Kingdom of Salt and Sirens

by J. A. Armitage

  “Oh.” I stood up straighter, a warm blush growing across my cheeks. “Is he . . . I mean . . . are you already in love with him?”

  Her face twisted—her nose, eyes, and lips coming together in a sour scrunch. “Definitely not. He’s nice to look at, but after watching that boy suck his thumb in preschool for a year, I don’t think I’m ever going to fall in love with him. You have nothing to worry about.”

  I exhaled. “Good. I wouldn’t try to fall in love with someone you were already in love with.”

  “Well, thank you for thinking of me, but he’s all yours.”

  Chloe pulled the plug in the sink and I stared, entranced, watching the water swirl and empty down the drain.

  “The only problem is, you can fall in love with him all you want, but he can just as easily fall in love with someone else.”

  I stopped and let her logic roll around in my brain. “Good point. I’d better get on it then.”

  “And what exactly do you plan to do? It’s not like you can force these things.”

  I grabbed a chair at the table and sat down. I’d been devising a plan all afternoon. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure how humans worked, but I knew enough to try.

  “Okay, so I figure the first thing I need to do is find out more about him.”

  Chloe leaned on the chair beside me. Her eyes were focused, but her lips were smirking. I couldn’t tell if she was interested or amused. “Sounds like a reasonable start.”

  “To do that, I’ll have to find out where he lives, go over to his house, check out his things, maybe watch him for a little bit.”

  “Okay, stalker. Is that how you ended up getting sent here?”

  I frowned. “No, but how else would you get to know someone enough to fall in love with them? Besides, what’s a stalker?”

  Chloe smacked her forehead with her hand and shook her head. “You, if you go through with this crazy plan. How do you not know what a stalker is?”

  “Then what do you suggest I do?”

  She tapped her pointer finger against her lips and turned her eyes toward the ceiling. “I’m not quite sure, but I suddenly have a craving for pizza.”

  “But we just ate.”

  She walked across the kitchen, slipped her arm around my shoulder, and led me toward the door. “Trust me on this, you’re going to love this place. Stacey works there, and it always has just what you are looking for.”

  “Sure then, I guess.”

  “Just promise you won’t tell people that you are falling in love with them and that they look ‘enchanting’?”

  I nodded.

  She grabbed her backpack and lifted the car keys from the small rack by the door. “Going to Tony’s, Dad,” she shouted to Stephen in the living room.

  “All right. Don’t get into any trouble,” he yelled back.

  How much trouble could you get in with pizza?

  8

  Fat Tony’s. An oddly named place for a squat brick building that housed no one I would have defined as fat nor anyone named Tony.

  “Come on, let’s get a table before it gets busy.” Chloe waved her hand and ushered me up the stone stairs to the door. I pushed on the glass and stepped inside, the strange mix of grease and garlic making my mouth water.

  “Hey.” Stacey met us at the door and pointed at a small table toward the back covered in a red and white checkered plastic tablecloth. I followed Chloe to the table and she dropped her schoolbooks on top.

  “What can I get you?” Stacey asked as I took a seat across from Chloe.

  “Not much. Just a couple of Cokes for now.”

  “For sure,” she nodded at Chloe and then turned to me. “How are you liking Faraway?”

  I shrugged. “Good, I guess.”

  “You guess? I’m sure it isn’t as exciting as L.A. though.”

  “L.A.? Right, yeah. Definitely not what I’m used to.”

  “Then you’re lucky to have Chloe. She’s the best friend anyone could have.”

  “Seriously, Stacey? I’m not campaigning or anything.”

  Stacey laughed and tapped her pencil on the edge of the table. “Two Cokes coming up.”

  “She seems nice.” At least now that she didn’t think I was a convict.

  Chloe opened her blue notebook and flipped to the first empty page. “Yeah, we’ve known each other since kindergarten. She’s the best.”

