Blest (8 page)

Roofs were a lot higher than you thought. That’s what Jim decided as he burst into the cold, autumn night with Leo, climbing the ladder that led out through Sydney’s attic. They stood on the sloped shingles of the house, looking out over the lake, the water shimmering purple with the evening sky. Leo licked his finger and stuck it out in the air. “Dude, no wind! This is perfect flying weather for a newbie. The wind can help, for sure, but this way you can learn the basics without getting thrown into a tree.”

“Great, I definitely want to try and avoid that,” Jim said. A rush of adrenaline surged through him.
Flying
. He was actually going to be able to go higher than the water tower. He looked down at the three-story drop and gulped. Sydney’s driveway was gloomy below him. He would either fly, or drop down like a boulder. He moved his arms experimentally, feeling the air pass through his wings. Right now, the boulder option seemed more likely.

Leo clapped him on the back. “I’m so jealous. There’s nothing better than the first flight.”

Jim nodded, unable to speak.

“Man, man, man, this is sweet. Beautiful out here, right?” Miles poked his head up from the skylight, a big grin on his face, but someone yelled at him to get moving so he scrambled up the last rungs of the ladder and hopped onto the roof, rubbing his hands.

Nora came out next. Even her ordinarily stern face broke into a smile as she saw the moon-striped lake below them. Sydney came last. The moonlight gleamed on her blonde hair until it looked almost silver. He had always wondered why she kept it in a braid, but now he realized it was probably because she would go blind if she was trying to fly and it was blowing all over the place.

He looked away when Sydney made eye contact with him. He was still a little intimidated by her—she was so confident, and believed so absolutely in being an angel. Jim couldn’t understand how anyone could believe in one thing so much.

“You ready?” Sydney asked quietly, walking up beside him. Jim opened his mouth to boast that he was born ready or something similarly stupid and confident, but nothing came out.

“It’s all right if you’re scared,” Miles said. “You won’t die—most likely.” He laughed and hopped off the roof.

Jim’s eyes widened, and he ran to the ledge and peered down. With a sudden
whoosh
, Miles shot up dangerously close to the ledge like a rocket, almost head-butting Jim. Jim staggered back and looked up into the sky as Miles zig-zagged straight into the wispy gray clouds.

Nora looked at her phone. “Almost eleven. Standard Miles-show-off hour.”

Sydney laughed. “Miles is our best flier, so he gets a little cocky. They say he may go to the Academy and learn to fly with a sword.”

Jim squinted against the clouds, but couldn’t even see Miles anymore.

“You won’t have to go that high,” Sydney assured him. “Although it
is
always safer higher up. During the day, you can’t fly too low or the humans will see you. Or worse . . . demons.”

Nora ran straight to the edge of the roof and jumped. Jim watched her wings spread, catching the wind, and she glided effortlessly out over the lake. Leo hooted triumphantly and burst into the air next, soaring around the house. Jim could tell that he had just gotten his wings. Every so often, he listed to the right or left, like a canoe paddling too hard in one direction. Sydney followed his gaze.

“Yeah, Leo’s a little clumsy,” she said, smiling. They heard another one of Leo’s hoots. “But he makes up for it with passion.”

They both laughed and caught each other’s eyes. Jim shied away and looked at his feet. He slowly crept closer to the ledge. “Well?” Sydney asked. “Are you ready to do this? Are you excited?”

“No and yes,” he mumbled.

“Perfect!” Sydney gave him a hard push from behind. “It’s like swimming, better to just dive right in!”

The ground hurtled toward him, coming toward him faster and faster. He stretched his wings. He could feel the air blow through them, catching like wind on an umbrella, but before he could flap them even once he hit the driveway. Hard. He lay there for a moment, stunned, until he heard the light fall of feet in front of him. He looked up and saw Miles, his wings still flapping and his toes just brushing the ground.

“You’re a natural, man,” he said, laughing.

Sydney fluttered gracefully beside him. “Miles, you were a pretty crappy flier yourself when you started.”

Miles lifted a few feet and twirled around. “And now look at me, I’m a ballerina of the sky!”

Sydney reached out her hand, and Jim took it. As he got up, he tested his arms and his legs, then put a hand to his ribs. Nothing hurt, and nothing seemed broken.

