Wings of the Wicked

  “You know, for an angel, you sure do gamble a lot.”

  “You’re a bad influence.”

  “Oh, okay,” he said sarcastically.

  “Maybe I’m just above the rules.”

  “Or you’re not.”

  “I’m the Preliator. I do what I want.” I stuck my tongue out at him.

  “You’re exhausting, that’s what you are.”

  “And you’re obnoxious.”

  “And you’re childish.”

  “You think I’m childish?” I looked at him pleadingly, feigning hurt.

  He looked crushed. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  “Ellie, I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re mean,” I said through a small laugh disguised as a sob. I couldn’t keep a straight face to save my life.

  He blinked at me. His lips made a slight curve. “Faker.”

  “Am not. I’m really devastated. I’m shocked you would say such things.”

  “You know I’d never say anything to hurt your feelings on purpose.”

  I sat back and winked. “Of course.”

  We pulled into my driveway and Will shut off the car. “Are you making me go to that party Saturday, too?” he asked.

  I noticed the change in subject, and my mood took a sudden turn as well. “I want you to be there, and not just keeping a lookout. I want you really there. With me.” We were supposed to be broken up, according to my friends and family, but we still had to pretend to be just friends, even though we weren’t and would never be just friends. Even if the world ended and the reapers took every last mortal soul, I would still be madly in love with him. Nothing would change that.

  He turned to look at me again, but his gaze held mine a little longer than before, and this time with softness. Maybe a little sadness, too. “Okay. I’ll go with you.”

  I tried to hide my frown, but I knew I had failed by the look on his face. “I miss you. I mean, I miss you.”

  His body sagged a little, and he looked away from me to the floor at his feet. His hand tightened on the console and his thumb tapped it, but I wasn’t sure if that was from impatience or indecision. His eyes were dark, and his expression turned to stone. I hated when he froze up like that, impenetrable and distant. When he opened up to me, things were their best, like only a minute ago when we’d been laughing and teasing each other. Some things needed to be said, though. We couldn’t keep living each day pretending everything was fine. Every day, another tiny shard of my heart broke away. If we kept going on like this, I’d never be able to piece it all together again. Will had my heart, and it would never belong to anyone else, but if he didn’t take care of every little piece of it that broke away, then it might be lost to us both forever. I couldn’t let him forget that. If I forgot it, if we both did, then my heart would never be whole again.

  “I know,” he said, and left my car without another word.

  My friends noticed how quiet I was the next day. Kate especially. She’d been my best friend since elementary school, so she knew if anything was on my mind. In third-period civics, I felt the vibration of my cell and slipped it out. Kate had sent a text from her desk in the row next to mine.

  Why are u moping?

  Instinctively I touched the winged pendant around my neck for support. I frowned and stared at the sentence for a moment before I typed one word in response.

  Will.

  I watched the teacher, Mr. Johansson, until he turned his back to scrawl more definitions on the dry-erase board. The whiny squeaking of his markers was utterly maddening. In my peripheral vision, I watched Kate chew on her lip as she held her cell underneath her desk and texted back to me.

  Cant be friends?

  Well, that wasn’t the problem, of course. What would I write back? What should I write? The truth? Maybe a little of it.

  Still in love with him.

  No chance of getting back together?

  This was where I’d have to lie.

  Different places in our lives. College keeps him busy and he doesnt think itll work out.

  LAME.

  I know. Tell u more at lu—

  My phone was snatched out of my hand so fast, I bounced in my seat and my heart stopped. I jerked around and saw Mr. Johansson had come out of nowhere and now held my phone in his clammy hand. When had he started doing rounds through the aisles? I should have been paying attention. Getting detention was not going to look good to my mom when I was already on thin ice. My pulse pounded in my head, and I exchanged looks with Kate. Her face was completely calm, as if she had nothing to do with it and feared no consequences.

