01 Unearthly

  Tucker doesn’t see me right away. He smiles the way he does when he delivers the punch line for a joke, a wry, knowing little flash of teeth and dimple. I melt seeing that smile, remembering the times when it’s been aimed at me. Murphy laughs, then they both hop out of the truck and circle back to the trailer to start unloading the rafts. I stand up, my heart beating so fast I think it’s going to shoot right out of my chest and hit him.

  Murphy rolls open a huge garage door, then turns back toward the truck, which is when he sees me standing there. He stops in his tracks and looks at me. Tucker is busily unfastening the rafts from the trailer.

  “Tuck,” says Murphy slowly. “I think this girl’s here for you.”

  Tucker goes completely still for a minute, like he’s been hit with a freeze ray. The muscles in his back tighten and he straightens and turns to look at me. A succession of emotions flashes across his face: surprise, panic, anger, pain. Then he settles back on anger. His eyes go cold. A muscle ticks in his jaw.

  I wilt under his glare.

  “You need a minute?” Murphy asks.

  “No,” says Tucker in a low voice that would break my heart if it wasn’t already in pieces around my feet. “Let’s get this done.”

  I stand like I’m rooted to the spot as Tucker and Murphy drag the rafts from the trailer and into a garage on the side of the office. Then they inspect each one, work through some kind of checklist with the life vests, and lock the garage up.

  “See ya,” says Murphy, then jumps into a Jeep and gets the heck out of here.

  Tucker and I stand in the parking lot staring at each other. I still can’t form words. All the things I planned to say flew out of my head the minute I laid eyes on him. He’s so beautiful, standing there with his hands shoved in his pockets, his hair still damp from the river, his eyes so blue. I feel tears in my eyes and try to blink them away.

  Tucker sighs.

  “What do you want, Clara?”

  The sound of my name is strange coming from him. I’m not Carrots anymore. My hair is back to blond. He can probably tell even now that I’m not quite what I appear to be.

  “I’m sorry I lied to you,” I say finally. “You don’t know how much I wanted to tell you the truth.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  “Because it’s against the rules.”

  “What rules? What truth?”

  “I’ll tell you everything now, if you’ll hear me out.”

  “Why?” he asks sharply. “Why would you tell me now, if it’s against the rules?”

  “Because I love you.”

  There. I said it. I can’t believe I actually said it. People cast around those words so carelessly. I always cringe whenever I hear kids say it while making out in the hall at school. I love you, babe. I love you, too. Here they’re all of sixteen years old and convinced that they’ve found true love. I always thought I’d have more sense than that, a little more perspective.

  But here I am, saying it and meaning it.

  Tucker swallows. The anger fades from his eyes but I still see shadows of fear.

  “Can we go somewhere?” I ask. “Let’s go somewhere off in the woods, and I’ll show you.”

  He hesitates, of course. What if I’m an alien invader trying to lure him to a secluded place so I can suck his brains out? Or a vampire, ravenous for his blood?

  “I won’t hurt you.” Be not afraid.

  His eyes flash with anger like I’ve come right out and called him chicken.

  “Okay.” His jaw tightens. “But I drive.”

  “Of course.”

  Tucker drives for an hour, all the way out to Idaho, into the mountains above Palisades Reservoir. The silence between us is so thick it makes me want to cough. We’re both trying to look at each other without getting caught looking at each other. At any other time I’d find us hilarious and lame.

  He turns down a dirt road that’s marked as private property and heads past the log cabins tucked back in the trees, up the mountainside until we come to a big wire fence. Tucker jumps out and fumbles with his keys. Then he unlocks the rusty metal padlock that holds the gate together, gets back in the truck, and drives through. When we reach a broad, empty clearing, he puts the truck in park and finally looks at me.

  “Where are we?” I ask.

  “My land.”

  “Yours?”

  “My grandpa was going to build a cabin here but then he got cancer. He left the land to me. It’s about eight acres. It’s where I’d come if I ever had to bury a dead body or something.”

