Angel Burn

by L. A. Weatherly

  The hot water felt good, vigorous. I stayed in the shower for a long time, savoring it and letting it wash my mind clear of thoughts. When I finally stepped out, I dried myself off, wiped the steam from the mirror with my hand, and wrapped my hair up in a towel.

  Then I realized that I didn’t have any nightclothes. Or a toothbrush. Or toothpaste. I felt like crying in frustration. Great. Now I was going to have to ask Alex for help again. I briefly considered sleeping in the towel instead, then thought of the logistics of that and sighed.

  “Alex?” I called through the bathroom door.

  There was a pause. “Yeah?”

  Opening the door a crack, I peered out. “Um — I don’t have anything to sleep in. Do you have something I could borrow? And some toothpaste, maybe?”

  He glanced at me and then away. “Yeah, hang on.” He got up and rummaged in his bag, pulling out a couple of things. He crossed to the bathroom and handed them in to me. Our eyes met.

  “Thanks.” I withdrew quickly inside again and shut the door.

  He’d given me a pair of black sweatpants and a faded red cotton shirt with long sleeves. They felt soft and worn, the way clothes get with lots of washings. I tossed them onto the counter, then brushed my teeth with a washcloth and finished towel-drying my hair. When I finally pulled on the clothes, they were so big that they swam on me, the sleeves of the shirt dangling past my hands. I started to roll up the right one . . . but stopped as sensations washed over me.

  There’s this thing called psychometry, which is when a psychic can pick things up from objects. Like, you give them dear old Aunt Grace’s wristwatch, and they hold it in their hands and can tell you everything about her. I don’t know how it’s supposed to work; maybe items hold leftover energy or something. Anyway, it’s never worked very well for me — the most I usually got was a distant flicker of emotion.

  But now, wearing Alex’s clothes, I was feeling something more.

  I stared at myself in the mirror as I stroked the red sleeve. It felt comforting. I mean, comforting beyond just the normal warmth and softness of an old T-shirt. The energy from when Alex had last worn it was . . . I closed my eyes, wrapping myself up in it like a blanket.

  It felt like coming home.

  My eyes flew open. You’re losing it, I thought. He hates the very idea of you.

  That was my brain. My hand wasn’t paying any attention; it was still touching the sleeve, my fingers running lightly up and down it. The energy that I sensed there felt so familiar, so safe.

  I dropped my hand as if the sleeve was on fire, and the sensations stopped. Closing my mind, I rolled up both sleeves almost harshly, shoving them up my forearms. What I had sensed was totally crazy. I didn’t even like Alex. Yet when I opened the door and went into the bedroom, my eyes darted straight to him. He was lying on one of the beds, watching TV with his arms crossed under his head, and seemed deep in thought.

  Glancing across at me as I came in, he actually smiled, his mouth twitching upward as if he couldn’t help it. “They’re, uh . . . sort of big on you,” he said.

  “Yeah.” I looked away from him, feeling flustered. Sitting on the empty bed, I started to comb out my hair.

  “I guess I’ll take a shower, too, if you’re finished.” He took some things from his bag, then went into the bathroom and closed the door. As I heard the shower starting up, I tried to forget about the sensations I had felt. Or how much even the slight smile had softened his face.

  The local news came on, and I looked up, wondering for a second if there might be something on there about my disappearance. But we were over a thousand miles away from home. I let out a breath. Were Mom and Aunt Jo OK?

  Over the last two days, I’d tried several times to get a fix on them psychically, picturing the house in my mind and trying to feel what was happening there. All I ever got was a sense of worry and slight irritation — exactly what I’d expect from Aunt Jo, now that she was left on her own with Mom. I hoped these glimmers meant they were both safe, that no one had come looking for me. I stared unseeingly at the TV screen. Aunt Jo was sure to have called the police by now, who would have found out from Nina that I’d gone to the Church of Angels, and . . . then what? Had they found my car? According to Alex, the police force was full of Church of Angels members; would they say anything if they had found it? Or were they were looking for me for reasons of their own?

