Hallowed

I look at her more closely. She looks worn out, dark and puffy around the eyes, frazzled.

“All right, I’ll be there,” I agree quickly. “I can’t stay super late, but I’ll definitely be there, okay?”

She nods. “Right after school,” she says again, then walks quickly away.

“What’s with her?” Christian materializes beside me and together we stare after her. “I told her I had a meeting for ski team, and she practically ripped my head off.” I shake my head, because I have no idea what’s up with her.

“I guess it’s important,” he says. Then he’s walking away too, joining his posse of popular people, heading out to lunch. I stand there for a minute feeling weird and lonely and finally move toward the lunch line. I get my lunch and flop down at my usual seat next to Wendy, who’s sitting with Jason at the Invisibles table.

She gives me this piercing look. She knows about this morning.

Jason says he has to go check on something, and off he goes.

I’m in so much trouble. With everybody.

“Where’s Tucker?” I ask immediately. “He’s still, like, alive?”

“He had to go home and do some chores during lunch hour. He wrote you a note.” She holds out a single sheet of notebook paper. I snatch it out of her hand. “I didn’t read it,” she says quickly as I unfold it, but something in her voice makes me think she might have.

“Thanks,” I say, my eyes scanning down the words. In his awkward script he’s written, Keep your chin up, Carrots. We’ll get through this. We just have to follow the rules for a while, and drawn an X—a kiss.

“Were your parents furious?” I ask, putting the note in the inside pocket of my jacket. I flash back to how Mr. Avery’s eyes bulged when he saw us.

She shrugs. “Mostly they were shocked. I don’t think they ever expected. .” She coughs.

“Okay. Heck yeah, they were mad. They kept saying the word disappointed, and Tucker looked like a dog getting kicked every time he heard it, and then when he seemed sufficiently whipped they sent him out to muck the barn so they could deliberate on a punishment.”

“And what’s the punishment?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Let’s just say my parents are not your biggest fans right now, and things were tense at the Averys’ this morning.”

“I’m sorry, Wen,” I say, and I mean it. “I guess I made a mess of things.” She puts a hand on my shoulder, squeezes briefly. “It’s okay. It’s relationship drama. We all have relationship drama, right? You just happen to have a relationship with my brother. I guess I should have seen that coming.

“I have to mention one thing, though,” she adds good-naturedly, after a minute. “If you hurt my brother, you’re going to have to deal with me. I will bury you in horse manure.”

“Right,” I say quickly, “I’ll remember that.”

“So, what’s the big emergency?” Jeffrey says. He jogs down the aisle of the Pink Garter toward where Christian and I are sitting, waiting for Angela, who is uncharacteristically late. “I thought we weren’t going to meet this week because we like, you know, spent all weekend together. I’m kind of sick of you people.”

“Glad to see that you decided to grace us with your presence, anyway,” Christian says.

“Well, I couldn’t miss it,” he says. “You do know this whole club rotates around me, right?

I move that we change the name to the Jeffrey Club.” He grins as he reaches the table. On pure sisterly instinct I stick out my foot like I’m going to trip him, and he scoffs, steps over my leg and shoves my shoulder.

“How about the doody-head club?” I suggest.

He snorts. “Doody-head.” That was our highest form of insult when we were kids.

We tussle around for a second, trying to give each other noogies. “Ow,” I say, when he accidentally bends my wrist backward. “When did you get so freaking strong?” He steps back and grins. It feels weirdly good, roughhousing with Jeffrey. He’s been almost his normal old self since we came back from the congregation, like he has finally given himself permission to move on from whatever it was weighing him down before.

Christian is staring at us. He’s an only child and could never understand the delicate joys of sibling abuse. I give Jeffrey one last push for good measure and take my seat at the table.

Jeffrey plunks down on the chair opposite me.

Angela comes in from the back. Sits down without a word. Opens her notebook.

“So. Emergency,” I say.

She takes a deep breath. “I’ve been looking into the life span of angel-bloods,” she says.

“Does this have anything to do with you asking Mr. Phibbs how old he is?” I venture.

“Yes. After seeing the congregation last weekend, I was curious. Mr. Phibbs is a Quartarius, I’m pretty sure, but he looks a lot older than your mom, who’s a Dimidius. So you can see why I was confused.”

I don’t see.

“Either Mr. Phibbs must be a lot older than your mother,” she goes on to explain, “or your mom must age at a different rate than Mr. Phibbs does. Which made me think, what if Quartarius, who are only a quarter-angel — seventy-five percent human — age at like seventy-five percent the rate that humans do? Humans don’t live much past one hundred, typically, so a Quartarius angel-blood might live to be a hundred and twenty-five. Which would account for Mr. Phibbs looking old.”

She stops. Drums her pen against her notebook. Looks worried.

“Go on,” I say.

Another deep breath. She doesn’t look at me, which is really starting to freak me out. “I thought Dimidius,