“Didn’t get that ancient text you wanted on eBay?” asks Christian.
She glares at him. “Funny.”
“Sorry, Ange,” I say. “Can I help?”
“The vision doesn’t give me very much to go on. There’s a set of wide steps, a bunch of stone archways, and people drinking coffee. That describes practically any college in the country.”
“Look for trees,” I tell her. “I have a good book if you’re trying to identify what area certain trees grow in.”
“Well, I hope I get something decent to go on soon,” mutters Angela. “I have to apply, you know? Like, now.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Christian says nonchalantly. He glances down at his notebook, where I think he’s working on calculus homework. “You’ll figure it out when you’re supposed to figure it out.” Then he looks up, and his eyes catch mine again.
“Did you?” I can’t help but ask, even though I know the answer. “Did you figure it out when you were supposed to?”
“No,” he admits with a short, almost bitter laugh. “I don’t know why I said that. Drilled into me, I guess. That’s what my uncle always tells me.” He hasn’t talked much about his uncle. Or his purpose, outside of the initial “I was having visions of you in the forest fire, I thought I was supposed to save you, and now I’m confused” conversation. Once, he showed us that he could fly without flapping his wings, Superman style, hovering over the stage like David Blaine while Angela, Jeffrey, and I gaped up at him like idiots.
Occasionally he gives Angela some random angel fact, so she’ll be satisfied with what he’s contributing to the group. He seems to know more than we do, but mostly he’s been pretty tight lipped.
“So,” Angela says, and the expression on her face makes me nervous. She gets up and crosses to stand next to Christian’s table. “What happens now?”
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“You haven’t fulfilled your purpose, right?”
He stares at her.
“All right,” she says when he doesn’t say anything. “At least answer this: when you had your vision before, did it come during the day, or at night?” He looks off at the shadows in the back of the stage area for a minute, deciding, then glances back at her. “At night.”
“You dreamed it?”
“Usually. Except one time I was awake.”
Prom. When we danced, and then we had the vision, together.
“Well, Clara’s having a new dream,” Angela says. I give her what I hope is my most angry glare, but she ignores it, of course. “Like maybe it could be a vision. We need to figure out what it is.”
Christian looks at me, immediately interested. I’m literally standing in the spotlight, so I jump down from the stage and walk over to them, feeling his gaze following me.
“What vision?” he asks.
“It might only be a dream,” Angela answers for me. “But you’ve had it what, Clara, ten times now?”
“Seven. I’m walking up a hill,” I explain, “through a forest, but not like the hill in my—in our vision. It’s a sunny day, no fire. Jeffrey’s there, and he’s wearing a suit for some reason.
Angela’s there—at least she was last time I had it. And some other people too . . .” I hesitate.
“And you’re there,” I say to Christian.
I can’t tell him about how he takes my hand, how he whispers straight into my mind without saying anything out loud.
“It’s probably only a dream, you know?” I manage. “Like my subconscious working something out, my fears, maybe, or like those dreams where you show up to school naked.”
“What does the forest look like?” he asks.
“That’s the weird thing about it. It’s like a normal forest, but there are these stairs—a set of concrete stairs in the middle of the trees. And a fence.”
“What about you, have you been having any strange dreams?” asks Angela. “Some clue to add to all this craziness?”
Christian finally drags his gaze away from mine to look at her.
“No dreams.”
“Well, personally I think it’s more than a dream,” she says. “Because it’s not over.”
“What?”
“Your purpose. There’s no way you go through all that, the visions and the fires and everything, and then that’s it. No way. There has to be more.” My empathy chooses this moment to kick in, and I get a jolt of what Christian’s feeling: Resolve. Determination. A yearning underneath everything that makes me catch my breath. And certainty. Pure, absolute certainty. That Angela is right. That it’s not over. That there is more to come.
That night when I come into my room there’s someone standing on the eaves outside my window. In a split second all my mom’s baloney about Samjeeza being injured and vain and biding his time to come after us seems like exactly that— baloney—and I think, it’s him, it was his sorrow I felt the other day, I knew it, and my heart goes into crazy-panicked mode and my blood starts pumping and I glance wildly around my room for a weapon. Which is a joke because, a) I don’t have weapons so much as average teenage girl stuff in my room, and b) even if I were to procure something other than a nail file to defend myself with, what weapon works on a Black Wing? Glory, I think, got to call glory, but then I also think, wait. Why is he just standing there?
Why hasn’t he started in on the cheesy evil I-will-kill-you-little-bird lines yet?
It’s not Samjeeza, I realize then. It’s Christian. I can feel his presence plain as day, now that I’ve calmed down enough to think straight. He’s come to tell me something. Something important.
I sigh, put on a sweatshirt, and open the window.
“Hey,” I call out.
He looks over from his spot on the edge of the roof, a place that perfectly overlooks the mountains, which are still glowing a faint snow-dusted white in the dark. I climb out the window and sit down next to him. It’s freezing outside, raining a chilly, miserable drizzle. I immediately hug my arms around myself and try not to shiver.
“Cold?” he asks.
I nod. “Aren’t you?” He’s wearing a black T-shirt and his usual Seven jeans, gray this time. I hate that I recognize his clothes.
He shrugs. “A little.”
“Angela says that angel-bloods are supposed to be immune to cold. It helps with the flying at high altitudes, I guess.” I shiver again. “I must not have gotten the memo.” He smiles. “Maybe that power only applies to mature angel-bloods.”