Of Wings and Wolves

by SM Reine

  “You can’t buy me,” Abram said.

  It was so similar to what Summer had told Nash at the coffee shop that he had to laugh. “You’ll be only one artist featured among many. I’ll give you no special treatment. It will be the responsibility of your paintings to speak for themselves.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not unusual for a wealthy man who has invested in MU before to encourage education by—”

  “No. Why do you care about whether or not my art gets displayed fairly?”

  Nash lifted his chin. “To be frank, I don’t. I’ve seen too many great artists fall under the waves of time to care. But it matters to Summer. You matter to Summer. She loves nothing more than you and Gwyneth, and I must learn to care about the things she does.”

  “That’s fucking pathetic,” Abram said, but there was no ire in his voice. He folded his arms and considered Nash for several silent moments. Finally, he said, “I have a painting that’s six feet tall and twelve feet wide. It would be hard to display well.”

  “My engineers are fully capable of handling anything you have produced.”

  “And you want to have this gallery thing at your business, which Leliel has completely taken over in a matter of days,” Abram said. “You’re insane.”

  Nash spread his arms wide. “She can have the house, my company, my life. But she can’t have my dignity. Consider it a final gesture of revolt.”

  The men studied each other in the night, the silence broken only by water lapping over the beach.

  When Summer’s brother gave no response, Nash simply walked away.

  He was hopeful that the boy would come around in time for the gallery opening, but the silence was not promising. Nash tried not to walk quickly as he returned to the house, but he still couldn’t help but imagine a bullet embedding between his shoulder blades.

  Nash spent the rest of the night watching Summer sleep. But once the sun rose, he extracted a suit from his closet and left without disturbing her.

  It was unusual for him to be working at the same time that Margaret performed her morning chores, since Nash was subjecting himself to his sunrise vigil at that hour. But Margaret didn’t remark on his presence in the kitchen. She only gave him a very small smile, helped him find the strawberries, and pushed him outside again.

  Summer was still sleeping by midmorning, when he started to dress for the day. He brushed a kiss over her forehead and went to his office.

  There was only one knock on the door of Nash’s home office before it opened. Gwyneth Gresham stepped in, her knees covered in mud and hair frazzled.

  He studied her as he slipped his cufflinks into place. She was weighed down by exhaustion and frustration. “Did you find it?” Nash asked, even though he already knew the answer.

  Gwyneth shook her head. “I searched every inch of that place, high and low. There’s nothing there but trees and dirt.”

  “Then my estimation of the location must have been wrong. The fissure is elsewhere.”

  “I don’t know, Nash. I’ve lived here twenty years and been all over the place. The kids know the woods outside our cottage better than anything. If there was something strange, someone would have seen it by now.”

  He couldn’t keep the edge from creeping into his voice. “Then you must have missed something. You’ll have to look harder.”

  “There’s only so many places to look,” she said. “It’s not there, son.”

  Yelling at her wouldn’t make the door magically appear, although he was tempted to give it a try anyway. There were few things in his life that yelling at someone hadn’t resolved so far. But he tightened his jaw and focused on his cufflinks. “So the door under the lake is our only chance now,” Nash said, glaring at the churning water. The divers were still working. They had explored a full half of the lake and come up with nothing of interest.

  He smoothed his hands over his hair and faced Gwyneth again.

  “This bears further discussion, but for the time being, I need to get to Adamson Tower to finalize arrangements. Please, make yourself at home—Margaret will be happy to bring you fresh linens for a bath. And when you’re done, this is for you.” He patted the garment bag hanging from the door by a hanger.

  Suspicion darkened Gwyneth’s eyes. “What for?”

  “For your grandson’s debut at the new Adamson Industries gallery, of course.”

  Her features melted into a smile, and she unzipped the bag. Margaret had selected the outfit inside. It was a designer pantsuit, expensive but simple. Nash already knew that she would look superb in it.

  “Thank you,” she said, and he could tell that she wasn’t referring to the suit.

  Summer woke up in Nash’s bedroom feeling pleasantly sore and very warm, although it took her a moment to remember why. As soon as she did, a furious blush rose to her cheeks, quickly followed by a feeling of smug satisfaction.

  “Bet the Tri Deltas have never partied like that,” she said to the empty room, and then she clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle her own giggle.

  She was punch drunk. Nash had rendered her stupid.

  Summer hadn’t even realized that it was possible to feel the things that he evoked in her. Sure, she had been involved with a couple of guys before, and she thought that it had been good—but Nash had completely reset her standards to an impossibly high level. Not that it was exactly fair to compare the computer nerds she had dated to an immortal angel.

  Her arm stretched out to the bed beside her, feeling for his warmth, but there was no indication that Nash had been in bed at any point. A quick sniff of the air told her that she was alone. Nash must have dropped her off and left again.

  Nash.

  With a little giggle, she flopped back in bed again. Oh, man. Flying through the air. Touching the stars. And the most amazing sex of her life.

  Exiled angel or not, he sure knew how to show a girl a good time.

