Unearthly

“Try to tell me you don’t,” he murmurs, so close his breath is on my face. I look up into his eyes and see the beckoning heat in them. I can’t think.

His lips are too close to mine and his hands are drawing me closer.

“Tuck,” I breathe, and then he kisses me.

I’ve been kissed before. But nothing like this. He kisses me with surprising tenderness, for all of his gutsy talk. Still cupping my face, he gently brushes his lips against mine, slowly, like he’s memorizing what I feel like. My eyes close. My head swims with his smell, grass and sunshine and musky cologne. He kisses me again, a little more firmly, and then he pulls back to look down into my face.

I so don’t want it to be over. All other thoughts vanish from my brain. I open my eyes.

“Again,” I whisper.

The corner of his mouth lifts, and then I kiss him. Not so gently this time. His hands drop from my face and grab at my waist and pull me to him. A small soft groan escapes him, and that noise makes me feel absolutely crazy. I lose it. I wind my hands around his neck and kiss him without holding anything back. I can feel his heart thundering like mine, his breath coming faster, his arms tightening around me.

And then I can feel what he feels. He’s waited such a long time for this moment. He loves how I feel in his arms. He loves the smell of my hair. He loves the way I looked at him just now, flushed and wanting more from him. He loves the color of my lips and now the taste of my mouth is making his knees feel weak and he doesn’t want to seem weak in front of me. So he draws back, and his breath comes out in a rush. His arms drop away from me.

I open my eyes.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

He can’t speak. His face has gone pale beneath his golden skin. And then I realize that it’s too bright in there, too bright for the shady dark of the barn, and the light’s coming from me, radiating off me in waves.

I’m in glory. Tucker stares at me in shock. I can feel his shock. He can see everything now in all this light, glowing out through my clothes so I might as well be standing naked in front of him. I inhale sharply. Part of me twists painfully at the look of terror in his eyes, and just like that, the light goes out. His presence in my mind fades away as the barn darkens, and we’re standing a few steps apart from each other now.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I watch the color slowly come back into his face.

“I don’t know what.,” he tries, and then stops himself.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“What are you?”

I flinch.

“I’m Clara.” My name, at least, has not changed. I take a step toward him, put my hand out to touch his face. He shies away. Then he grabs my hand, the one with the cut. I gasp as he jerks the bandage away.

The wound is completely healed. There isn’t even a scar. We both peer down at my palm. Then Tucker’s hand falls away.

“I knew it,” he says.

I’m flooded with a strange mix of panic and relief. There’s no explaining this away. I’ll have to tell him. “Tuck—”

“What are you?” he demands again. He staggers back a few steps.

“It’s complicated.”

“No.” He shakes his head suddenly. His face is still so pale, greenish like he’s about to throw up. He keeps backing away from me, and then he’s at the door of the barn and he turns and runs toward the house.

All I can do is watch him go. I feel disconnected from myself, shaky with the shock of what’s happened. I don’t have a ride home. And Tucker could be in the house getting a shotgun for all I know. So I run. I stumble toward the woods at the back of the ranch, grateful for the cover of the trees. It’s starting to get dark. Once I’m a little ways in, my wings snap out without me even having to summon them. I fly carelessly, getting completely lost before I can sense the way home, instantly soaked by clouds and so cold I’m shivering hard enough to make my teeth chatter, tear-blinded and halfpanicked.

I cry as I wing my way home. I cry and cry. It feels like the tears will never stop.

* * *

Mom discovers me in my room sobbing into my pillow a few hours later. I’m scratched and scraped and tear- streaked, but what she says when she sees me is

“What happened to your hair?”

“What?” I’m desperately trying to get it together so I can decide how much I’ll tell her about the whole Tucker thing.

“It’s back to its natural color. The red is completely gone.”

“Oh. I brought the glory. It must have zapped the color right out.”

“You attained glory?” she says, her blue eyes wide.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, my darling. No wonder you’re upset. It’s such an overwhelming experience.”

She doesn’t know the half of it.

“Rest now.” She presses a kiss to my temple. “You can tell me more about it in the morning.”

When she’s gone I send a frantic email to Angela: Emergency, I write, hardly able to make my fingers and brain work well enough together to get out a simple message.