The Second Sign (2 page)

“What do
you
think?” Gabby asked Mrs. Margot,
the kindest woman she’d ever known. “What would
you
recommend?”

“I recommend homeschooling. You're too dangerous,
Gabby.”

Gabby chuckled. It sounded mean, and her insides did
this tightening thing that hurt like hell. It almost felt as if a
snake had coiled around her chest. It was hard to breathe. She
swallowed.

“I would never hurt anyone. Not really.” But that
wasn't good enough. It wasn't like Gabby ever killed anyone...on
purpose.

“I know.” Mrs. Margot squeezed her sleeve, knowing
Gabby’s aversion to touch. “But you need time to figure out who you
are. And you need to do that alone.” She released her and
disappeared into her supply room. Gabby’s nursing session over, she
jumped off the cot and headed home.

Given that it was the last day of school and the
first day of summer break, the cars and students already had
scattered into the wind. Gabby was glad. She didn’t want to see
anyone, not that anyone would want to see her. She could hike the
mile through the wooded area or walk along the walkways and risk
being noticed by one of the freaks that went to St. Catherine's
High School. Gabby opted for the trees.

Streams of sunlight forced their way through the
breaks in the canopy of trees like long, thin fingers. The smell of
leaves mixed with moss hung in the air. Gabby loved the privacy of
the woods. She loved being under the cover of shadows.

Hot for the last day of school, Gabby had dressed in
a long-sleeved, multicolored shirt cut at the end of the sleeve so
her thumb could fit through. Her cropped pants ended just below the
knee. She always wore running shoes, and she took a deep breath
before she plunged into her run. The uneven ground didn't dissuade
her from picking up speed. She loved feeling the wind whip through
her hair. She felt free. She twisted her body along the curve of
the branches— some made a grab for her clothes. This would be her
last trek home through this particular wooded area. The other
closest high school was two and a half miles the other way.

She could pick out the trail she'd made over the
course of the year running to and from school. This was
her
trail. No one knew about it but her. No one used it but her. She
ran until an eerie feeling crept up along her neck as if someone
had blown a warm breath on her. She grounded to a halt. Breathing
hard, her heart drummed in her ears. Sweat glistened on her brow
and spilled into her eyes, stinging them. She wiped them away and
narrowed her gaze. The world had turned a dark shade of gray. She
turned to look behind her, and the gray thickened to a fog of black
shadows. Branches hissed, and the ground crackled.

“Who's there?” she called.

Nothing. Somewhere a crow cawed.

A loud snap plunged her back into motion. She was
not
going to be a victim of a remade slasher flick. She ran
fast. Whispered echoes sprung all around her. The trees ahead of
her seemed to move, blocking her way, extending branches. She
raised her hands in front of her face as a branch lashed out at
her, but she didn't stop. Her heart slammed against her chest,
threatening to burst.

Relief spread through her when she saw a blue
colonial house in the middle of nowhere. Her house. With her keys
secured in her tight grip, she unlocked the door and bolted inside,
slamming it shut behind her. She leaned her back against the door,
willing her heart to settle. The booming sound of her frantic
breathing eased before she rounded the door, pulling the curtains
just a sliver, hoping to glimpse something so she knew she wasn't
nuts. Shadows outlined the rim of the forest just before the
clearing to the house, avoiding the light.

She whirled toward the kitchen just as the dog flap
flopped back into place. She didn't have a dog. The dog flap was
there when Adler rented the house. She took a step forward when a
tall, lanky man stepped into the shadows of her living room. His
clothes were the color of blood, his face ashen, and his eyes
glazed. Gabby couldn't even make out the rising and falling of his
chest.
Was he breathing?
His veiled eyes stared at her,
unblinking. He stepped closer, staying deep in the shadows.

“Who are you?” Gabby asked, her mind buzzing, her
hands already clenched ready to fight.

He didn't respond. Instead he turned into the guest
bathroom.

