A Gift of Wings (50 page)

“Hi, honeys, I’m home,” she called, as Shu and Tef came running to curl around her ankles. Lucky knelt to stroke and snuggle the neglected beasts.

“You’re just in time,” came Josh’s voice from the kitchen. “We’re getting ready to order pizza. Any requests?”

“Pepperoni and mushrooms?”

“You got it!”

After giving the cats a few final pats, Lucky headed to the kitchen, pausing only long enough to toss her purse and scarf onto her bed. Shu and Tef trotted along beside her, as if afraid to let her out of their sight. “I know,” she crooned to them, “I missed you too.”

As she entered the kitchen, Ben turned from the open refrigerator door to hand Josh a beer. “Hey, Lucky, what’s your poison?”

Both Lucky and Josh shot him a look.

“Sorry, my bad. Beverage?” he amended.

Lucky chuckled. “A Coke would be great, thanks.”

“Did you just come from Aidan’s?” Josh asked, as she popped the top on her soda.

Lucky shook her head. “I left his place early afternoon—not long after I woke up. Then I wandered around downtown for a while and went to see G-Ma.”

“How was she?”

“Today was a good day. She was more like herself.”

“Good. I need to go see her soon.”

“She’d like that.” Lucky paused before continuing, “And how are you?”

Josh shrugged. “Great. Never better. I feel completely back to normal—except for still being a little weirded out about the whole thing.”

“Yeah, I got that too.”

Josh said nothing at first. Then, after taking a long drink of his beer, he asked, “So, can you maybe give me less of a Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of what happened?”

“Let’s move to the living room, people,” Ben inserted, making shooing motions, before Lucky could reply. “We need comfy chairs for this.”

While they waited for the pizza, Lucky filled in the missing details for her cousin, starting with the night at the Icarus show when she’d seen Aidan’s wings. As she described her first meeting with Zeke and the subsequent revelations at and after his lecture at the OI, she looked at Ben with a frown.

Interrupting her own narrative, she asked, “You’re Naphil too, right? Why haven’t I ever seen your wings? Or gotten any visible hint that you’re anything other than human?”

“I was wondering when you’d get around to asking about that,” Ben replied, grinning like the Cheshire cat.

Lucky raised her eyebrows. “And are you going to give me an answer, now that I’ve
finally
figured out the question?”

Ben remained silent for a few moments, his mischievous eyes laughing into hers. Lucky kicked him. He was enjoying keeping her in suspense way too much.

“Ow!” Ben said, laughing.

“Out with it,” Josh said, giving his boyfriend’s clubbed hair a tug, “or I might start kicking you too.”

“Alright, alright. I have the Gift of Glamour. Appropriate, right?” Here he directed a raised eyebrow at Josh, who rolled his eyes. “My ability to glamour is so strong that Sensitives, other Naphil, even full-fledged angels can’t see through it. That’s why Zeke chose me to keep something of an eye on Aidan when he renounced his wings. The fact that I happen to play a
fine
bass was an added bonus.”

Lucky frowned. “What is this about Aidan renouncing his wings? What does that even mean? He mentioned it in passing, when those rogue Powers were after us, but then I got skewered, and given everything else, I completely forgot about it.”

Ben held up his hands and shook his head. “You’ll have to ask Aidan about that, sweetie. I don’t think he’d appreciate my spilling that story.”

“Fine,” Lucky sighed. “So, can I see you without your glamour?”

“Yeah,” Josh seconded. “Can we see you without your glamour? I mean, I
can
see you if you drop the glamour completely, right? Now that I know what you are?”

Ben nodded. “Yes, dear one, you’ll be able to see me too. In all my glory.”

Josh rolled his eyes again. “Oh, saints preserve us! Just get on with it, will you?”

Lucky and Josh both giggled as Ben stood up and struck a pose. Then Lucky’s breath caught in her throat as the young man transformed into a beautiful, shining thing. He still had Ben’s shape and features, but his skin glowed translucent, and great bronze-colored wings dusted with gold arched upward behind him.

