by Cynthia Hand
“Welcome to Angel Club,” she says melodramatically.
Christian does his laugh/exhale thing. “First rule of Angel Club, you do not talk about Angel Club.”
“Second rule of Angel Club,” chimes in Jeffrey. “Do not talk about Angel Club.” Oh boy. Here we go.
“Hilarious. You’re bonding already.” Angela is not amused. “Seriously, though. I do think we should have rules.”
“Why?” Jeffrey wants to know. Always with the attitude, my sweet little brother. “Why do we need rules for a club?”
“Maybe if we knew what the point of the club was,” adds Christian.
Angela’s eyes flare in a way I’m familiar with — this is not going according to her carefully constructed plan. “The point,” she says in a clipped tone, “is to find out all we can about this angel-blood stuff, so we don’t like, you know, end up dead.” Again with the melodrama. She claps her hands together. “Okay, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. Last week our girl Clara here stumbled upon a Black Wing in the mountains.”
“Crashed is more like it,” I mutter.
Angela nods. “Right. Crashed. Because this guy puts out a kind of toxic sorrow, which, because of all Clara’s touchy-feely skills, took away the lightness she needed to fly, so she fell, dropped out of the sky, right where he wanted her.”
Jeffrey and Christian are looking at me.
“You fell?” asks Jeffrey. I must have left out this part of the story when I told it at home.
“Touchy-feely skills?” asks Christian.
“I have a theory that Black Wings are incapable of flight, by the way,” Angela continues.
Clearly this is not the question-and-answer part of this event. “Their sorrow weighs them down too much to get airborne. It’s only a theory at this point, but I’m kind of liking it. It means, if you ever came across a Black Wing, you might be able to escape by flying off, because he couldn’t chase you.”
What she needs, I think, is a chalkboard. Then she could really go to town.
“So Clara was incapacitated simply by being in the presence of a Black Wing,” she says.
“We should learn if there’s anything we can do about that, some way to block the sorrow out.” I’m definitely on board with that idea.
“And since Clara and her mom defeated the Black Wing using glory, I think that’s our key.”
“My uncle says glory takes years to be able to control,” Christian says then.
Angela shrugs. “Clara did it, and she’s only a Quartarius. What level are you?”
“Only a Quartarius,” he replies with a hint of sarcasm.
Angela gets this glint in her eye. She’s the only Dimidius in our group, then. She has the highest concentration of angel blood. I guess that makes her our natural leader.
“Okay, so where was I?” she says. She ticks it off on her fingers. “Objective one, find a way to block the sorrow. That’s mostly a job for Clara since she seems to be extra sensitive to it.
I was with her when we saw the Black Wing at the mall last year, and I didn’t get anything from him but a mild case of the creeps.”
“Hold up,” interrupts Jeffrey. “You two saw a Black Wing at the mall last year? When?”
“We were shopping for prom dresses.” Angela heaves a meaningful look at Christian, as if the whole incident was his fault somehow because he was my date.
“And why did I not hear about this?” Jeffrey asks, turning to me.
“Your mom said it would put you in danger, knowing about them. According to her, when you’re aware of Black Wings, they become more aware of you,” Angela answers for me.
He looks skeptical.
“So she must think you’re all grown-up, since she told you about them now, right?” Angela offers helpfully.
I think about the stony look on Mom’s face the morning after the fire, when she told Jeffrey about Samjeeza. “That, or she thought it might be necessary for Jeffrey to have a clue about Black Wings in case one of them shows up at the house wanting revenge,” I add.
“Which brings us to objective two,” Angela segues smoothly. She glances at me. “Did you finish the book I gave you?”
“Ange, you just gave it to me at lunch.”
She sighs and gives me a look that conveys what an amateur she thinks I am. “Can you get it, please?”
I hop down to fetch the book out of my backpack. Angela decides that maybe a table would be more comfortable to get down and dirty with the research, which she evidently means to jump right into. We reconvene around a table, and Angela takes The Book of Enoch from me.
She flips through the pages. “Listen to this.” She clears her throat. “It happened after the sons of men had multiplied in those days, that daughters were born to them, elegant and beautiful.
And when the Watchers, the sons of heaven, beheld them, they became enamored of them, saying to each other, ‘Come, let us select for ourselves wives from the progeny of men, and let us beget children.’”
“Okay. Enter angel-bloods,” I comment.
“Just wait for it. I’m getting to the good part. . Then their leader, Samyaza, said to them,
‘I fear that you perhaps may be indisposed to the performance of this enterprise; and that I alone shall suffer for so grievous a crime.’ Does that name sound familiar?” A shiver zings its way down my spine.
“That’s him, then, Samjeeza? The angel who attacked Mom and Clara?” Jeffrey asks.
