Kissed by an Angel/The Power of Love/Soulmates

by Elizabeth Chandler

  Ivy watched with numb fascination. Finally Will drew back his hand. She stared at the drawings. Angels, angels, angels. One angel that looked like Tristan, his arms wrapped around her lovingly.

  Fury rushed through her. “How dare you!” she said. “How dare you, Will!”

  His eyes met hers. There was confusion and panic in them. But she did not relent. She felt nothing but fury.

  “Ivy, I don’t know why … I didn’t mean … I’d never want to, Ivy, I swear I never would—”

  She ripped the paper off the table.

  He stared at it in disbelief. “I’d never hurt you,” he said quietly.

  It had been so easy. In less than a millisecond, it seemed, Tristan had slipped inside Will. There was no struggling to communicate: the angel pictures had come quickly, as if their minds were one. He had shared Will’s amazement at the sight of the image his pencil had drawn; if only Will could make it real for them, his comforting Ivy.

  “What do I do now, Lacey?” Tristan asked. “How can I help Ivy, when all I do is keep hurting her?”

  But Lacey wasn’t around to give advice.

  Tristan wandered the streets of the silent town long after Ivy and her companions had left. He needed to think things out. He was almost afraid to try again. Statues of angels, pictures of angels, just mentioning angels stirred up in Ivy nothing but pain and anger—but that’s what he was now, her angel.

  His new powers were useless, completely useless. And there was still the question of his mission, about which he was totally ignorant. It was so hard to think about that, when all he could think about was reaching Ivy.

  “What do I do now, Lacey?” he asked again.

  He wondered if Lacey was being overly dramatic when she had said that his mission could be to save somebody from disaster. But what if she was right? And what if he was so caught up in his and Ivy’s pain that he failed someone?

  Lacey had said to stay close to the people he knew, which was why, as soon as he awakened from the darkness, he’d sought out Gary and followed him to Celentano’s that evening. She’d also told him that the clue to his mission might be in the past, some problem he saw but did not recognize as such. He needed to figure out how to travel back in time.

  He imagined time as a whirling net that held thoughts and feelings and actions together, a net that had held him until he suddenly broke away. It seemed that the easiest point of entry would be his point of exit. Would it help to go to the place itself?

  He quickly made his way along the dark, winding back roads. It was quite late now and no cars were on the road. An eerie kind of feeling, the sense that at any moment a deer might leap out in front of him, made him slow down, but only for a moment.

  It was strange how easily he found the spot and how certain he was that it was the spot, for each turn and twist in the road looked the same. The moon, though it was full, barely filtered through the heavy leaves. There was no silver splash of light here, just a lightening of the air, a kind of ghostly gray mist. Still, he found the roses.

  Not the ones he had given her, but roses like them. They lay on the side of the road, completely wilted. When he picked them up, their petals fell off like charred flakes; only their purple satin ribbon had survived.

  Tristan looked down the road as if he could look back into time. He tried to remember the last minute of being alive. The light. An incredible light and voice, or message—he wasn’t sure if it was actually a voice and couldn’t remember any words. But that had come after the explosion of light. He returned to the light again and focused his mind on it.

  A pinpoint of light—yes, before the tunnel, before the dazzling light at the end, there had been a pinpoint of light, the light in the deer’s eye.

  Tristan shuddered. He braced himself. Then his whole self felt the impact. He felt as if he were collapsing in on himself. He fell back. The car was rushing backward, like an amusement park ride suddenly thrown in reverse. He was caught in a tape running backward, with words of gibberish and frantic motions. He tried to stop it, willed it to stop, every bit of his energy bent on stopping the backward-racing time.

  Then he and Ivy sat side by side, absolutely still, as if frozen in a movie frame. They were in the car and eased slowly forward now.

  “Last glimpse of the river,” he said as the road made a sharp turn away from it.

  The June sun, dropping over the west ridge of the Connecticut countryside, shafted light on the very tops of the trees, flaking them with gold. The winding road slipped below, into a tunnel of maples, poplars, and oaks. It was like slipping under dark green waves. Tristan flicked on his headlights.

