by Lisa M Basso
“No can do. Heading home today.”
He used his Bad Robot impression to separate every syllable of his speech. Or Star Trek. I could never keep them straight. “I’ll see you at Roxy’s tomorrow morning for H.C., though.”
His code for hot chocolate made me laugh the same way it always did, in little chuckles that rode up my throat. If anyone could get my mind off wings, it was Lee.
We climbed the rest of the hill in much-needed silence. When we reached Roxy’s, I went inside and waved at him from the window, then checked in with Daphne.
She towed me through the kitchen and to the beginning of a long hallway. The off-white walls shone with grease or steam or something I wanted to know nothing about since I actually enjoyed the burgers here. “The first door on the left,” Daphne pointed to a stainless-steel door with a pull handle, “is the walk-in freezer.” Rows of metal shelves lined the wall beside the walk-in, storage space for all the non-refrigerated items. “First door on the right is for employee storage, with a small break room. There are lockers, but I haven’t had time to clear one out for you. Next door on the right is my office. That’s the tour.”
Daphne ducked into her office to grab my uniform, which she promptly tossed to me. “Go ahead and get dressed, then I’ll have Shelly go over the menu with you. Let me know if you have any questions.”
I hugged the uniform to my chest and smiled. My first real job. My own space where I could create a more normal version of myself, away from the prying eyes of my family, counselors, and classmates. A place where I could be me.
I exited through the kitchen, rounded the counter, and changed in the ladies’ room—which wasn’t as easy as it sounds in a cramped stall. I shimmied into the bubble-gum pink uniform, complete with white collar and ruffled apron. The white nurse shoes and tan pantyhose fought for the title of Most Horrible part of the outfit. Until I saw the white, frilly cap.
Oh no. No, no, no.
Instead of putting it on, I returned to the counter where Shelly, the girl Daphne had assigned me to shadow for the day, stood, cap-less. “What’s the deal with the cap?” I asked, maybe a little too panicky.
“You know, I swear the owner put those in with the uniforms so he could walk in one day and just laugh and laugh at us. You can wear a headband or tie a cute little scarf over a ponytail instead.” She adjusted her black-and-white polka dot headband. “Your hair should be fine for today,” she flipped the bottom of my ponytail, “but make sure you have one for tomorrow, otherwise Daph’ll have kittens.”
Shelly glanced at the back of a soup spoon to check her jet-black hair, sweeping aside a thick streak of orange as she blew a watermelon-scented bubble with her gum. She breathed on the spoon, then wiped it with her apron so she could get a better look. With a tart smile, she dropped the spoon inside a cup of tomato soup at the pickup counter and delivered it to an elderly man at table twelve.
On her way back, she reluctantly picked up a check from the next table over. I’d noticed them trying to get her attention since before Daphne took me in the back. She rolled her eyes and checked her phone. “There’s just something about old people that really gives me the willies.” She set the check and money beside the cash register and leaned on it with her elbow. “I think it’s the wrinkles. But you wouldn’t know anything about that. Your skin is major.” She leaned in dangerously close, invading my personal space.
Great, I’d found the one girl in this city who was on more drugs than I was.
“Sorry, I have a thing for faces. With a little makeup you could really be a looker—I mean, that plain-Jane gig works for some girls, but there’s a lot of competition out there. How old are you?”
“Uh, sixteen.”
Her eyes lit up with a spark of yearning. “Ugh, to be young again. Let me just say, my high school experience was top-notch.” The way her voice changed with each syllable, it sounded more like she was singing than talking. But there was something about Shelly that you couldn’t ignore. She had too much life in her for one person—something I’d heard my mom say once. But it totally fit her.
She finally turned her attention to the check under her elbow, and I picked up a menu I almost knew by heart already. It took Shelly four minutes to make change for a bill that was $21.98, but in her defense, the girl never stopped talking. “The one thing you need to know about high school is to go for it. Whatever you have the opportunity to do, do it—and do it a lot.” She rolled her eyes and smiled this enormous, scary smile.
