Unearthly

That guy’s a monster. It was an amazing thing to watch. Jeffrey just took him down, didn’t even look winded, and when I saw him like that I knew that he couldn’t be entirely human. And then later I wore the angel shirt to Brit History and watched your face get all tense and broody when you looked at it. So I was pretty sure I was right.”

“It was that obvious?”

“To me it was,” she says. “But I’m glad. I’ve never known anybody else like me.”

She laughs and before I can totally process what she’s saying, she bends her knees and swoops up off the stage, gliding effortlessly over the darkened theater and up into the rafters.

“Come on,” she says.

I stare after her, thinking of the huge amount of damage I will probably do if I try.

“I don’t think you have enough insurance on this place for me to try to fly here.”

She drops lightly back down to the stage.

“I can’t fly,” I admit.

“It’s hard at first,” she says. “I spent all last year climbing up into the mountains at night so I could jump off ledges and catch some air. It took months before I was really able to get the hang of it.”

That’s the first thing anybody has said that makes me feel better about flying.

“Didn’t your mom teach you?” I ask.

She shakes her head wildly, as if she finds the idea hilarious.

“My mom’s about as human as they come. I mean, what angel-blood would name their kid Angela?”

I stifle a smile.

“She lacks imagination, I guess,” she says. “But she’s always been there for me.”

“So it’s your dad then.”

Her expression becomes instantly sober. “He was an angel.”

“An angel? So that means you’re a half blood, a Dimidius.”

She nods. Which means she’s twice as powerful as me. And she can fly. And her hair is a normal color. I’m a pot of envy.

“So your mom’s not human,” she says. “That means you’re—”

“I’m only a Quartarius. My mom is a Dimidius and my dad’s just a normal guy.”

I suddenly feel a little exposed standing there on the stage with my wings out, so I fold them in and will them to disappear. Angela does the same. For a minute we stand contemplating each other again.

“You said in class you’d never met your father,” I say.

Her face is carefully blank.

“Of course not,” she says matter-of-factly. “He’s a Black Wing.”

I nod like I completely understand what she’s talking about, but I don’t. Angela turns away and wanders out of the pool of light on the stage into one of the darkened corners.

“My mother was married once, but her husband died of cancer right before she turned thirty. He was an actor, and she was this shy costume designer. This was his theater. They never had any kids. After he died, she went on a pilgrimage to Rome.

She’s Catholic, so Rome’s a pretty important place for her, plus she has family there.

One night she walked home from evening mass, and a man followed her. She tried to ignore it at first, but she had a bad feeling about him. He started to walk faster, so she ran. She didn’t stop until she was at the family’s house.”

Angela sits down at the edge of the stage, her legs dangling over into the orchestra pit. She keeps her eyes downcast while she tells the story, her face turned slightly away, but her voice is steady.

“She thought she was safe,” she says. “But that night she dreamed of the man standing at the foot of her bed. His face was like a statue, she said. Like Michelangelo’s David, impassive, sad in the eyes. She started to scream, but then he said something in a language she couldn’t understand. His words paralyzed her; she couldn’t move or make a sound. She couldn’t wake up.”

I sit down beside her.

“And then he raped her,” she murmurs. “And she realized it wasn’t a dream.”

She glances up, embarrassed. One corner of her mouth lifts.

“So the downside is that I wasn’t exactly conceived in love,” she says. “But the upside is that I have all of these amazing powers.”

“Right,” I say, nodding. I wonder how old she was when her mother told her that story — it’s not really the kind of story you want to hear from your mom. I’ve never heard of such a thing happening. An angel raping a human? I can’t imagine it. The night is starting to take on a weird sort of Twilight Zone feel. I came to work on a history project, and now I’m sitting on the edge of a stage with another angel-blood as she spills her entire life story to me. It’s surreal.

“I’m sorry, Angela,” I say. “That. sucks.”

She closes her eyes for a moment, as if she can see it all in her mind.

“So if your mom is human and you’ve never seen your dad, how did you even know you were an angel-blood?” I ask.