Black

by Angelina J. Steffort

  And suddenly, irrationally, my tears began to flow. I was overwhelmed by feelings of loneliness and emptiness. Adam was gone, and Jaden seemed to be playing games about whether he was in or out of my life. I was caught half-in and half-out of a world of the supernatural with no one I could share that with. I had decided that Chris, Adam’s father and an angel himself, was off limits to me as I didn’t want to bother him while he dealt with his own grief. Almost certainly I would be hunted to the death by Adam’s killers and there was nothing I could do about it. Even Jaden would not be able to save me, assuming Jaden would even be there. I had never felt weaker or more alone. I was crushed beneath a weight I didn’t understand and couldn’t fight off.

  I closed my eyes to prevent more liquid from escaping past them.

  “Don’t cry, Claire.” Jaden’s voice whispered beside my ear. His hand curled around my neck and pulled my head against his shoulder.

  My eyes flew open reflexively. He must have teleported from the bed to my chair the second I had closed my eyes. Without a doubt he had read my emotions—a mixture of being positively angry with him for leaving me alone, my grief for Adam, and the all consuming fear of what was going to become of me, combined with constant pain flaring in my insides like flames licking my body, soul, and psyche.

  “Shhhh—” Jaden pulled me tight to him. “I’m here. No need to worry now.”

  I dug my fingers into his shoulders to prove to myself that he wasn’t a hallucination—I didn’t trust myself with anything these days. If it wasn’t for the constant pain, I would sometimes be a hundred percent sure it had been a dream; but it hadn’t, and Jaden being here with me was living proof.

  My guardian angel cradled me in his arms and hummed to me soothingly. He didn’t complain about my fingers clawing him. I felt more tears wet my face and soak his shirt. The way he held me comforted me a little. It took away the anger, the fear—but not the pain. The pain was too intangible to ease it with a physical touch. It was too real in every fiber of myself.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” I sobbed into his shirt. I was sure he felt the relief that was flowing through me that very second. “Will you stay for a while?”

  “I’m not sure how long I can.”

  I felt his body stiffen as he felt my disappointment.

  “But, I’m here now. Don’t worry for the moment. I’ll stay as long as I possibly can.”

  For some reason his words didn’t convince me I wouldn’t be alone within minutes again.

  I tore away, out of his embrace, and tried to catch his gaze.

  “What’s kept you away?”

  Jaden’s eyes turned to the ceiling. They were unnaturally golden in the artificial light that was brightening my room in this very early hour of the day.

  “Do you think you can pop up in my life, keep me from killing myself, and then vanish like nothing happened—” I accused.

  “There is hardly anything I can do.” Jaden’s voice was cold and controlled, the usual softness in his eyes gone. He took a step away from me and leaned against my desk where he froze into a statue.

  “What do you mean, can do?”

  Happy as I had been to have him back a second ago, he was strongly irritating me now.

  “As I said—complicated.” The dissatisfying answer shot from his unmoving lips in an unmelodious flow.

  I turned so I faced him fully.

  “As I said—I can keep up.” I pointed a finger at him and touched the fingertip to his chest. “Shoot!”

  Jaden’s eyes wandered off again, searching the room for something, I imagined could be the right words, before they locked on mine.

  “You don’t want to know everything—believe me.”

  I coughed at his words. “I think I very well know what I want and what I don’t.” The way he looked at me made me feel like a misbehaving little child.

  “Believe me—knowing that I wasn’t there is enough information. You don’t necessarily need to know where I have been and what has kept me.” The words seemed a little bit more like an excuse than an explanation. The way he was rolling his gaze across the walls while he talked to me gave me a vague idea of how bad the truth might be.

  “Just tell me you weren’t held by the demons,” I stressed. An image of Jaden’s body, bent under the force of Volpert’s power, shot up in my head. I could almost hear him scream in pain as my imagination played me a vivid movie of my worst fears.

  The fear was certainly plain on my face. I could tell by the way Jaden darted towards me and cupped my face in his hand.