A blush crept up my cheeks at her innuendo, and I had to look away.
“What? Oh my God, did I embarrass you?” She set the change on the counter again and took hold of my shoulders, turning me toward her. “It’s Ray, right?”
I nodded, completely unsure how to interact with Shelly. She wore her hair like a fifties style pin-up, with thick, curled-under bangs and waves at the bottom. And those had to be tattoos snaking up both her legs beneath her stockings. She wore a lot of makeup over her eyes in blacks and grays, and a foundation that might have been a shade too light for her, all of which made her look older than she probably was. My guess was late twenties.
“I’m Shelly, and I’m not right—hell, the world’s not right—get over it.” She flashed the underside of her wrist where inked in black letters were the words “get over it.” “A little icebreaker.” She smiled, her deep red lipstick doing its job to play up her thin lips. “Just don’t pay too much attention to me and don’t stress the small stuff, and you’ll do fine here.”
She popped her gum once more, then released her grip on my arms. When she returned the change to her table, the man argued that he gave her forty dollars and got change for thirty.
She snatched the bill, then angrily riffled through the cash register. “See what I mean,” she whispered. “Freaky.” She took out an extra ten and delivered it to the man, who muttered complaints to his lady friend all the way to the door.
“Thanks, come again!” she hollered after the door closed behind them. Then she turned to me again.
I braced myself.
“What was I saying? Oh, yeah! High school. Make the most of it. I used to be a sad, boring little kid. But the summer before ninth grade, bam! Hit by a car. I spent a week in the hospital, almost died. The rest of summer, physical therapy. But I survived and I vowed to live each day to its fullest, because, babycakes, you only live once. Tomorrow we could both be dead. Don’t spend your life hiding behind long brown hair and a plain face. Have fun with it.” She flipped my ponytail again.
My jaw had dropped somewhere in the middle of her story. This girl had something I’d always wondered about. Life. Spark. Originality.
A weird kinship bloomed between us. She’d been me, and I’d been, well I’d been crazy, so I was a little like her.
I sighed softly. If only I could afford to act like that.
Unlike me, Shelly wasn’t under a microscope. But she was brave, not caring about what other people thought, just jumping in without worrying about consequences. One day I’d like to live like that, reinvent myself and discover who I really am.
I smiled at her as she picked up the menu I was looking at. “So, now that my lecture is done—geez, I sounded like my mother there for a sec—I guess I should like, teach you something about how to waitress.”
Maybe Daphne wanted me to shadow her so I’d know exactly what not to do as a waitress. At least she was patient with me. She was patient when I dropped food. She was patient when I spilled water on one of the customers. And she was still patient when, less than an hour before closing, a man with dark wings breezed through the door and I dropped the coffee pot, sending shards of glass and scalding hot coffee rushing across the floor.
Chapter Nineteen
Coffee burned through my pantyhose, searing my skin. I swiped a handful of napkins from the dispenser and blotted my leg until the pain ceased.
From my vantage point, squatting behind the counter, I watched the man shake out his dark wings. Th
eir rainbow sheen reminded me of an oil-slick.
“Geez, girl, are you okay?” Shelly dropped a wet rag on my foot. “Sorry, Ray.” She nudged the dingy rag over with the toe of her shoe—her way of wiping up my mess—and leaned into the counter where he sat. “Hi, Kade.” She rested her elbows on the Formica.
Kade?
Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap. This couldn’t be real. My heart thundered like it was going to burst out of my chest. He—those black wings—couldn’t be real. I swallowed, panic ticking in the back of my throat. Black wings, just like Allison’s drawing. Just like Luke had been dreaming of. The same wings I had dreamt of last night.
One corner of his lip turned up in amusement. “How’s it going, Shelly?” His rich, brown eyes slid to the left, taking me in. “Another tryout?”
“Aw!” She squealed and tapped his hand in a playful scolding. “You’re just awful. Ray’s doin’ great. I’ll get a new pot of coffee started for you, hon.”
