I tucked my hair behind both ears and offered a forced smile. “Yeah.”
“Good.” His grin widened. “I made spaghetti and you’re just in time.”
Lauren took my coat and hung it in the closet. “He did something different with the sauce, so you have to tell him it’s delicious even if it tastes like motor oil and oregano.”
I laughed weakly. “Okay.”
“Come on,” Lauren said, and walked toward Nathaniel and the kitchen. “Let’s get some hot food into you.”
Everyone was kind to me during dinner, laughed at my pathetic jokes, and life seemed a little normal despite everything that had happened. I helped Lauren with the dishes as Nathaniel and Will cleared the table and put everything away. Once everything was cleaned up, I leaned over to rest my head on Will’s shoulder and yawned.
“You doing okay?” he asked as he bent his head to look into my face.
I gave him a little smile. “Just sleepy. It’s been a long day.”
“I’ll take you upstairs.”
“Good night, Ellie,” said Lauren.
“Good night. Thank you both.” I waved to her and Nathaniel, and followed Will out of the kitchen. He grabbed my duffel bag off the floor and carried it upstairs with him. When he led me into his room, I chewed nervously on my lip.
“You can sleep in here,” he offered, and dropped my things next to the nightstand.
“You don’t have to give up your bed for me.” My voice was small and quiet.
He shrugged. “Well, there’s a guest room, but it’s not made up and I’m not making you wait until you drop unconscious from exhaustion. Besides, you’ve slept here before.”
I blushed fiercely at the memory of sleeping in his bed. As if he noticed my embarrassment, his gaze fell. After several awkward seconds, he started to walk by me.
“I’ll let you change and get some sleep.”
“Will, wait.” I put a hand to his chest. I wanted to tell him that he could stay, that I wanted him to stay, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “Do you always feel pain when I do?”
His entire body stiffened, and he took his eyes away from mine. “I didn’t want you to know that.”
My heart slipped into my stomach. “But it’s true, isn’t it? I saw … back at the bowling alley. How have you hidden this from me all this time? Why?”
He looked at me again. “I don’t always feel it when you hurt physically. It hits me when you hurt in your heart more than anything.”
I battled a sob that climbed my throat. “I can’t believe how much pain I’ve caused you for so long.”
“Some things hurt more than what my body feels,” he said gently. “I don’t care that it hurts. I can take a lot.”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I folded myself into him, and he wrapped his arms around me. He kissed my hair, and that terrible sob escaped me finally. “I don’t deserve you,” I said, burying my face in his chest.
“Don’t say that.” He pulled away and cupped my face in his hands. “Get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning. Good night, Ellie.”
“Good night.”
As he closed the door behind him, I sat down on the edge of the bed. After all the running I’d done, I felt like I was finally ready to stop.
22
THE NEXT MORNING I FOUND I MUST HAVE HAD A thousand missed calls from my friends and Nana. I texted only one thing to Nana: I’m ok. Then I shut off my phone. People were looking for me, but I didn’t want to be found. Eventually I would have to go back to the rest of the world, but I didn’t want that to be anytime soon. I wasn’t ready to face real life without my parents in it.
I dragged myself out of Will’s bed and ventured into the hall. I heard voices coming from the study, and I crept toward the cracked-open door and peered through. Lauren leaned against the oak desk beneath the big bay window and Nathaniel stood beside her, resting one hand on the desk’s edge. Both their expressions were serious, his a little more pained than hers.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” he said quietly. There was no harshness in his voice to alert me that they had been arguing. If anything, they both looked very sad.
Lauren stared at him, her face falling heavily. She seemed emotionally exhausted. “I don’t know what to ask.”
“We won’t end that way,” he said. “I promise.”
She smiled softly. “You can’t promise that.”
“I love you,” he said, and touched her cheek. “That’s all that matters.”
