Boundless (Unearthly) (27 page)

Christian insists that I take the first shower. I stand under the scalding spray and scrub my skin until it’s raw, getting off the last of Olivia’s blood. As I stand in front of the steam-wiped mirror combing out my hair, my own face seems to accuse me.

Weak.

You didn’t try to save Anna, or to stop them from taking Angela. You didn’t even try.

Coward.

You spent all these hours training to use a glory sword, because your father told you that you’d need it, but when the moment came, you couldn’t even draw it.

Gutless.

I grip the comb so hard my knuckles turn white. I don’t meet my eyes again until my hair is done.

When I open the door, Christian is sitting cross-legged on the single queen bed, staring at the painting on the wall, a picture of a large white bird with long legs and a stripe of red on the top of its head, spreading its wings, its toes touching the water, although I can’t be sure whether it’s taking off or touching down.

Failure, I think, remembering my inability to so much as conjure my wings at the Garter. Even at something as simple as flying. I’ve failed.

Christian looks at me. I clear my throat and gesture that it’s his turn to use the bathroom. He nods and gets up and brushes past me, his movements stiff and jerky, like his muscles have only now caught up with all the hell he’s put them through in the last twenty-four hours.

I sit on the bed and listen to the shower running, to Web’s breathing, to the clock ticking on the nightstand, to my own stomach growling. After about five minutes the water stops abruptly, the shower curtain rips aside, hurried footsteps cross the bathroom floor, running, and then there’s the sound of the toilet lid banging and of Christian throwing up. I jump to my feet and go to the door, but I’m afraid to open it. He won’t want me to see this. I lay my hand on the smooth painted wood of the door frame and close my eyes as I hear him retch again, then groan.

I knock, lightly.

I’m okay,
he says, but he is not okay. I’ve never felt him less okay.

I’m coming in,
I say.

Give me a minute.
The toilet flushes.

When I go in exactly sixty seconds later, he’s standing at the sink with a towel wrapped around his waist, brushing his teeth. He unwraps a glass from the tray on the counter and fills it with water, takes a swig and swishes it, spits.

His eyes when they meet mine in the mirror are ashamed.

Failure. He feels it, too.

I look away, inadvertently gazing down at his body, and that’s when I see the jagged wound in his side.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he says as I gasp. “But I probably shouldn’t have showered without tending to it first, because it’s opened up again.”

It doesn’t matter what he says—it’s bad, a deep nine-inch gash from the top of his left rib to his hip, black on the edges like the sorrow dagger burned him as it cut.

“We need to get you to a hospital,” I say.

He shakes his head. “And say what, exactly? That I was attacked by a pair of evil twins who cut me with a knife made of sadness?” He winces as I make him lean over the counter so I can get a better look. “It will heal. It should have closed already. I normally heal faster than this.”

“It’s not a normal cut.” I look up at him. “Can I try to fix it?”

“I was kind of hoping that you would.”

I have him sit on the edge of the counter, and I stand in front of him. My mouth is dry with sudden nerves, and I lick my lips and try to concentrate.

Focus.

Strip away everything, all the thoughts, the feelings, the silent accusations, and burrow down to my core. Forget what’s happened. What all I’ve failed to do. Just be.

Call the glory.

A few minutes later I glance up at Christian apologetically, sweat shining on my forehead. He rests his hand on my shoulder to help, to add his strength to mine, and I try again to bring the light.

Again, I fail.

Web wakes up and starts screaming like somebody poked him.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Christian.

“It’ll come back to you,” he says.

I wish I had his certainty. “We can’t leave the wound like this. This needs professional care.”

He shakes his head again. “If you can’t fix it with glory, we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way. I’m sure they have a sewing kit around here somewhere.”

Now I’m the one who’s queasy. “Oh no. You should see a doctor.”

“You want to be a doctor, Clara,” he says. “How about you start now?”

After the hard stuff is done, he falls into a deep sleep, thanks in part to the little bottle of hotel whiskey he drank before I started sewing him up. I can’t help but feel that the world is ending, that this is just the first act of something horrible to come, and I curl up next to him.