  The curtains were open, illuminating the room in a hazy glow that hinted at more rain to come, and a cup of coffee and a tray of strawberries sat on the table beside the bed. There was also a note. Considering that Summer couldn’t smell any other visitors to the room, Nash must have prepared that tray and dropped it off himself. She rolled onto her stomach and dragged the note into bed. The envelope was made of a thick, glossy material that was silken under Summer’s fingertips, and her name was written across the front in red ink.

  She removed the letter. There was something heavy weighing down the bottom of the envelope, but she couldn’t wait to read what Nash had written for her, so she left the other contents alone.

  You are cordially invited to the opening of the Adamson Gallery, it said. Her eyes skimmed over the description to the bottom, where the featured artists were listed. Abram’s name was at the very top. She hugged the invitation to her heart.

  So Abram was going to get the gallery display his secret project deserved, and Nash was going to be the one to give it to him.

  Her heart swelled in her chest, and she felt her chin begin to tremble as tears pricked at her eyes. She sniffled and wiped them away. It was silly to get so emotional over an invitation—it wasn’t like Nash was proposing to her or something.

  But this was so much better.

  She reached into the envelope to extract everything else and was surprised to find a bundle of money wrapped in another piece of paper. Summer didn’t have to count it out to know that it was fifty thousand dollars. The second note was written in the same looping script as her name on the front of the envelope.

  Summer,

  I keep all of my promises. All of them.

  With love,

  Nash

  Fifty thousand dollars. It was everything Summer could have hoped for—enough money to relocate, start a new life, become her own person. Yet now it only felt like the bars of a prison that she had been living in her entire life.

  There was nowhere she could go that would be far enough away. Not in this world.

  She tho
ught of the promises that he had whispered to her the night before, and shivers rolled down her spine. He had promised to explore the universe with her. And with that kind of money, Summer could certainly explore the entire world as she knew it for a couple of months—but what was the point?

  The money was nothing more than a gesture. Just one way to show her that he meant his promises.

  Summer snagged a strawberry and nibbled on the end as she contemplated the note, the gallery opening, the money. There had to be something she could do with that kind of cash, even if it was useless to her.

  An idea struck, and she grinned.

  Her clothes were conspicuously absent—probably still on a distant mountaintop—so she donned one of Nash’s clean shirts and ventured out of the bedroom.

  His house was quietly busy with people wearing uniforms and wearing white gloves. It hadn’t even occurred to her that he might have staff other than Margaret, but it looked like he had a small army going over the windows and mopping the floors.

  A quick word with one of the cleaning crew directed her to the spare bedroom, where Summer found Margaret herself washing the windows.

  “What are you doing?” Summer asked, leaning her shoulder against the doorway.

  “Mr. Adamson has requested that all of the windows in the house have a thorough washing,” she said, dropping the rag into the bucket and facing Summer. The old woman was smiling. “Apparently, he thinks it’s too gloomy in here now.”

  “You should make him wash his own damn windows,” Summer said.

  “It’s my job, miss.”

  “Oh, don’t call me that. Have you always wanted to be a maid? Is that, like, your dream job?”

  “I enjoy it. Managing a house this size is quite the challenge, though I must say, to be honest…” A smile crossed her lips. “I’ve always wanted to be a musician. I play guitar.” She showed her callused fingertips to Summer. “Unfortunately, that’s not much of a career.”

  “Yeah, I guess not.” Summer toyed with the edge of the envelope. “Do you think you could help me pick out something to wear for Nash’s gallery event tonight?”

  “Happily,” Margaret said. They abandoned the half-washed window and opened up the wardrobe. The maid didn’t even look through the dresses before pulling one out. “This will be perfect.”

  “You sure? How do you know?”

  “I know,” Margaret said.

  That was Summer’s cue to take the dress upstairs and get ready, but the envelope of money weighed her down. She bit her bottom lip and watched as Margaret prepared to get back to work.

  “I like guitar,” Summer blurted out.

  “It’s a wonderful instrument,” the maid agreed, picking up the bucket.

  Summer took it from her and set it on the windowsill again, slopping water over the side. “Well, artists need patrons, right? I’m not going to say you should quit or anything, but…” She pushed the envelope into Margaret’s hands. “Maybe this could help you follow your dream.”

  Before the maid could open the envelope, Summer planted a swift kiss on her cheek.

  “Thank you for everything,” she said.

  Then she took the dress and ran.

  Margaret’s taste was impeccable. The dress was a bright gold equivalent of the quintessential little black dress, with simple lines and a wide neck that emphasized her slender shoulders.

  Summer was tickled to find that Nash had left her another present in the master bathroom: a jewelry box with earrings and a necklace. The earrings were like little sparkling chandeliers, but the necklace was much more modest. It was a simple gold chain with a single charm in the shape of a wing.

  She loved it.

  The phone in his bedroom rang. “Hello?” Summer asked, cradling the receiver between her shoulder and ear as she struggled to zip up the back of the dress.

  “This is the chauffeur, ma’am. We’re ready for you.”

  “Chauffeur?” she asked.

  “To take you to the gallery.”