“You’re sweet,” she said, and covered his hand with hers. She pulled away. “But that isn’t all that matters, and you know it. You’ve seen what Will has had to go through for centuries. Don’t lie to me. I don’t want you to feel that pain for me.”
His gaze flickered away from hers and back again, but he stayed quiet. His curly mop of copper hair flopped over his forehead.
“Do you really want that for yourself?” she asked. “I don’t belong here and you know it.”
“I know,” he said urgently, leaning into her, his hands running through her dark hair and over her slender shoulders, “that you do belong here. With me.”
She started to smile, but it faded before it could bloom. “Our ending won’t be beautiful.”
“Not if it’s compared to you.”
Her smile came through then, matching his own silly one. “Nathaniel, I’m serious. You’ll outlive me by a thousand years at least. Are you prepared for that?”
The laughter left his expression. “I don’t care.”
She frowned and touched his face. “Nathaniel …”
“I’ll stay by your side until the end,” he said. “Yes, I understand what Will endures, and I’ll gladly endure it for you.”
Her eyes glimmered, but before she could cry, his lips met hers intensely. When he pulled away, he kissed the tip of her nose and she laughed softly through her tears.
With a strange feeling blurring through me, I left Nathaniel and Lauren to their secret world and decided to go for a long walk.
I returned to a very quiet house. A single lamp lit the living room and I found Nathaniel sitting on a sofa reading a book. He looked up at me and smiled.
“Where is everyone?” I asked, sitting down beside him. “Lauren is grocery shopping,” he replied. “I made Will go with her. It’s good for him to get out of the house and do something ordinary.”
I laughed. “I’m sure he considers it torture. He doesn’t like ordinary very much.”
Nathaniel shrugged. “He isn’t suited for it. Some of us, like Marcus and I, have been able to adapt to a somewhat normal human life. We can get pretty normal jobs, form human friendships, business relationships, and have hobbies. But others, like Will and Ava—even Sabina—they’ve never felt comfortable in the human world. Either they feel they don’t deserve to integrate into mortal society, or they just feel like they don’t belong.”
I felt bad for a moment about dragging Will to my stupid high school parties—especially bowling—but maybe Nathaniel was right. Maybe it really was good for him to do something other than fight for his life—for both our lives—every single night. “He needs the distraction.”
“A moment’s peace,” Nathaniel said. “It makes a world of difference. That’s why you’re so important to him.”
I shook my head. “But this whole thing, the whole reason why his life is so terrible, it’s because of me. If he didn’t have to protect me—”
“He’d still be doing the same thing,” he said gently. “He’d still be hunting demonic reapers without you, but with you, he has a reason to be happy, a reason to want to do this. You forget that he isn’t just your Guardian because Michael gave the sword to him. Will wanted this, still wants it.”
Sometimes I did forget that. He had accepted this duty from Michael all those years ago. He wasn’t forced into it.
Nathaniel watched me carefully. “I’m the only one left alive who knew Will before he met you.”
I considered h
is words, realizing that Will must have felt just as alone as I did. The weight of Will and Nathaniel’s bond was more than friendship. They were family.
“I don’t mean that to seem patronizing,” Nathaniel said, a worried look in his copper eyes.
“No, not at all,” I said. “You just mean that you knew a different Will.”
“Precisely. He was much more wild back then. Reckless at times.”
I laughed. “Will? Wild? I’ll never believe it.”
“He was very fond of girls and got into a lot of trouble. He found himself in situations that weren’t …” Nathaniel trailed off as he struggled with the right word. “Let’s just say, he settled down a lot when he became your Guardian. He takes himself more seriously.”
“Too seriously sometimes,” I added. “How did you meet him?”
“I knew his mother,” he explained. “Madeleine was quite celebrated as a hunter of demonic reapers. When Will decided he’d follow in her footsteps, she instructed me to look out for him. I never knew Will’s father, though.”
“What was Madeleine like?”
“She was a formidable woman, and so much like Will in that she was very devoted to her duty, but she was also kind.” He paused and said, “There’s something I want you to know, Ellie.”
