Fallen Angel of Mine (52 page)

The next day at school I set my tray
down carefully beside Snowy, trying to ignore the look she gave
me.

"So," she began and I tried really hard
to keep the sigh from escaping. I sighed way too much
lately.

"So," I said and had a brilliant idea.
"Are you going to ask Smoke to the Valentine’s dance? If you’re not
then I know who I’m asking."

"What?" She got all bug eyed at the
idea of me taking Smoke to the dance, then her eyes narrowed and
she shook her head at me. "Nice try. And anyway I am asking Smoke.
So have you given Osmond an answer about the date yet?"

I was tempted to put my head down into
my lukewarm mashed potatoes but resisted the urge. "I wish you
would stop fixing me up with him. I’m perfectly capable of having a
social life all by myself."

"All by yourself is what I’m afraid of.
Come on. It’s no big deal for you to go out to a little movie with
your good friend Osmond. You agreed to do it before all that crap
went down."

"Why do you want me to go on a date?
I’m not normal, and I’m not going to be normal however many normal
guys I date."

Snowy tossed her hair and said airily.
"Osmond is definitely above average."

I couldn’t help but smile little bit at
that. "Yeah, Osmond is great, but I’m not supposed to date people
who aren’t sanctioned by my family."

Snowy rolled her eyes dramatically. "Oh
yeah, and you’re so good at following the rules. When are you going
to bust out and do something crazy? I kind of miss the old
you."

"Yeah. Me getting people killed was so
way cool. Osmond has scars from the burns," I said quietly. I felt
a rush of guilt for risking my friends to rescue…

"He has scars from all kinds of things,
and he wasn’t nearly as badly burned as Lewis," she said ignoring
my flinch when she said his name. "Ask your mother if she minds if
you date Osmond, and if she says no, then you can give the whole,
‘my mommy won’t let me’ speech, but otherwise you have to give the
real reason you don’t want to date him."

I scowled at her. I wanted to say
something mean and cruel, about how long it had taken for her to
admit she liked Smoke, about how she hadn’t exactly bounced back
after Devlin died, but instead I bit my lip until I tasted blood.
That was unfortunate because the taste of blood made me wickedly
sick. I shoved away from the table and headed for the restroom. I
ignored the looks people gave me, mostly of pity irritatingly
enough. I wasn’t sure about the stories going around, but they had
something to do with me getting dumped and being depressed about
it. That wasn’t true at all. I was the one who told Lewis I never
wanted to see him again. Go girl power, I thought right before I
puked in the school’s old leaky toilet.

After I got home, I forced myself to
find my mother right away, before I found something more important
to do, like stare at the sky outside my window.

"Mom, Osmond asked me on a date. Is
that okay?" I felt like an idiot as I said the words. I was old
enough to date who I wanted, but ever since my uncle Stephen died
protecting me I felt like I owed a debt— the kind of debt you just
can’t repay.

She stared at me, and a slight smile
flickered around her mouth before it disappeared. "You’re asking my
permission?"

I sighed and started peeling an orange.
It gave me something to look at so I wouldn’t have to look at her.
"Jackson told me that I couldn’t date people without sanction from
the House. I don’t want to mess up again."

"Satan," she called in a raised voice.
After a few heavy seconds Satan’s slouchy hatted head appeared in
the doorway. "Sit down please."

Satan grumbled as he made his way to
the table. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and I could see the
tattoos circling his wrists. "What’s going on?" He asked pulling
out a cigar.

My mother’s hand darted out and
snatched the cigar from his mouth. "When were you going to inform
my daughter that she had no duty towards the House?" Her voice was
soft and purring but it made my arm hairs rise. I could feel the
anger in her, smoldering barely under the surface. I almost
expected lightning to strike.

Satan shrugged uncomfortably eying the
cigar. "It didn’t come up."

My mother’s fist tightened on the cigar
then she dropped the wilted sad mess on the table. "Why don’t you
tell my daughter why she has no duty towards the House, and why
don’t you sound convincing?" she asked leaning back in her chair
with her long sleeve covered arms crossing her chest.

Satan inhaled deeply, looked mournfully
at the cigar and then shrugged slapping his huge hands on the
table. "Your dad went with us to take out Bliss. He worked out some
kind of agreement to keep you and your mother out of the
House."

My mother snorted at this. "Some kind
of agreement? Which was…"

"Alex is taking the temporary place of
Stephen until Jackson can grow into the position, or until the
position is filled some other way, or until Alex takes over the
entire house and makes us all arborists," Satan finished with a
growl. "This wasn’t my idea, Helen. You know perfectly well that
I’d rather eat all my hats than see a Cool take the place as son of
the house, but times are changing. Apparently." He pulled out
another cigar and glared at my mother.

She gave him a bland smile and shook
her head. "Was that so hard, Satan?" She turned to me and said
gently, "You may date anyone you like. If you like him," she cocked
her head and then shook it slightly. "Osmond is a very good
friend." She stood up and that was that.

I looked at Satan but he was studying
the smoke that hung in a cloud around him, making no movement
towards the window. I waved my hands in front of my face to clear
the smell of burning but he didn’t seem to notice. I felt the
headache crowding behind my eyes and needed to get out.

I walked down the sidewalk beneath the
streetlights, sliding on the ice and hard packed snow. I shivered
and zipped my coat up higher. I walked aimlessly trying to sort
things out in my head. Something stirred inside of my chest when I
thought of my dad, working for Slide. I clenched my teeth trying to
understand why I felt like this, like I wanted to rip something
apart, like I wanted to do something drastic and stupid and
violent— to myself. The streetlight above me began humming, the
squeal sounding louder and louder until with a crackling pop it
exploded. I ducked and covered my head with my hands then felt a
burning line across my knuckles. I straightened shakily looking at
my hand in the near dark with the streak of blood already staining
the cuff of my coat. I pulled out the shard of glass, took a shaky
breath then walked home.

