Angel Fever

corridors? Especially this one.” He indicated the route to the garage. Maddeningly, Bascal hadn’t taken an inventory of the vehicles in the place before he’d torched it.

Bascal nodded. “Six or seven did, but most of them were killed. Zaran’s the only one who made it back – he says that corridor was empty.”

Zaran. Raziel’s dark gaze narrowed. Not someone he knew well, though Zaran was one of the angels who’d also enjoyed human energy, back before all angelkind came here. Unusually private, even for an angel – when they’d all been linked, the joke had been that you couldn’t even get the weather from Zaran’s thoughts.

“You know, I think I’d like to have a little chat with Zaran,” mused Raziel.

Bascal’s eyes glinted. “That guy, huh? You know, I never did like him. He’s sneaky.”

“Go get him,” Raziel ordered. “Don’t let him know what’s going on – and bring some backup.”

“Will do.” Bascal rose; as he turned to leave, he paused and reached into his pocket. “Oh – almost forgot. Present for you.” He tossed a small framed picture onto Raziel’s desk with a clatter.

Raziel stiffened with unpleasant surprise. Willow as a small child, smiling up through the branches of a weeping willow tree. “Where did you get this?”

Bascal grinned. “At the base – found it in one of the bedrooms that wasn’t destroyed. Thought you might want it. Spoil of war and all that.”

A willow tree. The willow tree, presumably: it would have been just like Miranda to take her there. “Thank you so much,” Raziel said with distaste. “Anything else?”

Bascal pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it over. “Kinda sweet, huh?” he sneered. “Wouldn’t have thought Kylar was the poetic type.”

Raziel opened out the well-worn page. My home is in your touch and in your eyes… He made a face. “No, quite,” he said, tossing it aside. It was the photo that kept drawing him; his daughter’s joyful smile was mesmerizing.

“We’ve got a date with Zaran,” he reminded Bascal. The other angel saluted ironically.

Once he’d left, Raziel leaned back in his chair. The office around him was decorated in quiet good taste: golds and browns; leather and soft fabrics. He scarcely noticed it. He picked up the photo, studying Willow’s face with an intense frown. So like her mother.

He shook his head. He couldn’t believe now that he’d ever been so smitten by a human woman; the week Miranda had spent away from college with her grandparents had dragged into infinity, so that he’d actually travelled up from New York City to this backwater region just to savour her again. That must have been the time it happened, since she’d been so revoltingly sentimental as to name the child “Willow”.

The photo’s appearance now of all times was unnerving. It forcibly brought back his dreams of Miranda – her face, gazing up at him. You know, I’m often confused now…

Raziel’s teeth gritted. The dreams mean nothing, he reminded himself. Miranda was dead; before that she’d been catatonic. She could not be haunting him.

Their child was a different matter.

“You were wise to run, my daughter,” Raziel murmured to the blonde, smiling girl. He stroked a finger over the frame. “But you can’t run fast enough. I’ll find you very soon – you, and whatever powers you’re hiding.”

30

ALEX AND I WENT TO an empty room on the town hall’s chilly second floor. As soon as he shut the door behind us, I let out a shaky breath and wrapped my arms around him.

“Whatever this is, can it wait just a few minutes?” I said hoarsely against his leather jacket.

His voice was rough too. “Yeah – that’s an excellent idea.” His arms enfolded me; he dropped his head down to my shoulder. I pressed close, listening to his steady heartbeat under my cheek.

“I still can’t believe this,” I said finally. I drew back and wiped my eyes. “Oh god, Alex, to actually have you back again…” I couldn’t finish; I’d start crying for real.

“I know. It must have been—” Alex broke off as he studied me. “You look different,” he said softly. He stroked his knuckle across my cheekbone. “Your face and your eyes.”

I thought of the grief that had lodged in my throat these past twelve months, making it hard to eat, giving me hollowed-out cheekbones. My reflection in the truck’s rear-view mirror on the way here: my eyes showing a year’s worth of pain.

And Alex’s voice when he’d left: Trust me.

An emotion stirred that I didn’t want to analyze. I pushed it away and tried to smile. “Just another year older, that’s all.”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah…I guess that’s it.” He kissed me; I shut my eyes as his warm lips touched mine. Then he sighed and rubbed my arms. “You know, all I want to do is hold you for about the next week, but…”

“I know.” I could sense his apprehension over whatever he had to tell me – and suddenly recalled my premonition that whatever happened in Pawntucket would be especially awful for me. I could have done without remembering that, right then.

There was a metal table with folding chairs; we sat down. Alex took my hand. “See, my dad’s idea was that the energy field in the angels’ world could be used to destroy them,” he said. “Cully thought it was possible, so I had to try it – even though getting there seemed suicidal. That’s why I didn’t tell you. Just imagining the look on your face…”

The look on my face. I thought of this last year again and couldn’t respond.

Alex sat gazing down, playing with my fingers. “Anyway, the blast destroyed the gate, and then I wasn’t able to connect with the energy field anyway – I was just stuck. So I went to Denver to try and find another way back home, and…that’s when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

He took a breath. “Willow, I met your mother in the angels’ world.”

The words slammed into me. My spine jerked away from the seat. “You what?”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Humans who have severe angel burn are like ghosts there. Their physical bodies still exist here in our world, but their minds just…go wandering with the angels.” He gave a sad smile, his thumb rubbing my palm. “She’s beautiful. She looks just like you. She’s been, like – frozen in time at twenty-one.”

Alex described his encounter with my mother as I sat stunned, drinking in every word. “She asked about you,” he said. “She wanted to know everything. And…she wished she’d been a better mother.”

“She did the best she could,” I said fiercely, swiping at sudden tears. “I always knew that – even as a little girl.”

Alex squeezed my hand hard. “She helped me escape,” he said quietly after a pause. “And, Willow…” He hesitated. “She said you could be the one to link to the energy field in the angels’ world.”

I straightened, staring. “Me?”

“You’re half angel, half human. You can straddle the two worlds and use their energy field to destroy them. I’m pretty sure that’s what Paschar’s vision meant.”

Was Paschar’s vision really true, then? I shook my head in a daze. “But, Alex, the immunity to the angels that’s happening here…Jonah thinks that has something to do with me too.” Quickly, I told him what Jonah had said. “None of this makes any sense!”

“Maybe it does.”

My hand in his went cold. “How?”

Alex shrugged. “The quakes were the most catastrophic event our world’s ever known – on the ethereal level too. What if, afterwards, humanity started trying to heal itself? Maybe people are unconsciously reaching out to the one thing that could save them from the angels.”

“Me, in other words,” I said in disbelief.