“Be still, my heart,” Josh muttered, as the vision before them was replaced by Ben’s familiar form.

“I know, right?” Ben said. “I wasn’t kidding when I said ‘glory.’”

“Oh, please,” Lucky said, dissolving into giggles. “Shut up, or I’ll have to kick you again.”

Just then, the buzzer sounded, heralding the arrival of the pizza. Lucky glanced from her cousin to Ben, neither of whom seemed to have heard the noise. “I’ll get it,” she said, “since you two seem to be having ‘a moment.’”

***

“How does it feel to be part angel?” Josh asked later, after Lucky finished telling them about the Making. He’d grown pale when she had mentioned the burns from the palm sigils, so she had kept the more painful details of the experience to herself.

Lucky shrugged. “I’m not really sure. I don’t have wings or a Gift yet. And since I’m apparently also part demon or something—whatever being a descendent of Lilith’s makes me—I have no idea what to expect. Even Uriel seemed to find it all a mystery.”

When Lucky started yawning, they said their goodnights, Josh and Ben offering to handle cleanup so she could get some rest. Lucky gratefully took them up on the offer, feeling the residual exhaustion of the last several days seep into her bones. A warm shower and an early bedtime beckoned. As she pulled Aidan’s sweater over her head, she felt a momentary pang and thought about calling him. She’d do that after she showered and got in bed, she decided. But by the time she’d finished her shower and slipped under the covers, her eyelids were beginning to droop. She’d call him tomorrow—after she’d gotten some much-needed sleep.

CHAPTER 33

But she didn’t call him the next day, or the next, or the next. Nor did he call her. And as the days passed, it became more and more difficult to think about calling or texting him. She began to worry that she’d irrevocably damaged whatever relationship they were beginning to have with her need for time alone. She played their last conversation over and over in her mind, and it always ended the same way: she told him he could call her. And yet he hadn’t. Maybe after some time without her, he’d decided he didn’t want to wait while she figured out who she was and what she wanted. And it wasn’t as if she’d figured anything out, after all. She just missed him.

And she was tired, so tired. The bone-deep exhaustion that had sent her to bed early on her first night back in her own apartment stayed with her for several days, leaving her with little energy for anything besides sleeping and brooding. When she wasn’t brooding about Aidan, she brooded about Lilith and when she might feel ready to contact her. When she wasn’t brooding about Lilith, she brooded about the changes in herself. She kept staring into mirrors, searching her face for the girl she had been and puzzling over the marks on her back for some clue about who she was now. She knew she could never go back: since she had undergone the Making, the past was a locked door—or a brick wall. And the future? Well, that was a gigantic neon question mark, flashing on and off:
What do you do now, Lucky? Who are you now?
What
are you now?

When she finally did pick up her phone, it was Mo she called. She had promised to catch her friend up when she had a chance, and after days spent thinking thoughts that chased their own tails, she was in need of some of Mo’s contagious effervescence. And besides, Mo was the one person other than Josh who could maybe help her stay connected to the Lucky she had been as she moved into the black maw of uncertainty before her.

Mo only razzed her a little about how long it had taken her to call. And before they hung up, she had invited Lucky over for French Toast à la Mo on Saturday—which, Lucky was surprised to learn, was the following day. She couldn’t believe she’d spent an entire week doing little more than sleeping and worrying.

She awoke the next morning with a feeling of anticipation. And she looked over her shoulder into the bathroom mirror for just a minute or two before she climbed into the shower. Naphil or demon or whatever she was, she had brunch plans.

It was almost two o’clock before Lucky left her friend’s apartment. Mo’s special French toast was fabulous, as usual, and the two lingered over brunch, laughing and catching up.