Nerves prickled in my gut, and I was afraid of what he might have to say. “Okay.”
He took a deep breath. “You understand the meaning and function of a relic, yes?”
“For the most part, yeah,” I said. “They’re objects with a magical connection to a creature from Heaven or Hell.”
“They can be anything, even something alive,” he said. “From a tree in a forest, to even a human being. And they all need a guardian, even demonic relics. Anything can have a connection to Heaven or Hell, but only the most powerful of all things are relics. Like you, Ellie.”
My head spun, and I sat more heavily into my seat. “What are you saying?”
“You are a relic, Ellie.”
“Me?”
He nodded. “Your human body, Gabriel’s vessel. The most holy of all things on Earth is you. Every relic requires a guardian. Will is yours.”
“So Will is a relic guardian. My Guardian.”
“Correct. The Guardian, the most important of all angelic guardians.”
“But you’re not a relic guardian or Guardian of me or anything, right?”
“No,” he said gently. “Not officially, but there are a few items that I keep safe. Records of our world, books of great importance. They were passed to me from my father when he was killed.”
“Then why are you involved? You don’t have to go through any of this.”
He smiled gently. “True, but Will is like my younger brother. I’ll always take care of him, and I’ll always fight by his side. That’s what you do for family and for the ones you love. That’s why I also want to protect you, Ellie. Not just because you’re the Preliator. You’re family, too.”
That hit home. The kindness of his words sank deep, tightening around my heart and rendering me unable to breathe. “Thank you, Nathaniel,” I said weakly. “You’re my family, too, but what I don’t really understand is why any of you would accept this responsibility. Why leave everything behind and dedicate your entire lives to protecting something at any cost?”
He took a deep breath. “What’s the point of eternal life if one spends it doing nothing? There is none. It’s a waste of eternity.”
I remembered what Will had said about the night Michael gave him his sword and the responsibility of being my Guardian: “He gave me purpose, some sort of resolution in my immortality, a focus. You gave me purpose.”
“There are four things you need to understand about war, Ellie,” Nathaniel began. “One, every action requires careful tactics. Two, never lose hope and fight only for what is right. Three, be brave, but you don’t have to be fearless. And four, be willing to sacrifice.”
Willing to sacrifice. Was I? How far would I have to go, how much would I have to sacrifice to win this war? What was I willing to sacrifice? Myself, my friends, my family—Will? I wouldn’t sacrifice their lives, but could I be willing to give them up in order to save them?
“I’m going to win this war,” I said to Nathaniel.
He smiled gently. “I believe you can.”
The front door opened and Will and Lauren emerged, their arms draped in grocery bags. Nathaniel and I rose to our feet and helped them bring in the rest of the bags from Lauren’s car. I soaked in the early March sunshine and forty-degree temperature. Spring was on its way.
“How was shopping?” I asked Will.
“Horrible.” He sighed. “It was a battle to get past all those women for a carton of eggs. They were vicious.”
I laughed. “Soccer moms too much for you?”
“Apparently,” he replied, giving me a little smile.
“Will can handle the nastiest reapers around, but soccer moms…” Lauren said with a grin as we toted the rest of the bags into the kitchen and unloaded groceries.
“I need to work off some of this aggression,” Will said. “Nathaniel, are you game?”
Nathaniel frowned. “Letting you beat the crap out of me for a half hour? I’m always game.”
Lauren and I sat on the porch bench and draped a quilt over us to watch the boys spar in the backyard. The melting snow added difficulty to their training, making it harder for them to move, and that was why it worked. Will laughed as Nathaniel slipped and splashed in the wet snow and mud.
“Nice move,” Will said, and rested his sword over his shoulder, rolling his eyes.
Nathaniel rolled over and clambered to his feet. He snorted through a wide grin and shoved Will’s shoulder. “That doesn’t count toward points. I slipped.”