  I glanced around the open room, studying the photographs on the walls of hills and rivers. They reminded me of Tuscany and the Tiber, but some were in such bad focus it was hard to tell. Most of the tables were already full, and even though everyone kept their voices down, the noise still bubbled up into a loud din. One of the only few empty tables was a large booth in the corner.

  I turned my attention back to Chloe and her open textbook as her hand feverishly scrawled across the notebook page. “What are you working on?”

  “Biology. Just have to finish this assignment, and I have a test next week. Sorry if it’s boring you.”

  “No. I was just wondering. If you needed to stay home, we didn’t have to come out.”

  She laughed. “Oh yeah, we did. You’ll see.” Then she returned to her questions.

  I reached into my bag and pulled out my own notebook, skimming all the pages I had written today about what I could do to complete Raguel’s mission. If only textbooks existed to teach me that stuff.

  Stacey returned with the drinks and placed them on the table with a basket of golden-brown breadsticks.

  “Aw. Thanks, Stace,” Chloe mumbled as she dropped her pen and grabbed one of the piping hot sticks.

  “No problem. Just remember when you’re rich and famous that you owe me a favor.” Stacey flicked her curly red hair over her shoulder and turned her nose up with a sly smile.

  “Absolutely.” Chloe bit down on the breadstick and her expression melted, reveling in the taste as she resumed writing in her notebook.

  “Do you like biology?” I asked.

  She tapped her pen on the edge of her page, then ran the cap down the metal spiral holding the pages together. “Yeah, it’s kinda my favorite. But I’m also into chemistry, physics, and calculus. I always hoped to go and get a degree in something like medicine or pharmacy or whatever, but I doubt that’s going to happen.”

  “Why not? If it’s something you want to do, then why can’t you?”

  “Because I doubt I will ever get very far from Faraway.”

  “But what about free will? If it’s something you want, don’t you have the choice to go after it?”

  Chloe laughed and fell back against her chair. “You’re kind of funny, you know that? If everyone got everything they ever wanted, the world would probably implode. Besides, I have other commitments.” A darkness crept into the sides of her eyes and she glanced down at her page.

  “Maybe. But I think you would make a great doctor one day.”

  The door swung open, allowing the cool fall breeze to whirl around the room. The swarm of purple and yellow jackets entered one after the other, high fiving, laughing, and generally taking up as much space as they could.

  “Do boys always travel in packs like wolves?”

  Chloe laughed and glanced over at the door. “Not all of them, but they sure do.”

  They piled into the open booth in the corner, interrupting everyone’s conversations, although it didn’t seem like anyone minded. Just when I thought they had finally settled into their spot, the door opened again and Griffin drifted in. Every step seemed to be in slow motion as I watched him swagger toward the corner table, grab a chair, and swing it between his legs, leaning his arms on the back.

  “So that’s why we’re here?” I glared at Chloe and she burst into uncontrollable laughter.

  “Maybe. Or maybe we just happened to be here at the same time they happened to be here, which just happens to be after every single Monday night practice?”

  “I thought you warned me about being a stalker.”

  “Technically, you
didn’t know he’d be here, so I’m the stalker.”

  “Okay, stalker, what do I do now?”

  “Do I have to think of everything? I have no idea. I just got you two in the room. You have to create your own magic.”

  I buried my face back into my notebook, somehow wishing the answers to this problem would be something I’d thought of already, but no luck. The voices of the team rumbled throughout the restaurant, or maybe I just imagined that they were louder than the rest, hoping to hear someone mention the weird girl that had practically fallen out of the sky.

  “Are you going to just sit there and try not to stare at him all night? Because we could’ve done that at home.”

  “Stare at who?” Stacey rested her hand on the back of Chloe’s chair and cocked her head to the side.

  “This one’s got it bad for Griffin Carlisle.”

  Stacey laughed and smacked her thigh with her hand. “Good luck with that, honey.”

  “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

  “Don’t take it the wrong way. I’m just kidding,” Stacey said.

