Boundless (Unearthly) (14 page)

His gaze darkens.

He can’t hurt me here, I tell myself. He can’t get me. But I’m still trembling.

“All right,” he says, like I’m being selfish but it can’t be helped; I’m partially human, after all. His tone changes, becomes casual. “Maybe you’ll feel like it on another occasion.”

I seriously doubt it.

“Did you ever find out the secret? Whatever it was your mother was keeping from you?” he asks, like we’re talking about the weather.

I fight to keep my face neutral, to keep my mind carefully under wraps, my tone as casual as his as I say, “I don’t know what you mean.”

He smiles. “You did find out,” he says. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be trying so hard to keep me at bay.”

So he knows I’m blocking him. I wonder if he can read me anyway, if he can hear my heart’s crazy rhythm, the quick intake of my breath, my fear like a sour smell oozing from my pores.

I shake my head helplessly. This was a bad idea, talking to him. Why did I think that I could handle him?

I turn to leave.

“Wait,” he says before I make it more than a few steps. “You don’t need to be afraid of me, little bird,” he says, walking up behind me as closely as the fence will allow. “I won’t harm you.”

I stop, my back to him. “You’re like the leader of the Watchers, right? Isn’t it your job to try to harm me?”

“Not anymore,” he says. “I was … demoted, if you will, from that title.”

“Why?” I ask.

“My brother and I, we had a difference of opinion,” he says carefully, “regarding your mother.”

“Your brother?”

“He’s the one you should truly fear.”

“Who is he?” I ask.

“Asael.”

The name sounds familiar. I think Billy mentioned him once.

“Asael seeks the Triplare,” Samjeeza continues. “He’s always fancied himself a collector, of beautiful women, of powerful men, of angel-bloods, especially those with a higher concentration of blood. He believes that whoever controls the Triplare will have the advantage in the coming war, and thus he is determined to have them all. If he finds out what you truly are, he won’t rest until you either submit to his will or he destroys you.”

I turn, the words
if he finds out what you truly are
resonating in my head. “This is all very interesting, Sam, but I have no clue what you’re talking about. My mother’s secret”—I force myself to look into his eyes—“was that she was dying. And that’s old news now.”

At the word
dying
he gives out a pulse of despair that I feel even through the emotional wall I’ve erected between us, but his demeanor doesn’t change. In fact, he smiles.

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive,” he says.

“Whatever.”

I’m in a bind now, I realize. I don’t have a ride. I rode here with Billy, and I intended to fly home, but he could always turn into a bird and come after me.

“I had my suspicions about you from the beginning, of course,” he continues smoothly, like I didn’t try to brush him off. “I couldn’t understand what had happened that day in the forest. You resisted me more than you should have. Somehow you made the jump back from hell to earth. You summoned glory. You bested me.” He shakes his head like I’m an impertinent but charming little girl.

“My mom did it,” I say, hoping he’ll believe it.

“Your mother was many things,” he says. “She was beautiful, she was strong, she was full of fire and life, but she was, for all that, a mere Dimidius. She could not cross between worlds. Only a Triplare would be capable of that.”

“You’re wrong.” I try but can’t quite keep the waver out of my voice.

“I’m not,” he says softly. “Michael is your father, isn’t he? That lucky bastard.”

He just keeps talking, and the more he babbles on, the more I risk giving everything away.

“Okay, well, this has been lovely, really it has, but it’s cold and I’ve got someplace else to be.” I turn my back on him one more time and move away from the fence, deeper into the cemetery.

“Where’s your brother now, Clara?” he calls after me. “Does he know about his proud lineage?”

“Don’t talk about my brother. Leave him alone. I swear—”

“You don’t have to swear, dear. I have no interest in the boy. But then, like I said, there are others who’d find his parentage fascinating.”

I think he’s trying to blackmail me. I stop.

“What do you want?” I glare at him over my shoulder.

“I want you to tell me a story.”

He’s crazy. I throw my hands up in frustration and stalk off through the snow.

“All right,” he says, chuckling. “Another time.”

I know without having to look back that he’s turned into a bird.

“Caw,” he says to me, mocking, testing me.

