Boundless (Unearthly) (28 page)

His mouth twists. “There’s a lot of stuff in there. Research. Poems. A detailed account of all Web’s soiled diapers. A list of songs Anna sang him to get him to sleep. And Angela’s thoughts, how she felt about things. She was tired, and angry, and scared, but she wanted what was best for Web. She was making plans.”

And now she won’t get to carry any of them out, I think. I don’t know exactly where Angela is, not exactly, but I do know something of hell. It’s cold and colorless. Bleak. Full of despair. I get a tightness in my chest, imagining Angela in that place, the hopelessness she must feel. The pain.

“And there was a last entry, written down fast,” Christian says. “She got a text from Phen that night. He warned her that the Black Wings were coming. She only had a minute to hide Web, but Phen gave her that minute.”

So Phen’s not all bad, is what he’s saying. But somehow that doesn’t make me feel much better about him. Because he was the one who got her in this mess to begin with.

“Anyway,” Christian says. “I wanted to tell you.”

He holds the journal out to me, an offering, but I don’t take it. I don’t know how I feel about reading her diary now that she’s gone. That’s her private stuff.

“I’ll put it on the nightstand,” he says. “If you want to read it.”

“No, thanks,” I reply, although I’m curious.

We go back to doing dishes, silent now, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Christian’s thinking about the journal, something that Angela must have written, something about Web and family. After a while he says, “Do you ever think about that day in the cemetery?”

He means do I ever think about the kiss. Do I ever think about
us
.

I don’t think I can handle this conversation. Not right now. “You’re the mind reader. You tell me,” I joke weakly.

But the truth is, yes, I think about it. When we’re walking together and he naturally takes my hand. When he looks up at me across the table at dinner, laughing at a joke I’ve told, his green-gold eyes all bright. When we pass each other on the way to the bathroom, his hair wet from the shower, his tank top clinging to him damply, the smell of his shaving gel wafting off him. I think about how easy it would be to accept this life. To be with him.

I think about what it would be like to go into the same room at the end of the night. I do. I think about it. Even if that makes me feel like a bad person, because he’s not the only guy I think that way about.

“It’s clean,” he observes, and gently takes the dish I’ve been vigorously scrubbing.

“I think about it,” he says after a minute.

He’s not going to let it go.

“Do you think you would have done it all on your own?” I ask.

He stares at me, surprised at my question. “On my own?”

“Well, kissing me was part of your vision, so you knew what was going to happen. You said, ‘You’re not going to go,’ when I wanted to leave. Because you knew I would stay. You knew you would kiss me, and I would let you.”

Something works in his throat. He drops his head, a curl of hair falling into his eyes, and gazes into the sink like there’s some mysterious answer to be found in the soapy dishwater.

“Yes, I kissed you in a vision,” he says finally. “But it didn’t turn out the way I thought it would.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought …” I feel his disappointment then, his embarrassment, his wounded pride.

“You thought if we kissed, we’d be together,” I say for him.

“Yes. I thought we’d be together.” He shrugs. “Not my time, I guess.”

He’s waiting. He’s still waiting. He’s given up everything for me. His entire life. His future. Everything, because he wants to keep me safe. Because he believes, in his heart, that he’s my purpose and I’m his.

“For the record, it was on my own.” He tucks the dish towel into the handle of the refrigerator, then steps closer to me. “I wanted to kiss you,” he murmurs. “Me. Not because of some vision I saw. Because of you. Because of what I feel.”

The words hang between us for a second, and then he leans in, strokes my cheek with the back of his hand, and kisses me, gently, without pressure. He keeps his lips against mine for a long moment, brushing softly. Heat rises between us. Time slows. I see the future he imagines: always together, always there for each other. We are partners. Best friends. Lovers. We travel the world together. We build a life with each other, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. We raise Web as our own, and if trouble comes knocking, we face it. Together.

We belong together.

He pulls away. His eyes search mine, the flecks of gold like sparks, asking me a question.

“I …,” I start, but I have no idea how I’m going to answer. I want to say yes, but something’s stopping me.

My cell phone starts to ring.

He sighs. “Answer it,” he says. “Go on.”

