Angel Burn (17 page)

Alex tucked the license back into the wallet and flipped through the plastic photo holders. There was one of Willow and her friend Nina, with their arms around each other and their heads pressed together. They were wearing funny hats, mugging at the camera. And one that had to be Willow as a little girl, holding the hand of a woman with blond hair. Her mother?

Alex looked at this photo for a long time. Willow appeared very young in it, maybe six or seven. And though her mouth was curved in a polite smile at whoever was taking the photo, the expression behind her eyes was anxious. She stood slightly in front of the woman, her body language protective. Willow’s mother — if that’s who it was — had the same wavy blond hair as her daughter and was staring off into the distance. The dreamy smile tugging at her lips was that of someone with severe mental angel burn.

Slowly, Alex closed the wallet and put it away. He turned on the TV. Lying down on one of the beds with his forearm crossed under his head, he gazed at the screen, still seeing the photo of Willow as a little girl. Her love for her mother was obvious; no wonder she hadn’t wanted to leave her.

And now she was over a thousand miles away from home and might never see her mother again  . . .  with only some guy she hated for company.

WHEN I GOT INTO THE SHOWER, the jets pounded down on me, sweeping away the grime of the last two days. I lathered my hair, wishing that the shampoo didn’t smell so much like Alex. And then I felt irritated that I’d even noticed what he smelled like. The last two days had been difficult enough, without having to deal with him being so stiff and cold toward me, as if it hadn’t even occurred to him that maybe I was a little bit more upset about all of this than he was.

The hot water felt good, vigorous. I stayed in the shower for a long time, savoring it and letting it wash my mind clear of thoughts. When I finally stepped out, I dried myself off, wiped the steam from the mirror with my hand, and wrapped my hair up in a towel.

Then I realized that I didn’t have any nightclothes. Or a toothbrush. Or toothpaste. I felt like crying in frustration. Great. Now I was going to have to ask Alex for help again. I briefly considered sleeping in the towel instead, then thought of the logistics of that and sighed.

“Alex?” I called through the bathroom door.

There was a pause. “Yeah?”

Opening the door a crack, I peered out. “Um — I don’t have anything to sleep in. Do you have something I could borrow? And some toothpaste, maybe?”

He glanced at me and then away. “Yeah, hang on.” He got up and rummaged in his bag, pulling out a couple of things. He crossed to the bathroom and handed them in to me. Our eyes met.

“Thanks.” I withdrew quickly inside again and shut the door.

He’d given me a pair of black sweatpants and a faded red cotton shirt with long sleeves. They felt soft and worn, the way clothes get with lots of washings. I tossed them onto the counter, then brushed my teeth with a washcloth and finished towel-drying my hair. When I finally pulled on the clothes, they were so big that they swam on me, the sleeves of the shirt dangling past my hands. I started to roll up the right one  . . .  but stopped as sensations washed over me.

There’s this thing called psychometry, which is when a psychic can pick things up from objects. Like, you give them dear old Aunt Grace’s wristwatch, and they hold it in their hands and can tell you everything about her. I don’t know how it’s supposed to work; maybe items hold leftover energy or something. Anyway, it’s never worked very well for me — the most I usually got was a distant flicker of emotion.

But now, wearing Alex’s clothes, I was feeling something more.

I stared at myself in the mirror as I stroked the red sleeve. It felt comforting. I mean, comforting beyond just the normal warmth and softness of an old T-shirt. The energy from when Alex had last worn it was  . . .  I closed my eyes, wrapping myself up in it like a blanket.

It felt like coming home.

My eyes flew open.
You’re losing it,
I thought.
He hates the very idea of you.

That was my brain. My hand wasn’t paying any attention; it was still touching the sleeve, my fingers running lightly up and down it. The energy that I sensed there felt so familiar, so safe.

