Glancing around, he saw that he was standing in a pale-blue kitchen with white cabinets. An unwashed pot sat on the stove; there was a meal’s worth of dirty dishes beside the sink. He moved through the kitchen and pushed gently at a partially open door. It swung obediently wider; he stepped through and found himself in a dining room, where he stared in disbelief at the large velvet painting of a sad clown that hung on the wall. Whatever this creature was, it had seriously bad taste. Precarious-looking heaps of clutter filled the room’s corners — stacks of papers, magazines, cardboard boxes. A white lace tablecloth covered the dining table, with a messy pile of mail scattered across one end. Alex picked up the top envelope. A bill from the Pawtucket Water Department, addressed to Ms. Joanna Fields.
He froze as a faint snore sounded in the next room. Quietly, he placed the envelope back onto the pile and pulled out his pistol, flicking the safety off. His fingers dug in his jeans pocket for the silencer; he screwed it on in a few deft movements and eased through a pair of French doors into the living room.
A teenage girl lay asleep on the sofa, curled under a red-and-black knitted afghan. She was on her side, with one slender arm cradling a throw cushion nestled under her head. Long, wavy blond hair spread across her back and shoulders like a cape. Even though she was sleeping, Alex could see how pretty she was, with her delicate, almost elfin features. He stood in the doorway, watching the soft rise and fall of her chest. When he was certain that she wasn’t going to wake up, he closed his eyes and began shifting his consciousness up through his chakras.
As his focus rose above his crown chakra, he breathed in sharply. The human-angel energy was much stronger here, like a tide threatening to sweep him off his feet. This was it, all right; this girl was what he’d sensed from outside. But what was she? Keeping his focus in the ethereal plane, Alex opened his eyes . . . and saw the radiant form of an angel hovering above the girl’s sleeping figure.
Instantly, his gun was at the ready. But even as his finger started to pull the trigger, his mind was balking at what he was seeing. This wasn’t right; there was something wrong, something missing —
As he realized what it was, his eyes widened. He stepped around the coffee table, keeping his gun trained on the creature before him. It floated peacefully with its wings folded behind its back, its head bowed slightly, as if in sleep. It wasn’t his imagination: the angel didn’t seem aware of him.
But more than that, it had no halo.
Alex shook his head blankly. He had to be seeing things. The angel’s face was lovely, serene, a magnified version of the girl’s own. Yet where there should be a halo framing its head, there was simply . . . nothing. An angel’s halo was its heart; without one, it couldn’t survive. His eyes flicked again to the sleeping girl. The image was obviously a part of her; the two were linked somehow. So what did that mean, when angels couldn’t maintain their human form and their ethereal one at the same time?
Alex stared at the girl, troubled. Distantly, he realized that his gaze was lingering on her face, taking in the faint gold of her eyebrows; her eyelashes against her smooth cheeks. His head snapped up as he heard a car pull into the drive. On the sofa, the girl stirred, snuggling deeper into her pillow. Alex moved to the window. Parting the curtains the barest inch, he watched an old yellow Corvette park behind the Toyota. The engine fell silent, and a thin girl with brown hair and lots of eye shadow got out. Alex quickly scanned her. She was wholly human.
As she headed toward the front door, he let the curtain fall again and slipped into the dining room, pressing himself against the wall to one side of the French doors. The door knocker rapped softly — two short, hesitant knocks. “Willow!” called the girl’s voice in an undertone. It sounded like she was looking up toward the bedroom windows. “Hello, good morning. . . . Are you awake yet?”
There was a groan from the other room as the girl started to wake up. Craning his neck slightly, Alex watched in amazement as the shining angel image wavered and began to fade.
“Willow!” hissed the girl on the front porch, knocking again. “Open the door. I forgot my phone!”
The girl — Willow? — lifted her tousled head and peered blearily toward the front door. Yawning, she threw the afghan off, then stood up and headed for the dining room. Alex drew back against the wall, his heart quickening. She shuffled through without seeing him. As she went into the hallway, he saw that she was wearing pink pajama bottoms and a light-gray T-shirt. She was petite, only five three or so, but obviously close to his own age — slim, with a small, perfect figure.
