by Scott Speer
Mark nodded again, thoughtfully, and moved over on the bed.
“Sit down, Jackson.” He patted the mattress next to him. Jacks came over wordlessly and sat.
Mark regarded his stepson.
“That . . . girl . . . you brought to the party tonight. She’s not part of your world, Jacks. She can never be a part of your world, and you know that. You know if anything were to happen to her, anything at all, there would be nothing you could do for her.”
“I know the laws,” Jacks said.
“And there’s a good reason for those laws,” Mark said. “It’s not a”—he paused, choosing the word—“a prejudice, Jackson. It’s a safeguard. The laws safeguard the institution of Guardianship.”
Mark rose and walked slowly to the window. He looked out at the twinkling city, the palm trees black in the night. Jacks sat on the bed, watching him. Guardianship. Duty. The words seemed empty, tied to parties and press junkets and paparazzi, all of it some kind of hollow dream being acted out in the Immortal City when he thought about how he felt standing next to Maddy. But that was over now. He tried to cast these thoughts from his mind. He was just upset, that was all. It would pass.
“As a Guardian, Jacks, your responsibility is to your Protections. If you allow yourself to be distracted worrying about . . . others, then it puts your Protections in danger.” He turned and faced Jacks again. “If a Protection were to get hurt because a Guardian was distracted, do you have any idea the damage that would cause? What would happen to the trust placed in us as Angels? What would happen to people’s belief in the system itself?”
He walked toward Jackson, who sat motionless on the bed. Jacks thought about how he would feel if Maddy was in danger, what he would do. If he were totally honest with himself, he knew what Mark was saying was right.
“Don’t you understand? Something like what you did tonight could destroy everything. Everything the Archangels have worked for, that your mother and I have worked for, even that your father worked for”—he was inches away from him now, standing over him—“fought for, and died for. Do I need to remind you why he fought the rebels? He gave his immortal life so that the good work of the Archangels, the good work of Angels on earth could continue.”
Jacks nodded wordlessly.
“There’s been another incident on the Walk of Angels, Jacks,” Mark said, narrowing his eyes at his stepson.
“Who?”
“Ryan Templeton. I wanted you to hear it from me. He was murdered. If this gets out into the media, they’ll blow these Angel disappearances out of proportion. There’s also a silly rumor going around that these Angels are being murdered in order of their stars. We’re sure it’s just coincidence. But your star would be next.”
“What?” A jolt ran through Jackson’s body. He felt something he wasn’t too familiar with: fear.
“If this gets out . . . with all eyes on you, it’s more important than ever that we keep a solid front. For years, those envious anti-Angel groups have been looking for just this type of opportunity. With Ted Linden being elected, it’s only going to get worse. You’re—I mean it’s—too important to give into fear now. We are putting your star on that sidewalk in defiance of whatever or whoever is out there trying to intimidate Angels.”
“But only an Angel can kill an Angel.” Jacks’s thoughts immediately cast back to what Sierra had said to him at the party that night—Can’t wait for your star. Was Sierra and Steven’s jealousy so great that it would lead them to something like . . . this? The look in her eyes had been dark and unblinking. But dark enough for murder?
“Jacks, this is more complicated than you could imagine,” Mark said.
The Archangel appraised his stepson. “I know all of this might not seem fair, but it’s part of the sacrifice that is asked of us,” he said.
Slowly, Mark sat next to Jacks again and let out a long breath.
“This is your Commissioning week, Jackson. I want you to think about your duty as a Guardian. Think about the Protection’s life you will be holding in your hands. Think about that. It will be your responsibility to make sure they come home to their families each night. So their children can have a parent. So their parents can have a child. So their siblings can have a brother or a sister.”
Mark put a firm hand on Jacks’s shoulder. “This is not about you anymore, Jackson. It’s about the Protections we serve. It’s about the duty we are all called to as Angels and as Guardians, and I will not have you mock that. I will not have you mock your duty, Jackson.”
Jacks stood up swiftly, irritated.
