Falling (The Falling Angels Saga) (20 page)

The faces of the other food court inhabitants changed quickly from amazement to mild amusement. “She’s talking into a mechanical device,” I heard a thirtyish woman say. “I’ve seen them online.”

A few moments later, everyone went back to what they were doing. Everyone, that is, but us.

“Megan?” Erin enquired, wondering if I was still in there. She knew the story of my runaway abilities. She knew that Satan was just itching to get his hands on me.
Had it finally happened?

Not daring to utter a sound for fear of the horror that might come out of my mouth, I nodded my head quickly. “Mmm-hmm.” I hitched a thumb over my shoulder, indicating that I was leaving. I turned and started for the escalator.

“You sure you’re okay?” she called after me. I nodded again, doing my best imitation of a bobble head as I hurried toward the escalator. “She needed to know,” Erin called louder. “Now things between us can get back to normal. You’ll see.”

I didn’t respond. Oh, I had plenty to say, but I was afraid to speak for fear of what might come out. I recalled the sound of my voice last summer at the Insomniac’s Café when my shift supervisor, Carly Sanchez, decided to embarrass me in front of the other new hires. Anger had slammed into me that day. The voice that came out of my mouth was low and seething, and sent Carly running home never to return.

This was different. First off, I wasn’t angry. I was upset, no doubt about it. I was mortified that Erin would take it upon herself to tell Maudrina to take a hike. But there was no anger, and yet the voice coming out of me today was a horror movie voice so unlike my own I could never duplicate it in a million years.

I’m totally losing control.

Speaking of horrors, I was also concerned about the horror that might accompany the demonic voice. Wind, an earthquake, pestilence, maybe even flames. I could be a one-girl wrecking crew when my abilities were out of control, and if that monster voice was any indication, I was
way
past out of control.

Innocent people could get hurt. Right now it was just a demonic voice and that’s how I wanted to keep it. There were hundreds of people at the mall. I needed to get down the escalator and out of there before I caused any real damage.

I reached the escalator and started down. Not waiting for the moving steps to take me to the bottom on their own volition, I double-timed it down the stairs. Fortunately, there was no one ahead of me to impede my progress. The up escalator, however, was jam-packed with mall visitors.
You guys just missed a neat trick. If you’d’ve only gotten here sooner.

I was nearing the bottom when I saw her. I froze. It was as if I’d been paralyzed, my feet refusing to move, super glued to the mechanical step. I looked into her deep set eyes, recognized the pale, translucent skin as she glided by. She was smiling at me, with a big ole yellow-toothed grin.

My head didn’t turn to follow her. It couldn’t. It, too, was paralyzed.

“You can win,” I heard her say in a whisper meant for my ears only as she glided by.

I continued to the bottom with no attempt at looking back. I closed my mind to anything more that she might say, and when I got to the bottom, I stepped off the escalator and began walking stiffly toward the nearest exit, moving like Dorothy’s tin man.

Look back!
a voice inside me called.
Maybe she’s waiting for you.

That’s what I feared most. I feared looking back and discovering the yellow-toothed girl I’d met in a stairwell at G.U. was indeed waiting at the top of the escalator for me, waiting to say more, waiting to explain it all.

It was no coincidence that she’d arrived when she did. I knew that. I also knew I was in no state of mind to find out if she was sent by Ibwa, or Satan, or any other unearthly entity. I was already in the process of becoming unhinged. No telling what might have happened if I saw her waiting for me.

You can’t handle the truth!

So I pretended I didn’t see her. I told myself my mind had played a trick on me. There was no yellow-toothed girl on the escalator. I’d just imagined there was, and the sooner I got the imaginary girl out of my mind, the sooner I could deal with the real problem of the day: My best friend in the world had been told I didn’t need her anymore. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I exited the mall moving with a rigid gait. Shaking off the temporary paralysis, I headed down the street away from the mall, away from Erin and the imaginary (
don’t tell me she’s not
) yellow-toothed girl with one destination in mind.

*

The barking began as soon as I started up the walk. Piddles and Sam sensed my arrival and were greeting me with a cacophony of welcoming barks. Usually, when I came up Maudrina’s walk, the door would fly open and Piddles would come scampering out, bouncing in the air with excitement. This time the door didn’t open. I stepped up and rang the doorbell.