  “No,” he said, almost toneless.

  I felt my psyche snapping again. Tears were blurring my vision, making my lashes stick together in blond clusters around the rims of my eyes.

  “Don’t you worry about me,” he said with a smile that looked almost natural. “I can take good care of myself.”

  I nodded halfheartedly.

  “You should go back to sleep.” Jaden took my arm and led me to the bed with gentle force. “You’ve got school tomorrow.”

  I let him press me down and tuck me under the blanket. He sat down beside me and took one of my hands into his.

  “Cry if you need to,” he said. “It’s okay. Nothing is going to be better if you don’t.”

  “It hurts, Jaden—so much I’m not sure I’m able to live through this for much longer.” It felt so good not having to hide anything. With Jaden I could be myself, whether I wanted to or not.

  “I know—” he squeezed my hand and smiled wryly. “I am feeling whatever you feel—right now it’s almost unbearable.”

  I rolled my head to the side as Jaden reached out to touch my cheek. He stroked it once. “You’re so much stronger than you give yourself credit for.”

  A second later, he had vanished from my bed and the switch of the light clicked the room into darkness. Another second and Jaden’s weight reappeared beside me. He had teleported over to the switch and back.

  A soft golden glow was hovering over me—Jaden’s eyes. They were staring at me out of the darkness.

  “Time to sleep.”

  Jaden’s hand pressed down on mine and I felt myself drifting into blackness. The last thought I could form was the wish that I would finally wake up from this nightmare. Then everything went dark.

  The alarm clock tore me from the first restful hours I had had in weeks. I knew I had to get up, find some clothes, and get presentable for school, but my eyelids were too heavy right now to lift them. I liked Saturdays and Sundays better. On the weekends I wasn’t forced to go outside and be around people—something that had been exhausting me lately. I lay there, listening to the alarm, for a short while—a minute, maybe less—before I reluctantly lifted my hand to mute the noise. On the way from under the blanket to my bedside table my hand bumped into something warm and hard. My eyes fluttered open in surprise.

  “Good morning, Claire,” Jaden greeted me from unexpectedly close by. My hand was lying against his chest where it had hit it. He was resting on his side on the edge of my bed, propped on his elbow, his head in his hand. “Wait a second.”

  He turned around in a swift movement and silenced the alarm. Then he turned back and eyed me critically.

  “You don’t look rested at all—though you looked like you did rest in the last couple of hours. Your eyes were closed and your breathing even, at least.”

  “I had a dreamless sleep.” I sat up and shook out of the blanket. “That’s good, I suppose.” But seeing Jaden meant I hadn’t dreamed the last weeks. It meant that everything was real. And that was how I still felt. Empty and aching.

  I left Jaden lying on my bed and got to my feet to hurry through the morning routine. I didn’t even look at the clothes I was pulling out of the closet. I didn’t care whether the colors matched, I just slipped into them, trying to keep a grip on myself as long as possible. If I had to go to school today, I didn’t want to make a fool of myself, sobbing through the lessons—again. I just wanted to vanish for a while, becom
e invisible to the world. This was why I had done only the most necessary things during the past weeks and spent most of my free time at home in my room. I felt a little safer there than elsewhere.

  “Should I take you?” Jaden stood beside me and watched me tie my shoelaces with a worried expression on his young face.

  I shot him an ambivalent frown. I didn’t want to be alone outside, but I didn’t want to attract attention either, and I definitely would when Jaden was with me. He was quite a looker and simply everybody would notice us entering the school grounds together. I also feared the endless stream of questions my friend Amber would throw at me the moment we would be alone. Jaden would be her type—tall, beautiful, mysterious. I didn’t want her to be put in any danger because of the people I was being surrounded with.

  “Er—no, thank you.”

  “Sure?” He ran his hand through strands of golden hair which were dancing on his forehead as he looked down at me. “I was headed in that direction anyway—I could drive you.”

