As if on cue, Anna Zerbino comes in from the lobby with a stack of table linens. She stops in the aisle when she sees me.
“So it fits,” she says, her humorless dark eyes looking me up and down.
“It’s great,” I say. “Thank you for all your hard work.”
She nods.
“Dinner’s ready upstairs. Lasagna.”
“Okay, so we’re done with the fitting,” I say to Angela. “Get me out of this thing.”
“Not so fast,” whispers Angela, glancing at her mom over her shoulder. “We haven’t done much of our
She’s so predictable. Always with the angel research.
“Come on,” I whisper back. “Lasagna.”
“We’ll be right up, Mom,” says Angela. She pretends to fiddle with my collar until her mother leaves the theater. As soon as we’re alone again, she says, “I figured out something good, though.”
“What is it?”
“Angels — full-blooded angels, I mean — are all male.”
“All male?”
“There are no female Intangere.”
“Interesting. Now help me get out of this dress.”
“But I think that angels could appear female if they wanted to. I believe they can change form, like shape- shifters,” she says, her golden eyes dancing with excitement.
“So they can become cats and birds and stuff.”
“Right, but more than that,” she says. “I have another theory.”
“Oh, here we go,” I groan.
“I think that all the stories about supernatural creatures, like vampires, werewolves, ghosts, mermaids, aliens, you name it, could all be angel related. Humans don’t know what they’re seeing, but it could all be angels taking on other forms.”
Angela has some wild theories, but they’re always cool to consider.
“Awesome,” I say. “Now let’s eat.”
“Wait,” she says. “I also found something about your hair.”
“My hair?”
“The blaze thing you told me about.” She walks over to the table and grabs her notebook, flips through it. “It’s called
“What, you find that on the internet?” I ask with a stunned laugh. She nods. As usual, Angela has taken the nugget of information I’ve given her and turned it into a gold mine.
“I wish it would happen to me,” she says, twisting a strand of her shiny black hair around her finger wistfully. “I bet it’s awesome.”
“It’s overwhelming, okay? And you’d have to dye your hair.”
She shrugs like that doesn’t sound so bad to her.
“So what do you have for me this week?” she asks.
“What about the concept of purpose?” This is a big one, something I probably should have gotten into a lot earlier, only I didn’t especially want to talk about purpose, because then I’d have to talk about mine. But now I’ve literally told her everything else I know. I even broke out the angel diary and showed her my old notes. Secretly I hope that she, in her infinite wisdom, already knows all about purpose.
“Define purpose,” she says.
No such luck.
“First get me out of this thing.” I gesture to the dress.
She moves around me quickly, loosening and unfastening all the laces and ties. I go into the dressing room and change back into my normal clothes. When I come out, she’s sitting at one of the tables drumming her pencil on her notebook.
“Okay,” she says. “Tell me.”
I take a seat across from her.
“Every angel-blood has a purpose on earth. Usually it comes in the form of a vision.”
She scribbles furiously into her notebook.
“When do you see this vision?” she asks.
“Everybody’s different, but sometime between thirteen and twenty, usually. It happens after your powers start to manifest. I only got mine last year.”
“And you only receive one purpose?”