  “You really don’t have to hurry,” said Ivy. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

  “I ruined your appetite?”

  She shook her head. “I guess I’m all filled up with happiness,” she said softly.

  The car sped along and took a curve sharply.

  “I said, we don’t have to hurry.”

  “That’s funny,” he murmured. “I wonder what’s—” He glanced down at his feet. “This doesn’t feel …”

  “Slow down, okay? It doesn’t matter if we’re a little late—Oh!” Ivy pointed straight ahead. “Tristan!”

  Something had plunged through the bushes and into the roadway. He saw it, too, a flicker of motion among the deep shadows. Then the deer stopped. It turned its head, its eyes drawn to the car’s bright headlights.

  “Tristan!” she shouted.

  He braked harder. They were rushing toward the shining eyes.

  “Tristan, don’t you see it?”

  “Ivy, something’s—”

  “A deer!”

  He braked again and again, the pedal pressed flat to the floor, but the car wouldn’t slow down.

  The animal’s eyes blazed. Then light came from behind it, a burst of headlights—a car was coming from the opposite direction. Trees walled them in. There was no room to steer to the left or the right, and the brake pedal was flat against the floor.

  “Stop!” she shouted.

  “I’m—”

  “Stop, why don’t you stop?” she pleaded. “Tristan, stop!”

  He willed the car to stop, he willed himself back into the present, but he had no control, nothing would stop him from speeding into the whirling funnel of darkness. It swallowed him up.

  When he opened his eyes, Lacey was peering down at him.

  “Rough ride?”

  Tristan looked around. He was still on the wooded road, but it was early morning now, gold light fragile as spiderwebs netting the trees. He tried to remember what had happened.

  “You called me, hours ago, asked me what to do next,” she reminded him. “Obviously you couldn’t wait to find out.”

  “I went back,” he said, and then in a rush he remembered. “Lacey, it wasn’t just the deer. If it hadn’t been the deer, it would have been a wall. Or trees or the river or the bridge. It could have been another car.”

  “Slow down, Tristan! What are you saying?”

  “There was no pressure, no fluid. It went all the way down to the floor.”

  “What did?” Lacey asked.

  “The pedal. The brake. It shouldn’t have given out like that.” He grabbed Lacey. “What if … what if it wasn’t an accident? What if it only looked like one?”

  “And you only look dead,” she replied. “Sure fooled me.”

  “Listen to me, Lacey. Those brakes were in perfect shape. Somebody must have messed with them. Somebody cut the line! You have to help me.”

  “But I don’t even know how to pump gas,” she said.

  “You have to help me reach Ivy!” Tristan started down the road.

  “I’d rather work on the brakes,” Lacey called after him. “Slow down, Tristan. Before you knock off another deer.”

  But nothing would stop him. “Ivy has to believe again,” Tristan said. “We have to reach her. She has to know that it wasn’t an accident. Somebody wanted me—or Ivy—dead!”

 
KISSED BY AN ANGEL

  THE POWER OF LOVE

  To the many hands that created this book.

  P2-1

  “This time I’ll reach her!” Tristan said. “I have to warn Ivy, I have to tell her that the crash wasn’t an accident. Lacey, help me out! You know this angel stuff doesn’t come naturally to me.”

  “You can say that again,” Lacey replied, leaning back against Tristan’s tombstone.

  “Then you’ll come with me?”

  Lacey checked her nails, long purple nails that wouldn’t chip or break any more than Tristan’s thick brown hair would grow again. At last she said, “I guess I can squeeze in a pool party for an hour. But listen, Tristan, don’t expect me to be a perfect, angelic guest.”

  Ivy stood at the edge of the pool, her skin prickling from the cold water that occasionally splashed her. Two girls brushed past her, chased by a guy with a water gun. The three of them tumbled into the pool together, leaving Ivy drenched by a shower of icy drops. If this had been the year before, she would have been trembling, trembling and praying to her water angel. But angels weren’t real. Ivy knew that now.