There was no longer any sign of the angel. No indication at all that there was anything nonhuman about the girl.
He heard the front door open. “Nina, what are you doing here?” the girl said groggily. “It’s hardly even light out.”
Nina’s voice sounded strained. “I know, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about Beth — all that stuff you told me yesterday.”
There was a pause, and then he heard Willow sigh. “I didn’t get much sleep either; I must have fallen asleep in front of the TV. Look, wait here. I’ll go get us some coffee.”
“Wait here?” Nina sounded surprised. “Aren’t I allowed in the house anymore?”
“Not at ungodly o’clock, you’re not,” said Willow shortly. “I don’t want to wake up Mom and Aunt Jo, OK? We’ll sit on the front porch.”
Alex pressed against the wall again as she came back indoors. Thankfully, she didn’t turn on the dining-room light as she passed through again on her way to the kitchen, and he remained hidden in the half shadows. There was the sound of a cabinet opening and of running water. Alex took a silent step closer to the kitchen door and watched unseen as Willow spooned instant coffee into a pair of mugs. With another yawn, she scraped her hair off her face and stretched. She looked so entirely human, so drowsy and sleep-rumpled.
For a moment, Alex just gazed at her, taking in her long tumble of hair, her wide green eyes and pixieish chin. Fleetingly, he imagined her eyes meeting his, wondering what she’d look like if she smiled.
Irritated with himself — why the hell was he even thinking this? — he shook the idea away and checked out Willow’s aura. Angelic silver, with soft lavender lights shifting through it: again, like a mix of angel and human. But unlike an angel’s aura, there was no bluish tint to its edge, no indication of when she had last fed. In fact, it looked as if she didn’t need to feed at all, at least not in the same way angels did. Drawing his energy back to his heart chakra, Alex regarded the girl in confusion. She was angelic . . . and yet she wasn’t.
A framed photo on a dusty bookcase caught his attention; he moved closer and picked it up silently. A small girl with long blond hair was standing under a tree, her face tilted up in delight as its feathery leaves brushed across her face, framing it.
A willow tree. Willow.
Alex stared down at the small photo. If he had needed further confirmation that this girl was something bizarre, then this was it. An angel’s human form was always that of an adult — they didn’t have childhoods; they didn’t breed. If Willow had been a child, then she wasn’t an angel of any type he’d ever encountered before.
So what was she?
He ducked into the shadows again as Willow suddenly returned to the dining room and plucked a purple sweater off one of the piles. She pulled it over her head as she walked back into the kitchen, then smoothed her long hair with both hands and tied it into a loose knot at the nape of her neck.
God, she’s beautiful. The unbidden thought whispered through his mind as Willow grabbed the mugs of coffee and headed back outside. “Here you go, Nescafé’s finest,” he heard her say as she went out onto the porch. The front door closed.
Alex shoved the photo almost harshly into his jacket pocket. Of course she was beautiful, he reminded himself — she was part angel somehow. He headed quickly through the kitchen and then out the back door, easing it shut behind him. In seconds, he’d jogged across the crumbling patio and
shouldered his way through a pair of tall, winter-smelling arborvitaes. The chain-link fence felt cool as he grasped it; he scaled it swiftly and dropped into a neighbor’s backyard. From there, he climbed into the next. A few minutes later, he was on the street again, walking casually toward his car. Glancing at Willow’s house, he could see the two girls talking, their heads bent in earnest conversation.
No. He shook his head as he slid behind the steering wheel and started the engine. Not two girls — one girl and one something that he didn’t understand at all.
