“All right.” He put the chalice down and went back to her. “My father was an Irin. A Watcher. He was an angel, Aimee. A fallen angel.” He waited a moment, she thought, for it to sink in. “Surely you know about his kind, from going to Sunday school when you were a little girl?”
“Kind of,” Aimee answered Orias. “Is that what you are?”
His sigh, though shallow, was so full of despair it almost brought her to tears. “No,” he said patiently. “I am Nephilim. My mother was human. She made the mistake of loving him and it killed her.”
Nephilim. Aimee had heard the term before, after her mother had taken a Bible study course at Middleburg United Church, during what her dad called Emily Banfield’s angel phase. For a long time, it was all her mom talked about. She’d become so fascinated with angels that she’d sent away for lots of books—some of them rare and some she said had been left out of the Bible. She’d had pictures and paintings and ceramic figurines of angels all over the house. Most of them were beautiful and graceful, but the fallen angels were dark and frightening, and the Nephilim were horrendous. When her mother had gone away on one of her frequent vacations, Aimee’s dad had taken them all down and packed everything away.
“My mom told me some people think that’s what Goliath was but—I mean, you’re tall, but so are a lot of pro basketball players. You’re not a giant.”
He uttered a short, sardonic laugh. “We’ve evolved, Aimee,” he said. “We’re still giants—but now of industry and commerce. It would be very inconvenient for us, in your modern world, to be as we were in the beginning. Every species evolves, does it not?”
“I guess. Do you have wings too, like your father?”
“That I won’t know for a couple of years—not until my twenty-first birthday. Some Nephilim do get them, but only the most powerful.”
“So you have powers?” she asked.
“I think that’s why my father didn’t want me around,” he said. He went to fill his chalice again and came back to stand beside her. As much as he was drinking, she noticed, he wasn’t getting drunk. It was like he was swigging down grape juice. “I have the power of an angel and the heart of a human. That could make me very dangerous, indeed,” he warned and looked at her darkly. Her heart did a somersault into her stomach.
“So you’re part human. Does that mean—you have a soul?” she asked.
“My human half does. Half a soul, anyway.”
Aimee frowned, confused. “Does that mean angels don’t have souls?”
“A soul is the part of a being that is eternal,” Orias explained. “And that which is eternal is a part of God. When the Watchers fell, the eternal part of them—the soul—was revoked and taken back to heaven. Now, although they retain their terrible power, the fallen are only soulless shells. And the Nephilim are even worse. We’re burdened with all the want, the need, the aching love that humans possess, but our withered spirits are trapped forever in the banished husks of our bodies. Our souls are wretched, broken, exiled things—half souls.”
He was trembling now, and tears welled in Aimee’s eyes as she saw the painful emotions coursing through him. She wanted to do something to comfort him—take his hand, give him a hug—but she restrained herself.
“That’s really sad,” she said. “But I still don’t get it. With all your so-called supernatural power and all your money, you’re happy to settle for life in plain old boring Middleburg?”
“From what I’ve heard, it’s not so boring. And you’re here.”
“You’ve really got to stop talking like that,” she told him, but she was feeling a little more comfortable with him. “I’m taken.”
“So you’ve said.” He reached out and brushed her hair away from her face, and again she wondered what his lips would feel like on her own. “You’re very special, Aimee.” He took her hand and drew her closer to him. “It’s time you realize that. You can do anything you want to do. This world can’t hold you.” His voice was low, almost a whisper. “You can slip through its fingers, any time you want. Be anywhere you want. Tell me, where would you be at this moment, if you could be anywhere in the world you wanted to be?”
Looking for my mom was the first thing that came to her mind, followed by, anywhere, as long as it’s with Raphael. But what came out of her mouth was, “I don’t know. I’d have to think about it.”
“Think about it, then,” he said softly. He put his wine down and reached out to gently caress her cheek with his fingertips, which then moved lightly, barely touching her, up to her temple, until his warm, broad hand was resting lightly against the side of her face.
Stop letting him do this, she told herself; stop letting him touch you. She should step away from him but she couldn’t. She didn’t want to.
“Close your eyes and think about where you would like to be, in the most secret place of your heart—where you want to be more than any place else in the world,” he whispered. “And you’ll be there.”
Something told her it would be dangerous to obey him, but she couldn’t resist. She wanted to be with Raphael, of course, wherever he was at that moment—hanging out with his friends at Rack ’Em, watching TV with his mom, or walking along the old train tracks with Nass—and Orias seemed to think he could take her there. So far the only magic she’d seen had been negative and destructive. It might be cool to see it do something positive for a change.
She closed her eyes.
And she shot through space and time, traveling at light speed through some kind of brilliant, multicolored wormhole, surrounded by exploding starbursts of bright, white light. . . spinning, falling, rolling, and then drifting . . . slower and slower . . . until she felt solid earth beneath her again.
But she wasn’t with her mom. Or Raphael.