Will scoffed. “Come on, man. That’s pathetic.”
“Hey,” Nathaniel said with a wave of his finger. “I’m a reader, not a fighter.”
“Keep it friendly, boys,” Lauren called. “Maybe I should keep score so nobody cheats.” She tugged the blanket a little tighter when a cold breeze blew by, and we exchanged smiles and I shook my head.
Nathaniel spun the sword in his hand just to show off as he advanced on Will. Then he vanished, moving so quickly my eyes lost him for a heartbeat, but Will spun around, sweeping his blade up to meet Nathaniel’s as the other vir reappeared. Will’s sword dwarfed Nathaniel’s, but I was surprised at Nathaniel’s skill and ease with the thin, sleek blade. He was definitely much more of a bookworm than a fighter, which was a part of his charm, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know how to kick some ass. He seemed to match each of Will’s strikes, at least until Will tired of going easy on him.
The way Will fought was hypnotizing. His graceful ferocity was the most beautiful, calculated thing I’d ever seen. His movements as he dodged Nathaniel’s swift strikes were so slight and effortless that it almost appeared to be a dance he knew to his very soul.
The snow made no hindrance to their battle as it flew everywhere in the air, streaks of white following silver blades and sweeping, feather-light footsteps. Nathaniel deflected Will’s sword with his own and Will’s elbow smashed into Nathaniel’s nose, knocking him back. Nathaniel brought his blade up and Will swung his down, silver crashing together, and Nathaniel kicked his boot into Will’s chest, forcing him to stagger on his heels.
“That’s two points for each,” Lauren explained. “They each made successful offensive and defensive maneuvers.”
“How does one of them win?” I asked.
“There’s no winning,” she said. “They just keep adding points. I forgot both their scores ages ago, but the numbers are ridiculous. Nathaniel holds his own against Will, but it’s obvious who is the more talented fighter.”
“Nathaniel is brilliant, but I almost never see him fight.”
She shrugged. “He’d rather be useful to the war in other ways. Will, on the other hand, can’t get enough of fighting. It wears him out physically and emotionally,
but it’s like a drug to him. He can’t function without it.”
Something heavy settled in my chest. “It’s his life.”
Out the corner of my eye, I caught Lauren glancing at me. “It’s yours too,” she said. “But I’m not sure what Will would do with himself if he didn’t have a mission for even five minutes. He’d go crazy.”
As I watched him spin his sword through the air, I imagined him living a quieter life where he wasn’t constantly trying to survive and save me at the same time.
“Don’t even think it,” Lauren warned sharply. “I know that look on your face. He agreed to this. It’s what he wanted. I can’t describe to you the difference I see in him since you came back into his life.”
I gazed across the lawn again at Will. Our eyes met, and I knew he could hear my conversation with Lauren. But he never missed a beat and never let Nathaniel gain the upper hand.
“You chose this too,” Lauren said. “Don’t forget that either.”
She was right. As Gabriel, I chose to become human and fight the reapers. It was my mission to see this through, just as protecting me was Will’s mission.
Will’s sword ripped open Nathaniel’s sleeve and blood shone in the sunlight. Nathaniel spun away with a grunt of pain, holding his arm with his other hand. Will withdrew his sword until it vanished completely.
“I’m done,” he said, winded.
Nathaniel studied his face. “All right.” He said nothing more.
Will headed toward the house tiredly, snow clinging to his clothes and his hair. I rose to help him clean up as he walked inside.
“Don’t track that slush into the house,” Lauren scolded Nathaniel. When I glanced behind me, I saw her catch his wrist and mouth the word “wait.”
In the kitchen, Will pulled off his boots, set them on the rug beside the glass doors to dry, and yanked off his long-sleeved pullover. I took it from him so he could brush off his jeans and smooth out his white T-shirt.
“You did a good job,” I offered, breaking the silence between us.
He didn’t look up. “So did Nathaniel.”