  I examined my shoes for a second, buying time before I got to my feet.

  “Maybe if you drop me off far enough from the entrance so nobody asks questions—”

  “Sure—” He opened the front door for me.

  I half-expected Nigel, my cat, to be waiting outside, looking at me with big yellow eyes, but he was gone. Demons had killed him to hurt me, to give me a sign that they could get to me anywhere, anytime. I had understood and I still felt like they might pop up any second, aiming for me this time. But in reality, outside everything was exactly like it should be at the end of a cold February. The sun was still hiding behind thick clouds and the dim light told me that winter wouldn’t be over for a while.

  Sophie’s car was already gone. I figured she was at the campus early for some reason. I hadn’t heard her get up and leave the house. On the end of the driveway, a very elegant slate-colored car was parked under a leafless tree.

  “Since when do you own a car?” I asked surprised as he led the way to the gray vehicle. “I thought you travel by teleporting.”

  “Usually I do, but right now I’m in need of a presentable, human way of locomotion.” His eyes glimmered mysteriously as he quickly looked at the handle of the shiny gray door.

  He got into the car and waited for me to climb in on the passenger side.

  “Do you like it?” he asked in an unusually insecure voice.

  “It’s a nice ride.” I had a quick look at the interior. “A bit flashy, maybe.”

  Jaden started the engine and we rolled off toward Aurora High School. I watched the houses fly by outside. A knot was forming in my stomach, big enough to fill my entire torso. The pain in my heart was throbbing constantly. I was glad I had at least managed to have seemingly normal conversations with everyone at school. My fellow students would think I was depressed or sad but they wouldn’t know I was in continuous pain. Only Jaden would know. And he didn’t comment on it all the time. He very well knew there was hardly anything he could do about how I felt. All he could do was stay with me and suffer with me. And it was a lot more than I would ever expect anyone to do for me. Nobody should suffer like that. It was inhuman.

  “Just drop me off here.” I pointed at a driveway a few streets from the school buildings.

  Jaden pulled in and let me get out of the car.

  “Thanks for dropping me off—and thank you for staying with me last night. In fact, it was a lot more restful than all the other nights since—” I swallowed and let my chin sink down.

  Jaden nodded, understanding without me finishing the sentence.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “When will you come back?” I asked through the open door. My hand clamped the handle fiercely, as if I could hold the car in place with only my grip.

  “We will meet sooner than you expect.” He winked at me.

  Hesitantly, my fingers detached from the cold metal. The door fell shut with a noise that said very expensive car and Jaden half-opened the passenger window.

  “Take care,” he said through the gap, and then rolled off into the morning traffic of Aurora.

  My eyes followed the gray car until they couldn’t make it out in the stream of vehicles.

  It was a raw morning and the sidewalks were damp. After a minute of walking I reached the parking lot. It was full of students who were all heading toward the main building. I quietly filed in between people I didn’t know and made my way down the hall toward the classroom. I knew that my chances of staying unnoticed were infinitesimally small. Somehow though, I hoped that Amber, Lydia, and Gregory, my best friends, would realize I wasn’t in the mood to be social. I honestly wished they wouldn’t mind me staying the passive element of our clique. All I wanted was to be, to exist—I couldn’t handle more. Existing and not feeling was my biggest desire. Since I couldn’t escape the barbed wire tearing through my heart and what was left of my soul, all I could do was live through another day, tormented by memories and ashamed that my emotions were so obvious on my face. Having my friends around me would give me a somewhat secure space to exist.

  I stepped though the classroom door, my books clamped tightly to my chest as if to shield myself from the looks I knew would be coming my way. I was used to heads turning in my direction. It happened every day. People thought they knew the story and they did, to a degree. They knew the official story I had given out. My boyfriend committed suicide one night at a party. What else they thought they knew, I couldn’t tell. We had had a fight? He had been high? He had been mentally unstable all along, and showed up suddenly at our school because he needed to get away from where people knew his history? And certainly there was speculation about my role in his death. I was either a fool to fall so hard for a guy with no provable past, or I was an awful person, capable of ruining a nice guy’s life. Some people’s eyes told me it was my fault Adam had felt an irresistible death wish. The way they looked at me didn’t leave any doubts. For a week or so I had wondered what they might be thinking, but then I figured out that needing to know was just one more weight on my heart and I was better off blocking it out.