Okay, weird. Maybe he had to go? Really bad.
Gabby wasn't one to run, okay, unless she was being stalked by
trees. Curiosity took the best of her, and instead of bolting out
of the house and away from the weird guy in her bathroom, she
stepped closer, catching a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror.
The mirror rippled as he ran his fingers along the smooth surface.
His eyes met hers through the reflection and he stepped out. His
flesh shimmered under the beams of light entering through the
windows, his face morphed into something with rows of long, white
teeth. His flesh, like wax, melted onto his red clothes, dripping
around him. Gabby couldn't bring herself to look away.

The front door burst open and the thing exploded.
Gabby dropped to her knees under the explosion of ash and whatever
the hell that thing was, trying not to breathe in the particles
around her. Strong arms lifted her and she looked into the clear
blue eyes of her twin.

Max and Gabby were nothing alike. When they turned
six, Max saved a kid from getting trampled in the train yards and
got the power of persuasion, while Gabby, who had saved a snake,
which happened to poison Mrs. Elias’ mongoose soon afterward, had
her eyes turned purple and got the ability to see angels and
demons. When they turned twelve, Max gave a bully the other cheek
and got wings. Gabby punched the bully on both cheeks, nose, eye,
and lip and got the ability to feel impressions people leave
behind. Her brother graduated high school at the age of fourteen
and went off to fight in the war against evil, and they called
her
a freak.

“Are you all right?” Max asked.

She shrugged out of his grip. “Yeah, I’m fine. Are
you bringing your work home with you?”

Gabby dusted herself off. For one, she wanted to
make sure she was still in one piece, and two, she didn’t want any
of that guy on her. She motioned to the pile of ash on the floor.
Demons didn’t particularly do well in front of angels and usually
opted to go
poof
instead of being sent back to Hell.

“We were tracking a legion of demons west of here
when”—he looked at the pile of ash as it lifted up into the air,
sparked, and turned to nothing—“when Adler called me.”

“I don't even want to know what that was and why
it's here,” Gabby said just before she bolted up the stairs to her
bedroom and the conversation of Adler came up again.

Finding a demon in her house she could handle. Some
souls who strayed on the edge of realms came looking for reprieve
with Max. She’d seen three try in the last year. Hell couldn't keep
its minions. But Adler talking to Max meant Max already found out
about her fight. And that was way bad. She launched herself inside
her room and slammed the door behind her. It did no good. Max was
already perched on the windowsill outside her bedroom. Invisible to
everyone else in this form, her gift allowed her to see him.

She lunged for the window, but supersonic speed gave
him an unfair advantage and he swept inside her room.

“Adler called me today,” he repeated. He sounded
like someone's father. He wasn't hers. She actually never met her
father. But the veins on the side of his neck and forehead bulged.
At sixteen he intimidated most linebackers.

“And what did our fine guardian have to say?” Gabby
stepped back, already looking for an exit.

“He says you got into another fight today.” Max
stepped closer. He swept his blond hair from his bright blue
eyes.

He obviously got all the good genes.

“I did not. I never had a chance to fight.”

“Gab, you’re supposed to lay low. No attention.” He
lowered his voice, almost to a whisper.

He sounded desperate, sorry for something he didn’t
even do. It was as if he were negotiating with a suicidal jumper by
apologizing for a world that sucked. It was the voice of influence.
Too bad it never worked on her.

“I know. I just can't help it. It's not like I look
for it.” The urge to flee left her, and she sank onto her bed.

“It isn't?” He cocked a brow, and her heart leapt
for him.

He looked human. Like the boy who untangled her hair
from pines as she sobbed silently in the woods, or the boy that
helped her with her homework when she was ready to give up on
kindergarten and become a ninja instead. His eyes softened and he
unfurled his wings. They glistened in the stream of light like a
million tiny diamonds. It was a reminder that their connection as
twins was seeping down the toilet.

“We're going to the lake house.”

The coiling around the chest thing came back and she
forced herself to breathe. “No. I can't go there.”

“I'm not asking you.” His voice turned cold, deep,
and throaty.

“You're not my keeper.” Gabby lifted her hands in
front of her, trying to shade her eyes from the blinding light
bouncing off his wings.

“I'm older than you.” He took a step forward.

“Yeah, by six minutes.”