I could hear Piddles and Sam racing back into the house to tell Maudrina I was at the door. Of course, she already knew. The dogs ran back into the entryway, Piddles crashing into the door before racing off again.

I started getting a horrible feeling, a premonition of sorts that she wasn’t going to open the door—not ever. It hit me like flu symptoms, a queasy stomach and light-headedness.

I’ll believe it for both of us for now. Give you a little break.

Break’s over,
I thought. Maudrina was no longer there for me to lean on. Maybe she was gone for good. I again thought of Satan laughing himself into a conniption fit.
You ready for me now?

That’s when I heard someone coming, shuffling slowly toward the door. My heart leapt as I realized she was going open it, she was going to let me in.

The door unlocked, opened a crack. “Come on in,” her retreating voice called. “And don’t let the dogs out.”

I slipped inside the house. Piddles and Sam were all over me, Piddles leaping into the air while Sam nudged my knee. Maudrina was moving away. She was in her PJs and headed for the kitchen. She didn’t look back. It was four thirty in the afternoon and Maudrina was already in her PJs. Not good. Not good at all.

After giving the dogs some brief attention, I headed for the kitchen after her. Piddles and Sam raced ahead of me.

“I missed you at the mall,” I said, even toned as I entered. Maudrina was seated at the kitchen table nursing a glass of chocolate milk. Piddles was already in her lap, licking the sweetness from the tips of her fingers. Maudrina looked over at me, weary-eyed. I’d seen the look on Suze during tax season at work. She’d come home so mentally exhausted some days, she could barely string two sentences together.

“You ever have that feeling that while everything seems to be good, something in your gut is telling you it isn’t, and that at any moment the bad news you’ve been waiting for is going to come crashing down on you?” she asked.

“Waiting for the other shoe to drop. That’s what my mother calls it,” I said in response. Sam came up to me and nudged my hand on top of his head.
Pet me!

“Ever since we rescued Erin, that’s the feeling I’ve had. I’ve been waiting all summer for the other shoe to drop,” she said and took a swallow of chocolate milk.

“And today it did,” I said softly.

“Yeah,” she replied. She looked down at Piddles in her lap and smiled as the dog continued licking her fingers. “Today it finally did,” she said.

“I’m sorry. I had no idea—”

“She’s back!” she said, cutting me off. “Thanks to
us
, she’s back.” Her tone was a reminder to me that she never wanted a hand in it. She never wanted it to happen.

I don’t think she’s worth
it,
she had told me before I headed off on my rescue mission.

“She’s wrong about me and her,” I said, moving to the table and sitting. “Today’s meeting was to tell her that I hadn’t trusted her, that I’d accused her of trying to harm Aunt Jaz. And you know what? I was right not to trust her. What Erin and I had was good. It was great even. But it’s nothing like the bond
we
share.”

“I know that,” Maudrina said, her face suddenly brightening into a smile. “We’re best friends.”

“The
best
best friends,” I added, now smiling myself. Mine was a smile of relief. I hadn’t lost her after all. The boxer, Sam, had no use for our conversation. He was trying to climb into my lap.

“But you’d like for Erin and me to find a common ground, right? You’d like for us to all be friends, and I can’t because… I hate her.” The cloud once again drifted over Maudrina’s eyes as the weariness returned. “I know how important she is to you, Megan, and I tried to make it work. I really did. But I
hate
her.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. It wasn’t that I didn’t think Maudrina was entitled to her feelings. Rather, it was the vehemence with which her words had come.

“I know I have no right to hate her. Truth is, I don’t even know her. And I don’t want to. That makes me a bad person, right?”

The question caught me off guard. “No,” I said softly.

“I didn’t leave the mall today because Erin hurt my feelings. She did. But I left because if I’d stayed another moment, I was going to punch her out.”

She was serious. She was dead serious. It wasn’t a laughing matter, and yet I burst into laughter.

“Don’t laugh.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, laughter continuing to bubble out of me. “But I can’t help it. I can’t see you punching anyone.”