“You don’t have to lecture me about duty, Mark.”
In an instant, Mark had risen off the bed in front of Jacks, throwing him back across the room.
“Really? Then can you please tell me why I am seeing pictures of my stepson messing around with trash like that girl? Some human girl?”
Jacks steadied himself against the wall.
Mark’s tone was ferocious, echoing around the room.
“What were you thinking, Jacks? What were you thinking?” Mark spit out. “Do you think all this was coincidence, Jacks, all your media coverage, the success, the fame? Do you think we’ll just stand by and let you throw it away, that we’ll have groomed you for nothing, that we don’t need you to stand as a shining example against our enemies, who are growing every day? Do you?” The walls almost shook with his furious tone.
Jackson and his stepfather stood mere inches from each other, eye to eye. Neither blinked. After a few moments the heave of Mark’s chest quieted. He began composing himself. Jacks turned away, taking in the weight of Mark’s words. He knew it was true.
“Mark, I’m sorry, I wasn’t—” Jacks said tiredly. “It’s over.”
Mark looked at his stepson. The rage was gone from his eyes now; only the disappointment remained.
“I’ll talk to Darcy in the morning; we’ll take care of it. Try to get it killed by the Commissioning ceremony tomorrow night.”
Jacks nodded.
“You embarrassed yourself tonight, Jackson,” he said. “Do yourself a favor and never, never do that again. Have I made myself clear?”
“Yes,” Jacks said.
Mark walked to the doorway.
“Very soon you’re going to be a Guardian Angel. At least try to act like one.” Mark paused for a moment on the threshold. Jacks looked at his stepfather, lit from the track lighting above him. There was something off about his blazer, which was normally so crisp and clean, now rumpled and thrown over his arm. It was stained. A red splotch. Like blood.
Before Jacks could even register what he was seeing, Mark closed the door with a slam. Waiting until he heard his stepfather’s footsteps fade down the hall, Jacks leapt up from his bed and went to where Mark had stopped. He leaned down and looked at where the Archangel had been standing, but there was no sign of anything. He checked the comforter on the bed, where Mark had been sitting. Nothing there, either. Jacks shook his head. It’d been a late night—he must have been imagining things.
But he hadn’t imagined the look in Maddy’s eyes when she told him she wanted nothing to do with him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Last call,” the man said, wiping dry another pint glass from behind the bar.
A solitary figure sitting at the bar in an overcoat nodded. Dust hung heavy in the dark air. The bartender picked up a broom and began sweeping.
Sylvester slowly twirled the remaining sliver of ice in the glass of whiskey he’d been nursing for the past thirty minutes. The dark bar was almost empty. It had been an Angel City institution for decades, with its dark wood, deep maroon-colored booths, and battered stools. Archangels had sat in those booths in years past, wheeling and dealing, and framed pictures of famous Guardians who used to be regulars in the forties and fifties hung dusty above the mirror of the bar.
The detective hadn’t been there in years. But he’d needed to think. The encounter with Mark had left him unsettled. Was the Archangel hiding so
mething? Or someone? Sylvester’s mind struggled to put the pieces together. In bringing up Sylvester’s punishment, his expulsion from the Angels, Mark had hit a nerve the detective had long since tried to bury. Sometimes he swore he could still feel his wings. Phantom limbs. Better not to dwell on these things. Think of the case at hand, not time long passed, he told himself.
It was going to rain. Sylvester felt it in his back. Pressure was in the air.
Why would someone—or maybe something—be taking justice on these Angels? What had Godson or Templeton done, or was the reason for the murders just the order of their stars? Did the HDF have the know-how to recruit an unhappy Angel to their side? There had to be a part he was missing. Sylvester turned the facts over and over in his mind. Troublingly, his thoughts kept moving to the Archangels themselves. Could the Archangels somehow be cleaning out enemies from within the ranks, and if so, would Mark even be aware of it? It could go all the way to the Council. The more he thought about it, the more he began to question Mark’s motives. He’d seemed evasive, and not too surprised when he was told his stepson’s star was next. The detective’s head swirled with possibilities, leads, dead ends. A file ten inches thick was waiting for him on the passenger seat of his cruiser. A peek into the dank underbelly of the Immortal City.