I watch Web sleeping in his crib. His breathing seems labored and uneven, and it scares me. I lie on the bed on my stomach with my feet dangling over the side and observe his tiny chest moving up and down, afraid that it will suddenly stop, but it doesn’t. He keeps on breathing, and pretty soon, exhausted, I fall asleep.

I’m woken up by my cell phone ringing. For a minute I’m completely disoriented. Where am I? What am I doing here? What’s happened? Web starts crying, and Christian mumbles something and swings out of the bed, groans and clutches his side like he forgot he was hurt, but stumbles over to pick Web up.

I find the phone. It’s Billy.

“Oh, Billy, I’ve been so worried. Are you okay?”

“Am
I
okay?” she exclaims. “What happened to
you
?”

I tell her. After I finish, she stays quiet for a few minutes. Then she says, “This is bad, kid. The Garter is all over the news. They’re reporting that Anna and Angela Zerbino are dead, the victims of arson.”

“Wait,” I interrupt. “They think Angela’s dead?”

But then I get it. The firemen would have found two bodies in the Garter: Anna and Olivia, and Olivia is nearly the same height and weight as Angela. They’re sisters, if Asael is to be believed, and I think he is. It’s a natural assumption for the authorities to make. I wonder how long it will take for them to figure out their mistake.

“The congregation is also reporting sightings of several suspicious-looking figures lurking in Jackson and the surrounding area, poking around where they shouldn’t be,” continues Billy. “Corbett even spotted a couple of them skulking around the house. They’re definitely looking for you. Where are you?”

“Nebraska.”

“Oh, lord.”

“We didn’t know where to go, so we picked somewhere random,” I say defensively. It might not be the most glamorous place in the world, sure, but it’s also not anywhere that anybody would think to look for us.

“Are you all right?” Billy asks. “No one’s hurt?”

I look at Christian. He’s standing by the window, holding Web flat against his chest and talking to him in a low murmur. He turns and meets my eyes.

“We’re alive,” I answer. “I think that’s pretty good, considering.”

“Okay, listen,” Billy says. “I want you two to sit tight for a few days. I’ll call an emergency meeting of the congregation, and we’ll see if we can come up with some kind of plan. Then I’ll call you. You good with that?”

“Yeah. Sit tight. We can do that.”

“You did the right thing, getting out of here,” she says. “I want you to be extremely careful. Don’t call anybody else. I mean it. No one. Don’t be friendly with anybody. I will feel a whole lot better knowing that I’m the only one who knows where you are. I’ll call you as soon as we have a plan of action.”

A plan of action sounds so good I want to cry.

“Take care of that baby, kid,” she says. “And take care of yourself.” She sighs heavily, then adds, “Sometimes he was so annoying.”

“Who?” I ask.

“Walter. He said this would happen. Infuriating man always had to be right.”

We lie low for a few days. We move to a nicer hotel, one where we have a full kitchen and dining area and living room space, two bedrooms so we can shut the door and watch TV while Web naps. We fall into something of a routine: Web wakes up and starts crying. We play rock, paper, scissors to determine who gets to change his diaper. We attempt to convince him to take a bottle of formula. We try different brands and different types of bottles, but he chokes and sputters and looks generally pissed that Angela is nowhere to be found, and eventually he drinks about two ounces of the stuff. We worry that it’s not enough. After he eats, he pukes. He starts crying again. We clean him up. We rock him, talk to him, sing, turn up white noise on the television, ride the elevator up and down, take him for long drives in the truck, jiggle and soothe and plead, but he cries for hours and hours, usually in the middle of the night.

I’m sure the other guests of the hotel are loving us.

At some point he falls asleep again. Then we tiptoe around, clean ourselves up, brush our teeth, chow down whatever leftovers are in the fridge—we memorize the takeout menus of all the local restaurants, which in Nebraska are a lot of steak houses. I change the dressing on Christian’s wound, which refuses to heal. I try to call the glory. I fail. We talk about anything but what happened at the Garter that night, even though we both know that’s all we can think about. We sit like zombies on the couch watching random shows. And then, too soon, always too soon, Web wakes up and we start the whole thing over.

I’m starting to understand why Angela was cranky.