  “Well, you’re probably not far off. I haven’t even figured out a way to talk to him, let alone anything else.”

  “I think your first challenge would be getting him away from the guys for five seconds,” Chloe added.

  The extra level of difficulty caused my shoulders to slouch, and I slid down in my chair.

  “I can help with that,” Stacey said. “But I’ll probably lose some decent tips for it, so you’d better be ready.”

  She marched back into the kitchen and I glanced at Chloe. She shrugged and stuck out her bottom lip.

  Oh no. Stacey returned to the dining room with her hands full of plastic water glasses. She winked at me as she passed by, and I swiveled in my chair to watch her walk toward the booth. She smiled at the group and started placing glasses in front of the players on the left. She straightened back up, one glass left in her hand, and suddenly it slipped, bouncing twice on the table before splashing all over Griffin.

  “I’m so sorry,” Stacey said, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  Griffin stood and shook out the water from his arms. “Not a big deal,” he said and excused himself, heading to the bathroom near the kitchen.

  Chloe howled and tossed her head back, while Stacey looked over at us and took a discrete curtsy.

  “Stacey is ruthless,” Chloe said, putting her hand on her chest to calm her laughter. “Now is your chance, don’t waste it.”

  I stood up and walked toward the bathroom, looking back at Chloe and Stacey who were both silently cheering me on. As I neared the door, the men’s room opened, and Griffin rushed out nearly knocking me over.

  “Whoa,” he said, taking a step back, his hands raised in surrender.

  I gasped and tried to act surprised. “It’s okay. But I guess we’re even now?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Who are you here with?” He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, not in any rush to get away.

  “Chloe. We’ve been doing homework. This seems like a good place to work, and great breadsticks.”

  He pointed at me. “Your name is Arianna. Right?”

  “Yeah.” My shoulders dropped. He clearly hadn’t been thinking about me the way I had been thinking about him. I was just some girl he had run into, no different than any other day. I should’ve been grateful he at least remembered my name. My stomach churned, suddenly wanting to be anywhere but here with my clumsy mouth.

  “Like, it’s Ahr-ianna, not Air-ianna, like air. I’ve been trying to figure that out.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” He had been thinking about me. He had actually spent more than five minutes of his day thinking about who I was.

  He nodded, then glanced over at his friends. “It was good to see you.”

  I opened my mouth to try and continue the conversation, but he started walking back to his table. I sighed, then retreated to mine, suddenly hating myself for not at least going into the washroom to keep up the charade. As I reached the table, the thought of that conversation being the last time we might talk gnawed at me.

  “Griffin,” I called after him.

  He turned around. “Yeah?”

  I sat down at the table with Chloe and waved for him to come over. Surprisingly, he complied and grabbed a chair to sit down between us.

  “I forgot to ask you if they ever found the thief from the farmer’s market.”

  His forehead crunched up and a scowl fell across his lips. “No. They think it was probably someone just passing through. No one else noticed the truck, and the police can’t do much without a license plate number.”

  “Oh. I’m really sorry I didn’t manage to catch him.”

  Griffin chuckled. “I don’t think you would have anyway. It sounds like they knew what they were doing. Besides,” his lips turned up in a shy smile and he looked down toward the table, “if you’d caught the guy, we may have never met.”

  He leaned closer to me and tapped his thick fingers on the table less than a quarter inch from my hand. A strange feeling built in my stomach, leaving me unsure about whether I wanted to sing from the mountaintops in the low-grade photos of Italy or simply run to the bathroom and throw up. He ran his other hand through his hair then looked down at our nearly touching fingertips and smiled.

  “Aw.” Chloe clasped her hands together and batted her eyelashes in a cartoonish way. “That sounds so adorable, Griffin.”

  He scowled at her, his expression turning from sweet to sour almost instantly.

  “It sounds like you guys have a ton to talk about. Maybe you should go do something together sometime, you know, like just the two of you.”

  Griffin’s face blazed red and he stood up from the chair. “I should probably get back.” He pointed quickly at his friends and then turned and practically ran across the restaurant.

