Immortal City

an audience. A host opened an envelope and read the name Sarah.

The runner-up grimly hugged Sarah as she jumped up and down in celebration. Seemingly from nowhere, a Guardian Angel, Owen Holymead, descended onto the stage, his wings flapping slowly as he landed. He gallantly stepped forward and took Sarah’s hand. The host handed her an oversized check.

“Who will it be this year?”

“Lindsay!” Sam exclaimed at the Magnavox. Gwen rolled her eyes.

“It’s totally going to be Addison, she had a way better performance last week, Lindsay’s so lame.”

Maddy knew the odds for winning the lottery or American Protection or getting a charity Angel were infinitely small, but Gwen and millions across the world still believed every month, every day, that they would be the new-est Protection, instantly catapulted into the world of Angel glamour and fame, with their own Guardian. To be saved.

Maddy kept her mouth shut.

Gwen took a french fry off Jessica’s plate. “You’ll be sorry when I’m Jackson Godspeed’s Protection and I’m at all the parties with the Angels and everyone wants to be my friend, and you guys are still worrying about second- period algebra.” Gwen turned to Maddy. “You’re coming over and watching Jacks’s Commissioning with us. I even got a little red carpet. We’re totally dressing up. Then after we’ll go to Ethan’s party!”

Ethan’s party. In all the excitement of the bio lab incident Maddy had almost forgotten.

“Gwen, I have three quizzes now on Monday. Two of which, I know for a fact, you do too. Plus my college applications are just sitting there. Look, I know I promised you I would think about it, and I have. The truth is, I really can’t go.” She flipped open her pad and began adding up their bill in her head.

“Come on, Maddy, everyone’s going,” Samantha said, as if that was reason enough.

“Maddy, how long have we been friends?” Gwen asked.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” Maddy said, exasperated.

“When else are you going to have fun except this year?

Kyle says Ethan’s house is amazing, and what if he actually has a Guardian, and he makes a special appearance? He says you totally have to come, I bet that means Ethan is really into you. If you never do anything else for me ever again, please do this.” Gwen folded her arms over her chest defiantly. It was one of those moments in life, Maddy thought, one of those moments where you had to choose between what you knew was right and your friend.

“Okay, relax,” Maddy said. She put the check down. “I just have to make sure I can get my shift off and that Kevin doesn’t find out.” Gwen jumped to her feet and gave Maddy a hug over the table.

“This weekend is going to be the best ev-er!” she said, transforming the last word into two distinct syllables.

After the girls paid and left, Kevin came around from behind the fryer, holding a spatula in one hand.

“Did your friends have a good time?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Maddy said, loading Gwen’s dirty dish on her tray.

“What was all that yelling about earlier?”

“Oh, just some Angel Gwen is in love with.”

“No, before that,” Kevin pressed. “You girls were talking about an incident at school or something?”

Maddy paused, hoping her expression hadn’t betrayed her. “Just girl stuff,” she said innocently, not meeting Kevin’s gaze. She piled Jessica’s plate onto Samantha’s and took them both on her arm. After a moment Kevin wiped his hands on his apron.

“Oh. Okay. Well, make sure to tell them to stop by again,” he said, and disappeared back into the kitchen.

Maddy didn’t realize until he was gone that she had been holding her breath. Slowly and silently, she let it out.

It was the only secret Maddy had ever kept from him.

Her visions.

Over the past several years, these strange images would come on her out of nowhere. Bad things, like what she had “seen” today. Except the difference was that this time, she actually recognized someone. That had never happened before. Normally the pictures in her head didn’t make any sense.

Growing up, most of the time she had explained the visions away if Kevin happened to be around. The first time it had happened, they’d been at an amusement park for her ninth birthday, and she’d had flashes of horrible things happening on the rides — bloody, disturbing images. She became hysterical and Kevin was so worried he took her to the medical facility at the park. After a while she was able to calm down. And she’d lied, saying the roller coaster had upset her. Even from that very young age, Maddy never wanted him to know about the strange things she saw. And she certainly didn’t want him to know that lately, it had gotten worse. She already felt like enough of a freak with the way she never felt fully simpatico around her peers. She didn’t need her uncle thinking so too. She loved Kevin dearly, but the fact of the matter was, he wasn’t her parent. Some things were just private.

Gwen often gave her a hard time about not dating, and Maddy usually used schoolwork and work at the diner as an excuse. And she was really busy with that stuff, but Maddy also knew that if she got close to someone, there was a chance one of those unsettling images would come in, and then what was she supposed to say? How could she explain her thing? Freshman year she’d been on a date with Adam Rosen, and halfway through, when they were holding hands, she’d literally run out of the frozen yogurt place they were in after a terrifying image of a car crash hit her from out of nowhere. Adam caught up to her, but she was still upset, and she had Kevin come get her and take her home. Just thinking about it still filled Maddy with shame.

But all of those earlier visions had been just random, like strange mental static of bad images. She thought she was just. . okay, fine. Mentally sick. Today she actually recognized the people. And a lot of good it had done her: she’d finally made the Lunch Special.

Maddy looked up at the big plastic clock that hung over the dining room. 8:45. Still early. She sighed as she walked her friends’ dishes to the kitchen. It was going to be a long night.

CHAPTER FIVE

Angel Boulevard lay dark and quiet. The palm trees stood motionless. By day it was the city’s biggest tourist attraction, with people from all over the world flocking to the Walk of Angels. At night, though, with its neon signs off and the shops shuttered, this end of Angel Boulevard looked more like an eerie ghost town.

An old man stumbled over the gleaming stars, the streetlights casting looping streaks in his vision. Pockets of people were outside clubs farther down the boulevard, but most everything else shut down at dark, the crowds moving west to the Halo Strip. The man steadied himself against a trash can, then peered in. It was the usual. Angel maps and tourist brochures and fast-food wrappers. If you want to know the character of a people, he always said, look at their trash. He dug his hand down through the garbage until his fingers closed around the smooth, curving surface of a beer can. He pulled it out and leaned back, letting the remains of its contents dribble into his mouth and over his chin. Then he tossed the can back at the trash. He missed and the can rolled across the sidewalk and into the gutter.

He didn’t bother picking it up. If the Angels wanted their boulevard to be clean, he told himself, they could come and do it themselves. They’d be cleaning a long time to get the dirt off this city.

He walked over and sat heavily in the doorway he had picked out for the night. It smelled vaguely of urine, but that didn’t bother him. It was out of the wind, and out of the way of the shop owners and the straggling tourists who would still be walking by. With any luck, he wouldn’t be kicked out tonight. He leaned drunkenly against the doorway and watched the glittering lights of the Immortal City spin around him. He smiled. If you had to be homeless, you might as well be homeless in the glorious City of Angels.

His eyes closed, and before he was even aware of his exhaustion, he fell asleep.

When he woke again, he wasn’t sure how long he’d been out, but the boulevard had gone eerily silent. Even