When the CIA had taken control of Project Angel after the Invasion almost two years earlier, a lot of things had changed. One of the main ones was that each Angel Killer now worked alone, with no contact from the others. Alex didn’t even know where the rest of the AKs were; he hadn’t been in touch with them for over twenty months. Anonymous texts arrived on his cell phone from unknown angel spotters; there were no names involved, no way for him to link the information he received to an actual person. Though his longing for the old days — the camaraderie, going on the hunt together, even the boring, endless days at the camp in the desert — was like an ache inside of him, he knew that the secrecy was necessary. This was war, even if its millions of casualties were too blissed-out to realize it. If he were caught by the angels or any of their human followers, he wouldn’t be able to give them any information.
But it also meant that it was a bitch to actually get ahold of someone if you needed to.
Alex spent the next five hours in his motel room, trying the emergency number that he’d been given when the CIA took over. He’d been told — on the phone, by an unknown voice — to memorize it and then destroy it. It wasn’t to be used except in cases of untold emergency.
For a long time, no one answered. He watched ESPN as he hit redial over and over, frowning at the TV screen without taking anything in. “Come on, pick up the goddamn phone,” he muttered.
Finally, just before noon, there was a click and a woman’s voice came on the line. “Hello?”
Alex had been lying on the bed with his cell cradled between shoulder and ear, dully channel surfing. He dropped the remote and snatched at his phone, sitting straight up. “This is Alex,” he said.
There was a long pause. “Yes?”
“I need to talk with someone.”
“This number is only to be used —”
“This is an emergency,” he said, his voice tight. “Trust me.”
Another pause, this one lasting for almost a minute. “Someone will call you back,” said the woman finally. Another click, and the line went dead. Alex swore, sorely tempted to throw the phone against the wall.
It was almost an hour before his cell phone went off. He grabbed it on the first ring. Without preamble, a male voice said, “Are you alone?”
“Yeah,” said Alex.
“Good. What’s going on?” The voice was bland; Alex couldn’t tell whether it was the same one he’d heard almost two years ago. Briefly, pacing around the motel room with its two double beds, he explained what had happened.
“Yes?” said the voice when he had finished. There was too much politeness in the short syllable, implying, What’s the problem?
Alex frowned. “So — I don’t know what this girl is,” he said. “If there’s no halo, then —”
“She’s an angel,” interrupted the voice. “You’re to follow your orders.”
Alex felt himself bristle. The CIA had come onto the scene about ten years too late, as far as he was concerned. Where exactly had they been while the rest of them were living out in the desert like refugees, shooting ancient guns, and using creaky holographs for training?
“Look,” he said, trying to keep his tone level. “She’s not an angel. I know an angel when I see one, all right? This girl is something else. It’s almost like she’s . . . part angel, part human.” Even as he spoke the words, he knew they were insane. Angels couldn’t breed.
“The anomalies are not your concern,” said the voice. “Just do your job. She’s an angel; she has to be exterminated.”
“Did you hear a word I just said?” demanded Alex. He started pacing again, shoving a chair out of his way. “Listen to me: She is not an angel. She doesn’t feed. She had a childhood. There’s no halo! If she’s an angel, then where’s she getting her energy from? How does she exist?”
“Again, these aren’t your concerns.”
Alex heard his voice rise. “You’re kidding, right? I’m out there on the front line every day; if there’s something I don’t understand, I’m toast. If this girl’s a danger, I need to know how. She —”
“Trust us,” said the voice.
Alex fell silent in disbelief. It was like talking to a robot.
“We have no reason to believe that there are any more like her,” the man continued after a pause. “But she must be taken care of. And quickly. She’s already caused great harm.”
Listening intently, Alex thought he caught a faint English accent. He stiffened as memory traced a finger up his spine. Just like humans, angels had their individual quirks . . . and one of the few to ever get away from his father had spoken with a British accent. The AKs used to joke that whoever got that angel next time would get bonus points.
“What great harm?” he asked.
“That’s not —”
“Not my concern. Right.” Alex sank onto the bed. This felt wrong. This felt very, very wrong.