  “Oh. Oh! Yeah, I’ll be down in a second.” She dropped the phone and redoubled her battle with the dress. Summer was pretty bendy, but she just couldn’t get the zipper any higher than mid-back.

  “Need help?”

  Gran stood in the doorway, her eyes crinkled by an amused smile. She looked super sharp in a white pantsuit that was dignified without making her appear too old, and her hair had been tied back in one braid, instead of the usual two. Summer hadn’t seen her since they talked over the photos in Nash’s office, and for a moment, she was struck speechless. But then she remembered her manners, and she nodded.

  “Yes, please.” She turned to give Gran access to her back. “What favor were you doing for Nash?” Gran’s skin was cool and smooth against her back as she operated the zipper.

  “Trying to help him find his way out,” Gran said. “Didn’t go as well as planned.”

  Summer bit her bottom lip. There were a thousand things she wanted to say to her grandmother, and she had no idea how to start. “The other side,” she said hesitantly. “Nash told me everything. How this place isn’t real.”

  “Does it matter if this world isn’t real?” Gran asked, picking a few stray hairs off the shoulders of Summer’s dress. “The people who live in Hazel Cove are real. They’re the descendants of the settlers that angels placed here so many millennia ago. You and I are real. The education you’ve received is real, your cat is real, and so is the cottage.”

  “But the news. The cities that don’t exist.”

  “Those things don’t matter, babe. What matters is here.” She pressed her hand to Summer’s heart. “We’ve been safe and happy for so long. Who cares about anything else?”

  “I do,” Summer whispered. “Don’t you want to go back?”

  Gran gestured for her to sit. “Let me do your hair. It’s a mess.” Summer sank onto a footstool, and Gran ducked into the bathroom. She returned with a bottle of oil. “I’ve thought about going back, sometimes. But Haven is beautiful and safe. This is our home. I don’t want to leave it.”

  “And that’s why you’ve been keeping secrets from me?”

  She rubbed the oil over her fingers, then began working it through Summer’s hair. “At first, I thought I’d let Rylie tell you the story herself. After all, it’s only been a few days since we left Earth, as far as they’re concerned—there’s plenty of time for her to follow us. But as time went on and she didn’t show, explaining everything to you seemed harder and harder.”

  Privately, Summer thought that keeping secrets was bound to be much harder. But now that Gran was talking, she didn’t want to interrupt.

  “I never had children of my own. Didn’t really want any when I was young enough, and by the time it sounded like a nice idea, I was too old. The most time I ever spent around kids, before you, was the occasional summer with Rylie.”

  “My mom,” Summer said.

  “That’s right. But raising you and Abram has been the best experience of my life, and it’s…” She sighed. “I stayed awake with you and your brother for a lot of long nights, giving you goat milk in a bottle and cradling away your hurts. You weren’t born to me, but you’re both my babies.”

  Her hands had stopped moving, and Summer turned to face her. There was a single tear on Gran’s cheek.

  “It was wrong of me to lie to you. I thought if you didn’t know the truth about your parents, you’d be safer and happier. But really, I was just being selfish.” Her voice broke. “I’m sorry, pumpkin.”

  Summer couldn’t stand to see her looking so sad. She wrapped her arms around Gran’s waist, pressed her ear to her chest, and held tight. It was hard to get over the hurt of realizing that she’d been lied to, but it was even harder to stay angry at Gran. “I love you,” Summer said without letting go.

  Gran patted her back and gave a single sniffle. “You about ready to see your brother’s painting?”

  “I can’t wait.”

  sixteen

  Nash had
anticipated an impressive crowd would gather for the night of the gallery opening. It was a given. Any time he made a public appearance, people flocked to him. Whether or not these humans knew it, they had the same origin as the mortals on Earth, and some part of them longed for his ethereal light.

  But even that anticipation didn’t begin to match the reality that faced him when he arrived in his limousine to help prepare for the gallery event. It was still hours before the doors would open, and the entire block was packed by milling bodies.

  The limousine came to a dead stop, unable to creep forward through the crowd.

  “Sorry for the delay, sir,” said the driver, peering at him through the tinted window. “Let me make some calls.”

  “No hurry,” Nash said, trying to restrain his annoyance.

  There weren’t many humans in the Haven, relative to the numbers on Earth—a half a million at most. Yet most of them appeared to have turned out for the event. It was even worse than the Marut University catastrophe had been. Stepping out of the vehicle would have been like begging to get mobbed, so Nash simply waited until the security team reached the vehicle and forced people to make a path.

  His limousine inched forward. Hands slapped against the tinted windows.

  “And I thought that being king had been bad,” he muttered, glaring at the faces pressed to the other side of his door. In truth, he barely remembered the many times that he had served as king to the citizens of the Haven, but it felt good to complain. He knew that Summer would have found it funny.

  Eventually, the limousine reached the entrance to the underground garage, which was blocked by more guards. “We’ll have to go under,” the driver said. “Sorry.”

  Nash waved a dismissive hand. Normally, he had his drivers let him out by the front door, but he didn’t feel like having his clothes ripped off that afternoon. Not until later tonight, he thought with a lazy smirk.