He tipped back the glass and took another sip of his drink. The detective was woozy, but not from the booze. He needed some sleep.
The TV above the bar was tuned to a news channel, but of course they were talking about Angels. A group of talking heads was on a debate-type show. On-screen was the graphic Angels: Whose Side Are They On?
“Can you turn that up?” Sylvester asked, motioning to the TV.
The bartender picked up the remote, bumping the volume up a few notches. “You want the check too?” he asked, hopefully. The handful of final other customers was clearing out. Sylvester nodded.
A man with a goatee and glasses was speaking to the two other experts on the show: “So what you have here, what you have is total uncooperation on the part of the Angels, Teri. We have no idea how these guys work. They just show up and do a save for the right price. There’s no transparency, no accountability—”
“But the fact is they’re saving lives, Will. Pure and simple. Do the math,” Teri, a woman in a power suit with short-cropped brown hair, interrupted the goateed man.
“I’ve done the math, Teri, and the fact is that the Angels only save a few, while the vast majority of humanity is left out in the cold,” Will responded, his face getting slightly red. “And now with these confirmed Angel deaths happening in what’s being called serial killer murders, which we’ve learned about just minutes ago, and the media hysteria that will certainly come from them, we have absolutely no idea what’s going on. The Angels are acting as if everything is just business as usual.”
Sylvester sat up straight. The murders had gone public. The Angels couldn’t keep everyone in the dark forever. The story was too explosive.
None of the handful of other customers in the bar seemed to pay much mind. They went there at that hour to try to escape the Immortal City’s woes, not pay attention to them.
The debate continued on the television:
“Okay, okay, let’s bring it back to the original—” The moderator attempted to steer the conversation but was interrupted by an irate Teri.
“If we’re going back to the original question: they can’t save everyone all the time, pure and simple,” Teri said. “There’s just not enough for humanity. This vocal anti-Angel minority in this country is not useful and will solve nothing. We have to accept the Angels as they are, on their terms. Think of how many lives they’ve saved! To do otherwise is to give ammunition to hate groups like the Humanity Defense Front, whose stated goal is the extermination of Angels by any means possible!”
The third guest, a man with a buzz cut and a red tie, spoke up. “How do we know they’re not capable of saving everyone? And at what cost do we have them save us? And then we have to owe these creatures that just materialized from thin air over a hundred years ago? They know everything about us, but they still won’t bring humans into a Guardian training facility except for special staged press events.” An on-screen title identified him as former army colonel Davis A. Jessup. “What’s really going on over at the NAS? And why has the Council of Twelve all but disappeared from the public eye for the past eighty years? Certainly all of these questions are important from a national security standpoint too.” The colonel paused. “I think soon-to-be senator Ted Linden’s recent victory at the polls has shown that a large part of this country wants these answers. Now.”
Taking a pull from his glass, Sylvester continued peering up at the television. If the public knew everything . . . he thought. On-screen they cut to file footage of Ted Linden at his victory speech. He was maybe forty-five years old and handsome, a sleek shock of dark lustrous hair swooped back on his head. He had a winning smile as a he gave a thumbs-up to his supporters.
“What should we think now that Angels are being killed? And scientists also have evidence that the Angels are actually aging faster than we thought,” Will stated. “Latest projections have the life spans of these so-called Born Immortals at four hundred to five hundred years. But the NAS maintains total immortality. If the aging is really happening, and these killings are really happening, apparently from within the community, what else are they hiding?”
Teri almost jumped out of her seat. “I’ve seen that report, Will, and I wouldn’t call it ‘evidence’ as much as total speculation! Anti-Angel elements are just trying for a power play in this country, but it’s not going to work. Whipping people into a false frenzy never lasts. It’s clear you’re just a mouthpiece for Linden and his party.”