She was in the red tent—the tent that Oberon had intended as a bridal tent—and she was sitting at a vanity in front of an ornate mirror brushing her hair. A maid was turning down the covers on a giant satin pillow as big as a king-size bed—but it wasn’t one of those horrible antler women that had served Oberon. This maid was pretty, neatly dressed in some kind of shiny, flowing red gown and a simple red cap. When her task was done, she bowed and left the room. It was right, Aimee knew, and she wasn’t afraid as she had been the first time she’d seen the red tent. She was waiting for something . . . or someone . . . and it was the happiest night of her life. She rose from the mirror and realized she was wearing a beautiful gown that shimmered with all the brilliant colors of a peacock, and she knew it was her wedding night.
The curtain parted, and Orias walked in. Her husband. She looked at her left hand and saw there was a wedding band there. But she didn’t feel the sick dread she’d felt when Oberon had kidnapped her and announced he was going to marry her. She felt love. Warmth. Satisfaction. Contentment. And she yearned to have her husband’s arms around her.
Orias drew her to him and she went willingly, arching up on tiptoe to meet his kiss.
“No!” she opened her eyes and backed away from him. She was still in his living room. The vision had been so powerful, so real—but she was still there, standing in front of his window. And he wasn’t even touching her. She noted absently that it was starting to get dark outside and a gentle snow had started to fall.
He laughed softly, and she could see how pleased he was. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way,” he said. “Let’s try something more practical.”
“How did you do that?” she demanded.
“I didn’t do it, Aimee. You did.”
“But that’s not where I wanted to be,” she protested. “You—you hypnotized me or something.”
“I did no such thing. Your mind took your body where you wanted it to be. You teleported, Aimee, which is a rare gift for a human to have. And we just teleported together. You were there—in some future time, of course—but you were really there.” He grinned. “And so was I.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Want me to prove it to you?”
She nodded.
“All right. There’s a chair in the hallway at the top of the stairs,” he said. “A wooden chair with red velvet cushions. Close your eyes again. This time, I want you to aim your energy and do it slowly. Feel yourself falling gently . . . but this time you’re falling up, through the ceiling. The ceiling can’t hold you back. Time . . . space . . . can’t hold you. You can slip through, if you want to, and be in the red velvet chair.”
Aimee closed her eyes. Instantly, she felt a tingling in her body, even more intense than when she meditated. The tingling increased and for an instant she felt like every cell in her being was vibrating wildly and she jerked slightly—like a person nodding off to sleep who suddenly catches herself and wakes up.
Then there was a sound: footsteps, coming up a flight of stairs.
She opened her eyes, completely disoriented. She was no longer in Orias’s living room. She was in a hallway, looking at a banister. A large, wooden staircase arced off to her left, leading downward. The footsteps drew closer as Orias came up the stairs and walked across the landing to her. She looked around and realized she was sitting in the chair with the red velvet cushions.
A moment later, he was pulling her to her feet, holding her close against his broad chest. “You did great,” he said gently, his voice low and soft. He touched her face and she realized he was wiping her tears away. She was crying.
“I’m really confused,” she said.
He shook his head. “No you’re not. You understand perfectly. Deep down, you’ve always known there was something special about you. Something unique. Powerful. This is it.”
“So what?” she said, pulling away from him. “What good is it? What can I do with it?”
“Find your mother, for one thing.”
“How?” She wasn’t so sure she should believe him, after the way Oberon had tricked her.
“I can show you,” Orias said.
She looked up into his eyes and for a moment she feared she would be lost in their depths forever. She couldn’t get the image of them together, in his red tent, out of her mind. And she couldn’t believe it had really happened.
“Why would you help me?” she asked.
“Because you are also going to help me. There’s something I need you to get for me, and you’re the only one who can do it.”
“What is it?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I can’t tell you,” he whispered. “All I can say is that it’s wonderful, and if you get it for me, I’ll share it with you. Do we have a deal, my beautiful traveler?”
“Deal,” she said, although she’d barely heard his words. She was falling, spinning, dizzy . . . gone. But not through the magic wormhole this time. This time, it was his eyes.
Orias leaned closer, and she didn’t pull away when his mouth covered hers. His strong, gentle hands moved down her cheeks, down her neck, along her collarbone, and she trembled in his arms. Then one word cut through her mind, like a flashing, fiery meteor:
Raphael.
She struggled against Orias for a moment, but he was strong, too strong—and too gentle, too beautiful. Her arms went around his neck and he lifted her, drawing her closer. A final, desperate wave of panic lashed through her, and she felt her whole body vibrating once more. The closer he pulled her to him, the closer she wanted to be. Her body hungered to stay there with him and her mind lacked the will to leave but her soul needed to escape. A shiver went through her whole being, and when she opened her eyes, she was no longer in Orias’s upstairs hallway; she was sitting on his front lawn, and her skirt was wet with snow. Big, white snowflakes drifted down from above, looking like tiny plummeting ghosts in the glow of the streetlights.
Completely numb, Aimee reached into her pocket, took out her phone, and called her dad. Her throat felt dry, and her voice sounded strange in her ears.
“Hey, Dad. You can come pick me up. I’m ready. Yeah, it was great . . . Okay, bye.”
She stood on shaky legs. As she brushed snow off her skirt, the front door opened, and Orias stepped out onto the porch. Her coat was draped over his arm. He leaned against the rail and smiled at her from the shadows.