  I stare at him.

  “So tell me,” he says.

  I take a deep breath and try not to focus on his eyes staring me down. I want to tell him. I’ve always wanted to tell him. I just don’t exactly know how.

  “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “How about you start with the part about you being some kind of supernatural being made of light.”

  My breath catches.

  “You think I’m made of light?”

  “That’s what I saw.” I can see the fear in him again, in the way he averts his eyes and shifts slightly to put more space between us.

  “I don’t think I’m made of light. What you saw is called glory. It’s kind of hard to explain, but it’s this way of communicating, being connected to each other.”

  “Communicating. You were trying to communicate with me?”

  “Not intentionally,” I say, blushing. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. I’d never done it before, actually. Mom said that sometimes strong emotions can trigger it.” I’m babbling. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out. Glory tends to have that effect on humans.”

  “And you’re not human,” he says flatly.

  “I’m mostly human.”

  Tucker leans back against the door of the truck and sighs in frustration. “Is this a joke, Clara? Is this some kind of a trick?”

  “I’m a Nephilim,” I say. “We don’t usually use that term, because it means ‘fallen’ in Hebrew, and we don’t like to think of ourselves as fallen, you know, but that’s what we’re called in the Bible. We prefer the term angel-blood.”

  “Angel-blood,” he repeats.

  “My mom is a half angel. Her father was an angel and her mother was human. And that makes me a quarter angel, since my dad’s an average Joe.”

  The words tumble out of me fast, before I can change my mind. Tucker stares at me like I’ve grown an extra head.

  “So you’re part angel.” He sounds exactly the way I did when Mom first broke the news to me, like he’s making a list of mental institutions in the area.

  “Yes. Let’s get out of the truck.”

  His eyes widen slightly. “Why?”

  “Because you won’t believe me until I show you.”

  “What does that mean? You’ll do that light thing again?”

  “No. I won’t do that again.” I put my hand down lightly on his arm, trying to reassure him. My touch seems to have the opposite effect. He pulls away quickly, opens the door, and hops out of the truck to get away from me.

  I get out, too. I walk to the middle of the clearing and face him.

  “Now, don’t be afraid,” I tell him.

  “Right. Because you’re going to show me that you’re an angel.”

  “Part angel.”

  I summon my wings and pivot slightly to show him. I don’t extend them or fly, the way Mom did to prove it to me. I think seeing them, folded against my back, will be enough.

  “Holy crap.” He takes a step back.

  “I know.”

  “This isn’t a joke. This isn’t some head game or magic trick. You really have wings.”

  “Yeah.” I walk toward him slowly, not wanting to spook him, then turn my back to him again so that he can see them completely. He lifts a hand like he’s going to touch the feathers. My heart feels like it will stop, waiting. No one else has ever handled my wings, and I wonder what it will feel like, to have him touchin
g me there. But then he pulls his hand back.

  “Can you fly?” he asks in a strangled voice.

  “Yes. But mostly I’m a normal girl.” I know he won’t believe that. I wonder if he’ll ever treat me like a normal girl again. That’s part of what I love about being with Tucker. He makes me feel normal, not in a plain Jane, nondescript way, but like I’m enough, just being me, without all the angel stuff. I almost start to cry thinking I’m going to lose that.

  “And what else? What else can you do?”

  “Not much, really. I’m only a quarter angel. I don’t even know all that the half angels can do. I can speak any language. I guess that comes in handy for the angels when they’re delivering messages.”

  “That’s how you understood the Korean lady at Canyon. And how you talked to the grizzly bear?”

  “Yes.”

  I glance down at my feet. I’m too afraid to see his face and know that it’s all over. The kiss was three days ago, but it somehow feels like another person’s life. Another girl, standing in the barn, kissing Tucker for the first time. Another girl he loves. Not me. Not little pathetic me humiliating myself by starting to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” I choke out.