“Angelic Durability,” Miles said, his face brightening. “It’s a fancy phrase that means you can’t be hurt by a fall. Unless you’re doing a Drop or something.”

“A Drop?” Jim asked, still dazed.

“Jim doesn’t need to know about that yet,” Sydney said quickly. She let go of his hand. “Okay. Want me to help you out a little?”

He flushed. He hated asking for help, but he knew that now more than ever he needed it. “Um, yes. Please.”

Sydney grinned. She grabbed him from under the arms and shot up into the air without warning. Before Jim even caught his breath, they were far above her house, hovering in the sky. “Going up is easy,” she said over the gentle breeze rippling through the air. “You stretch your wings, like you’re stretching your arms, and then you tense your shoulders. That’s how you flap them. Almost everybody is bad at first, because you don’t really use those muscles that much.”

Jim stared down at the forest and distant prairies below, a long blanket of fields folding into the purple-dark horizon. Little islands of suburbs lit up parts of it with pools of watery amber lights. For the first time, he felt completely sure he made the right decision. He stretched his arms and felt his wings respond, catching the air, and then tensed his shoulders so they flapped, once, twice, three times.

“Slow, steady flapping is good for hovering or flying longer distances,” Sydney told him, adjusting her grip under his arms and moving to grapple his waist. Jim swallowed hard as she brought him closer to her, her hand grazing the waistband of his jeans. “Hovering is like treading water. When you’re flying, it’s like swimming. Same muscle groups, really.” Her breath was warm in his ear, and tickled the fine hairs along his jaw. “Just remember to stay steady and let the wind do the work for you. There’s always a draft somewhere.”

Sydney kept a tight hold on him as they drifted over the shimmering lake, over the forests and the houses, over the bridges and brick sidewalks of downtown Pearlton and out to the prairie beyond. “Look at how small everything is,” Jim blurted out.

“Yeah,” Sydney murmured. “Being up so high and seeing all this stuff that people care about, it gives you a whole new perspective, doesn’t it? Sometimes I’ll fly for hours just to clear my head.”

They turned in a wide circle and Jim caught sight of the water tower. “I climb that thing, sometimes,” he confessed, gesturing to the tower. “And I think about that all the time when I’m up there—about what you were saying, the way we treasure some things and just don’t care about others.” He bit his lip, wishing he could be at the water tower now, painting the scene below. Bringing his mom into his world, color by color. “Sometimes, the things we think are important just . . . aren’t.”

Sydney was silent for a moment, and Jim wondered if he’d somehow offended her. “I’m sorry, Jim,” she finally said. “I wish I had known . . . I mean, I had no idea before, that you were like this. That you were like us. A Flier. If I had known—”

“It’s okay,” Jim said. He understood what Sydney was trying to say, that she was sorry for the way she treated him all those years.

As they coasted over the shadowy, blue-and-violet world below, Sydney explained to him how to feel for different currents in the air, and how to catch it the right way with his wings. They finally returned to her roof, where Leo and Nora were waiting, lying on their backs with their hands behind their head, looking at the sky as the clouds coasted above them.

“Where’s Miles?” Sydney asked, dropping to her feet and gently releasing Jim.

Nora just rolled her eyes. “He said he wanted to go to some Mexican place in St. Louis.”

“He went to the
city
?” Sydney shook her head. “He’ll be sore tomorrow, that’s for sure.” She turned back to Jim. “You want to try again?”

Jim nodded, flapping his wings a few times. He looked back at the ledge, took a deep breath, and ran as fast as he could. At the edge of the roof, he launched himself into the air. Gravity took its hold, and he immediately started to drop, but he spread his wings and the air caught them. Closing his eyes and thinking of what Sydney had done, the way she had guided him, he stretched his muscles and flapped his wings. Another flap sent him higher still, until the lake looked like a glittering coin, dark metal reflecting the white lace of starlight.

Jim broke into a grin, feeling a sudden surge of joy, as if he had fallen into his mural on the water tower and everything, all of life, had become one beautiful painting. Twisting to face the ground, he flew just below the clouds, the air rushing in his ears and his wings beating behind him. If only Claire could be here. If only they could explore this new world together.

