Immortal City (17 page)

“I don’t believe it,” Maddy said as casually as possible. “I’ve seen the pictures of him and Vivian Holycross. Like anyone else would even stand a chance.”

“Oh, I
know
,” Gwen squealed, suddenly distracted by the thought of her idol, “she is
so
gorgeous.” Maddy let out a breath and managed a smile. Gwen hadn’t caught on. And if Gwen hadn’t caught on, no one else had either.

They neared the commons area and saw the group of guys from earlier in the week: Kyle, Tyler, Simon, and Ethan, along with some other students. The boys were sitting around a table, while others stood around them. Tyler was moving his hands around as he talked, apparently in a heated conversation.

“You’re just, like, jealous,” a blond girl in black leggings and Uggs said to him as Gwen and Maddy approached.

“Jealous?”
His eyes bulged with incredulity. “We don’t even know where these
things
really came from, who they are, what they want from us. Yet the Angels take everybody’s money, and all anybody wants to talk about, read about, is
this
”—he pointed to his iPhone, which had a shadowy picture of Jackson flying with the “mystery girl”—“while we have real news, real problems that need to be dealt with. They’re just here to help themselves!” Panic shot through Maddy as she saw the picture. Tyler’s voice raised high with anger as he continued speaking.

“Ugh,” Gwen said under her breath to Maddy. “Tyler’s just trying to be cool by being all anti-Angel.”

“Hey, Tyler, relax,” Kyle said, putting his hand on Tyler’s shoulder. Tyler shrugged it off, his face turning red in anger.

“They can’t save everyone, you know that, everybody knows that,” the girl in leggings said. “But they can save some people, and you wouldn’t want them to do that? Just let everyone die? They’re doing their best. And you never know, it could be you who gets saved.”

“How? The lottery?” he scoffed. “Anyway, I’d
rather
they let me die.” Tyler said this last bit dramatically, and a couple students laughed and clapped slowly. His eyes shot out angrily toward them.

Ethan stood up from the table. “Come on, let’s go. This is getting too heated.”

“No,
I’ll
go. Freak,” the girl said to Tyler, flipping her hair and walking away with her friends. The crowd of spectators dispersed.

“Dude, that was awesome,” Simon said, eyes lighting up from behind his glasses as he pushed his long hair away from his face. “Way to stick it to them, bro!”

Kyle saw Maddy and Gwen. “Hi, Gwen. Hi, Maddy,” he said, smiling. Kyle was giving Maddy that look again.
But he couldn’t be, Gwen was right there!

“Hi,” Maddy said, looking away from him quickly. She caught Ethan’s eye, and she immediately flashed back to their conversation at the diner and how now she was out flying with Angels. Gwen was about to say something to him, but Maddy jerked her arm, pulling her down the hall. “Gotta go,” Maddy blurted.

“Ow!” Gwen said as Maddy pulled her along.

“Sorry, I, uh, just don’t want to be late.”

“That was so weird. It’s like,
hello
, you live in Angel City?” Gwen said, looking back at Tyler and the commons. “This is where the Angels are, Tyler. Get used to it. He’s just trying to show off.”

“Definitely,” Maddy said, trying to forget the fact that a picture of her and Jackson Godspeed had been the center of the whole debate. Just a few days earlier she would’ve probably taken Tyler’s side. But now that she had met Jackson, she felt . . . different. There were lots of details people didn’t know about the Angels, but maybe they weren’t necessarily bad things. Just stuff they wanted to keep private.

The girls made their way down the hall. The conversation turned to Homecoming and who had already been asked from their classes. Gwen reminded her that Ethan “was still single.” Maddy relaxed a bit now that the topic had turned away from Angels and, specifically, Jackson. Maybe it really wasn’t something to get worked up about. She even started to feel a mischievous sort of pleasure about the whole thing when her phone squawked in her backpack.

“What was that?” Gwen asked, crinkling her nose. Maddy fished out her ancient phone and flipped it open. It was a text message.