  A commercial came on, as if triggered by my thoughts, and I found myself gazing at a familiar pearl-white church. “Do you feel despairing?” intoned the voiceover. Oh, no, not this. I lunged off my own bed, grabbed the remote control from Alex’s, and switched the channel. Another local news program, this one about a shortage of hospital beds in Knoxville. Good — nice and safe and boring. I tossed the remote back onto Alex’s bed, then pulled my pillows out from under the bedspread and settled down to watch.

  “Hospital staff are struggling,” announced a woman with perfectly styled dark hair. She was standing in a hospital corridor; behind her, there were beds with patients in them lining the walls. An orderly bumped against one as he hurried past; there was the sound of someone groaning in the background. “What once used to be sufficient hospital space for central Knoxville’s needs has in recent months become woefully inadequate, as cases ranging from cancer to lesser-known diseases have skyrocketed. . . .”

  I frowned and hugged a pillow to my chest as I watched, a memory tickling at my mind. This was so familiar, even down to the shot of a news reporter standing in a crowded hospital corridor. Then I remembered: I had watched a similar news story only a couple of months ago, about a shortage of hospital beds in Syracuse.

  Hospital beds in Knoxville, Tennessee, and hospital beds in Syracuse, New York. Two cities a thousand miles apart from each other.

  The camera panned to a teenage girl in one of the beds against the wall; she was trying to smile, but you could tell how weak she was. My scalp prickled as I remembered Beth’s reading — that was exactly how I’d seen her looking after she’d been at the Church of Angels for a while. Alex’s words rushed back to me, about the angels’ touch leaving people hurt, diseased — and I realized that the two news stories weren’t a coincidence. There wasn’t a shortage of hospital beds; there was an increase in people being sick, and it was because of the angels. This was really happening — not just to Mom and Beth, but to people all over the country. The story ended and another one came on. I sat in a daze, trying to take in the sheer scale of it.

  I jumped as the bathroom door opened. Alex came back into the bedroom wearing a pair of navy-blue sweatpants, his dark hair looking towel-dried. He dropped his clothes on the dresser and went over to his bag, while I tried not to stare at the sight of him with his shirt off — the toned muscles on his stomach, chest, and arms; the smoothness of his skin, still slightly damp from the shower. With a sideways glance, I took in the faint line of dark hair that crept down from his navel, watched his tanned shoulders move as he rummaged in the bag and pulled out a T-shirt. There was a tattoo on his left bicep — a black AK in gothic lettering.

  God, he is so good-looking. Heat scorched my face at the unwanted thought. I really, really did not want to be attracted to Alex. He pulled the T-shirt over his head, and I felt myself relax a little.

  Taking something else out of his bag, Alex said, “Hey . . . this is yours.” Turning, he held it out to me. My eyes widened as I saw that it was the photo from home, the one that had sat on the bookcase in the dining room: me and the willow tree.

  Slowly, I reached out for it. My throat tightened, remembering when Mom had taken it — one of those brief, wonderful times when she’d actually been all there. See the willow tree, Willow? That’s you. That’s your name. I traced my fingers over the glass. “But — how did you —?”

  “I took it from your house,” he admitted. He sprawled on his bed, stretching a leg out and propping the other one up on the cover.

  I stared at him in disbelief, clutching the photo in both hands as if
to protect it. “You stole it? But why?”

  Alex shrugged as he looked up at the TV, his forearm resting on his knee. “Angels don’t have childhoods. When I saw that, I knew for sure that you weren’t an angel, so I took it. I thought I might need it.” His blue-gray eyes rested on me for a second. “Sorry.”

  I started to say something else but stopped, gazing back down at the photo. “No, I’m really glad to have it,” I confessed. I stroked the frame and placed it on my bedside table. Then I thought of something. “How did you get into the house, anyway?”

  He smiled slightly. “I picked the lock on the back door. Your aunt should get a good security lock; that one’s pretty crap.”

  I sighed and dropped my head back against my pillows. “Yeah, I wish I could tell her.”