“Looking good, Jim!” Miles shouted from above. He dropped beside Jim and held out something wrapped in yellow paper. “Taquito?” he said. Jim shook his head, laughing. “Suit yourself,” Miles said, and sped off, diving at break-neck speed to Sydney’s house and slowing down only at the last second, shouting, “Attacquito!” Jim heard Nora squeal as he tossed a taquito at her.

As he made his way back to the group, Jim thought about what Sydney had said about Miles going to some place called the Academy and learning to fly with a sword. His stomach turned. Flying was such a majestic, calming experience. He couldn’t imagine ruining it by fighting somebody. Especially if that somebody would have to be Claire.

Claire sat in homeroom, scrolling aimlessly through Instagram, looking at the photos of girls she no longer knew from schools that had all melded together in her memory. She wondered if any of them had just found out they were demons. Or angels. She sighed. It had been a week and she still couldn’t believe it. Even when she shifted in her seat and felt her curled wings bunch up tight against the back of the chair. She looked at Gunner’s empty desk. He and Shane had decided homeroom was “optional” and usually went to the weight room before classes now.

She shook her head and looked back at Instagram. Her thumb crawled across the screen, the pictures blurring on the edges of her vision. Were these girls still worried about things like boys and homework? They probably didn’t have to think twice about who they liked, or worry whether their brothers were going insane. It wasn’t fair.

“Instagram, huh? Nothing more exciting than looking at what girls think will impress other girls the most, right?” Claire flushed and looked up. Julia had taken Gunner’s empty seat. She smiled good-naturedly. The other girl’s wings glowed almost translucent red in the crisp, golden sunlight from the window behind them. “I know we haven’t talked much.” She tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear. “You just looked lonely. Is everything okay?”

Claire swallowed. “Is it . . . that obvious?” It was true that she hadn’t gone out of her way to talk to the other demons since last week. Befriending any of them seemed somehow like betraying Jim. How could she become friends with people who hated him?

Julia smiled. “I only figured you might be feeling lonely, because I felt the same way when I got my wings last month. I wasn’t friends with Shane or Ben or Erik before. They’re all Juniors anyway. Maria and I talked, but it’s not like I sat with her at the cafeteria. She’s . . .” Julia leaned forward and lowered her voice, “a little high-maintenance. My mom works for Shane’s dad, and I knew we were . . . not human. But I didn’t realize it meant that we’re not allowed to hang out with anyone else.” Her mouth twisted for a second. She jerked her thumb in the direction of her wings. “Once you get these things, it’s almost like you can’t choose who your friends are anymore.”

Claire nodded slowly. She looked around the class, but most kids were on their phones, earphones plugged in. Ms. Stellison, the homeroom teacher, was on her phone, too. “I can’t believe anything that’s happened since I moved to Pearlton,” she whispered. The words hovered in the air for a moment. She so badly wanted to tell somebody, anybody, about Jim. It wasn’t natural to keep a secret buried so deep. Last night, he had flown up to her bedroom window unannounced, but she hadn’t dared let him stay for longer than a few furious kisses. She had wanted to yell at him for coming and hold onto him forever at the same time.

“Usually,” Claire said carefully, “Gunner and I get to a new school and we stick together. We make friends with everybody. It used to be kind of fun.”

“Usually? How many schools have you two gone to?”

“Enough to know that they’re more the same than different.” Claire laughed, but her smile faded. “Gunner was—is—my best friend. But now he’s . . . changed. I’m not used to this.”

Julia waved her hand. “Oh, that’s just what happens to all the guys when they first get their wings. They get all angry and stuff.” She grinned, a mischievous light in her blue eyes. “It’s kind of hot.”

“What? Grunting and trying to intimidate everyone?”

Julia laughed. “Well, sure, it sounds bad when you put it like that. Just relax. Gunner and Shane are going to burn all that off in . . . well, a few years.”

“Years!” Claire hissed incredulously. A few other kids turned to look at her. She dropped her voice to a whisper again. “What do you mean, years?”

“It usually lasts until they grow up, like, eighteen or nineteen. Then they turn into calm and scary Brokers like Shane’s dad.” Julia’s eyes shifted around. “Unless they grow up to be Predators, but there aren’t many of those left on the Field. The angels banished most of them to Slag centuries ago.”

Claire rubbed her eyes. “How many types of demons are there?”