“I was sent by—” He stopped and furled his wings
where they hid behind him. Gabby lowered her hands. His lips drew
into a thin line, and the muscles on his face were at work mauling
the inside of his cheek. Something he did when he mentioned their
father. He rubbed his palms together. “Him.”

“So what?” It hurt like hell and he knew it. Gabby
didn't even know her father's name, only that he was an angel. She
wouldn't have believed it if she didn't have a brother who sprouted
wings.

“We always go to the lake house for the summer.”

They went to the lake house to celebrate their
birthdays since no one exactly knew what disaster awaited them, or
what transformation would accompany their date of birth. For the
past two birthdays, Gabby had almost met certain death. Almost
mauled by a Rottweiler on her fourteenth birthday, and on her
fifteenth birthday, Kyle Turner died after saving her from a fire
that swept through the Mason Fertilizer Plant near their lake
house.

“Please Maximus, don’t do this. I don’t want to go
back there.”

“We just don't know what’s going to happen.”

“But you're an angel, isn't your boss, like,
all-knowing?”

“It doesn't work that way.”

“Right. Free will. So I deserve this.” She dropped
back on the bed and covered her face with her pillow.

“Gabriela.”

She hated when he said her whole name. “Fine. I'll
go hide out at the lake house. Be homeschooled until you figure out
what to do with me. Can you get out of my room now?”

Going Nowhere Fast

Jake Myers believed he would live forever. Extreme
sports grounded him. The more he lived on the edge of life, the
more he appreciated his existence. So when his dad sent him and his
sister, Jenna, packing to some lame ass water lagoon retreat, he
was astronomically pissed.

“It’s for your own good. You need to settle down.
You need to start concentrating on what college you’re going to, on
careers and jobs, and become more...domesticated.”

Yup, that’s the word Dad used. Domesticated. As if
Jake was some sort of housebroken puppy.

“Who uses words like domesticated?” he asked Jenna
while she drove toward Nowhere USA fast. It was actually Mount
Desert Island, Maine. The only town in Maine Jake ever heard of was
Castle Rock, and that didn’t even exist.

Jenna sighed. The oldest of this sibling group, he
gave her credit for maneuvering through high tide with Dad and
agreeing to babysit.

“He’s just worried that you’re not serious about
your life.”

A snort, Porky Pig style, escaped his lips. “Yeah,
well I’m not dead yet.”

“Come on, Jake. Just give it a try. I don’t think I
can handle a pissed off seventeen-year-old male in my vicinity.
Check out the scene, meet different people, and”—she shrugged and
gave him a sideways glance—“you never know, you know.”

He turned away from her, a scowl cinching his
features. “I hate it when you say that.”

He lifted his feet up on the dash, deciding it best
to breathe and try out the yoga meditation Jenna had been listening
to through half the ride. And it had been a very long ride. He
would give it three weeks and then he’d defect. Domesticated or
not, he wasn’t living his last full summer before senior year in a
hell-hole restricted, preppy ass...
breathe
. He closed his
eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

He hadn't realized he’d fallen asleep until Jenna
poked him awake. “We’re here.”

He rubbed his neck and sat up. Somesville was a
tourist spot with lakes, rivers, and mountains along the island,
but as twilight plunged fading light into Somes Sound, giving it an
iridescent glow, Jake couldn’t help but hold his breath. A smile
curled his lips. It looked amazing. This inlet led straight into
the Atlantic Ocean and freedom.

“I told ya you’d like it. This is where Dad grew
up.”

Jake shut his mouth, snapping back to reality, and
coughed. He never really paid much attention to where Dad came
from. It was always Mom’s family they visited, shared holidays
with. Dad had always been a mystery to him. “I…think…” He coughed,
with a hand to the throat for effect. “I ate…a bug.”

“Oh
whatever
. Stop being so negative all the
time.” She came around and punched him in the arm just before
pulling out her bag from the flatbed.

He smirked, rubbing his arm. The house, nestled
close to the lake with its own small dock and boat, sat directly
across from a huge house with a gigantic window sweeping the front.
Lights flickered inside and he could almost see movement. He let
out a long whistle.