Crazy freaking angels! I’m suddenly so mad I’m on the edge of tears. I kick at the snow under my feet, uncover a patch of wet, black earth, pine needles, rotting leaves, dead grass, bits of gravel. I bend and pick up a small stone, smooth and dark, like it belongs at the bottom of a river somewhere. I turn it over in my hand.

“Caw,” says Samjeeza the crow.

I hurl the rock at him.

It’s a good throw, the kind that would get me on Stanford’s women’s softball team in a heartbeat. It’s more than human, that throw. It cuts through the air like a bullet, over the fence and straight at the meddlesome Black Wing. My aim is true.

But it doesn’t hit him.

The rock shoots past the branch, which is now empty, and falls silently into the snow on the forest floor. I’m alone again.

For now.

I’m looking forward to building a great big fire in the living room fireplace, making something to eat for Billy and me, and maybe putting up some Christmas decorations, calling Wendy to see if she wants to go to a movie or something. I need some normal time. But first I stop at the grocery store.

Which is where, in the middle of the baking aisle, I run into Tucker.

“Hi,” I breathe. I curse my stupid heart for how it leaps when I see him standing there in a white tee and holey jeans, holding a basket with green apples, a lemon, a package of butter, and a bag of white sugar in it. His mom must be making a pie.

He looks at me for a minute as if deciding whether or not to bother talking to me. “You’re awful dressed up,” he says finally, taking in my coat and the black dress and the knee-high black boots, the way my hair is done up in a loose chignon at the crown of my head. His mouth twists into a mocking smile. “Let me guess: you’re magically teleporting to some fancy Stanford party, and you lost your way?”

“I came from a funeral,” I say tightly. “At Aspen Hill.”

Right away his face sobers. “Whose?”

“Walter Prescott’s.”

He nods. “I heard about that. A stroke, wasn’t it?”

I don’t answer.

“Or not a stroke,” he surmises. “He was one of your people.”

My people. Nice. I start to walk away, because that’s the wise thing to do—just leave, don’t engage with him—but then I stop, turn back. I can’t help myself. “Don’t do that,” I say.

“Don’t do what?”

“I know you’re mad at me, and I understand why you would be, I get it, I do, but you don’t have to be like that. You’re like the kindest, sweetest, most decent guy that I know. Don’t be a jerk because of me.”

He looks at the floor, swallows hard. “Clara …”

“I’m sorry, Tuck. I know that might not be worth much, me saying it. But I’m sorry. For all of it.” I turn to walk away. “I’ll stay out of your way.”

“You didn’t call,” he says before I can flee.

I blink up at him, startled. “What?”

“This summer. When you got back from Italy, before you went to California. You were home for two weeks, right? And you didn’t call. Not once,” he says with accusation in his voice.

That’s what he picks to be mad about?

“I wanted to,” I say, which is true. Every day I thought about calling him. “I was busy,” I say, which is a lie.

He scoffs, but the anger fades from his face, becomes a kind of resigned frustration. “We could have hung out some, before you had to go.”

“I’m sorry,” I murmur again, because I don’t know what else to say.

“It’s just that … I thought maybe we could be …” His throat works for a minute before he gets the word out. “Friends.”

Tucker Avery wants to be my friend.

He looks so vulnerable right now, staring at his boots, his ears slightly red under his tan, his shoulders tight. I want to reach over and put my hand on his arm. I want to smile and say,
Sure. Let’s be friends. I would love to be your friend.

But I have to be strong. I have to remember why we broke up in the first place: so that he could have a life where he wouldn’t be attacked by a fallen angel at the end of a date, where he could kiss his girlfriend without her literally lighting up like a sparkler on the Fourth of July, where he wouldn’t be constantly kept in the dark. He needs someone normal. Someone who will age when he ages. Someone he can protect the way a man protects his woman, and not the other way around. Someone not me. I mean, five minutes ago I was being blackmailed by a Black Wing, for heaven’s sake. I’m being hunted by a fallen angel who means to “collect” me. I’m going to have to fight. Possibly die.

I take a deep breath. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

He looks up. “You don’t want to be friends.”

I try to meet his eyes. “No. I don’t.”