She couldn’t have seen what I saw; otherwise she’d be running straight for Morpheus’s blue pill instead of flirting.
Great, a Matrix reference. I’d been spending way too much time with Lee.
From the far end of the counter, I heard Shelly scooping coffee and pouring water. The smell of stale bitterness wafted up from the floor, and the remaining droplets on my pantyhose turned cold. I avoided another look at him as I focused on scooping up the large pieces of glass.
“Careful you don’t cut yourself.” The thick smoke of his voice engulfed me.
I looked up to find him leaning over the counter. His folded wings cast an ominous black shadow over me. I darted up and hit my head on the overhang of the counter. Pain exploded behind my eyes, and white spots stormed my vision. Glass crunched under me as I slumped to the floor.
He chuckled and reached over the front of the counter to offer me his hand. “You’re a jumpy one, aren’t you?”
Only around creepy, unearthly guys.
I looked up at him.
Big mistake.
His dark hair was messily styled in the sexiest way. The natural bronze tone of his skin accompanied the strange darkness of those wings a little too well. Stubble traced a neat line along a too-perfect jaw. And those eyes—deeper than a bottomless pit. They seemed to breathe the very essence of night into my soul.
Studying him was stupid. Pointless. Dangerous.
My hand floated into his before I could stop it. His hand was warm, his palm rough. A chill raced up my arm as I imagined his fingers wrapped around Tony’s throat, holding a blade to Allison’s wrists. And catching me in my nightmare. His face had been immersed in shadow, and his voice sounded completely different, but I would never forget those wings.
He pulled me to my feet.
“Thanks.” I pulled my hand away as soon as I could think again.
I blinked the image of those cavernous depths away and went to grab a broom and dustpan from the back. The urge to run was stronger than it had ever been with any other winged men. But if I left, I would lose the job. And real or not, I was done letting wings ruin my life.
After tossing the remaining glass, I returned to my post behind the counter. I may have been trembling like a leaf, but I held my ground.
I watched everyone else in the diner to avoid looking at him—at his wings. Shelly tended to the three tables that were finishing up, the closest patron a lone man two tables back from the counter, the farthest a young couple snuggling in the same side of a booth in the corner.
This one couldn’t know I could see him. That had caused nothing but problems with Cam. One slip-up and now he seemed to think we were friends, that I would help him out. He’d want to hear about this. Tension rode my shoulders, filling the space between them. I’d have to decide whether or not to tell him about Kade at school tomorrow. Then again, I had about as much trust in Cam as I had in loose-lipped Gina Garson.
A light gust drifted past me, blowing my ponytail back. I fought my panic and looked up to find those iridescent wings fully extended. The right side of his wing tip turned to smoke as it passed through a chair against the far wall. Moonlight poured in through the windows, and silver fire bounced off his wingspan, radiating through the diner with the shine of a disco ball.
Gooseflesh crept up my arms.
Why would he do that? When Cam had done the same thing in History class, he’d been testing me. I think. Because I was acting like, well, like a girl who could see wings.
His eyes searched my face, filled with an ominous curiosity. That could mean this one was testing me, too. But why? I’d been much more careful.
Aside from the people who thought I was crazy, Cam was the only one who knew—who believed—in my … ability to see them. It would be just my luck if he had shared that knowledge with Mr. Black Wings here.
This had never happened in Safford. Now, it seemed like everyone could see through me, straight to my secret.
Overwhelming fear stuck me to the floor. Determined to hold it together, I wiped all emotion from my face. I wouldn’t expose my curse again. Cam had gotten lucky. Kade wouldn’t. If he didn’t already know.
Shelly returned with another check, passing straight through one of his extended wings. I practically snatched the check and credit card from her and ran it through the machine.
“Whoa there,” she said.
“Sorry, it’s just—you said I should do the next credit card transaction—so I can learn the system.”
Each of the dark angel’s feathers moved in its own rhythm, the ends waving like fingers.
I riveted my gaze to the machine.