Julia shrugged. “Almost all of us on the field are Brokers.” She tapped her temple. “We’re smart, we’re logical, we’re merciless and cool. You can tell if someone’s a Predator if you can see actual scales on their face, but those don’t grow in until later. They’re stronger fighters. Or so I’ve heard. I don’t know anyone who’s ever met one before.”

A sudden squeal came from the front of the classroom, where a freshman cheerleader peeked her head out from under about three pounds of roses. Julia rolled her eyes and muttered something inappropriate under her breath.

“This room got a
lot
of roses!” the girl declared. “That’s great! Remember, every rose helps the student government fund the Homecoming Dance.”

“Why do they need so much money?” Julia slouched against her chair. “The gym isn’t exactly a ballroom.”

The cheerleader looked at Ms. Stellison, who looked up from her phone to glare in Julia’s general vicinity. The girl continued at a slightly higher pitch: “Anyway, the school dance is going to be great, and these roses could be from friends, significant others, or the best kind—secret admirers!”

Claire cringed. She had gotten the sheet last week asking for money for flowers and thrown it in the trash. It had been an instinct. But now, she found herself anxiously looking at the batch of roses as the cheerleader rifled through them, inspected name tags, and handed them out. She wondered if Jim would risk sending her a rose, then got angry that she was thinking about it at all. It was just a plant that got torn from the dirt, she reminded herself. There really was nothing special about—

“Is there a Claire Morgan? Claire, you got three roses!” the cheerleader exclaimed.

Claire scrambled up from her desk and grabbed the roses before the cheerleader even had a chance to move. She turned away from the girl and thumbed through them. Three roses? One was from Gunner, with the slightly ominous message,
Keep the family strong
. Then, surprisingly, Shane.
I’m glad you made the right choice
, the note said. The last rose had no name tag. Claire held onto it, running her fingers on the rose’s soft petals. This one had to be from Jim. She wished that he hadn’t had to be nameless. That they could go to the dance together and hold hands in the hallway. But no. He couldn’t even put his name on a stupid flower.

“You’re pretty popular,” Julia said as Claire dropped back into her seat. She tossed her cascade of gold hair over her shoulder and smiled. “Isn’t it weird that people go crazy over roses, but if you picked them a dandelion or a maple leaf they would just toss it?”

Claire tucked Jim’s rose behind her ear. Let Gunner and Shane each think it was theirs. She looked at Julia again. “It’s not the rose, really, it’s the meaning behind the rose,” Claire said.

Julia tapped her chin. “So what does that rose mean to you?”

Claire shrugged. “That . . . it’s complicated.”
You have no idea.

• • •

At lunch, Claire and Julia talked more. Julia told Claire about her parents, how they had both been in the War of the Broken Wall. Her mom was now the Treasurer for the Morrisey Administration and her dad traveled a lot. He was something called a Field Merchant. “He hunts down artifacts from Glisten and sells them to the demons. There are some demons who are trying to figure out what makes the material from Glisten so powerful.”

“Too bad that crazy geezer Mr. Webb can’t teach us about that,” Shane said, chewing through his sandwich like a wolf. “Instead, we have to learn about frogs and other pointless stuff.”

“He’s not really a geezer, geezers are old,” Maria pointed out. “But he’s definitely crazy.”

“Fair point, babe.” Shane thumbed her nose and she giggled.

Claire wondered how Shane could be so brutal toward angels and so loving toward Maria. Julia had said they’d been dating since middle school, and that Maria’s father was one of Mayor Morrisey’s best friends. “It’s a match made in . . . somewhere,” she had said, and Claire laughed. Julia was always so relaxed about things. Of all the demons, she was the easiest to be around.

“Oh, that’s a cool one,” Julia said.

“Huh?” Claire asked.

Julia pointed past her. “Someone went all out in the parking lot.”

Claire turned to the long window facing the parking lot behind the school—and gasped. Part of the brick wall leading to the gym had been transformed into a bright mural of blue and green, a cloudless sky above a forest. In the center of the picture was the Pearlton water tower. On top of the building, there were two birds. One was red and one was white. They huddled next to each other. Claire squinted and realized that their wings were crossed, so that it was almost like the red and the white wings had become one.

It took all of her willpower not to mouth Jim’s name. She wondered if anyone else knew that he was such a graffiti artist. Probably not.