From Jacks.

It simply said,
See you at 8.

Maddy’s mouth went dry.

Gwen leaned in to look. “That thing gets texts messages?” Maddy whipped the phone away and held it on the other side of her body.

“It’s not a text,” she blurted. “I mean it is. But it’s nothing.”

“OMG, is it a
boy
?” Gwen probed with eager eyes.

“No! Okay, yes. Could you just leave me alone?”

Gwen looked shell-shocked. The very idea of not sharing boy information was a fundamental violation in Gwen’s mind.

“I’m, like, your best friend!”

“It’s just . . .” Maddy’s mind raced. “It was a wrong number.” It was a terrible lie. Gwen’s eyes flashed with suspicion.

“You’re acting strange. What’s going on, Maddy?”

“Wrong number, Gwen, honest, I swear. Just seemed like it was from a guy. Not a . . . girl wrong number. Guys are stupid like that, right?”

Gwen flipped her blond hair, annoyed and suspicious. “. . . Right.”

The bell rang.

“See you later,” Gwen huffed, and disappeared down the hall.

Maddy focused on taking steady, controlled breaths. When Gwen was safely out of sight, she pulled the phone out of her pocket and read the text again. Could she back out? Yes, she thought, she could. Like a complete coward. And worst of all, then she would be proving him right. About her. And all that “living life” nonsense. She wondered where he would be taking her, and what they would be doing, and if she would know how to act. And what was she going to wear? Not her jeans and hoodie, and all that pretty much left was her waitress uniform. She couldn’t borrow anything from Gwen without raising even more suspicion, so she didn’t even consider it. There was one other option, something she hadn’t thought about in a long time.

Maddy sighed. Gwen was right. She
was
acting strange.

She looked at Jacks’s text and simply texted back:

Okay.

S
ylvester drove his unmarked cruiser drove down Wilshire Boulevard, passing the designer stores, luxury car dealerships, and upscale office buildings of Beverly Hills. Though once located at the Temple of Angels itself, the corporate offices of the Archangels had long since been moved to a sleek, ultra-modern building off Beverly Boulevard. Palm trees swayed gently in the breeze overhead as Sylvester drove. The sky was a perfect, cloudless blue.

He turned right at Beverly and pulled into the parking garage entrance under the dark glass monolith of the NAS building. The ramp led him straight to the valet-parking booth. There was no self-park option. He grumbled to himself as he waited for the attendant to make his way over. Having to pay someone just to park your car for you seemed like a crime.

After receiving his ticket, Sylvester called one of the sleek stainless steel elevators and rode it up to the lobby. The architecture of the NAS lobby was striking and minimalist, with dramatic full-length windows and near-futuristic furniture. On the walls, large flat screens played footage of recent saves on a continuous loop. Against the far wall was a glowing reception desk and, to the left of that, a hallway led back to the offices of the Archangels.

Sylvester crossed the lobby to the reception desk and smiled sheepishly at the impeccably groomed girl with perfect skin and blond hair who looked up at him. She eyed his rumpled coat and scuffed shoes incredulously before pasting on a plastic smile.

“Can I help you?” she said in a chirpy voice.

“It’s Detective Sylvester to see Archangel Godspeed.”

“Is he expecting you?” she asked with a flip of her hair.

“Yes,” he said, irritated.

“Have a seat, please, and I’ll let him know.” She gestured toward the couches while taking a sip of her latte. Sylvester shuffled over and sat awkwardly in a too-fluffy couch. He watched the saves play over and over on the flat screens. After ten minutes, a young assistant appeared.

“Mr. Sylvester?” he asked. “This way, please.”

Sylvester was taken past the reception desk and down the hall, passing rows of assistants on headsets busily rolling calls for the Archangels. At the end of the hall the assistant opened glass double doors to the conference room and ushered Sylvester in.