  Chloe watched him walk away, then shrugged. “Well, that could’ve gone better.”

  9

  Fall leaves scuttled around my feet as Chloe and I walked into school Tuesday morning. I convinced her to come a little early to avoid the purple parade of Lions and the possibility of locking eyes with Griffin in the hallway. I’d been awake most of the night, running over the awkward rejection I’d received at Tony’s and trying to figure out what my next step would be. Love and free will. These were two concepts that should be very simple but were turning out to be a lot more complicated than I had anticipated.

  “I just have to run to the library,” Chloe said, speeding ahead of me toward the front door, “but I will see you in class.”

  A happy tingle bubbled through my body as I anticipated spending time with her in class. It might only be one, but I would take what I could get. I wasn’t sure when it had happened, the exact moment when I’d decided I liked this girl-shaped human, but I did. The way her laugh tinkled like silver bells and made me laugh with her. The thoughtful way she took care of the people in her life. The way she cared about me when she didn’t have to. I’d only been on Earth three days, but one thing I knew for sure was that being around Chloe Martin made me smile.

  The halls were partly filled but not jam-packed like it would be in about fifteen minutes. I rested my forehead against the metal locker and let the coolness wash over me. What was I going to do now? I opened the locker and shoved in my books, then pulled out the timetable and an English text the office had provided. Underneath everything, I glimpsed a white book with gilt-edged pages. I yanked it out and stared at the cover. The History of Angels.

  Where did this come from? Who else knew my secret? A nervous sensation crept up my back. I looked up and down the hallway, then faced into my locker and opened the book. I flipped through the pages—beautiful painted pictures mixed with columns of text—but there was no indication who it was from.

  “See anyone you know?”

  I jumped and dropped the book to the floor. It landed with a smack against the tile.

  Seth chuckled, then bent over to pic
k it up and hand it back to me. “Is that any way to treat a gift?”

  “What is this for?” I asked, shoving the book deep into the back of my locker.

  “So maybe it’s not a gift. Maybe it’s an apology.”

  I crossed my arms, the tiny hairs on my skin standing at attention. “Oh.”

  “I’m really sorry about yesterday. You have no idea how lonely it can be, knowing the things we know and not being able to share them with anyone. I think I just got a little too excited about that.”

  I closed my locker and sagged against the locker bank. “Don’t ever try anything like that again.”

  “I won’t.” He backed up a step, clearly understanding the tone of my voice. “I’d rather have you talking to me. Plus, I wouldn’t want to get my face bashed in by your blockhead jock boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend. I don’t think Griffin really wants much to do with me, at least where romance is concerned.”

  “Oh, well I guess you’re going to have to find a new plan then.”

  “Yes, I guess I am. I’ll see you at lunch or something.”

  I tried to walk away, but Seth kept up with me. “Is there anything that I can do?”

  I gave him a sour look.

  “Not like that. I mean, maybe I could use some of my contacts to figure out how to get you home.”

  “You know people who can do that?”

  “Maybe. I could ask around, but only if you ask me to.”

  “Okay. Can you ask around for me, Seth?”

  His face lit up and regret clawed at my brain.

  “Absolutely. I promise I will make yesterday up to you.”

  “Not necessary. Just get me out of here.”

  After Seth left, I crept back to my locker and took the book out again. I ran my right hand over the beautiful embossed cover. The gift was actually quite thoughtful, but something about Seth tainted it. I wanted to trust him, but he always came off as too aggressive. If he really wanted to help, he needed to tone it down.

  I slipped into English class early and flipped through the pages of the book, hoping for something to make sense. Unfortunately, most of the text seemed to be descriptions of the angels instead of anything useful. I stopped on a page near the middle. A familiar set of blue robes and gilded wings flowed across two full pages. “Raguel, Angel of Justice” it said in the corner. I traced my finger over his long silver hair. Why can’t you just tell me what I need to do?