  There was a short silence, with only the sound of the TV. One of those stupid court shows had come on, where people go and shout at each other in front of a judge.

  “Look, Willow . . . ” Alex paused, and I glanced over at him. He was frowning, tapping his knee with his hand. “I, um . . . I know that all of this must be really hard for you. I mean, having to leave your family, and . . . everything.”

  Oh, God, don’t be nice to me; I’ll start crying. I shrugged, staring fixedly at the screen. “Yeah, I’ve had better weeks. Like the week when I had the chicken pox — that was a lot more fun.”

  He gave a short laugh. The sound surprised me; I realized that I’d never heard him laugh before. But then I hadn’t been laughing much, either. We watched the show in silence for a while. A woman was accusing her dog groomer of giving her dog a bad haircut and wanted hundreds of dollars in pain and suffering. The dog didn’t look as if he cared either way.

  “When did you first find out that you’re psychic?” asked Alex suddenly. He was gazing at the TV. When I didn’t answer, he turned his head to look at me. His dark hair was ruffled, still a little damp from his shower.

  My muscles tensed. I wasn’t usually self-conscious about being psychic, but I knew exactly what it meant as far as he was concerned. It was why I’d felt so torn about doing a reading in the diner, right in front of him.

  “Why?” I asked.

  His shoulders moved as he shrugged. “Just wondering. It must be pretty hard — knowing things that other people don’t know.”

  Everything within me seemed to go still. That wasn’t what most people said. Most people, if they believed I was psychic at all, just went on about how fantastic it must be. Wow, you can really tell the future? That is so cool! Can you, like, win the lottery? Having someone actually realize that it’s not always fun was . . . unusual.

  “I don’t know when I first found out,” I said. “I’ve always been psychic. It was more a question of . . . well, realizing that the rest of the world isn’t, I guess.”

  An unwanted memory flashed through my mind: myself at five years old, out shopping for groceries with Mom. There had been a kind-looking lady in the cereal section who’d squeezed my hand and cooed, “Oh, what a pretty little girl!” And that had made me feel good, so that I wanted to do something nice for her, too. So I told her all about the images that I saw. The new house that she and her husband were building. Her teenage son, who was going to leave home but then return in less than a year. Her new job, which she wouldn’t like at first, but —

  She’d dropped my hand as if she’d been holding a snake. She must have said something before she hurried away, but I don’t remember what. I just remember the expression on her face; it had been burned into my brain. A look of absolute horror; of disgust almost, as if —

  As if I wasn’t even human.

  My chest went tight at the memory. What do you know? The woman had been right.

  Alex looked back at the TV. “Yeah . . . finding out that other people weren’t must have been tough. Like you were the only person in the world.”

  “That was exactly how I felt,” I admitted. “But then I got to be a teenager, and it stopped bothering me so much. I guess I’d gotten used to being different. Besides, I like helping people, if I can.” I stopped in confusion, realizing that we were actually having a conversation — one that wasn’t about what kind of sandwich I wanted.

  Alex nodded. “I could tell that back at the diner. What you did for that waitress, that was really . . . ” He stopped, seemed to be searching for words. “Really good,” he finished at last.

  He meant it. I gazed sideways at him, wondering why he was talking to me now . . . and whether he still thought that part of me was just like the angels. God, why did I even care? The memory of how the energy from his shirt had felt flashed through my mind, and my cheeks flushed.

  “Thanks,” I said, looking away from him. On the TV, another court case was coming on: as the dramatic music played, a woman strode toward the defendant’s podium, wearing a power suit and lots of gold jewelry.

  “So will she get her restaurant in Atlanta?” asked Alex.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. It was the nicest of her likely futures, so I hope so, now that I’ve told her about it.”

  He propped himself on his elbow, watching me. “Can you read yourself?”

  “No. I’ve tried, but I never get anything. It’s always just gray.”

  “Probably just as well. That would be weird, to see your own future.”

  “Just being psychic is pretty weird,” I said. “Or at least, most people think so.”

  He lifted a shoulder. “Well, you’re talking to someone who kills angels for a living. That’s not exactly normal.”