The next day at school I waited until
after the very last bell.

"Osmond, when do you want to go?" I
asked him, the words spilling out of my mouth as quickly as
possible. I’d caught him after school at his locker, and I tried
not to notice the people looking in my direction. Osmond shot me a
grin, and I wanted to flinch at the white scar across his forehead.
It had been a miracle that everyone hadn’t died.

"I’ll pick you up tonight at seven. Do
you need a ride home now?"

I shook my head and smiled while I
backed away from him. "See you then."

I rode home with Snowy and felt a
slight satisfaction at not telling her about the date. She’d been
bothering me for so long, not telling seemed like the only revenge
I could think of. It was almost a relief to think of going out with
Osmond. I liked Osmond. Maybe if I liked him enough I would stop
feeling sick about Lewis.

After I got home, I stood in my bedroom
in front of the mirror wondering if I should put on the knife
harness Satan had given me for Christmas. It went around my thigh
and was the kind of thing that I wouldn’t have thought about much
as a Hotblood, but now, it was weird. I was not the same person who
could easily hunt and track and fight and who had no fear. I stared
at myself in the mirror, the eyes that were somehow both my dad’s
silvery pale blue, and my mother’s dark blue nearly black, the hair
that still had highlights from the summer that made the brown look
alive and healthy. I looked nice. When I smiled I didn’t look like
I wanted to eat someone. I missed the scary Hotblood. I shook my
hair back and left the knife where it was. I needed to forget about
all the things I wasn’t and couldn’t be.

On the date, I stood beside Osmond in
line for the popcorn and felt my stomach clench. I couldn’t
remember ever being in a movie theater and there was something
about the dim lights and the popcorn machine that made me nervous.
Maybe it was Osmond who was wearing a nice button down shirt and a
jacket, wearing cologne I could smell. I guess he matched me in my
carefully selected dress but it made me wonder where the guy was
who I’d known all my life.

"So… do you have the internship lined
up yet?" I asked as a younger couple with some rebellious piercings
that would have looked mild anywhere other than Sanders bumped
us.

"It’s been lined up for years. How are
your art classes going?" He gave me a half smile that made a dimple
in his cheek. The dimple made me smile back at him.

"Great! It’s amazing to see how much
there is to learn." My smile was weak and forced but I held onto
it.

"Give it some time," he said
encouragingly. "Do you want popcorn?"

Before I knew it we were sitting close
to the back of the movie theater with popcorn between
us.

"That guy makes a lousy villain,"
Osmond whispered.

"What is he wearing?" I asked, and he
gave me a smile I could only see dimly in the reflected
light.

I eventually relaxed back into my chair
and let myself be amused by the story of a guy and girl who were
chased around by some ridiculously badly acted villains until the
point where the guy’s injured and the girl’s telling him she loves
him, and there’s so much blood, and the smell was overwhelming and
intoxicating, and nothing else in the world was like it, and it’s
everywhere, on her hands, smeared down her dress, and she’s kissing
him, begging him to live, begging him to stay with her, telling him
she loves him and can’t live without him, and someone was yelling,
saying something about danger, the woman she has to leave him, has
to…

The screen went black as Osmond pulled
me to my feet and half carried half pushed me down the aisle
towards the nearest exit. People shouted and pushed while the thick
smoke came from everywhere. I coughed and stumbled but Osmond had
his arm around my shoulder and he blocked everyone in our path,
gently of course. I leaned against him and put my face in his
shirt, glad for the smell of the cologne that blocked out the
smoke, kept me from smelling the blood.

We burst through the side doors into
the alley where groups of people were standing around talking
excitedly, pointing to the movie theater. I looked down and studied
the bricks beneath my feet as Osmond took me away quickly down the
alley, holding me steady as we walked over ice so I didn’t fall on
my face.

We made it to the curb where his truck
was parked and left the sound of people behind us, the cold air and
brisk wind sweeping away any traces of smoke. Osmond buckled me in
when my shaky hands wouldn’t do it then was soon in his seat
turning on the truck with the heater on full blast. I hunched as
small as I could get with my hands over the heater, not warm yet as
Osmond drove. He drove around town aimlessly but I didn’t care one
way or another. I still felt shaky, like I’d been in an accident
and barely walked away leaving a wreck behind me. Osmond reached
over and took one of my hands in his. His hand was warm,
comfortable even, but I had to resist the urge to jerk away from
him.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Osmond
asked after a long silence stretched out as dark and bleak as the
night outside the window.

"About what?" I asked.

"Did you see Valerie in the alley?" he
asked.

I shook my head and
shivered.

"She looked at you like… I don’t know.
She looked like you were responsible for it."

My head snapped up and I stared at
Osmond. He looked back at me with a slight frown on his warm face
and I pulled my hand out of his grip.

"I haven’t talked to Valerie since
school started after Christmas break."

"I could feel the energy coming off
you," Osmond said quietly. "You were watching the movie but I
watched you. Something happened in that theater that only you saw,
and it upset you enough that…" he trailed off.

"You think I burned down the
theater?"

He studied the road for a minute
without saying anything. "I don’t know what happened; that’s why
I’m asking you," he finally said.

"How should I know? I don’t know
anything! I don’t know why I still haven’t figured anything out, I
don’t know who I am, or what I want, or what’s going to happen, and
I certainly don’t know why you wanted to take me on a date. I don’t
know why I have to smell blood in a movie theater, or why I…" I
faltered and didn’t ask why I hurt so much for someone I didn’t
really know.