  The previous winter, when she had dangled from a diving board high above the school pool, frozen with a fear she had known since childhood, she had prayed to her water angel. But it was Tristan who had saved her.

  He had taught her to swim. Though her teeth had chattered that first day and the next and the next, she had loved the feel of the water when he pulled her through it. She had loved him, even when he argued that angels weren’t real.

  Tristan had been right. And now Tristan was gone, along with her belief in angels.

  “Going for a swim?”

  Ivy turned quickly and saw her own suntanned face and tumbleweed of gold hair reflected in Eric Ghent’s sunglasses. His wet hair was slicked back, almost transparent against his head.

  “I’m sorry we don’t have a high dive,” Eric said.

  She ignored the little jab. “It’s a beautiful pool anyway.”

  “It’s pretty shallow at this end,” he said, pulling off his sunglasses, letting them dangle from their cord against his bony chest. Eric’s eyes were light blue, and his lashes were so pale he looked as if he didn’t have any.

  “I can swim—either end,” Ivy told him.

  “Really.” One side of Eric’s mouth curled up. “Let me know when you’re ready,” he told her, then walked away to talk to his other guests.

  Ivy hadn’t expected Eric to be any nicer than that. Though he had invited her and her two closest friends to his midsummer pool party, they weren’t members of Stonehill’s fast crowd. Ivy was sure that Beth, Suzanne, and she were there only at the request of Eric’s best friend and Ivy’s stepbrother, Gregory.

  She gazed across the pool at a line of sunbathers, searching for her friends. In the midst of a dozen oiled bodies and bleached heads sat Beth, wearing a huge hat and something resembling a muumuu. She was talking a mile a minute to Will O’Leary, another one of Gregory’s friends. Somehow Beth Van Dyke, who had never even dreamed of being cool, and Will, who was thought to be ultracool, had become friends.

  The girls around them were arranging themselves to show the sun—or Will—their best angle, but Will didn’t notice. He was nodding encouragingly to Beth, who was probably telling him her newest idea for a short story. Ivy wondered if, in his quiet way, Will enjoyed Beth’s writings—poems and stories, and, once for history class, a biography of Mary, Queen of Scots—which somehow always turned into steamy bare-every-emotion tales of romance. The thought made Ivy smile.

  Will glanced across the pool just then and caught the smile. For a moment his face seemed alight. Perhaps it was only the flicker of sun flashing off the water, but Ivy took a self-conscious step back. Just as quickly, he turned his face into the shade of Beth’s hat.

  As Ivy stepped back she felt the bare skin of a cool, hard chest. The person did not move out of the way, but rather lowered his face over her shoulder, brushing her ear with his mouth.

  “I think you have an admirer,” said Gregory.

  Ivy did not move away from him. She had gotten used to her stepbrother, his tendency to lean too close, his way of showing up behind her unexpectedly. “An admirer? Who?”

  Gregory’s gray eyes laughed down at her. He was dark-haired, tall and slender, with a deep tan from spending hours a day playing tennis.

  In the last month, he and Ivy had spent a lot of time together, though back in April she would never have believed it possible. Then, all that she and Gregory had in common was shock at their parents’ decision to marry, and anger at and distrust of each other. At seventeen, Ivy was earning her own money and looking after her kid brother. Gregory was racing around the Connecticut countryside in his BMW with a fast, rich crowd who scorned anyone who didn’t have what they did.

  But all that seemed unimportant now that he and Ivy had shared a lot more—the suicide of Gregory’s mother and Tristan’s death. When two people live in the same house, Ivy discovered, they share some of their deepest feelings, and, surprisingly enough, she had come to trust Gregory with hers. He was there for her when she missed Tristan the most.

  “An admirer,” Ivy repeated, smiling. “Sounds to me like you’ve been reading Beth’s romances.” She moved away from the pool, and Gregory moved with her like a shadow. Quickly Ivy scanned the patio area for her oldest and best friend, Suzanne Goldstein. For Suzanne’s sake, Ivy wished Gregory would not stand so close. She wished he wouldn’t whisper to her as if they shared some secret.