I dropped my hand as if the sleeve was on fire, and the sensations stopped. Closing my mind, I rolled up both sleeves almost harshly, shoving them up my forearms. What I had sensed was totally crazy. I didn’t even
like
Alex. Yet when I opened the door and went into the bedroom, my eyes darted straight to him. He was lying on one of the beds, watching TV with his arms crossed under his head, and seemed deep in thought.

Glancing across at me as I came in, he actually smiled, his mouth twitching upward as if he couldn’t help it. “They’re, uh  . . .  sort of big on you,” he said.

“Yeah.” I looked away from him, feeling flustered. Sitting on the empty bed, I started to comb out my hair.

“I guess I’ll take a shower, too, if you’re finished.” He took some things from his bag, then went into the bathroom and closed the door. As I heard the shower starting up, I tried to forget about the sensations I had felt. Or how much even the slight smile had softened his face.

The local news came on, and I looked up, wondering for a second if there might be something on there about my disappearance. But we were over a thousand miles away from home. I let out a breath. Were Mom and Aunt Jo OK?

Over the last two days, I’d tried several times to get a fix on them psychically, picturing the house in my mind and trying to feel what was happening there. All I ever got was a sense of worry and slight irritation — exactly what I’d expect from Aunt Jo, now that she was left on her own with Mom. I hoped these glimmers meant they were both safe, that no one had come looking for me. I stared unseeingly at the TV screen. Aunt Jo was sure to have called the police by now, who would have found out from Nina that I’d gone to the Church of Angels, and  . . .  then what? Had they found my car? According to Alex, the police force was full of Church of Angels members; would they say anything if they
had
found it? Or were they were looking for me for reasons of their own?

A commercial came on, as if triggered by my thoughts, and I found myself gazing at a familiar pearl-white church. “Do you feel despairing?” intoned the voiceover.
Oh, no, not this.
I lunged off my own bed, grabbed the remote control from Alex’s, and switched the channel. Another local news program, this one about a shortage of hospital beds in Knoxville. Good — nice and safe and boring. I tossed the remote back onto Alex’s bed, then pulled my pillows out from under the bedspread and settled down to watch.

“Hospital staff are struggling,” announced a woman with perfectly styled dark hair. She was standing in a hospital corridor; behind her, there were beds with patients in them lining the walls. An orderly bumped against one as he hurried past; there was the sound of someone groaning in the background. “What once used to be sufficient hospital space for central Knoxville’s needs has in recent months become woefully inadequate, as cases ranging from cancer to lesser-known diseases have skyrocketed. . . .”

I frowned and hugged a pillow to my chest as I watched, a memory tickling at my mind. This was so familiar, even down to the shot of a news reporter standing in a crowded hospital corridor. Then I remembered: I had watched a similar news story only a couple of months ago, about a shortage of hospital beds in Syracuse.

Hospital beds in Knoxville, Tennessee, and hospital beds in Syracuse, New York. Two cities a thousand miles apart from each other.

The camera panned to a teenage girl in one of the beds against the wall; she was trying to smile, but you could tell how weak she was. My scalp prickled as I remembered Beth’s reading — that was exactly how I’d seen her looking after she’d been at the Church of Angels for a while. Alex’s words rushed back to me, about the angels’ touch leaving people hurt, diseased — and I realized that the two news stories weren’t a coincidence. There wasn’t a shortage of hospital beds; there was an increase in people being sick, and it was because of the angels. This was really happening — not just to Mom and Beth, but to people all over the country. The story ended and another one came on. I sat in a daze, trying to take in the sheer scale of it.

I jumped as the bathroom door opened. Alex came back into the bedroom wearing a pair of navy-blue sweatpants, his dark hair looking towel-dried. He dropped his clothes on the dresser and went over to his bag, while I tried not to stare at the sight of him with his shirt off — the toned muscles on his stomach, chest, and arms; the smoothness of his skin, still slightly damp from the shower. With a sideways glance, I took in the faint line of dark hair that crept down from his navel, watched his tanned shoulders move as he rummaged in the bag and pulled out a T-shirt. There was a tattoo on his left bicep — a black
AK
in gothic lettering.