  I pretended not to notice the secretive whispering behind my back. I didn’t care anymore who it was or what they said. Nothing they thought or shared was of any concern to me anymore. Getting through the days was all that mattered. I didn’t pay attention to the way they looked away, blushing, when I caught them staring or whispering.

  I sat in the back row all the time now, invisible to my classmates—which was what I wanted to be. And I was grateful that my teachers, at least for the moment, left me alone. It was a good place to hide from their gazes during classes. Most of the teachers didn’t bother to ask me anything—they knew I wouldn’t have an answer for them, no matter what the question would be.

  Sophie had insisted on me going back to school a few days after the funeral. She said it would be the best way to get my life back. She had pried on me for a while, monitoring me closely for signs of an eating disorder, like after our parents’ deaths, knowing that could derail my life all by itself. But I went to school every day and I ate reasonably well, and I could hold a sensible conversation, so that gave her hope that things would work out okay eventually. I said nothing to her about any recovery I expected to make. She had no idea Adam’s death wasn’t as simple as it seemed and that the indescribable fear, suffering, and horror I had experienced went far, far beyond the tragic loss of a friend and the ending of a teenage romance. What the loss of Adam, and his violent death, had done to me was irreparable.

  As I reached the back of the classroom, Lydia joined me at a table.

  “Hey Claire,” she smiled at me, kind and warm like the person she was.

  I gave her what messed up curved line my mouth remembered a smile to feel like in return. From the way it felt on my face, I was positive that it looked like a distorted grimace.

  “How was your weekend?” Amber joined us. She took a seat in the row before us and turned around in her chair to talk to us.
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  “Not so good.”

  I knew without looking that Lydia was rolling her eyes.

  “Richard and I had a fight—again.”

  Richard was the younger brother of Ian, Sophie’s boyfriend. Lydia and Richard had met at our house at one of Sophie’s college parties and clicked immediately. They made a cute couple. Although lately it seemed the course of true love was not running smooth. I had a hard time staying interested in their boring little squabbles. Instead of trying, I stared out the window and scanned the parking lot, searching for distraction. It was only feeling a new energy in the room that brought me back. Students were shifting in their chairs and there was a wave of nudging, giggling, and whispering.

  “—and will finish this last year of school at Aurora High. Please give him a warm welcome,” Ms. Fields finished, and there was a smattering of applause while a couple of the more outgoing boys aired their social savvy by saying welcome and glad to meet you.

  I would have looked up front to see what the commotion was about, except that at that very second a private little lightning bolt immobilized me. From my seat, I could see a car in the parking lot that somehow stood out in the humdrum line of student vehicles. It was a very nice car. It was slate-colored. And a little flashy.

  Shadow

  My eyes snapped to the front of the class. A pair of awesomely golden eyes stared back at me.

  “I hope you’ll like it here, Mr. Ableton,” Ms. Fields said to him. “There is a free seat in the second row. Just on the left, over there.” She pointed at a table near Gregory. I hadn’t noticed him come in and sit down there, just as I hadn’t noticed our new student enter the classroom.

  “Thank you, Ms. Fields.” The sound of his voice was soothing, even when he didn’t talk to me.

  I watched him walk over to where the teacher had directed him. His movements were smooth and elegant—worthy of an immortal. He wore jeans and an ordinary, black long-sleeved shirt. The clothes were hiding his majestic posture in usualness.

  Not a girl in the room wasn’t looking at him, those slim hips and broad shoulders sliding gracefully into his seat, and that impossibly golden hair. Even Ms. Fields’ eyes followed him with curiosity.