I drop my hands to see him walking toward me, reaching out. We aren’t in the vision now, but I still find him beautiful, even wet with rain and smudged with ash. He takes my hands in his.
“You’re alive,” I choke out, shaking my head. He squeezes my hands, then pulls me in for a hug.
“Yeah, that’s good news to me, too.”
One hand strokes slowly down my wings, sending a tremor through me. Then he pulls back and lifts his hand in front of him, looking at it. His palm is black. I stare at it.
“Your wings are covered with soot,” he says with a laugh.
I grab his hand, draw my finger across it, and sure enough, come away with a mix of soot and rain. He wipes his hand against the sides of his jeans.
“What do we do now?” I ask.
“Let’s just play it by ear.” He looks into my eyes again, then down at my lips. Another quake shakes me. He wets his lips, then looks back into my eyes. Asking me.
This could be my second chance. If neither one of us needed saving. What else is there, but this? It seems like we’ve been set up on some kind of heavenly ordained date. We don’t need the fire. We could reenact the vision here and now.
“It was always you,” he says, so close I could feel his breath on my face.
I’m drowning. I do want him to kiss me. I want to make everything right again. To make my mother proud. To do what I am supposed to do. To love Christian, if that’s what I’m meant for.
Christian starts to lean in.
“No,” I whisper, unable to get my voice any louder. I pull back. My heart doesn’t belong to me anymore. It belongs to Tucker. I can’t pretend that away. “I can’t.”
He steps back immediately.
“Okay,” he says. He clears his throat.
I take a deep breath, try to clear my head. The rain’s finally stopped. Night has fallen.
We’re both soaking wet, and cold, and confused. I’m still holding his hand. I tighten my fingers around his.
“I’m in love with Tucker Avery,” I tell him simply.
He looks surprised, like the idea that I might be already taken never crossed his mind. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Please don’t be sorry. Anyway, aren’t you still in love with Kay?”
His Adam’s apple jerks as he swallows. “I feel stupid. Like this is all some big joke. I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“Me neither.”
I drop his hand. I extend my wings and grab the air, rising from the top of the ridge and up over the burned forest. Christian stares up at me for a minute, then lifts off himself. Seeing him like that, riding the air with those beautiful speckled wings, sends a chill down my spine and a wave of confusion into my already shell-shocked brain.
“Come on,” I say as we hover for one final moment over Fox Creek Road. “Come with me.”
We stand outside the front door for a long time. It’s dark now. The porch light’s on. A moth is hurling itself against the glass again and again in a kind of rhythm. I fold my wings and will them gone. I turn to Christian. Our wings are no longer out, but he looks like he would rather fly away now and never come back. Pretend none of this ever happened. That the fire never happened. That we don’t know what we know, and everything isn’t impossibly screwed up.
“It’s okay.” I don’t know if I’m talking to myself or to him.
This is my home, the beautiful, secluded log house I fell in love with eight months ago, but suddenly I’m a stranger here, darkening this doorstep for the very first time.
So much has changed in the last few hours. My mind is clogged with all I’ve seen, what I’ve survived, battles with evil angels, forest fires, and the implications of what I’ve done. Christian is alive, standing there looking as jumpy as I am, smoke-streaked but beautiful and so much more than I ever expected him to be. But I’ve failed at my purpose. I don’t know what will happen now. I only know I have to face it.
There’s a noise behind us, and both Christian and I spin around to gaze out into the growing blackness. A figure flies toward us through the trees. I don’t know if Christian’s aware of the existence of Black Wings, but instinctively we reach for each other’s hand, as if this could be it, our last moments on this earth.
It turns out to be Jeffrey. He lands at the edge of the lawn, wild-eyed like something’s after him. He’s carrying his backpack over one shoulder, curling his arm around it to keep it out of the way of his wings. He turns to look down our driveway. For a moment his back is to me, and all I see are his wings. The feathers are nearly black, the color of lead.
“Is that your brother?” asks Christian.
Jeffrey hears him and turns like he expects a fight. When he spots us on the porch he lifts his hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the porch light, squinting to identify us.
“Clara?” he calls. It reminds me of when he was a little kid. He used to be scared of the dark.
“It’s me,” I answer. “Are you okay?”
He takes a few steps forward into the circle of light from the porch. His face is a flash of white in the darkness. He smells like the burned forest.