  Mr. Johansson tsked as his watery eyes and index finger scrolled through my text conversation. He smelled like a moldy old sweater in one of those antique shops my nana dragged me to on rainy Saturdays when I stayed with her. His hands were stained from the dry-erase markers he used all day, and I could just imagine the kind of grubby fingerprints he was leaving on my phone’s touch screen. “Sounds scandalous, ladies. Still in love with him, huh, Miss Monroe?”

  Mortified, I turned away from him and stared at my notebook in front of me. I heard my classmates’ laughter and whispers, and I felt all their eyes on me. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I thought teachers only read notes to the whole class in stupid teen movies. This was not happening. Not happening.

  “Detention, for both of you, after school today,” Johansson barked, his voice lilting proudly like he thought he was awesome for catching two girls texting each other. “You’ll have plenty of time then to copy down my notes from class instead of sending your own. You can have your phones back after that.”

  He grabbed Kate’s phone from her hand and sauntered up to the front of the room. I made a deliberate attempt not to hear another word he said for the rest of the hour.

  Kate stabbed her salad with her fork like she was trying to kill the cucumbers before she devoured them. She swore loudly enough to make her mother faint. “We should kill him.”

  “We so should.”

  “I can’t believe he read the texts out loud and gave us detention.”

  “Seriously.” Why couldn’t a reaper have eaten him instead of Mr. Meyer?

  “Babes!” Landon greeted us as he slid into the seat beside Kate and blew a raspberry on her cheek. She scowled and swatted at him, and then explained what had happened with Mr. Johansson.

  “Don’t sweat. Detention is only like an hour. You’ll have plenty of time to get ready for tonight.” Landon said it with a smile, but he failed to make either of us feel better.

  “Yeah, but it’s Friday,” Kate whined.

  “At least it’s not Saturday detention,” I offered.

  “True,” she said. “So what did you want to tell me? About Will?”

  “Girl talk,” Landon mumbled. “That’s my cue.” He got up and moved to the end of the table where our other friends, Chris and Evan, sat.

  “So?” Kate pressed.

  I let out a breath and ate a bite of my lunch. “I don’t know. It’s just so hard, seeing him so much and not being with him.”

  “He’s still tutoring you, right?”

  “Yeah. He’s coming tonight and to your party Saturday.”

  “Pretending to be friends is impossible when you like someone that much.”

  “Even if we stopped hanging out, I’d have to see him for our tutoring sessions.” If one considered my sparring, patrolling, and fighting evil soul-stealing monsters with Will tutoring.

  “Can’t you get a different tutor?”

  “Not really. We were sort of paired together.”

  “Has he kissed you since you broke up?”

  My stomach considered imploding. “No.”

  “Well, that makes things easier. I don’t know. Keep hanging out with him. If he still loves you, then it’s got to be hard for him, too. He’ll cave. He’s a guy. And it’s not like you can stop loving someone just like that. It takes a long time, not overnight. It
takes a long time to fall in love and to fall out of love. My advice is to remind him of what he’s missing as often as possible.”

  “Like how?”

  “Be cute. Be sexy. Just use what you have, lover. I’m sure you know what he likes best about you. Flaunt it. When he misses it—misses you—too much, he’ll come running back. You see him so often. It can’t be difficult.”

  I wished it was that easy. But she couldn’t know the entire story. I was divine, pure, untouchable in Will’s eyes. I was the Left Hand of God. Trying to seduce Will wasn’t going to get him to ignore Michael’s threat. But I knew that Will loved who I was, and that’s what I needed to remind him of.

  I smiled. “I might have it figured out. Thanks, Kate.”

  “You got it. Think I should start my own dating hotline?”

  I laughed. “You give everyone the same advice.”

  “Well, duh. You do know who you’re talking to, right?”

  “Yeah, well,” I started, and shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “I don’t think I’m ready for that with Will yet. Even if we were together.”