Angela sits back. “I think so. It goes on to talk about how they married the human women and taught mankind how to make weapons and mirrors, and showed them sorcery and all kinds of taboo stuff. They had tons of kids, which the book describes as evil giants — the Nephilim — who were abominations in the sight of God, until there were so many of them and the earth became so evil that God sent the flood to wipe them all out.”
“So we’re evil giants,” repeats Jeffrey. “Dude, we’re not that tall.”
“People back then were shorter,” Angela says. “Poor nutrition.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” I say. “How could we be abominations? How is it our fault if we’re born with angel blood in our veins? I thought the Bible describes the Nephilim as heroes.”
“It does,” Angela answers. “The Book of Enoch isn’t in the Bible. I have a theory that it might be some kind of anti-angel-blood propaganda. But it’s interesting, right? Worth looking into. Because this Samjeeza fellow is right in the middle of it. He’s the leader of this group of Black Wings called the Watchers, which, according to some other research I’ve been doing, is a band of fallen angels whose basic job is to seduce human women and produce as many angel-bloods as possible.”
Fabulous.
“Okay, so objective two is finding out more about Samjeeza,” I say. “Roger that. Are there any more objectives?”
“One,” Angela says lightly. “I thought one objective of Angel Club should be to help each other figure out our purposes. I mean, you two have had yours, but didn’t fulfill them. So what does that mean?” she says, glancing at Christian and me. “And Jeffrey and I still have ours coming. Maybe if we all put our heads together, we can understand this whole purpose concept better.”
“Great. Hey, look, I’ve got to go,” Jeffrey says abruptly. “Practice started ten minutes ago.
Coach is going to have me running laps until I drop.”
“Wait, we haven’t got to the rules part yet,” Angela calls after him as he books it for the door.
“Clara can fill me in later,” he calls back over his shoulder. “Or you could make, like, stone tablets or something. Angel Club ten commandments.” Then he’s gone.
So much for finding out exactly what he knows.
Angela looks at me. “He’s funny.”
“Yeah, he’s a barrel of laughs.”
“So. The rules.”
I sigh. “Lay them on us.”
“Well, first, and this one’s a no-brainer, no one tells anybody about this. We�
�re the only ones who know about Angel Club, okay?”
“Do not talk about Angel Club,” says Christian with a smirk.
“I mean it. Don’t tell your uncle.” Angela turns to me. “Don’t tell your mom. Don’t tell your boyfriend. Got it? Second rule: Angel Club is a secret from everybody else, but we don’t keep secrets from each other. This is a no-secrets zone. We tell each other everything.”
“Okay. .,” I agree. “What are the other rules?”
“That’s it,” she says.
“Oh. One per stone tablet,” I joke.
“Ha. Ha.” She turns back to Christian. “What about you? You’ve been awfully quiet this whole time. You’ve got to swear too.”
“No, thank you,” he says politely.
She leans back in her chair in surprise. “No, thank you?”
“To the rules. I won’t go blabbing about this thing to my buddies on the ski team. But I tell my uncle everything, and I’m going to tell him about this.” His eyes seek mine, pin me. “It’s stupid not to communicate what you know to the adults. They’re only trying to protect us. And as far as the no-secrets zone, I can’t agree to that. I don’t even really know you guys, so why would I tell you my secrets? No way.”
Angela’s speechless. I find this kind of funny.
“You’re right,” I say. “We ditch the rules. There are no rules.”
“I think it’s great, though,” he says as a way of soothing Angela. “Meeting and finding out what we can do, trying to figure things out. Count me in. I’ll be here, whenever, until it snows and then I have ski team, but maybe then we can move this to Sunday afternoons, which would work for me.”
Angela recovers. She even whips up a smile. “Sure, that’s doable. Probably better for Jeffrey’s schedule, too. Sundays. Let’s do Sundays.”
There’s a moment of uncomfortable silence.
“Okay then,” Angela says finally. “I think this meeting is adjourned.” It’s almost dark when I leave the theater. Storm clouds are brewing overhead, churning like a grumbling stomach. I guess I should be grateful for the rain, since the storm put out the fires, which in the end probably saved people’s lives and homes. It’s only weather, I remind myself, but sometimes I wonder if this particular weather’s been sent to bother me personally, a punishment, maybe, for not doing my job, for failing at my purpose, or some other sort of ominous sign.
I try for a quick, casual good-bye to Christian at the corner, but he puts his hand on my arm.
“I still want to talk to you,” he says in a low voice.
“I have to go,” I manage. “My mom will be wondering where I am. Call me, okay? Or I’ll call you. One of us should definitely call the other.”
“Right.” His hand drops away. “I’ll call you.”
“I gotta run. I’m late.”
And then I’m off in the opposite direction.