For once I’m glad he can’t read my mind the way Christian does. He’d see how much I think about him, how I dream about him, how even after all this time apart my heart still aches to see him, touch him, hear his voice. He’d see that we can’t be friends. He’d see that every minute I’m with him I want his arms around me. I remember his lips on mine. I’ll never,
never
, be able to see him as a friend.

It’s better this way, I repeat to myself. It’s better this way. It’s better this way. He has to live his life, and I have to live mine.

His jaw tightens. “All right,” he says. “I get it. We’re done. You’re moving on.”

Yes,
I need to say to him. But I can’t make my lips form the word.

He nods, flexes his hands like he wants his cowboy hat to put on now, but he doesn’t have it. “I should go,” he says. “I have chores to do back at the ranch.”

He moves to the end of the aisle, then stops. There’s something else he wants to tell me. My breath hitches in my throat.

“Have a nice life, Clara,” he says. “You deserve to be happy.”

My hands clench into fists as I watch him walk away.

So do you, I think. So do you.

“You’re distracted, Clara,” Dad says. “You need to focus.”

I lower my part of the broom, panting. My shoulder smarts from where Christian just whacked me. We’ve been sparring in my backyard in Jackson in ankle-deep snow for the past half hour, and so far it’s been pretty even. I hit him; he hits me. Although that last hit was a doozy.

Christian looks at me with guilt in his gold-flecked eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asks quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m fine. We agreed not to pull our punches, and I left you an opening, so you should go for it.” I rotate my arm in its socket, wince, then roll my head from side to side, stretching. “Can we take a break for a minute? I could use a breather.”

Dad frowns. “We don’t have time for that. You must practice.”

This is our fifth training session together—me, Dad, and Christian—and every time Dad seems more tense, like we’re not making enough progress. He’s been working us like crazy all week, but winter break is almost over, and we won’t have as much free time to train once we go back to school. We should have moved on from brooms and mops by now. We should be wielding the real deal.

“I thought there’s no such thing as time for you.” I’m trying not to whine. “Come on. I need hot chocolate. My feet are freezing.”

Dad sighs, then strides across the yard to stand between Christian and me. He puts a hand on the back of my neck right under the hairline, then does the same to Christian. I don’t have time to ask what he’s doing before I feel a jolt in my stomach and the world dissolves into a bright white light, and when it fades we’re standing on a beach. It looks like the set of a deserted-island movie, all perfect white sand and blue water, nobody around but a few curious seagulls.

“Holy crap, Dad,” I gasp. “Try warning us next time.”

“Now,” he says, clapping his hands together. “Again.”

We take off our boots and socks, strip off our jackets, and toss them down on the sand. Dad stands on the water’s edge a ways off and crosses his arms to watch us. I lift my broom and approach Christian, who drops into a defensive posture. Sand squishes between my toes.

“So,” Christian says, like we’re having a laid-back conversation instead of trying to beat each other to a pulp. “How’s Angela?”

“She’s all right. She’s speaking to me again, at least.” I thrust. He parries. “I had dinner at her house a couple nights ago, and we talked some. At least she gave me the version of the story she wants everyone to believe.” He swings; I block. “She’s going to be in my lit class this quarter—did I tell you? We’re reading Dante. That should be a barrel of laughs.”

“I saw her in the square yesterday, eating a double-decker ice cream cone in twenty-degree weather,” Christian says. “She gave me guff just like her normal old self. Only … bigger.”

“Oh, come on, she’s not that big. You can hardly tell.”

“What is she now, like six months along?”

I see an opening and take a whack at his leg, but he moves too fast. I stumble past him and whip around barely in time to deflect a blow meant for my hip. I push him away.

“That depends on which story you believe.” I wipe at a strand of hair that’s sticking to my face. “If Pierce is the father, that would make her like four months, tops. But she told me that she’s due in March, which would make her six. The math doesn’t add up. Six months means she got pregnant in Italy. So the baby has to be Phen’s.”

“But she won’t admit that Phen’s the father, not even to you?” Christian asks.

“No way—she says it’s Pierce. She even told Pierce that he’s the father, which means that he is now completely freaked out. He’s offered to help, but Angela won’t let him do anything for her. He’s a decent guy. Too bad he’s not the father.”