  “If you’re not ready, you’re not ready,” she said with a shrug. “You don’t want to look back on it and think, Oh my God, what was I thinking? Before you take that next step, make sure it’s a good idea. It doesn’t have to be special. You just don’t want to regret it.”

  I admired Kate for a moment, quietly reflecting on what she said. If Will and I slept together—and thinking about it made my insides flutter—would it be a good idea? Would I regret it later?

  She took another bite and winked at me, flashing a secretive smile. “You know it’s a good idea.”

  My cheeks burned and I shook my head, laughing. “Like I’ll ever get the chance to find out.”

  Did I have any regrets? I was afraid Will would become one. I’d lived countless lives, and I wondered about what had happened in those lives—the big and small things that I couldn’t remember. Had I ever been married? Had I ever had any children? Did I have descendants somewhere out in the world? My eyes bugged. That was too much to handle. Smaller things, Ell, I told myself. Don’t think that hard.

  7

  AT KATE’S PARTY ON SATURDAY NIGHT, I STOOD BY the snack table, picking out a plateful of crackers and cheese slices, with Will at my side. Nobody was in the kitchen besides us, but the commotion from the thumping music and crowd of people in the den poured over the half wall and allowed us no privacy. Kate’s basement was like an underground finished house, even complete with spare bedrooms. Her parents pretty much let her have the run of the place.

  Will reached out randomly and pulled on one of the thick ringlets I’d molded into my ponytail, and then let it bounce back into place. “You’re obnoxious,” I noted, and popped a cheese cube into my mouth.

  “Why’d you put your hair up?” he asked. His voice reminded me of a child pouting over not getting a second piece of candy.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Because I wanted to do something different with it tonight.”

  “Your hair is beautiful, and I like it better when it’s down,” he said wistfully.

  I peeked at him out of the corner of my eye, and the longing look in his gaze made my stomach bottom out. He watched me for another moment before leaving the kitchen. What was he getting at? He could not intentionally be a tease. Will never did that stuff on purpose. But if he was going to play this game, I could work it to my advantage.

  As soon as he’d gone, I scooted into the bathroom and pulled the hair tie out of my hair and shook it loose. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken my ponytail out only because he wanted me to, but I’d do it again just for the chance at stealing a kiss from him. Anyone who’d ever tasted his kisses wouldn’t blame me.

  When I emerged from the bathroom with my plate, I pushed my way through the pack of gyrating bodies and back over to the sofas, where Kate, Landon, and a handful of other seniors were sitting and laughing. The heavy bass coming from the speakers was beginning to make my left eye twitch.

  I sat down in a sofa chair and ate, watching them shout at one another over the loud music. Will appeared next to me and I glanced up at him, catching a triumphant flicker of a smile on his face. He might feel pretty cocky after I’d changed my hair, but by doing it I’d guaranteed that he’d be staring at me for the rest of the night. That smile of his faded when I flipped my hair over my shoulder, exposing my throat, and let my hair cascade down my back.

  Will, one point. Ellie, five thousand.

  “We have to go to Florida for spring break,” Landon said with certainty.

  “Any place but PCB,” Kate groaned.

  It took a moment of decoding for me to realize she meant Panama City Beach.

  “God, that place is disgusting,” she continued. “The last thing we need on our consciences before college is spending our senior spring break in some cheap seventh-story hotel room with unidentifiable stains on the walls, puking up ten-dollar whiskey.”

  I grimaced. Kate certainly had a way of making situations very … colorful.

  Landon turned to me. “Ell, are you in?”

  “Yeah,” I said through a mouthful of crackers. “If I can afford it and my parents actually let me go.” I wondered if I’d be able to take Will along. As my Guardian, he’d have to go. The most difficult task concerning that would be explaining to everyone why my non-boyfriend would be joining me on my out-of-state spring break.

  Will laid a hand on my shoulder and his fingers tightened. I turned my head to look up at him, but instead he bent over and whispered into my ear, “Don’t be angry.”

  That was random. “What are you—?” And then I saw him.