Still, there are nice moments, too. Funny stuff happens, like once when Web pees on Christian’s T-shirt during a diaper change, right smack on the Coldplay logo, and Christian just nods all calm and says, “So what are you saying, Web?” We laugh until our sides hurt over that one, and it’s good, laughing. It eases the tension.

On the fourth night, as we’re sitting there on the couch after I’ve spent the past hour pacing around with Web yelling in my ear, Christian reaches over and draws my feet into his lap and starts massaging them. I bite back a laugh, because I’m ticklish, then a groan at how good it feels. It’s nice, the feeling that we’re with each other in this, that we’re partners and we’re going to make it through somehow.

“I think I’ve gone deaf,” I say, a running joke between us every time Web suddenly stops crying and falls asleep.

“When did Billy say she’d call, again?” Christian replies, another joke we’ve been telling often, and I laugh.

But something inside me squirms uncomfortably, because all of this feels like a scene we’re acting out of someone else’s life with someone else’s kid, and all we’re doing here is playing house.

Christian’s fingers go still against my ankle. He sighs.

“I’m beat.” He gets up and crosses to the bedroom where Web is sleeping. “I’ll take the first shift. Good night, Clara.”

“Good night.”

He goes into his room and shuts the door. I flip channels for a while, but nothing good’s on. I turn the TV off. It’s early, only nine o’clock, but I wash my face and dress for bed. I check on Web one last time. I lie down.

I dream of Tucker. We’re in his boat on Jackson Lake, stretched out on a blanket in the bottom of the boat, tangled up in each other’s arms, soaking up the sun. The way things used to be. I’m completely at peace, my eyes closed, almost asleep but not quite. I press my face into Tucker’s shoulder and breathe him in. He plays with the short, fine curls at the base of my neck—the baby hair, he calls it. His other hand moves up from my hip to that tender spot below my arm.

“Don’t you tickle me,” I warn, smiling against his skin.

He laughs like I dared him and drags his fingers over the back of my arm, feather lightly, sending a jolt all down my body. I bite his shoulder playfully, which gets another laugh out of him. I raise my head and gaze into his warm blue eyes. We both try to look serious, and fail.

“I think we should stay here, Carrots,” he says. “Forever.”

“I totally agree,” I murmur, and kiss him. “Forever sounds good.”

A shadow passes over us. Tucker and I look up. A bird sails overhead, a huge crow, larger than an eagle, bigger than any other bird I’ve ever seen. It turns in a slow circle high above us, a blot against the blue sky.

Tucker turns to me with worry in his eyes. “It’s only a bird, right?”

I don’t answer. Dread moves like ice freezing in my veins as another bird joins the first, circling, weaving through the air above us. Then another joins, and another, until I can’t keep track. The air seems colder, like the lake could freeze beneath us. I can feel the birds’ eyes on us as they turn, the circle tightening.

“Clara?” Tucker says. His breath comes out in a puff of cloud.

I stare upward, my heart pounding. They’re waiting for the right moment to swoop down, to tear into us with their sharp beaks and claws. To rip us apart.

They’re waiting.

The way vultures will circle a thing that’s dead or dying. That’s how they’re looking at us.

“Oh, well,” says Tucker, shrugging. “We always knew this was too good to last.”

The next morning, Christian and I do dishes. We’re standing shoulder to shoulder at the sink, me washing, him drying, when he says out of the blue, “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Okay,” I say warily.

He goes out of the room for a minute, and when he comes back, he’s holding a black-and-white composition notebook.

Angela’s journal.

“You went back,” I say, astonished.

He nods. “Last night. I flew back to the Garter. I found it in a trunk in her bedroom that didn’t burn.”

“Why?” I gasp. “That was so dangerous! Billy said there are Black Wings there, looking. You could have been—”

Caught. Killed. Taken off to hell. And I would never have known what happened to him.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t want her journal to fall into the wrong hands. I mean, who knows what Angela wrote about us in here? Or about the congregation? And I just wanted to … do something. I have so many questions. I thought maybe this would give us some answers. I was up all night reading it.”

“So did you find what you were looking for?” I ask softly, not sure whether to be furious at him for taking such a risk or relieved that he came back unharmed.