When I got home from school, I burst into my room, anxious to find the flower garland I’d left on the armchair. I nearly dropped my books in surprise. Gavin was sitting on my bed.
“Crap, you scared me!” I said, my entire body warming at the sight of him again. He glowed with gorgeousness.
I conjured every ounce of restraint I had to stop from jumping onto his lap. He was real. Our trip, his village, the secret place at the top of the world, flying back home . . . it had all happened. He was live, in the flesh, sitting on my crocheted bedspread, waiting for me.
“Wait, how did you get in here?” I tried to sound casual to cover my elation.
“You left the window open.” His tone was serious. I wondered if he was going to chide me for neglecting my safety.
“Did you see my grandparents?” I asked, to remind him I didn’t live alone. I also wasn’t sure if they would care I had a boy in my room, but I didn’t want them to tell me I couldn’t, either.
“They’re not here,” he said. “But don’t worry. I can’t stay long. I only came to say good-bye.” For the first time, I noticed he wasn’t smiling.
“Good-bye?”
He must have seen my face fall, because his own darkened with pain. He waved his hand, as if trying to physically change the mood in the room. “It’s good news, really. The Warrior party successfully chased the demons out of the area. There’s no more threat to Aviemore, or to you.” He attempted a half smile. “You’re rid of me.”
Doubt cast a shadow over me. Our first reunion after an entirely magical day was supposed to be passionate, or at the very least more familiar. I knew I hadn’t imagined the trip, but was I completely delirious imagining he liked me?
“Don’t you mean you’re rid of me?” I challenged, trying to stir up some emotion in him. “No more babysitting, right?”
“I was relieved of Guardian duty, yes.” He chose his words carefully. “Restored to Warrior Patrol. I’m still assigned to Aviemore, just not to you in particular.”
Still assigned to Aviemore. Hope beat in my chest like a drunken butterfly. Rid of my guardianship, we could be together more openly. No rules. No bitterness that he was in an inferior position. It was great news.
Relieved, I crossed the room and stood in front of him. I couldn’t help myself; I reached out to touch him. “We can see each other more easily now, right?”
He gently circled his hand over my outstretched wrist and held it still. “You seeing me while I was working is what placed you in danger in the first place. So that doesn’t happen again, you won’t be seeing me again. Ever.” He moved my hand to the side, stood up, and broke contact with me.
My heart dropped to the floor. “Why? You said the demons were gone.”
“Those demons are gone, but there’s still something going on in the area that I have to . . . I really can’t talk about it.”
His passivity infuriated me. “Right.” I threw my hands in the air. “Or I’ll be tortured.”
“It’s not a game.” His face flared with intensity. “This is serious, Maren! I’m serious! Don’t joke about things like torture. If you saw . . . This is exactly why I can’t get close to you . . .”
“It’s too late, isn’t it?” I interrupted. “You’re already close to me. Too close, and it’s freaking you out. That’s why you’re doing this.” I held my breath and waited to see how he would react. His face drained of all color. He sunk back onto my bed and buried his head in his hands.
“I can’t,” he whispered at the floor.
“Can’t what?” I crawled onto the bed next to him and brushed at imaginary lint on his shoulder just to touch him. The air crackled with tension.
“I can’t be with you,” he moaned. “I want to. Believe me . . . The temptation is crushing . . .” He lifted his eyes and locked me in a sultry stare.
“I want it too,” I whispered. “Being with you is just so . . . easy. I can’t explain why it feels right, but it does. You know it does.”
“But it’s wrong.” His gaze was penetrating and intimate. “I can’t do this to you.”
I swallowed hard and blinked to keep some semblance of control. “Do what to me? Break my heart? Because you’re kind of already doing that.”
A heavy grief colored his voice. “I can’t change who I am, Maren. I’m an angel, and I’m a Warrior. I have a dangerous job.”
“I know your job is dangerous.” I wiggled a loose stitch on the bedspread, kept my own voice even and calm. “You’ve told me. I don’t care. I can handle it.”