  He’s quiet. Tears drip off my chin. He lets out a slow, shaky breath.

  “Don’t cry,” he says. “That’s not fair.”

  I laugh and sob at the same time.

  “It’s okay,” he whispers. His fingers brush at the tears on my cheeks. “Don’t cry.”

  Then he puts his arms around me, wings and all. I curl my arms around his neck and bury my face in his chest and breathe in the smell of the river on him. Somewhere in the woods a crow caws. A blackbird answers. And then we’re kissing and everything goes away but Tucker.

  “Okay, wait,” he says after a minute, pulling back. I blink up at him in a daze. Please, please, I think, don’t let this be the part where you change your mind.

  “Is it okay to kiss you?” he asks.

  “What?”

  “I won’t get struck by lightning?”

  I laugh. Then I lean in and brush my lips lightly against his. His hands on my waist tighten.

  “No lightning,” I say.

  He smiles. I run my finger along the length of his dimple. He lifts a strand of my hair (which has popped free from my ponytail) and inspects it in the sunlight.

  “Not red,” I say with a shrug.

  “I always felt like there was something off about your hair.”

  “So you thought you’d torture me by calling me Carrots?”

  “I still thought I’d never seen anyone as beautiful as you.” He drops his head and rubs the back of his neck, embarrassed. He’s blushing.

  “You’re a real Romeo,” I say, blushing, too, trying to cover it by teasing him, but then he puts his arms around me again and runs his hands over my wings. His touch is light, careful, but it sends a wave of pleasure straight to the pit of my stomach so strong that my knees get weak and wobbly. I lean into him and press my cheek to his shoulder, working to keep the air going in and out of my lungs as he strokes slowly up and down the length of my wings.

  “So you’re an angel, that’s all,” he murmurs.

  I kiss his shoulder. “Part angel.”

  “Say something in the angel language.”

  “What should I say?”

  “Something simple,” he says. “Something true.”

  “I love you,” I whisper automatically, shocking myself yet again. The words in Angelic are like murmurs of wind and stars, a low, clear music. His arms tighten around me. I gaze up into his face.

  “What did you say?” he asks, but his eyes tell me he heard me loud and clear.

  “Oh, you know. I just kinda like you.”

  “Huh.” He kisses the corner of my mouth and pushes a strand of hair away from my face. “I really, really like you, too.”

  So I’m in love. That crazy, forget to eat, float around in a daze, talk on the phone all night and bounce out of bed every morning hoping to see him kind of love. The days of summer fly past, and every day I find something else I love about him.

  It feels like no one else knows him the way I do. I know that he doesn’t really dig country music, but it’s part of the whole Western scene so he tolerates it. He admits that he inwardly cringes every time he hears the twang of a steel guitar. I think it’s hilarious whenever we hear it, knowing that. He loves Cheetos. He believes one of the greatest tragedies in this world is the way the land keeps getting eaten up, all the wild spaces filled with condos and dude ranches. He both loves and hates the Lazy Dog, for that reason. His recurring fantasy is to go back in time and ride the range in those days before fences, out in the heat with the little dogies, driving them across the land like a real cowboy.

  He’s good to people, respectful. He doesn’t cuss. He’s kind. Thoughtful. He likes to pick me wildflowers, which I weave into garlands for my hair so I can smell them all day long. He doesn’t make a big deal about me being different. In fact, he hardly ever brings up the whole angel-blood thing, although sometimes I see him looking at me with a kind of curiosity in his eyes.

  I love how he sometimes gets embarrassed by the mushy stuff between us and then his voice gets all gruff and he tickles me or kisses me to shut us both up. Boy, do we ever kiss. We make out like champions.

  Tucker never takes it too far, though I sometimes want him to. He’ll kiss me, kiss me, kiss me until my head swims and my body goes light and heavy at the same time, kiss me until I start tugging at our clothes, wanting as much contact as I can get. Then he groans, grabs my wrists, and moves away from me, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths for a minute.