  Suzanne had been pursuing Gregory since the winter, and Gregory had encouraged the chase. Suzanne said they were officially dating now; Gregory smiled and admitted to nothing. Just as Ivy laid a light hand on Gregory to push him back a little, a glass door slid open and Suzanne emerged from the pool house. She paused for a moment, as if taking in the scene—the long sapphire oval of the pool, the marble sculptures, the terraces of flowers. The pause conveniently gave all the guys a chance to look at her. With her shimmering mane of black hair and a tiny bikini that seemed more like jewelry than clothing, she outshone all the other girls, including the ones who had been longtime members of Eric and Gregory’s crowd.

  “If anyone has admirers,” Ivy said, “it’s Suzanne. And if you Ye smart, you’ll get over there before twenty other guys line up.”

  Gregory just laughed and brushed back a tangle of golden hair from Ivy’s cheek. He knew, of course, that Suzanne was watching. Both Gregory and Suzanne were into playing games, and Ivy was often caught in the middle.

  Suzanne moved with catlike grace, reaching them quickly, yet never appearing to move faster than a leisurely stroll.

  “Great suit!” she greeted Ivy.

  Ivy blinked, then stared down at her one-piece in surprise. Suzanne had been with her when she bought the suit and had urged her to find something that plunged even further. But of course this was just a setup to turn Gregory’s attention to Suzanne’s … jewelry.

  “It really looks terrific on you, Ivy.”

  “That’s what I told her,” Gregory said in an overly warm voice.

  He had never said a thing about Ivy’s suit. His white lie was intended to make Suzanne jealous. Ivy flashed him a look and he laughed.

  “Did you bring any sunblock?” Suzanne asked. “I can’t believe I forgot mine.”

  Ivy couldn’t believe it, either. Suzanne had been working that line since they were twelve and vacationing at the Goldsteins’ beach house.

  “I know my back is going to fry,” Suzanne said.

  Ivy reached for her bag, which was on a nearby chair. She knew that Suzanne could stretch out on a sheet of foil at high noon and still never burn. “Here. Keep it. I’ve got plenty.”

  Then she placed the tube in Gregory’s hands. She started off, but Gregory caught her by the arm. “How about you?” he asked, his voice low and intimate.

  “How about me what?”

  “Don’t you need some lotion?” he asked.

/>   “Nope, I’m fine.”

  But he wouldn’t let her go. “You know how you forget the most obvious places,” he said as he smoothed the lotion at the base of her neck and across her shoulders, his voice as silky soft as his fingers. He tried to slip a finger under one strap. Ivy held the strap down. She was getting mad. No doubt Suzanne was burning up, too, she thought—though not from the sun.

  Ivy pulled away from Gregory and quickly put on her sunglasses, hoping they would mask her anger. She walked away briskly, leaving them to tease and antagonize each other.

  Both of them were using her to score points. Why couldn’t they leave her out of their stupid games?

  You’re jealous, she chided herself. You’re just jealous because they have each other, and you don’t have Tristan.

  She found an empty lounge chair at the edge of a small crowd and dropped down into it. The guy and girl next to her watched with interest as Suzanne led Gregory to two lounges in a corner apart from the others. They whispered as Gregory spread lotion over her perfectly shaped body.

  Ivy closed her eyes and thought about Tristan, about their plans to run off to the lake together, to float out in the middle of it with the sun sparkling at their fingertips and toes. She thought about the way Tristan had kissed her in the backseat of the car the night of the accident. It was the tenderness of his kiss that she remembered, the way he had touched her face with wonder, almost reverence. The way he had held her made her feel not only loved, but sacred to him.

  “You still haven’t gone in the water.”

  Ivy opened her eyes. It seemed pretty clear that Eric wouldn’t let her alone until she proved she would not freak out in the pool.

  “I was just thinking about it,” she said, removing her sunglasses. He waited for her by the pool’s edge.

  Ivy was glad that, at his own party, Eric had stayed sober. But perhaps this was how he made up for it. Without alcohol, without drugs, this was how Eric entertained himself: testing people on their most vulnerable points.