-existent. She called out to him in her excitement, and as he turned to look at her, his wings burst into flames. The force of the fire drew his bare shoulders up and back, his body arcing backward into a perfect bow. Lucky was awestruck by the beauty of it—the arc of his body, the flames, and the music. Each tongue of flame on his wings had begun to sing, and the air was filled with a resonating, haunting chorus. Then the arc of Aidan’s body broke, crumpled, and the music stopped as he began to fall. She screamed in terror as she reached for him.

“No! NO!” Lucky jerked awake as she cried out, her heart pounding with fear. She sat up, pushing trembling hands through her hair.

After her breathing had slowed, she threw back the covers, got out of bed, and padded down the hall to the kitchen, where she retrieved a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water from the tap. Still feeling too shaken to return to bed, she wandered into the living room and curled up on the couch, wrapping a fleece throw around her shoulders to take away the chill.

The dream had felt so real—the freedom, the exhilaration, the fear. She listened to the noise from the street below—raucous laughter and loud conversation from a group of people walking by, the shrill sound of a city bus releasing its brakes, the bass beat from a passing car growing louder and then fading away. She let the familiar sounds comfort her, restore a sense of normalcy.

She didn’t feel like going back to bed for quite a while, and when she did, her sleep was troubled and restless.

CHAPTER 4

It was almost 3:00 AM when Aidan parked his motorcycle outside Zeke’s brownstone. He didn’t hesitate to ring the bell despite the hour. He knew the angel never slept. Waking and working 24/7, that was Zeke. There was, he supposed, something to be said for that. Still, he was thankful that he was human enough to need a little shut-eye. He hadn’t felt that way a year ago, but the nightmares weren’t as frequent now, and he’d made friends with the oblivion found in dreamless sleep.

When no one answered, Aidan rang the bell again. The street was so quiet he could hear the sound echoing in the dark house. He tapped his foot impatiently while he waited for a response. He was about to ring a third time when the door opened. Zeke just looked at him, his face revealing nothing of his thoughts. Aidan couldn’t tell if the angel was surprised to see him, or if he’d known who was at the door all along. He also had no idea if Zeke was pleased or annoyed by his presence at his door in the wee hours of the morning.