The room was breathtaking. A long, thin conference table with twelve chairs sat in front of a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking Angel City and the entire Los Angeles Basin. In the corner of the room, in a glass display case, stood the armor and sword of an ancient Battle Angel. A reminder of a distant past. Sylvester looked at the armor, then turned and admired the view. After another ten minutes, Mark Godspeed appeared in a crisp, expensive suit.

“I’m sorry, David,” Mark said, coming quickly into the room, “I was on a post-save conference call with a Protection. You know how those go. I had my assistant make some coffee; would you care for some?” The Archangel motioned to a coffee service tray that had been set up in the center of the table.

“Yes, thank you,” Sylvester said. Mark picked up the carafe and filled a cup with steaming black liquid. He handed it to Sylvester, than began pouring one for himself.

“There’s been another incident on the boulevard,” Sylvester said. “I wanted you to hear it from me first.” Mark paused, then finished pouring his coffee and carefully set the carafe back on the tray. “Another pair of wings was discovered last night. This time we recovered the body in the victim’s swimming pool, at his home.”

“Who?” Mark asked.

“Ryan Templeton.” The detective tipped the cup back, taking a pull of coffee.

The Archangel was quiet for a moment. “Good Angel. I know his family.” Sylvester nodded silently.

“The wings were found on his star. Right next to Theodore Godson’s star. Although we haven’t recovered the body of Godson, it’s likely he has also been murdered. We have reason to believe the order of the stars is determining the targets. Lance Crossman’s star is next. And sure enough, he’s also missing.”

After a few moments, the Archangel spoke.

“Angels killed in the order of their stars?” Mark asked. Sylvester nodded. Mark took a seat on one of the sleek chairs. “Does the press know yet?”

“No. But we won’t be able to keep it quiet very long. People stand up and pay attention when Angels start disappearing.” He paused. “We need to act, Mark.”

Mark stared out the window at the city moving silently beyond the glass. “What do you want me to do?”

“Call an emergency session of Archangels, then bring it straight to the Council. Put the Angel community on alert. Afterward, we’ll hold a press conference and announce the killings to the media. The whole city needs to be warned.”

“Absolutely not,” Mark said insistently. “The public cannot know about this. Can you imagine what it would mean? Angels dying? How could the public trust us? We deal with this internally. Period.”

“More could end up hurt, Mark,” Sylvester said. “This isn’t about Angel publicity anymore. Something much more serious is going on here. Don’t be a fool.”

“There are those who don’t live amongst us. Those who have taken, well, how does one say it? A different path?” He turned and studied Sylvester for a moment. Sylvester ignored the implication.

“Sure. Could be. The Archangels have made enemies. But whoever is doing this is ripping off their wings, in some kind of twisted version of the Council’s punishment.” Mark raised his eyebrow, but Sylvester went on. “We could consider the possibility that someone feels law and order isn’t going far enough, a zealot among the Archangels who wants more control. More of their . . .
justice
.” He cleared his throat on the last word.

Mark stared directly at the detective. When he spoke, his voice was cold and sharp: “What’s past has passed, David. We Archangels didn’t make these rules, we simply administer them for the Council. The fact that the ACPD even has you on a case of this nature, due to . . .” Mark trailed off.

“Due to
what
, Mark?” The detective stared at him coldly.

“I think you know what I’m saying.”

“I’m not sure I do, Mark.” Sylvester pushed his glasses up the ridge of his nose. “Do you mean to say I’m unfit for this case due to the fact that I had my own wings taken by the Archangels?” Sylvester almost seemed to shake as he spit out the words. They hung in the conference room, heavy.

After what seemed like an eternity, Mark Godspeed turned to the window. His voice was calm and even. “Bringing up the past will do no good. That you’re implying any one of my colleagues is involved in this bloodshed is outrageous. I hope you’re not spreading such filth around the ACPD. That would be unfortunate.”

The detective didn’t blink.

“The HDF has also been more active than usual recently,” Sylvester said. “Three armed operatives were arrested on their way to a safe house yesterday. Do you think a disgruntled Angel could’ve defected, be working with them?”

Mark shrugged.