“Cool,” Ben added, stretching his thick ox’s neck to get a better look.

“It’s stupid,” Shane snapped. “Who would ever waste their time on something like that? It doesn’t even mean anything.”

Maybe not to you
, Claire thought. She kept stealing glances at the picture for the rest of lunch. Gunner asked if she wanted to try flying home with him after school, even though Maria and Ben warned him that the Tribunal could punish them for revealing themselves to humans, but she said she still wasn’t confident enough with her flying. Really, though, she couldn’t even focus on the conversation. Her eyes kept drifting to the graffiti, Jim’s love note to her.

“They banished us from our place in Glisten, just because we
know
humans aren’t capable of having free will,” Shane was saying.
Not this again
, Claire thought. “Have you turned on the TV lately? Gone on the Internet? It’s obvious allowing humans to do whatever they want turns them into animals.”

Gunner pounded the table. He always loved these speeches. “Humans need demons to control them,” Shane went on. “Their free will is destroying the Field. First, we have to find the Portal so we can get back the powers the angels stole from us—all the original demon powers. Durability. Invisibility. The ability to manipulate matter!”

Claire didn’t know about the whole free will theory. She herself didn’t have free will when it came to being with Jim. If being a demon meant letting the other demons decide what and who you liked, how did the demons have free will?

When the bell rang and everyone started toward their afternoon classes, Claire told Gunner that she had to go back to her locker. She turned into the hallway, then waited for most of the kids to trickle out of the cafeteria before running out into the parking lot. The gleaming graffiti was drawing her in like a magnet. She stopped right in front of the wall, staring up at the water tower, at the two birds.

“Claire!” Jim’s voice was a strained whisper.

She looked left and right, and finally directly up. Jim grinned from the roof, waving down at her. “I thought this might get your attention. Come on up, you can only see this wall from the cafeteria and it looks like everyone’s gone.”

Claire looked over her shoulder before bolting up to the roof. She had flown a few times with Gunner, but the wings still felt a little unwieldy behind her. Jim backed out of sight, moving away from the ledge, and she landed next to him. Almost immediately, their bodies were intertwined, kissing wildly. Claire clung tight to Jim, burying her face in his flannel shirt, breathing in the warm, familiar scent of him. She blinked away the tears that pricked at the corners of her eyes. She couldn’t ruin the moment by crying. Not when Jim had created something so beautiful.

“How did you manage to make that thing so fast?” she finally asked.

Jim winked. “The early bird gets the chance to graffiti the wall.”

“And you knew I was going to come out?”

“How could you resist?” His blue eyes twinkled.

Claire laughed. “I think most couples have beaches and cliffs and forests as their romantic getaway. We have a rusted metal building.”

Jim kissed her on the forehead. “That’s what makes us special.”

Claire huddled against him, tugging at the corners of his shirt and listening to his heart pound. “I like the birds. I like how their colors blend together.”

“That’s one of my favorite things about colors,” Jim murmured. “The more you combine them, the deeper and richer they are, the more complex. I almost wonder if that’s happening with our wings.”

Claire looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

Jim nodded. “The white feather you have. I have a red one.”

She gasped. “You do?”

He gently released her and turned, spreading his wings to their full extent, almost three feet across in either direction. Claire noticed a flash of crimson on the left wing. It looked like it was in the exact same place as her white feather. So far, none of the other demons had commented on it. She had a feeling that Shane had noticed, but for some reason he hadn’t said anything.

“What do you think it means?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” Jim turned back around, furling his wings. “All I know is that it makes me feel more connected to you, even when we have to run away from each other in the hall the cafeteria. None of the angels know what it means—they’ve never seen it before. I think it has to do with our promise, that day. You remember?”

Claire nodded. “We swore on blood,” she whispered. “That we would stick together, no matter what.”

“So I don’t want you to ever feel alone, or that I’m not thinking of you,” Jim said urgently, lifting her chin with his thumb. “That feather means that I’m always with you. We’re in this together, Claire.”

For a second, they stood in silence, looking out across the fields and the parking lot, focusing their eyes on the real Pearlton water tower in the distance. Then, the bell rang.

“Lab!” she said suddenly. “We’re supposed to be at Lab by now!”

Jim kissed her one last time. “Oops. Here, I’ll go through the lobby and you go through the cafeteria.”