  Marcus.

  The reaper stood just inside the doors everyone used to get in and out of the basement without bothering Kate’s parents. He hadn’t even taken two steps into the party and already he was surrounded by girls. He stood a head taller than most people there, so he wasn’t easy to miss. Plus he was hot and he was fully aware of that, which probably made girls flock to him. Even in the low light, I could see that sweeping smile across his face that made him even more attractive.

  Of course I wasn’t fooled.

  I shot to my feet, but Will grabbed my hand before I took a single step.

  “He’s not going to hurt anyone,” Will said with a serious expression.

  That wasn’t even the point. He was a reaper, and I didn’t want my human friends exposed to the supernatural world. Will was more than enough. Despite my annoyance, I couldn’t help but admire Marcus for plainly displaying his gnarled burn scar around his collar as if he wore it proudly and felt no shame at all.

  When Marcus spotted me, he waved and pushed through the gaggle of girls. Blatant hate twisted their faces when they saw him ease right toward me.

  “Ellie, Will, how are—?”

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded.

  He blinked in surprise. “Well, I—”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” I said, not letting him finish. “I told you not to come.”

  Will’s voice was gentle in my ear, soothing. “He doesn’t mean any harm.”

  I glared at him. “Don’t defend him.” I turned to the other reaper. “Marcus, you need to leave.”

  “Oh, I’m not leaving,” he said with a soft laugh.

  “Who’s your friend?”

  I practically leaped into the air and spun around to see that Kate had walked up behind me. I slapped the back of my hand against Marcus’s chest, hard enough to force him back a step. “This is Marcus. Ignore him. He’s a bad seed.”

  As she checked him out, that growing smile of hers told me she was up to no good. She held out a hand for him to take. “Hi. I’m Kate. I’m a bad seed, too.”

  Instead of shaking her hand, he swept it up and bowed his head to press his lips against the back of her hand. “A pleasure.”

  If I were Kate, I would have swooned. But I wasn’t Kate and she wasn’t me. Instead of doing something apocalyptically u
ncool, she let two simple words roll off her tongue as if we were all in some classic Hollywood movie: “All mine.”

  Marcus let go of her hand and she turned to me. “Where did you find this one?”

  I thought quickly. “He’s a friend of Will’s … from … school.”

  She glowered at me. “Why do you always get the hot college guys, and why didn’t you tell me you were bringing an extra?”

  “Oh, I’m even more shocked than you are,” I said through my teeth as I smiled bitterly at Marcus. His eyes were glued on Kate. She had that effect.

  “So, Marcus,” Kate said. “You go to college with Will?”

  His smile widened almost imperceptibly. “Foreign exchange.”

  “Interesting. Where are you from?”

  “Spain,” he answered smoothly, voice like cream. “While I’m here, I hope to explore every last inch of America.”

  Her brow arched suggestively. “Oh?”

  I looked up at Will pleadingly. Strangely, he didn’t feel bothered at all by Marcus’s interest in a normal human girl. Was it common for reapers to date humans, or did they just sleep with them? If Will seemed to think it was okay for Marcus to do so, then was he guilty of it himself? The thought of Will with another girl was sickening, but I had to accept the fact that he was a guy, even if he was a reaper. Mortal girls practically threw themselves at him. Not to mention there was Ava and whatever history I suspected they had together.

  “Would you like a drink, Marcus?” Kate offered.

  “I’d love a drink,” Marcus replied.

  “Okay then.” She beckoned for him to follow her into the kitchen.

  I looked at Will. “Stay right here.”

  He frowned. “I’m not a dog, Ellie.”

  “Fine,” I chirped. “Then no biscuit for you.”

  When I smiled at him, he grinned and rolled his eyes. “You don’t have to throw him out. Just leave him be.”

  “I’m only going to talk to him,” I assured Will, and jogged to catch up with Marcus. I put a firm hand on his arm, stopping him before he went into the kitchen.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.