“If there’s no halo, then more conventional methods will be fine,” said the voice, its English lilt obvious now that Alex was listening for it. “But you’re to do it, and do it now. If that creature isn’t dead in an hour, you’ll regret it.” With a click, the voice was gone.
Alex slowly flipped his phone shut and put it on the bedside table. It could just be a coincidence, of course. It wasn’t impossible that someone from England could be in the CIA. Except that he didn’t really believe in coincidence; it was one of the reasons he’d stayed alive for so long. Mentally replaying the conversation with its evasive, threatening tone, exactly how wrong it was struck him forcibly. In his experience with the CIA, that wasn’t how they operated, at least not with Project Angel. They knew perfectly well that the AKs were the experts, not them — they’d never have said “trust us” to him and actually expected him to buy it. He was being lied to.
His thoughts tumbling, Alex rapped his fist against his jeans. Jesus. Could angels have taken control of Project Angel? The implications reeled through him. And if they had, then why were they so eager for him to kill this girl?
What was she, anyway?
Alex’s gaze fell on the photo that lay on the dresser beside his keys. The pretty little girl with long blond hair, smiling upward through the trailing leaves. Abruptly, he got up from the bed and began to pack, throwing things into his bag without paying attention to how they were landing. If he was right and the angels were somehow behind this, then he wasn’t going to let this girl out of his sight until he knew what the hell was going on.
And meanwhile, he had a feeling that he might have to make a run for it soon.
ON FRIDAY, I’d gone to school early so I could catch Beth before classes began. I sat in my Toyota in the student parking lot for over half an hour, watching all the cars pull in one by one, until the parking lot was a sea of glinting metal. Beth’s car never showed. I waited until ten minutes after the final bell had rung, and even then I walked into the building slowly, glancing over my shoulder and hoping — but a tight, anxious part of me already knew that it was too late.
Then, later that morning, Beth’s parents must have called the school, because someone overheard Mrs. Bexton talking about it in the office. By lunchtime Pawtucket High was buzzing with the news: Beth had dropped out of school to join the Church of Angels.
All that day, I walked around in a daze, hoping it was a mistake, that Beth just had a cold or something, that she’d turn up later, smiling and perfect, just the same as always. But of course it didn’t happen. Finally, bet
ween fifth and sixth periods, Nina showed up at my locker. “You know something about this, don’t you?” she demanded.
I stared into the messy depths of my locker, suddenly close to tears. Around us, the hallway jostled with people. “Yeah, sort of,” I said softly.
“Come on.” Nina grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the school. As we left the building by a side door near the art room, we passed a couple of seniors, and I stiffened as I heard what they were saying.
“Well, I think Beth’s really brave.”
“Yeah, my cousin joined, and so did one of my mom’s friends. They all say that angels really exist and that —”
I hunched my shoulders in my jean jacket and hurried out the door after Nina.
In the parking lot, we sat in her car and talked. I told her everything that had happened . . . except for the part about Beth’s angel turning up on my doorstep. She wouldn’t believe me, for one thing, but more than that I didn’t really want to think about it myself. Anyway, she was stunned enough. She sat silently for ages, shaking her head. “Willow, this is just . . . I mean, my God.”
“Yeah,” I said, and tried to smile. “That sort of sums it up.”
“Well — what are you going to do?”
“Do?” I was sitting curled in her Corvette’s bucket seat with my head against the window. I looked up and stared at her. “What can I do? She’s already joined; she’s not going to un-join.”
Nina’s hazel eyes were accusing. “And you know this how, exactly?”
I scraped my hair back, frustrated. “Because I saw it! She just stays there, getting sicker and sicker, until . . . something happens.” I trailed off, seeing again the cold gray cloud that had drifted over everything.
“Something happens,” repeated Nina, drumming her fingers on the dash. “Willow, listen to yourself! It’s not like you know.”
“I do know!”
“You do not. All either of us know is that Beth has joined the Church of Angels and that it’s because of your reading somehow and that you’ve got to help her before she ruins her life. Did you know that she was going to try for early admission at Stanford?”
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