Chapter 39
XXXIX.
The scents of salted meat and coffee make my stomach growl as I take a seat at the round table in the kitchen.
My shoulders are looser since sobbing in the shower, as if the tears had been hiding beneath my skin this entire journey until I was able to open my veins and release them.
Sunlight warms my damp hair through the window, and I close my eyes as the light soaks into my skin.
Nate was right. This is a different heat from Dominus. Down there, the air was suffocating. Here, the sun slides against my body like velvet, warming everywhere it touches without burning it.
Mom sets a plate of food and a mug of coffee in front of me. “I wasn’t sure if you drank this. If not, I can make more tea. I know your father loved it. He drank like ten cups a day.”
I nod. “We have coffee back home. Father uses fans to blow the smell into the lots sometimes. It’s another form of torture he concocted. Letting the shadelings smell it without bringing them any.”
She sighs. “How I fell in love with that man is beyond me.”
“Me too.” I shove a slice of bacon into my mouth and chew, my thoughts racing. “This means I’m half angel? If you were one when you got pregnant?”
“Maybe.” She peers over my shoulders. “Your wings certainly indicate your mixed heritage. Angels typically have gold woven into their feathers. Except our wings are usually various shades of white. I’ve never seen anything like yours.”
“They’re making it difficult to walk around Earth. Some douchenozzle even grabbed a feather.”
She takes a sip of coffee and raises an eyebrow. “Your father never taught you to glamour yourself? That’s how he visits Earth, and how I blended in until I had you.”
“Nope.” I roll my eyes and stab my fork into the center of the egg.
The yolk bursts and flows across the white like lava over rocks.
“Fire lessons, sight lessons, fighting lessons. But nothing useful up here. He forbade me from visiting, and now I understand why. He didn’t want me to learn the truth about myself. He’s ashamed of it.”
Ashamed of me.
That’s why he wants to abandon me in Hell. So he never has to be reminded of this abomination he created.
I mash the top of my egg until it’s no longer recognizable.
She presses her lips into a line. “I know nothing about controlling fire, but I can teach you to glamour. I mean, that’s what I do. I’m a teacher.”
“You teach humans?” I look up in surprise, and yolk flies from my fork and spatters the white table.
“It comes naturally to me. Kind of my gift, if you will.” She frowns and wipes away the yolk massacre with her napkin.
“Your father probably didn’t teach you much about angels, but we all have our little gifts.
I am—was—the angel of learning. And I can definitely teach my daughter how to make her wings disappear.
” The gold in her eyes flickers as she jumps out of her chair and waves her hand for me to follow. “Stand up.”
My stomach flips. I’ve never had a parent who wanted to teach me anything.
Pushing my plate away, I ease out of my seat and stand beside her, noting that we’re the same height now that I’ve removed my boots.
“Using a glamour is easy,” she says. “You need to visualize yourself a different way—like, say, without your wings. If you will them to disappear, they will. It’s temporary, and only works so long as you’re consciously trying to hide them, but eventually it becomes second nature. Try it.”
I close my eyes and follow her directions. There’s a flutter, and the weight on my shoulders lessens. When I glance behind me, the wings are gone.
Cursing under my breath, I shove my hands onto my hips. “Seriously? I could’ve been walking around without these things in the way for months? Do you know what a pain it is to lug a pair of growing wings around Hell?”
“I suppose that’s why your father never taught you. Being able to change how you look to humans gives you more power over them.”
“I’m glad I don’t have to worry about my feathers getting caught on shit anymore.
” She grimaces at the swear, but I sink into my chair and grab the last piece of bacon from my plate.
“Everything makes so much sense now. Why I’ve never fit in at home, the wings, the weird visions. I only half belonged there.”
Mom wraps her hands around her coffee mug. “You’ve had visions?”
“I don’t know what I’d call them.” I cock my head. “Mr. B. says it’s the sight. I’m supposed to be able to see people’s sins. But sometimes I can see a person’s good deeds, too. Especially when—”
I clear my throat. I’m not exactly about to start telling my mother about making out with Nate. Not only is our time together private, but every time I think of him leaving, I want to lie in a dark room and never come out.
She smirks and leans back in her chair. “When did this start?”
“Only recently.”
She stares at me, and I shift in my seat.
I hope her other angel gift isn’t reading minds.
Her nails tap against her mug, the smile still perched on her lips. “Who is he?”
“Who is who?”
“Sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t assume these things. Is it she? Or maybe they?”
My knife squeaks against the plate as I scrape at a patch of hardened yolk with furrowed brows. “What are you talking about?”
The sun glints off my knife, lighting my mother’s eyes. Her golden irises shimmer with amusement. “Angel abilities—like the one to see the good in people for judgment—aren’t things you’re born with. You have to earn them.”
My brows scrunch further. “How?”
“One can only access their full angel capabilities when they’ve experienced the purest form of love.
Of course, love is abundant in Paradise, so we find it early on in each other up there.
But I suppose it’s a little less prevalent where you’re from.
Your father, while I’m sure he loved me, isn’t the most affectionate being. ”
“That’s ridiculous. I’ve never been in love.”
She tilts her head and stares at me, unblinking.
I drop my knife with a clatter. “I mean, there was the shadeling who broke out of Hell with me, Nate. He didn’t annoy me as much as I thought he would, but that’s not love. That’s…tolerance. I tolerated him, nothing more.”
A sly grin breaks across her face. “Uh-huh.”
I roll my eyes, my insides curling. “I didn’t love Nate. Sure, he was funny and brave and handsome and kind and a really good kisser, but he was also a pain in my ass.”
“They usually are, dear. It’s when you want them around despite that that you know you’re in love.”
I press my palms to my cheeks, remembering our time in the castle.
How he made me laugh, how kissing him felt like I’d found home for the first time. The pain when he walked away. The knowledge that it was for his own good because I’d never forgive myself if something happened to him.
“Oh no,” I whisper, covering my face. “I’m in love with that pain in my ass.”
“Told you.” Mom takes a satisfied gulp of coffee, then freezes. She leans forward, setting her mug down on the table with a clatter. “Wait. Did you say you broke him out of Hell? You didn’t bring him to Earth with you, did you?”
“Yes,” I say. “But he didn’t belong down there. He’s innocent.”
“That’s not the issue. For crying out loud, didn’t your father teach you anything? Nothing about what happens to souls when they try to leave?”
“He taught me humans suck.” I eye her over my now empty mug. “Almost as much as angels.”
She threads her fingers through her hair. “I’m going to ignore that last bit for now because we have something more urgent at hand, but we’ll address it in due time. Devica, you can’t just pull someone out of the afterlife. There are rules.”
I shrug. “Any rule that punishes Nate for a crime he didn’t commit is wrong.”
“I agree, but that doesn’t change that you’ve upset the balance by bringing him back to Earth.” She grabs our plates and takes them to the kitchen. “Where is he now?”
I fiddle with the hem of my—her—lemon-patterned dress.
The urgency in her voice spreads goose bumps over my skin.
“I don’t know. We split up at the park. I thought that’d be best, in case Father found us.
I didn’t want Nate punished for my crimes.
He’s been through enough. Why? What’s going to happen? ”
“If you pull someone out of the afterlife, it will find a way to take them back.” She sets the plates in the sink with a clatter and faces me, her eyebrows furrowed. “Devica, the boy you love is going to die all over again.”