I answer the phone.

“All right, kid,” Billy says, not even bothering with a greeting. “It’s time to come in. Can you be in the meadow by Friday night?”

I look at Christian. Should we go back to Wyoming? It’s safe here, where nobody knows where to find us. Web’s safe here. We could stay.

“Sure, why not?” he says, too lightly. “What have we got to lose?”

So much, I think then. There is still so very much to lose.

As far as I can tell, every single member of the congregation is gathered around the campfire by the time we arrive in the meadow on Friday night, and when we step into the circle, me cradling Web in my arms, everyone goes quiet.

I’ve never seen so many worried faces.

“Well,” says Stephen, after a minute. Apparently he’s the master of ceremonies at tonight’s event. “Have a seat, both of you.”

Great. No small talk, no
good to see you in one piece
—straight to the interrogation.

People scoot to make room for us at the front of the circle, and we hunker down in the grass. I pull the blanket more tightly around Web, like that will shield him from all the curious stares he’s getting. He reaches a tiny hand out in the direction of the fire, his golden eyes reflecting the light.

“Before we open this up for discussion,” Corbett Phibbs says, stepping forward, “we’d like to hear what happened, in your own words. That way we’ll all be sure to understand.”

I let Christian tell it. I struggle to keep my face passive as I listen to him relate the events without embellishment, the way we talked about on the drive over, without getting too much into the gritty details. Christian keeps it simple: We showed up. Asael wanted Angela’s baby. He told one of his minions to kill Anna Zerbino, then left, taking Angela, leaving the others to burn the place. We found where Angela had hidden Web, fought our way out of the Garter, and fled. The bare bones of what happened.

After that the congregation peppers us with some questions Christian doesn’t know how to answer. “How did Asael know about the baby?” and “How did Angela know to hide the baby before the Black Wings arrived?” and, finally, “How did you fight them off?”

“With a glory sword,” Christian replies, which makes them collectively gasp. I guess how to wield a glory sword isn’t common knowledge among them. “My uncle taught me.”

The first of the lies we plan to tell tonight.

It sucks not being wholly honest with the congregation, but if there’s anything that Christian and I have had ingrained in us by our parents, it’s that we should never admit to being Triplare. Not to anyone. We don’t even want to let on that we know the Triplare exist. That’s why Corbett asked us to tell our story this way, so we can spin it the way we need to, without revealing ourselves, or Web. Only Corbett and Billy know the truth.

“So the girl’s body they found in the Garter isn’t Angela,” someone confirms. I locate the source of the voice: Julia. The voice of dissent every time we had a meeting last year. Not my favorite person.

“No. Asael took Angela,” Christian answers.

“Why? What would he want with her?” Stephen asks.

“She’s his daughter,” Christian says. “At least, that’s the way he was talking. Like he’d been keeping tabs on her.”

My throat closes briefly. Asael had been using Phen to keep tabs on Angela. All that time, all of what she felt for Phen, all that she thought she knew about him, was a lie. He was following orders. He didn’t seem to enjoy following them, but that doesn’t change the truth. She was a job to him.

If I thought Stephen’s expression was serious before, it’s apocalyptically serious now.

“I see,” he says. “And who is the father of Angela’s child?”

“Some guy at school,” I reply quickly. Lie number two.

Stephen frowns. “Some guy?”

“His name’s Pierce. He lives in our dorm. But it doesn’t matter who the father is,” I say, my voice louder than usual. “We need to find Angela. We need to get her back. Web needs her. So I’m really hoping you’ve got some awesome kind of plan.”

Silence. Even Corbett looks uncomfortable for a minute.

“We do have a plan,” he says gently. “But it involves the baby, not Angela.”

“What do you mean? How can it involve the baby and not Angela?” I hug Web tighter to me.

“We think it might be best if you give the baby to Billy. She’s agreed to care for him, guard him, and protect him, perhaps indefinitely. Until there are further developments.”

“Further developments?” I exclaim. “What does that mean?”

“Clara,” Christian murmurs. “Calm down. They’re doing their best.”

“What, you don’t care?” I challenge. “Angela’s one of us. She’s been kidnapped. Aren’t we even going to try to get her back?”