God, he is so good-looking.
Heat scorched my face at the unwanted thought. I really, really did not want to be attracted to Alex. He pulled the T-shirt over his head, and I felt myself relax a little.

Taking something else out of his bag, Alex said, “Hey  . . .  this is yours.” Turning, he held it out to me. My eyes widened as I saw that it was the photo from home, the one that had sat on the bookcase in the dining room: me and the willow tree.

Slowly, I reached out for it. My throat tightened, remembering when Mom had taken it — one of those brief, wonderful times when she’d actually been all there.
See the willow tree, Willow? That’s you. That’s your name.
I traced my fingers over the glass. “But — how did you —?”

“I took it from your house,” he admitted. He sprawled on his bed, stretching a leg out and propping the other one up on the cover.

I stared at him in disbelief, clutching the photo in both hands as if to protect it. “You
stole
it? But why?”

Alex shrugged as he looked up at the TV, his forearm resting on his knee. “Angels don’t have childhoods. When I saw that, I knew for sure that you weren’t an angel, so I took it. I thought I might need it.” His blue-gray eyes rested on me for a second. “Sorry.”

I started to say something else but stopped, gazing back down at the photo. “No, I’m really glad to have it,” I confessed. I stroked the frame and placed it on my bedside table. Then I thought of something. “How did you get into the house, anyway?”

He smiled slightly. “I picked the lock on the back door. Your aunt should get a good security lock; that one’s pretty crap.”

I sighed and dropped my head back against my pillows. “Yeah, I wish I could tell her.”

There was a short silence, with only the sound of the TV. One of those stupid court shows had come on, where people go and shout at each other in front of a judge.

“Look, Willow  . . . ” Alex paused, and I glanced over at him. He was frowning, tapping his knee with his hand. “I, um  . . .  I know that all of this must be really hard for you. I mean, having to leave your family, and  . . .  everything.”

Oh, God, don’t be
nice
to me; I’ll start crying.
I shrugged, staring fixedly at the screen. “Yeah, I’ve had better weeks. Like the week when I had the chicken pox — that was a lot more fun.”

He gave a short laugh. The sound surprised me; I realized that I’d never heard him laugh before. But then I hadn’t been laughing much, either. We watched the show in silence for a while. A woman was accusing her dog groomer of giving her dog a bad haircut and wanted hundreds of dollars in pain and suffering. The dog didn’t look as if he cared either way.

“When did you first find out that you’re psychic?” asked Alex suddenly. He was gazing at the TV. When I didn’t answer, he turned his head to look at me. His dark hair was ruffled, still a little damp from his shower.

My muscles tensed. I wasn’t usually self-conscious about being psychic, but I knew exactly what it meant as far as he was concerned. It was why I’d felt so torn about doing a reading in the diner, right in front of him.

“Why?” I asked.

His shoulders moved as he shrugged. “Just wondering. It must be pretty hard — knowing things that other people don’t know.”

Everything within me seemed to go still. That wasn’t what most people said. Most people, if they believed I was psychic at all, just went on about how fantastic it must be.
Wow, you can really tell the future? That is so cool! Can you, like, win the lottery?
Having someone actually realize that it’s not always fun was  . . .  unusual.

“I don’t know when I first found out,” I said. “I’ve always been psychic. It was more a question of  . . .  well, realizing that the rest of the world isn’t, I guess.”

An unwanted memory flashed through my mind: myself at five years old, out shopping for groceries with Mom. There had been a kind-looking lady in the cereal section who’d squeezed my hand and cooed, “Oh, what a pretty little girl!” And that had made me feel good, so that I wanted to do something nice for her, too. So I told her all about the images that I saw. The new house that she and her husband were building. Her teenage son, who was going to leave home but then return in less than a year. Her new job, which she wouldn’t like at first, but —