“See, what’d I tell you, Kady? Ray’s doing a great job.”
Kady?
In the corner of my eye, I caught the glint of his smile. “She’s a regular angel.”
My eyes widened. My finger slipped, punched a wrong button, and the machine beeped a loud complaint at me. My breath came too loud, too fast. Instead of letting him crack me, I used the distraction of the credit card machine to conceal my fear. “Why is it beeping at me?” I pressed Enter again. The machine spit out some paper, almost like it was disgusted with me, and beeped again.
Shelly muscled in. “It’s nothing; you just pushed the wrong code or something.” She hit the red Cancel button, then swiped the card again.
“Sorry—”
“Stop saying sorry; it’s fine.” Shelly tore off the slip from the machine, the sound punctuating her words. “Be bold, Ray.” She bumped her hip against mine and sauntered back to the couple’s table.
All this time, I could feel his eyes on me.
The woman and her teenage son two booths in front of the lovers waved and exited the diner. The clock above the door told me Daphne was still on break. Too bad, ‘cause now would be a great time for my own break.
Kade cleared his throat. I tried to think of something to do, anything to distract myself from the hypnotic ripples of his wings, and my stomach. I spotted another rag on the counter and flew to it, concentrating on making small circles over the celestially silver-speckled Formica.
I’d parted my lips to ask if he wanted anything else, when Kade’s wings came down with the force of a hurricane. A millisecond later, the door opened, sending in a gust of wind. I blinked through the current, but got lost in a tangle of hair and lashes, the two jockeying for the more painful position in my eyes.
I swiped a hand across my eyes to clear my vision. A squeak told me the dark angel’s weight had shifted in the counter’s swivel seat. I looked up to find his hand coming toward me. One that could have murdered Allison and Tony. His fingers brushed the center of my cheek. I tripped over my own feet, stumbling back, and slammed into the back counter. I couldn’t rub the chill on my arms away, or let him see the quaking of my knees behind the counter, without fear of being exposed.
His lips quirked the slightest bit. “Eyelash.” He turned the angle of his hand to show me a black eyelash on his finger.
He knew I saw him. He had to.
>
The bell on the door chimed as it closed. The wind from the door could have replaced the force of his wings and saved my sorry ass from being completely exposed. Kade retracted his dark wings with a frown.
I swallowed and turned up a self-satisfied smile. After I was sure he saw it, I aimed it at the new customer. “Welcome to Roxy’s. Sit anywhere you like.” The guy plopped his messenger bag with a red Academy of Art University logo on the table by the door.
Shelly returned, almost brushing into the tip of a wing, with a fresh pot in one hand and a mug in the other. “How ‘bout a slice of pie?” she asked Handsy Kade.
He didn’t answer her, just continued to spear me with his stare.
Shelly exhaled loudly, looking from him to me. She propped a hand on her hip and cleared her throat, obviously not used to being ignored. The glare she leveled at me could freeze the latest flare up in the kitchen.
Yikes. “You know I only come for the coffee,” he finally responded.
Shelly harrumphed. “Is that all? Just the coffee, not the sparkling conversation?”
Kade turned on the charm the second a coffee cup landed in front of him, flashing Shelly a winning smile. “The coffee and the company.”
“Ray, would you mind?” Shelly asked, tilting her head toward the art student. “Daph should be off break soon. Wouldn’t want her thinking you can’t handle this.”
Gladly.
Abandoning the dingy rag on the counter, I grabbed a menu from beside the register, relieved to have an excuse to put distance between us, and hurried toward the diner floor. Kade flicked his wings open again, effectively blocking my exit. I stopped, swallowing a gasp, just as he shot me a smug “gotcha” look.
Chapter Twenty
A sick feeling churned inside me. So far I’d done my best ignore-the-wings impression, while Kade did everything short of flying through the diner. But now he had me trapped. For whatever reason, I couldn’t just pass through them like everything else. I’d learned that when Cam’s had brushed my arm. I inched forward, looking smack dab into those terrifying black feathers.