A small smile materialized on her lips. “It’s true. I had to get away, or there was going to be a beat-down at the mall.”

I recalled her words from last summer before I headed off to Tavares Castle to rescue Erin:
If you somehow miraculously manage to get out of this, and she steps one toe across the line… I’m going to kick her ass.
And here she was echoing the same sentiment.

“I do want to work things out with Erin,” I said, after my laughter diminished. “I can tell she’s hurting. But after what she pulled today, I totally understand how you feel.”

Maudrina nodded, silently accepting that I wasn’t going to throw our friendship away, either. “I need a hug,” I said.

“Me, too,” she replied, the specter of a smile rippling her lips.

We stood in the middle of her kitchen, hugging like distant cousins meeting up at the airport. Piddles and Sam were doing their best to get between us. No way.

That was when everything changed.

I remember the exact moment. We were standing in the middle of Maudrina’s kitchen, hugging. The dogs were doing their best to get between us. The late afternoon sun was shining through the blinds that covered the kitchen window over the sink, throwing prison-bar-like shadows onto the tile floor.

“I’m ready,” I said.

Maudrina pulled back and looked at me with a puzzled yet knowing smile. “Ready?” she asked. “Ready for what?”

I sighed, and with the sigh I felt all the fear and worry I’d been clinging to these past several days fall away. I was a caterpillar shedding her cocoon of fear, worry, doubt. “When we were at Aunt Jaz’s, you said you’d carry things for me until I was ready to carry them for myself. Until I was ready to start believing I could actually win. Thank you for carrying the weight for me these past few days,” I said, looking her in the eyes. “But I’m ready to start believing now.”

Maudrina’s smile broadened and a look came into her eyes. Something like pride, like she was proud that I’d finally gotten there. “What brought this on?” she asked, that look never leaving her eyes.

I didn’t know exactly how to put it into words. It started with me surviving the weekend. It’s not like I was dying or anything, at least not on the outside. But when I’d dragged myself home from Aunt Jaz’s Saturday evening, I truly did feel like my world was coming to an end.

Yet when I woke up Monday morning, my world hadn’t ended. I still had Guy and Maudrina. I still had my mother. I still had hope. After that, I’d gotten through a day of school along with my former best friend telling my
current
best friend to take a hike. My current best friend didn’t take a hike. She was standing here in her kitchen wearing the cutest Hello Kitty PJs, eyeing me with pride, like a young mother whose daughter had just completed her first day of Kindergarten.
Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?
And finally, it was the yellow-toothed girl I’d seen again on the escalator.
You can win.

“I don’t know,” I said in response to her question. “I guess just the fact that I’m still here. That
we’re
still here.” My expression shifted. A nervous little bird began hopping around inside my stomach. In the past, this jittery stomach would have indicated a feeling of fear or worry, but today I felt exhilarated. “We’re going to beat him,” I said with conviction. “We can win.”

Maudrina’s smile broadened. “I know we can. We beat him before, and we’ll beat him again.”

“The final hurdle in a long and grueling race,” I said, repeating her words of Saturday afternoon in Aunt Jaz’s bedroom. “We’re almost there.”

She nodded. “Yes, we are,” she said, continuing to smile.

We came up with a simple plan to get the ball rolling. I knew it was something Guy wasn’t going to approve of, but I also knew it was the right thing to do. It would be dangerous, but wasn’t I in danger already?

I couldn’t wait for Armando or the Satanists to come after me. I had to take the offense. I had to do some sabre rattling. What’s that old football saying?
A good offense is the best defense.
That was my best chance for defending myself against Satan and the Satanists—attack first.

I told Maudrina I wanted to start right away. Tonight.

“I wish I could be there with you,” she said, and I knew she meant it. She had been there with me at Tavares castle, bolstering me, flooding me with confidence.

“I wish you could be there, too. But you can’t this time. This time I have to do it alone.”

When I left Maudrina’s that evening, I felt invigorated. I was about to do something so incredibly fearful, and yet, I felt energized. It’s amazing how much better you feel when you’re not waiting around for the other shoe to drop. No shoes were dropping on me. Not this time. I was going to strike first. First blood, so to speak.