“Okay,” he says. He doesn’t go back to his Spanish. He leans against his locker, long after the bell rings, catching his breath.

Chapter 16

Square Ice-Cream Cones

Angela is practicing her violin when we come in. She likes to do it on the stage at the Pink Garter, under the lights, letting the music fill the empty theater. It’s not a song I recognize, but a beautiful, haunting kind of tune that winnows its way up to my dad and me as we stand at the entrance. When the last note fades away, we clap. Angela lowers the violin and shades her eyes to peer out at us, unable to see beyond the stage lights.

“Awesome song, Ange,” I call to her.

“Oh, C, it’s you. God, you scared me. I thought you were under house arrest. Not that I’m not glad to see you. I’ve been studying some wild theories this week—this historian who analyzed The Book of Enoch back at the turn of the century. Fascinating stuff.”

“I have some news myself. Can you come down?”

She starts down the stairs. Nothing motivates Angela like news. As soon as her eyes adjust to the dimmer light in the audience section, she sees Dad.

“Holy crap!”

“Not exactly.” I have to admit, I enjoy surprising Angela.

“You’re an Intangere,” she blurts out.

“Hello,” Dad says. “I’m Michael. Clara’s father.”

Cat’s really out of the bag now. It seems odd, since he and Mom worked so hard to keep this all a secret, and now he’s going around introducing himself as my dad like it’s the most natural thing in the world. But that’s who he is, I realize. He is simply incapable of hiding what he is.

“Clara’s father . . .” Angela’s eyes are like saucers. “Clara’s . . .”

“Yes.”

“But that would mean . . .”

“We’re putting a great deal of trust in you, Angela,” he says. “You must guard this information from everyone.”

She nods solemnly. “Right. Of course I will.” Smiles. “Wow. Didn’t see that one coming.” She looks at me. “Don’t tell me you’ve known about this the whole time.”

“I found out yesterday. When he showed up.”

“Wow.”

“You’re telling me.”

She turns to Dad all businesslike. “So. What do you think of Enoch?” He thinks for a minute. “He was a good man. I liked him. Although he allowed himself to be used in terrible ways.”

She obviously meant the book.

He meant the man.

“So you’re not a Quartarius,” she says then. Something about the tone of her voice makes me look at her. Her face is blank, like she’s trying really hard to hide what she feels.

Jealousy. Wow, jealousy. I feel it without even trying. All this time she thought she was the powerful one of the two of us. She was Dimidius, I was Quartarius, and she liked it that way.

Now . . . she doesn’t even have a name for what I am. And my dad is here, handsome and powerful and good, and he cares about me, and he’s a link to more information than all the dusty old books in the world. Because my dad is older than all the dusty old books in the world.

Her jealousy is like something slimy in my mind.

“Okay, let’s not get all melodramatic or anything,” I say. “It’s not such a big deal.”

“It’s a huge deal!” she exclaims, then sucks in a quick breath. “You were reading me.

You were using your empathy.”

“Sorry. But you’re feeling some pretty stupid crap about me, right?”

“You can’t do that,” she says, then remembers that my dad is right there and shuts up. Her face is alabaster pale, then suddenly a flare of blue light sparks from her hair just once, like a lone firework against the black backdrop of the theater.

“I couldn’t help it,” I say.

Yeah, she’s pissed.

“It was really nice to meet you, Mr. Gardner,” she says, “but I should get back to practicing.” She looks at me. “You know the way out.”

“Fine.” I head for the door. “Come on. We’re done here.”

“Nice to meet you as well, Angela,” Dad says. “You’re just as Maggie described—very impressive for having been alone in this for so long.”

“Thanks,” she says with a bit of a squeak, unable to hang on to her sucky attitude with him around.

Yep, my dad’s a charmer.

He teaches me to become invisible. Well, maybe teach is a strong word. It’s a complicated thing, something that involves the bending of light. He tells me all about it like it’s a formula a genius is going to scribble in marker on a window someday. I only half understand, but then he does it. He makes us both invisible, which proves handy for flying around wherever you want, without someone pointing up into the sky and saying, Look, an angel! It’s even better than Jeffrey’s white bird theory.

I’m still in a bad mood, after Angela, but it’s hard to stay mad when my dad radiates joy, and then I’m flying with him, the wind carrying me like notes of a song. I haven’t flown in so long I was afraid I forgot how, but it turns out to be as easy as breathing, with Dad. We spiral down, swooping the edges of the trees. We shoot upward, breaking the cloud banks, up and up until the air grows thin around us. We soar.

We end up at a car dealership in Idaho Falls. We come down behind a building, Dad in the lead, and he makes us reappear.

Angela would have peed herself to see this, I think. Serves her right.

But I used to be jealous, too. All that time, thinking she was the strong one, the one who always had it all together. She knew everything before I did, even about my mom dying. She mastered flight first. She could change the form of her wings. She’d met a real angel, and spent her summers in Italy.

“Don’t dwell on it,” Dad says. “Her reaction was natural. As was yours, before.”

“You read minds?”

“I can. I’m better with feelings. Like you.”

Like me. I can’t help but shake my head at the craziness of that idea, that he and I resemble each other, even in that small way.

“So, we’re in Idaho Falls,” I glance at my watch. Four p.m. It took us twenty minutes to get here, what would be more than a two-hour drive by car. We flew fast.

“What are we doing here?” I ask.

“I want to buy you a new car.”

What sane girl would say no to that?

Dad turns out to be quite the haggler. I’m pretty sure we get the base bottom price for the new white Subaru Forester we end up driving off with.