  I glanced at him, suddenly wondering what his life was like. He was so young to be on his own the way he was, and it seemed like he’d been doing it for years. I pushed the thought away. I wasn’t about to ask him any questions, not after last time.

  Alex sat playing with the remote, turning it over in his hand. A long moment passed, and then he cleared his throat. “Look . . . I’m sorry,” he said.

  My head turned sharply as I stared at him.

  “What I said that first night —” He stopped and sighed, tossing the remote onto the bed. Scraping his hand through his hair, he said, “When I first found out, it just threw me, OK? For a lot of reasons. I don’t — I don’t think you’re like the angels. And I’ve been acting like a jerk. I’m sorry.”

  A smile grew slowly across my face. “Yes, you have,” I said. “But apology accepted.”

  “Good.” He smiled back at me. His eyes looked slightly troubled, but it was a genuine smile. It changed his whole face.

  Warmth filled me; embarrassed, I turned to the TV again. The woman in the power suit was showing close-up photos of a scratch on her car, her voice trembling with anger. After a pause, I said, “So, can I ask questions now?”

  Alex’s dark eyebrows rose. “You could have asked me questions before.”

  “I guess. It didn’t really feel like it.”

  He thought about this; a corner of his mouth quirked. “No, I guess it didn’t. Yeah, go on, fire away.”

  I sat up, crossing my legs. “What’s this place that we’re going to, exactly?”

  Alex shifted, pulling one of his pillows out and sitting up a little. “It’s a camp in southern New Mexico, out in the desert. It’s where I was trained. I think Cully will probably be there now, training new AKs.”

  Angel Killers, I remembered. “And who’s Cully, exactly?”

  I could practically see the memories flickering across his face. “He used to be an AK, until he lost a leg on a hunt. He knows more about all of this stuff than anyone alive.”

  Lost a leg. My eyes went to the dresser, where Alex had put his pile of clothes. His gun lay on top, in a holster. Obviously I had known already that what he did must be dangerous, but now it hit me just how dangerous. “Does that sort of thing happen often?” I asked.

  Alex’s expression didn’t change. I could feel the tension forming inside him, though, like a coiled wire. “He was lucky,” he said shortly. “The unlucky ones either die or end up with a
ngel burn.”

  Had something like that happened to his brother? Looking back at the TV, I changed the subject in a hurry. “So, you lived at this place in New Mexico?”

  “Yeah.” Alex hesitated and then added, “My father was the one who started it.”

  Him and his father and his brother, all out at this camp in the desert together. I remembered the glimpse I’d gotten from his hand: the barbed wire, the bright, hard blue of the sky. “What about your mother?” I asked.

  He gazed at the screen without moving. At first I thought he wasn’t going to answer. “It’s a long story,” he said eventually.

  “Sure, OK.” I wished I hadn’t asked. The subject of his family seemed to be a minefield. We watched TV in silence for a while. I twisted a strand of still-damp hair around my finger. “Listen, the whole . . . angel problem,” I said at last. “It’s gotten worse recently, hasn’t it? I mean, I don’t remember even hearing about them until a couple of years ago, and now it’s like — they’re everywhere. On TV. In the papers.”

  Alex seemed to relax. “It was the Invasion,” he said, plumping up one of his pillows and settling back down on it. “They’ve always been here, but then almost two years ago their numbers just exploded. We don’t know why — if something happened in their own world, or what.”

  I watched him, taking in his dark eyebrows; the smooth line of his neck as it disappeared into the collar of his T-shirt. “Where is their world?”

  “We’re not sure,” said Alex. I noted his casual use of the word “we,” suggesting a team that had been fighting together for a long time. “Another dimension, probably. They seem to be able to cross over into this one.”

  Another dimension. I always thought those only existed in science fiction — made-up stories. Like angels. “So they just — live here? The same as humans?”

  He drew a knee to his chest, looping his forearm over it. Even when he was at ease, there was a sense of strength somehow, like a big cat. “Yeah. They have houses, drive cars . . . They just sort of blend right in, without anyone really noticing them.”