“Well done,” he said. “You got all the way outside that time. You’re even better than I thought.”
“Thanks,” Aimee responded, although she still didn’t understand what had happened. Had she really teleported herself from the living room upstairs to the red velvet chair, and from upstairs outside into the snowy front yard? It seemed impossible.
“All the stories are true,” Orias said. “You really are the one. No one can get it but you.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about, and she didn’t care. A warm, dreamy feeling enveloped her and she opened her hand and watched snowflakes drifting down onto her upturned palm, each one instantly melting and disappearing against her skin. That’s what all these crazy experiences were like, she thought—Tyler’s death, Raphael’s battle with Oberon, her newly discovered special teleporting trick—as soon as she tried to touch them with her rational mind, they seemed to disappear. But she knew with all her being they were real.
When she looked up, Orias was standing in front of her. Carefully, he helped her into her coat. Looking into her eyes, he slowly buttoned it and then he leaned down and kissed her once . . . slowly, gently. She no longer tried to pull away. She didn’t want to pull away. He gazed at her for a moment longer.
“I’ll see you soon,” he whispered. And then he turned and strode back up the steps and onto the porch.
They stood there like that, in silence, him on the porch staring at her and her on the sidewalk, watching the snow fall, until her dad’s car pulled up to the curb. She waved at Orias. Silently, he raised his hand to her. When she was safely in the car, he waved to Jack and went back into the house.
Aimee nestled into the leather of the car seat and shut the heavy door. The blast of the heater felt amazing, and she realized she was freezing.
With a sudden urgency she took out her cell phone and looked at it. Two missed calls, blocked number. Raphael. She quickly shoved the phone back into her pocket. No way she could call him back tonight.
“So,” Jack said. “How’d it go? You think we’re in business with Orias?”
She looked at him for a moment before she answered, no longer shocked or surprised at the raw greed that showed in his eyes.
“Yeah,” she said tonelessly, as she turned to stare out the window. “I think we are.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Hey, Raphael—can I talk to you?”
He looked up from the table he was clearing to see Maggie Anderson, looking glamorous in an elegant white winter coat with a fur hood. She always looked beautiful, but there was something different about her tonight . . . something hopeful, radiant, and it made her even prettier. She was smiling at him.
“Sure. I guess.”
“I mean—when you take a break,” she said. “So we can sit down.”
Without a word, he led her to a table in the corner. “Give me a couple of minutes,” he said and then took the full bus tub back to the kitchen. When he returned, she’d slipped off her coat and made herself comfortable. He approached her warily.
“Come on,” she said. “Sit down.”
He pulled out the chair across from her and sat, looking at her expectantly.
“Thanks again for helping me out with Rick.”
“You came all the way down here to tell me that? Come on, Maggie—what’s up? He bothering you again?”
“Not really. No more than usual, anyway. I’ve got it under control.” She hesitated for a moment and then plunged ahead. “Okay, look—you said we’re friends now, right?” He nodded, still silent. “So I came here as a friend. It’s about Aimee.” Her expressio
n was strange, he thought—a mixture of smug satisfaction and sympathy.
“Look, Maggie—you need to stop right there,” he warned her. “You know I like Aimee—everyone knows we’re together. It’s not a secret anymore. And even if her father sends her away to that school again, or gets me arrested, or has everybody in the Flats evicted, we’re still going to be together. Got it?”
“Oh, I get that you’re with her,” Maggie said seriously. “But I think you should know she’s not with you . . . at least, not exclusively.”
And she took a camera out of her coat pocket, turned it on, and handed it to Raphael.
He looked down at the screen. It was a photo of Orias Morrow. He was standing on the front porch of the big, old house on Church Street—Oberon’s house—while a girl stood out on the snow-covered lawn, looking up at him.
Raph moved to the next picture. Now, Orias was standing right in front of the girl, who looked a lot like Aimee. With a growing sense of dread, Raphael clicked to the next picture. Orias was buttoning her coat and looking down into her eyes. In the next photo, they were kissing. He felt a sickening constriction in his chest. This couldn’t be real. There had to be some mistake. Maybe the picture was Photoshopped or something. In the next image, the girl had glanced over and was gazing up the street. It was Aimee. No doubt about it. He could see her face clearly. In the next picture, she was getting into a car; he could even see the license plate: BNFLD 4.
He gave Maggie her camera.
“Nice try,” he said, a tremor in his voice. “Rick take the pictures? You can tell him I’m not that gullible. You should go now. I’ll walk you to your car.” He needed to be alone, needed to assimilate his thoughts. Aimee . . . and Orias? Oberon’s son. The guy everybody in town was saying would save Middleburg with all his new business ventures. The guy all the girls at Middleburg High couldn’t stop talking about. What in the hell was Aimee doing with him? Kissing him?
“Rick doesn’t know anything about this,” Maggie said quietly. “Only that Orias invited Aimee over and she decided to go. That’s how I knew she would be there. But he doesn’t know about the pictures. No one else knows—just you and me.”
GHOST CROWN: THE TRACKS TRILOGY - Book Two Page 34