Mo told Lucky about her first week of college classes. She told her how much she liked Eric, and how surprised and pleased she was that her dad liked him too. And she told her how scared she had been waiting at Zeke’s house while Lucky hovered between life and death.

Lucky told Mo about the strange dream-state in which she’d lingered after the Power had stabbed her, and how Malachi had come to her rescue in a vision of crows. She told her about how Aidan had taken care of her and held her while she slept. She told her how much the Making had hurt, and how afraid she’d been that she wouldn’t be able to survive the pain. She did not tell her how Kev had rested his hand on her back for the briefest of moments before he activated the sigil that burned his Mark into her skin, or how he had touched her hair after. Those memories were hers to keep and ponder in secret.

Once the meal was finished, they made quick work of cleanup, laughing and joking so much that by the time Lucky was ready to leave, she felt almost normal. Even as she acknowledged the undoubtedly fleeting nature of
that
feeling, she took comfort in knowing that no matter how much her life had changed, she still had her best friend.

She was on her way out the door when Mo stopped her. “Oh, I almost forgot. Are you going to the show at I-House tonight?”

“What show?”

Mo looked at her in surprise. “Icarus is playing. You didn’t know? Aidan didn’t tell you?”

Lucky shook her head. “He probably forgot. I’m sure I’ll hear from him soon.”

“Well, the music starts at 9:00. See you there?”

Lucky murmured something noncommittal. She didn’t want to tell Mo about her last conversation with Aidan—about how hurt he’d seemed. And since he hadn’t called—after she’d
told
him he could—she wasn’t sure if she should go to the show or not. Maybe he didn’t want her there. She told herself she had no right to feel hurt, when she was the one who had said she needed time—and, whispered her conscience, when she was the one who kept thinking about Kev—but the sense of loss pierced her heart. She’d said he could call her. Why hadn’t he called?

Thinking and worrying, Lucky drifted south, toward the University of Chicago campus. She wandered past the main quad and down to the Midway, where she turned west. She hadn’t been conscious of having a particular destination in mind, but when she reached the Midway’s end and looked up, her lips twisted into an ironic smile. Rising before her was the Fountain of Time.

She’d always found the Lorado Taft sculpture haunting, with its mass of people swept inexorably along in its sandy waves, that lone, imposing figure watching over them. She had never been able to decide if this mysterious being controlled the tide that swept the others forward, or if he just watched. Was he unable to intervene—or unwilling to do so? Now, she wondered if maybe he wasn’t biding his time, waiting for the right moment. She could imagine him thrusting out the staff he held, halting the forward motion, while he made some adjustments, moved this one here, that one there, until, satisfied, he again planted the staff beside him, and the waves rolled forward once more.

Crossing the street, she moved to one end of the reflecting pool and perched on its lip, positioned so she could see both the lone figure and the roiling masses. She studied them in silence for a long time. Then, feeling as if she too were being swept forward by that relentless wave, she tugged the chain with its dual pendants out from under her shirt. Slipping the chain from around her neck, she studied the medallion and the locket with the same intensity that she had directed toward the sculpture. Locket and medallion. Past and future. G-Ma and Lilith. Aidan and Kev. Her thoughts were waves, crashing and receding, only to rush forward once again.

After a while, she wrapped the chain around her left hand, and clasping the locket in her right, she called to mind the image of the flame-haired woman who said she was her grandmother. She imagined Lilith in as much detail as she could remember—scarlet hair, emerald eyes, pale skin, dark cloak, voice bright and mocking, laugh tinkling and airy. When the image was as sharp as she could make it, she squeezed her hand around the locket, closed her eyes, and concentrated, calling to the one the image represented.

“I’m not sure whether to be surprised that you called me this soon or to ask what took you so long.”

Lucky turned her head toward the source of the light, teasing voice to see Lilith strolling around the corner of the sculpture. She had exchanged her dark robes for an equally dark tailored pantsuit that, coupled with her sleekly styled red hair, made her look like a successful and somewhat glamorous business woman.