Note to self: buy some nunchucks or something.

Another crash reverberates through the house, then a loud curse, the sound of breaking glass.

The noise is coming from Jeffrey’s room.

I throw on my robe and hurry down the hall. There’s another loud bang. He’s going to wake Mom up if he hasn’t already. I open his door.

“What are you doing?” I call into the dark, irritated.

I flip on the light.

Jeffrey is standing in the middle of the room with his wings out, dressed in just his jeans.

He yells in surprise as the light goes on, then swings around with his hand in front of his eyes like I’ve blinded him. His wings catch a stack of books on his desk, which crash to the floor. He’s soaking wet, his hair clinging to his face, a pool forming under him on the hardwood. And he’s laughing.

“I can’t remember how to retract my wings,” he says, which he obviously finds hilarious.

I look beyond him to the open window, where the blinds are all twisted up and dangling from one side.

“Did you just get home?” I ask.

“No,” he says, grinning. “I went to bed early. I’ve been here all night.” He takes a step toward me and stumbles. I catch him by the arm to steady him. That’s when he laughs into my face and I get the full, nasty brunt of his breath.

“You’re drunk,” I whisper in amazement.

“At least I didn’t drive,” he says.

This is bad.

I stand there for a minute, hanging on to him, trying to get my brain to function at four in the morning. I could go get Mom, assuming she isn’t already on her way up the stairs to find out what the racket is about. If she still has the strength to make it up the stairs. I don’t even know what she’ll do or, worse, what this might do to her. This is way beyond any kind of punishment she’s ever had to dole out. This is like grounded-for-a-year kind of behavior.

He’s still laughing like he finds this whole situation incredibly funny. I grab him by the ear. He yelps, but he can’t really fight me off. I drag him over to his bed and push him down on it, face-first. Then I tackle his wings, trying to fold them, press them down to rest against his back. I wish there was some magic word in Angelic that would instantly retract them— fold yourself!

comes to mind—but at least if I can get them to fold up he won’t do any more damage.

Jeffrey says something into the pillow.

“I can’t hear you, moron,” I reply.

He turns his head. “Leave me alone.”

“Whatever,” I mutter, still trying to get his wings lined up. “Where’s your shirt? And how did you get all wet?”

That’s when I notice his gray feathers. The wings are lighter than when I saw them the night of the fire. Then they were a dark gray, I hoped from soot. My wings were covered that night too, but it washed off, mostly. Jeffrey’s wings are still gray. Dove gray, I would call it. And there are a couple of feathers on the back of one wing that are the color of tar.

“Your feathers . . .” I lean in closer to look at them.

He chooses that moment to remember how to retract his wings. I fall on him clumsily, then scramble off. He laughs.

“You are in such deep trouble,” I say furiously.

He rolls over on his back and looks at me with an expression that’s so mean it literally sends shivers down my spine. It’s like he hates me.

“What, you’re going to tell Mom?”

“I should,” I stammer.

“Go ahead,” he snarls. “It’s not like you never sneak out. Tell Mom. I dare you. See what happens.”

He sits up. He’s still glaring like any minute he’s going to lunge at me. I take a few steps back.

“All you ever do is think about yourself,” he says. “Your vision. Your dumb dreams.

Your stupid boyfriend.”

“That’s not true,” I say shakily.

“You’re not the only one who’s important here, you know. You’re not the only one with a purpose.”

“I know—”

“Just leave me alone.” He smiles, a hard, ironic baring of his teeth. “Leave me the hell alone.”

I get out of his room. I fight the urge to scream. I want to run downstairs and wake up Mom and get her to fix it. Fix him. Instead I go to the linen closet. I get a towel. Then I go back to Jeffrey’s room and throw the towel at him. It hits him in the chest. He looks up at me, startled.

“I know your life is crap,” I tell him. “It’s not exactly a picnic being me either.” My heart is pounding, but I try to look cool and collected. “I won’t tell Mom this time. But I swear, Jeffrey, if you don’t pull yourself together, you’ll be sorry. You pull anything like this again, Mom will be the last thing you have to worry about.”

Then I march out of his room before he can see me cry.

Chapter 13

Go Out with a Bang

“You look lovely, Clara,” Billy says when I come into Mom’s bedroom in my prom dress.

Just for her sake I do a twirl, the layers of my red silk ball gown ballooning around my legs. The dress is a little extreme. Plus it cost a small fortune, but when Angela, Billy, and I saw it in the mall in Idaho Falls last week, it kind of called to me. Wear me, it said. Then Billy said something like what the heck, it’s your last formal dance of high school, go out with a bang. The theme of prom this year is Paradise Found—yep, organized by seniors who were forced to read Paradise Lost with Mr. Phibbs this year. My favorite book of all time.

It’s either this or a fig leaf.

I tried not to fixate on that spot in front of the GNC where I first felt Samjeeza’s gaze on me. I used to find it mildly funny that I saw a Black Wing at the mall. I tried to picture him shopping, drifting through the bookshelves of Barnes & Noble with the latest Dan Brown novel, in Macy’s fingering the ties, perusing the underwear, because even angels need underwear if they’re going to walk among us, right? I remember laughing about it with Angela, and when I think about that now, how we could joke about it, I think, man, we were dumb. We knew Black Wings were terrifying and powerful, we knew Mom’s face went sheet white that day in the mall, we were scared too, but we had no idea. So I tried not to look at where he stood and I tried not to remember the way his voice rasped into my ear telling me not to be afraid. The way he thought of me as something he could take. And almost did.

The other off thing about this mall trip was that this time, Mom wasn’t there. She sent Billy. It feels like Billy is already stepping in for Mom, always in the house these days, cracking Mom-style jokes, taking me shopping, and now it’s Billy and not Mom who helps me fix my hair for prom. It’s Billy who tells me how lovely I am, while Mom lays back against the pillows, watching with tired eyes.