“It’s not that we don’t care,” Billy says. She’s been quiet up to now, sitting behind the fire, stirring the embers with a stick. “It’s that we don’t have the power to save her. From what you’ve told us”—her eyes meet mine across the fire, meaning
from what you’ve told me
—“it sounds like they took her to hell.”

I knew that. They took her to hell, and I did nothing to stop them.

I clear my throat. “Well, then, we have to get her out of there.”

Corbett shakes his head sadly. “We can’t get into hell. Even if we had the ability to move between dimensions, it’d be impossible to find her. Hell is as vast as the earth, or so we believe. You couldn’t hope to locate Angela without some kind of guide, some idea of where to go.”

“A guide. Like an angel?” I ask.

Corbett scratches at his beard. “A real, full-blooded angel could do it. But none of us here know any of those.”

My dad could help us, I think, but he said he was going away for a while. He said I’d have to make it on my own. He said he couldn’t help me.

We’re going to have to find some other way.

“We think the two of you have been so brave, and faced so much,” Billy says as my mind churns with this new information, and the congregation murmurs their agreement. “You did everything you could, and we’ll do everything we can to help you now. I volunteered to take Web because I thought it’d take some of the burden off you.”

“But what would we do? If we gave Web to you, where would we go?” Christian asks.

Billy nods like she was expecting the question. “We’ve had some disagreements about that, but the majority of us think that you should remain in hiding. We could funnel you to one of our sister outposts, anywhere in the world.” She sighs like the idea totally depresses her.

My hope turns to a leaden ball of dread in the pit of my stomach. “You’re saying we can’t go back. To our old lives. Ever.”

Her smile is sympathetic. “We can’t make that decision for you. But yes, that’s what I’m saying. The general consensus is that it’s not safe for you to go back to California.”

So that’s it. No more Stanford. No more dreams of becoming a doctor. No more normal life. We’re going to be expected to start over.

“I think the baby should stay with us,” Christian says. “We’re doing fine with him.”

“But won’t the Black Wings be looking for a couple with a baby?” Julia says from the circle.

Shut up, Julia.

“I don’t care,” Christian says fiercely. “Web stays with us.”

Because we’re already a family, he feels. Because we’re responsible for him. Because it’s the least we can do, for Angela.

There’s not much to say after that, and the meeting is adjourned. Billy and Christian and I cross through the tall grass toward the trail that leads back to the truck, a sleeping Web snuggled up against Christian’s chest in a baby carrier that someone in the congregation gave us. It’s always full summer here no matter what the season outside, and I try to take a moment to enjoy the sweet air, the smell of grass and fresh water and summer wildflowers. The sky, unsullied by clouds. The stars wheeling bright over our heads.

I’m dragging my feet, literally. Something inside me doesn’t want to leave this place. It’s like I’m waiting for something else to happen.

I stop walking.

“What?” Christian asks. “What’s the matter?”

I can’t make myself go any farther. I’m crying. All this time, since the night the Garter burned, since everything fell apart, part of me has been numb. Silent. Paralyzed. But now I’m crying buckets.

“Oh, kid,” Billy says, enveloping me in her arms, rocking me. “Just breathe. It’s going to be all right, you’ll see.”

I don’t see. How can it be all right, if we’re going to leave Angela in hell? I pull away and wipe at my eyes, then start bawling all over again. I thought we’d find a solution to our problems here. I thought I’d finally be able to do something about what happened that night at the Garter. To save Angela. But here I am, giving up. Going back into hiding. Running away.

I’m a coward. A failure. Weak.

“Clara,” Christian says. “You’re the strongest person I know.”

“You don’t have to shoulder all this by yourself,” Billy says. “I’m here for you, kid. And this guy’s sure here for you.” She jerks her chin at Christian. “We’re all on Team Clara, everybody in this meadow, every single one of us in your corner, even Julia.” She grimaces, and I stifle a laugh that comes out as a sob. “Sure, things are dark right now. Put us one-on-one against the Black Wings, we’re all weak. We’re scared. We’re easily defeated. But together we’re a force to be reckoned with.”