  I think he seriously believes that deflowering an angel could mean an eternity in fiery hell.

  “What about church?” he asks me one night after he pulls away, gasping for breath. It’s the first week of August. We’re lying on a blanket in the bed of his pickup truck, a riot of bright stars over our heads. He kisses the back of my hand and then twines my fingers with his. For a second I forget the question.

  “What?”

  He laughs. “Church. Why doesn’t your family go to church?”

  Another thing I usually love about Tucker: He’s unflinchingly honest, forthright to a fault. I gaze up at the stars.

  “I don’t know. My mom took us every Sunday when we were kids, but not since we got older.”

  He rolls over to look at me.

  “But you know that there’s a God. I mean, you’re part angel. You have proof, right?”

  What proof do I really have? Wings. The speech thing. Glory. All powered by God, or so I’ve been told. God seems like the most likely explanation.

  “Well, there’s the glory thing,” I say. “How we connect with God. But I don’t know a lot about that. I’ve only felt it that one time.”

  “What was it like?”

  “It was good. I can’t really describe it. It was like I could feel everything you felt, your heart beating, your blood moving through your veins, your breath, like we were the same person, and we felt this incredible . . . joy. Didn’t you feel it, too?”

  “I don’t think so,” he admits, glancing away. “I was just so crazy happy to be kissing you. And then you were glowing. And then you were shining so bright I couldn’t look at you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m not,” he says. “I’m glad it happened. Because then I got to know who you really are.”

  “Oh yeah? Who am I?”

  “A really, really spiritual, spoiled California chick.”

  “Shut up.”

  “It’s cool, though. My girlfriend is an angel.”

  “I’m not an angel. I don’t live in heaven or play a golden harp or have heart-to-heart conversations with the Almighty.”

  “You don’t? You don’t have a big Christmas dinner with God?”

  “No,” I say, giggling. “We have our own traditions, but we don’t actually get to hang out with God. My mom says that ever
y angel-blood meets God eventually, though, after our purpose on earth is fulfilled. Face-to-face. I can’t really imagine it, but that’s what she says.”

  “Yeah, but that’s the same for everybody, isn’t it? Humans too?”

  “What?”

  “We all supposedly get to meet God. When we die.”

  I stare at him. I’ve never thought of it like that before. I assumed the meeting was like a kind of debriefing about our purpose. The idea has always terrified me.

  “Right,” I say slowly. “We all get to meet God someday.”

  “So maybe I should keep going to church.”

  “Church couldn’t hurt.”

  I stroke his cheek, totally loving the hint of stubble under my hand. I want to say something profound, something about how grateful I am that he can accept me for who I am, wings and everything, but I know that would sound cheesy beyond words. Then I’m thinking about church. Mom and Jeffrey and me in church when I was little, sitting in the pews, singing and praying with everybody else. Falling under the colored light of the stained-glass angels.

  We’re bumping along a dirt road in Bluebell and I’m trying to behave myself, keep a Bible’s worth of space between us so that we will actually end up fishing, unlike last time. But then he reaches over to shift, and when he’s done he puts his hand on my knee and I instantly get all quivery.

  “Ruffian.” I grab the offending hand and trap it in mine. His thumb strokes over the top of my knuckles, sending my heart into overdrive.

  “Sometimes you say the weirdest things, I swear,” he says.

  “It’s from having a mom who’s over a hundred years old. And the language thing,” I explain. “I understand every word I hear. Gives me an awesome vocabulary.”

  “Awesome,” he teases.

  “Exemplary, as a matter of fact. Hey, have you talked to your sister lately?”

  “Yeah, a couple nights ago,” he says.

  “Did you tell her about us?”

  He frowns. “Am I not supposed to?”

  I smile. “You can tell her. But I think she already knows. I talked to her yesterday and she was acting all funny.”

  “So you didn’t tell her.”