Sylvester tilted his glass back and took the final gulp of whiskey, laying down the empty glass and a few bills on the bar.
“Thanks,” he said to the bartender, pulling on his jacket as he walked to the door. Stepping onto the dormant streets of Angel City, he took in a lungful of night air. The stars high above twinkled dimly in the sky through the light clouds and pollution.
As soon as the door closed, the bartender walked to the window and turned off the neon signs, also flipping the Open sign to Closed. After bolting the door, he walked back to the bar, under the rows of dusty old Angel photos on the wall. He picked up the remote. Will, Teri, and Colonel Jessup were now near screaming at each other on-screen. He pressed the red power button and the TV switched to blackness, leaving the bar in silence as he continued sweeping under the dusty, watchful eyes of glamorous Angels past.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Maddy stumbled down the stairs with her hair still wet, pulling her hoodie over a shirt she had to resurrect from the hamper. In the aftermath of the disaster that was last night, she had forgotten to set her alarm and was late for her morning shift at the diner. Her limbs throbbed with fatigue, and her head ached with the painful memories of the party, but at least, she told herself, that was over now. No more lying. No more sneaking around. She could go back to being just plain Maddy. Beyond that, she tried not to think about it. She tried not to think about Jacks.
She grabbed her backpack from where she had left it on the floor and dropped in her shiny new BlackBerry Miracle. She would hang on to that, she decided. She’d needed a new phone anyway, and it made her feel like she at least got something out of the whole experience. She grabbed a piece of bread from a bag on the kitchen counter and, holding it in her teeth, hurried across the living room and threw open the door.
Maddy’s world went white. A barrage of camera flashes lit up the porch as a dozen voices shouted at her simultaneously.
“MADDY!” “MADDY!” “MADDY!” RIGHT HERE, MADDY!” RIGHT HERE, DARLING!” “OVER HERE, MADDY!”
Maddy had paparazzi.
They crowded together on the lawn in front of the porch steps, shutters clicking automatically, firing away at her. Still more paparazzi were running across the street, pulling their came
ras out of their bags and shooting as they ran, men with unkempt beards and unkind, sneering faces. Maddy stood there with her wet hair and the slice of bread hanging limply from her mouth. Jacks’s world had followed her home and was now standing on her front lawn.
“Maddy, how does it feel to be dating Jackson Godspeed?!” roared a heavyset pap in the back. Maddy pulled the bread from her mouth and attempted to shield her eyes with it. “How does it feel to be dating the most eligible Angel in Angel City?!” he barked again.
“We’re not dating!” Maddy shrieked. “I’m not dating anyone!” Maddy saw a few of the neighbors coming out of their homes to watch. A boy of about twelve took a picture with his phone. The humiliation was paralyzing. With her free hand Maddy groped for the doorknob and pulled the front door shut. She dropped the bread, grabbed a textbook out from her bag, and used it to cover her face.
Move, she told herself, and willed her feet forward, quickly down the front steps and walkway. Like a human tidal wave, the paparazzi followed, shuffling backward and trampling the few plants Uncle Kevin kept in the front yard. She broke into a run as she crossed the street, leading them away from the diner. Maddy couldn’t risk working the morning shift today. They kept pace with her, backpedaling or dropping their cameras to their sides and running to catch up.
“Did you meet Vivian last night?!” one of them shouted while panting. “Are you nervous she might try to steal Jacks back?”
“Just leave me alone!” Maddy yelled, fighting back tears.
“What do you think about the Angel murders? Are you worried about Jacks?”
The last question sliced through the others like a blade. Maddy froze on the sidewalk. The book dropped from her face.
“W-what?” she stammered.
“They’re finding severed wings on the Walk of Angels! The story just broke last night!” someone shouted back. She looked around the faces but saw only beady, unwelcoming eyes. She noticed one of them was recording the whole thing on a camcorder. He was grinning devilishly as he kept his eye on the device’s screen. It was such a violation. Maddy felt utterly naked.
