Immortal City

“I’m still mad at you,” she said.

“Understood.”

“And you’re not forgiven for what happened at the diner or how you lied to me.”

Jacks nodded. “It’s a deal. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

Jacks reached into his pocket and pressed something. A car alarm chirped in the driveway, cutting up through the night air.

“I thought we were flying?” Maddy asked, confused.

“Yeah,” Jacks said, pulling out his Ferrari keys and jingling them. “Flying.”

The Ferrari roared as Jacks expertly shifted, hugging the turns of Mulholland Drive. The car rose quickly and effortlessly into the Hills. Maddy had promised herself that she would not enjoy this. In fact, she had had an idea to pout the whole time. That would show him that he hadn’t won.

But with the warm leather seat vibrating against her legs and the wind in her hair, Maddy felt the thrill of the moment sifting through her defenses like fine sand.

Jacks navigated a hairpin turn. She shrieked with surprise and held on to the door handle. Jacks looked over and smiled. Ahead, the lights of the Los Angeles Basin beckoned.

The most amazing thing, Maddy thought, was that Angel City looked different from inside the Ferrari. It really did. It felt different too. Even smelled different. It wasn’t the run-down, dirty city she knew. It was beautiful.

“I like to come up here at night after everyone has gone to sleep,” Jacks said. The car rounded another turn.

“Up here it feels like you’re alone, you know? Away from all the bother. Like the whole city belongs to just you.”

“The whole city does belong to you,” Maddy said, looking at Jacks. “It’s a little different for the rest of us.”

“Well, you know what I mean,” he said.

“And what’s the bother? All the little people getting in your way all the time?”

Jacks’s eyes roamed over her face. “Look, you seem to think I live this charmed existence. And I guess in some ways I do. But the truth is, I have to go through a lot of the same things you do. I have pressure on me. I have expecta-tions. And I’m not perfect. I struggle.”

“Yeah, right,” Maddy groaned, her tone rebellious.

“The kid in the hundred-thousand-dollar sports car is telling me about struggle.”

“I’m just trying to say we have more in common than you might think.”

“You don’t know the first thing about me!” Maddy exclaimed. Jacks downshifted hard, the gears grinding in protest. His blue eyes flashed.

“Why won’t you give me a chance, Maddy?”

“Because,” she nearly yelled, “you think you just get to have anything you want, don’t you? You want something, it’s yours. That’s the way life works for you. Well, that’s not how it works for me, so it’s not how it’s going to work with me. I don’t fall for the money and the charm and the car. It takes a lot more than that.”

Jacks nodded, suddenly thoughtful. He flipped on the car’s turn signal.

“Okay, let’s ditch the car.”

He pulled the Ferrari onto a gravel turnout next to an overlook and killed the engine. “Will you be warm enough?”

he asked. Maddy looked out to the bench framed against the twinkling cityscape.

“I think so.”

The wooden bench was cracked and worn smooth, yet was surprisingly comfortable as they sat. Just beyond their feet, the earth sloped down gently at first, then dropped off dramatically into a deep canyon. Cut into the hillside like temples, the Angel houses glowed in the night. Jacks took his jacket and draped it around Maddy’s slender frame.

“Thanks,” she said. No one had ever put a jacket around her before.

Jacks’s presence inside the jacket was almost overwhelming. His smell was intoxicating. Maddy took a deep breath, steadying herself. Silence overtook them as they looked at the city together. A cricket chirped nearby, stopped, then started again. Jacks spoke.

“You said I wasn’t forgiven for lying to you. Well, it wasn’t all a lie.” He paused. “I was only two. . when my father. .” He trailed off.

Maddy chose her words carefully. “I thought Angels couldn’t die.”

“True Immortals can’t, but there are only twelve of them. Born Immortals can be. . made mortal. ” Jacks traced a circle in the dirt with the toe of his shoe. He stared at it, thinking for a split second of the policeman’s visit to his house and the mutilated wings that had been found on the boulevard. “I don’t even really know what my dad looked like, aside from a few old pictures. He died fighting the rebel terrorists.” Jacks looked away, his blue eyes reflecting the lights of the city.

Maddy raised an eyebrow — that’s something they definitely hadn’t covered in Angel History. But there were a lot of things the Angels kept to themselves.

“Well, I know what he looked like,” Maddy said. “He had dark hair. And pale, blue eyes.” Jacks laughed a little, shaking his head.

“I have my mother’s eyes. .” he said. “And, I’m told, my father’s wings.”

“His wings?”

Jacks nodded. “Broad and strong. A Battle Angel’s wings.”

The question came out of Maddy so fast she didn’t have time to stop it.

“Can I see them?”

“My wings?” Jacks asked about his most famous feature in disbelief. “You don’t know—” he cut himself off, holding his tongue. Not wanting to come across to this girl as conceited.

“Yeah, your wings,” Maddy said, now embarrassed but unable to take it back. “I mean. . what’s the big deal?

Can’t I see them?”

Jacks got to his feet and pulled Maddy up with him.

Maddy watched the muscles move under his shirt. Suddenly, the quiet night filled with the shrill tearing of fabric and Jacks’s wings expanded out of his back. Razor sharp, they pierced the night sky, knifing out from behind his shoulders with such force it blew her hair back. The sound of the whoosh was deafening. The wings reached out six feet in both directions, then settled, powerful and muscled, awaiting the command to fly. They glowed with their trade-mark blue luminescence, casting light on Maddy’s face. She was breathless.

“What do you think of them?” he asked.

Slightly afraid, but overcome with curiosity, Maddy reached out and ran her finger across the top of the left wing. It was hot to the touch.

“They’re. . great.”

Jacks smiled. “Want to try them out?”

Maddy pulled her finger away. “You mean actually fly?”

“Sure. Real deal.”

“I don’t know,” she said, unsure.

Jacks held out his hand to her. “Do you trust me?”

Somehow, strangely, Maddy felt as if the question held within it far more than just this night. She was at a crossroads. She looked at this boy Angel, young and perfect, his hand outstretched before her like the hand of fate itself.

It was a simple response — just a single word — but somehow, on some level, Maddy knew that it would change her life in ways she couldn’t imagine.

Her lips moved.

“Yes.”

Maddy pulled her hood up around her head and cinched the drawstring tight. “Put your arms around my