Coward, says the nagging voice inside my head. You should talk to him. Find out what he has to say.
What if he says we belong together?
Well, then you’ll have to deal with that. But at least you won’t be running away.
I think it’s more of a brisk walk.
Whatever.
I’m having an argument with myself. And I’m losing.
So not a good sign.
Chapter 3
Other People’s Secrets
Mom comes out of her office the moment she hears me step through the front door.
“Hey,” she says. “How was school?”
“Everybody talked about my hair, but it was fine.”
“We could try to dye it again,” she suggests.
I shrug. “It must mean something, right? God wants me to be blond this year.”
“Right,” she says. “You want a cookie, blondie?”
“Do birds fly?” I scamper after her into the kitchen, where, sure enough, I smell something wonderful baking in the oven. “Chocolate chip?”
“Of course.” The buzzer goes off, and she puts on an oven mitt, takes the sheet of cookies out of the oven, and sets it on the counter. I pull up a stool on the other side of her and sit. It feels so normal it’s weird, after what’s happened, all the drama and fight-for-your-life stuff and serious soul-searching, and now. . cookies.
The night of the fire I came home assuming we’d have this big tell-all, and everything would be out in the open now that the stuff from my vision had happened. But when I got home, Mom was asleep, asleep on the most important night of my life, and I didn’t wake her, didn’t blame her because we were both, at the time, so literally fried, and she’d been attacked, almost died and all. But still. It wasn’t exactly how I thought my purpose would go.
It’s not like we haven’t talked. We have, although mostly it was a debriefing of what’s already happened. No new information. No revelations. No explanations. At one point I asked,
“So what happens now?” and she said, “I don’t know, honey,” and that was it. I would have pressed her about it, but she kept getting this look on her face, this bleak expression, her eyes so full of pain and sadness, like she’s so incredibly disappointed in me and how my purpose turned out. Of course she would never come right out and say that, never tell me that I’ve screwed up everything, that she thought I would be better than that, that she thought I’d make the right choices when my time came, that I’d prove myself worthy to be called an angel-blood. But the look says it all.
“So,” she says as we wait for the cookies to cool. “I thought you’d be home a while ago.
Did you go to see Tucker?”
And already I need to make a big decision: to tell her about Angel Club, or not tell her.
Okay. So I think about how the first thing out of Angela’s mouth when it came to rules was not to tell anybody, especially the adults, and then I think about the way Christian refused, just like that, said that he tells his uncle everything.
Mom and I used to have that. Used to. Now I have no desire to share this stuff with her, not about Angel Club, not about the weird recurring dream I’ve been having, not about how I feel about what happened the day of the fire or what my true purpose might have been. I don’t want to get into it right now.
So I don’t.
“I was at the Pink Garter,” I say. “With Angela.”
Not technically a lie.
I brace myself for her to tell me that Angela, while full of good intentions, is going to get us all in deep trouble someday. She knows that any time spent with Angela is time spent talking about angel-bloods and Angela’s many theories.
Instead she says, “Oh, that’s nice,” and uses a spatula to slide the cookies onto a wire rack on the counter. I steal one.
“That’s nice?” I repeat incredulously.
“Get a plate, please,” she tells me, and I do. Then, as I’m sitting there with a mouthful of chocolatey goodness, she says, “It was never my intention to shelter you from other angel-bloods forever. I only wanted you to live normal lives for as long as possible, to know what it’s like to be human. But now you’re old enough, you’ve been through your visions, you’ve had a glimpse of the evil in this world, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing to start learning what it truly means to be an angel-blood. Which means hanging out with others like you.” I wonder if she still means Angela, or if now she’s talking about Christian. If she assumes being with him is my purpose. Not very women’s lib of her, I think, if she believes my entire purpose on this earth is to hook up with some guy.
“Milk?” she asks, then goes to the fridge and pours me a glass.
And this is the point where I finally get the guts to ask her. “Mom, am I going to be punished?”
“Why?” She reaches for a cookie. “Did you do something today I should know about?” I shake my head. “No. My purpose. Am I going to be punished because I didn’t, you know, fulfill it? Am I going to hell or something?”
She halfway chokes on the cookie, then takes a quick sip of my milk.
“That’s
not really how it works,” she says.
“How does it work, then? Will I get a second chance? Is there anything else that I’m going to be expected to do?”
She’s quiet for a minute. I can practically see the wheels turning in her head, deciding how much she’s going to tell me. This aggravates the crap out of me, of course, but there’s not a lot I can do about it. So I wait.
“Every angel-blood is given a purpose,” she says after what feels like an eternity. “For some that purpose manifests itself in a single event, a singular moment in time where we are led to be at a specific place at a specific time, to do a specific thing. For others. .” She glances down at her hands, choosing her words carefully. “Their purpose can involve more.”