“I can’t handle it!” He slammed his hand on the mattress. “Loving you would make you a target to every demon I ever go after. They’ll hunt you down and kill you, and I can’t put you in that kind of danger!” He thumped to his feet. “I’m sorry, Maren. I’m sorry it has to be this way. But it’s done. It’s over. You need to stay away from me, and I from you. For good.” He leapt for the open window, climbed on the ledge, and disappeared.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t follow him, couldn’t even watch him leave. Confusion ricocheted from my head to my heart and back again. Did he just tell me he loved me and then broke up with me in the same breath?
I threw myself down on the bed, prepared to cry my eyes out, when I spotted a white bundle on the floor near the headboard. I stretched out my arm, hooked it with my finger, and brought it close. It was Gavin’s shirt. The shirt I’d wrapped around me when he’d flown me back. I lifted it to my cheek. I could smell Gavin in the fibers. And, somehow, the tunic was still warm.
I scrunched it into a ball, clutched it to my heart, and let my tears wash over it. What had I done in a past life to deserve so much heartbreak in this one?
I fumbled at my neck for the Tudor rose necklace from my mom and rubbed its cool glass petals to soothe myself. Instead, self-pity tried to swallow me whole. I finally found a guy I liked who actually liked me back, and somehow I’d messed it up. How? Could I ever fix it? And why did it have to hurt so badly?
I never talked to my mom about boys, because there had never been any worth mentioning. Now there was one, I was desperate to talk to her, and she was gone. So was he, I reminded myself.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I wiped my face with the back of my hand and pulled it out. I hit the side button and found a text from Jo:
OUR BOG BUTTER IS GOING TO THE EDINBURGH MUSEUM!!
HOW COOL IS THAT? IM AT TV STATION. TALK LATER
Sweet Jo, she was always so darn perky. How did she manage it when she had a crappy life too? I thought about calling her, but I didn’t want to interrupt her with my sob story. And I wasn’t sure her eternal optimism was going to help anyway. I needed to talk to someone a little more dark and twisted.
I dialed Hunter.
“Hey, I was just thinking about you!” she said.
“Really?” I sniffed. “Why?”
“Wait, are you crying?”
I sniffed again. “No, I mean . . . not anymore.”
“Aw, is it your mom?” she asked.
“Kind of, but not totally.”
“A guy?”
“Good guess.”
“It’s always a guy, isn’t it? What did he do? Want me to come knock him out for you?”
I smiled into the phone. Calling Hunter was definitely a good idea. I told her about meeting Gavin in the woods, him showing up at my house, and my trip to his village.
She was impressed, and started babbling on, probably to distract me from the painful parts. “Oh, you’re so lucky! I’ve never met an angel. I know my parents worked with them. I can’t wait to work for the Abbey myself. Finally get out of here . . .”
“Where is the Abbey?” I interrupted. I rolled over and slid my mom’s journal out from under my bed.
“France.”
I slipped the decoded letter from between the pages and ran my fingers over the smooth outside of the envelope. “Le Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy?”
“Why are you asking me if you already know?”
“I don’t. I found an envelope my mom had addressed there right before she died.”
“So you found something?” Her voice went up an octave; from excitement or fear, I couldn’t tell.
“Yeah,” I admitted. I described the heart box, the journal, and the letter.
“How did you know it was written in invisible ink?” she asked. “Did you decode it?”
“Yes,” I said, remembering the cup of tea. “Sort of on accident.”
“There are no accidents,” she reminded me. “It’s amazing you could do that, you know. Not everyone can cryptanalyze. You must have inherited that from your parents. The Abbey’s going to want you for sure!”
“Maybe I don’t want them,” I replied. “And I think you were right.”
“Of course I was,” she said. “About what?”
“My mom.” I sucked in my breath and closed my eyes. “I don’t think it was an accident that she died. I think she was killed . . . by demons. I think a demon dropped her.” Like the hiker from Culloden. “My mom was found in the middle of an open field, dead from impact injuries, but there was nothing around for her to have fallen from. The coroner said she fell from about eighty feet up, too low for an airplane or a hot air balloon or something along those lines. It made no sense. She was crushed into the ground with no reasonable explanation.”
I decided not to tell her about my premonitory dreams and how I could have stopped my mom from leaving the house that day, how I should have but didn’t because I was holding a grudge from the night before. I couldn’t even remember what our fight had been about—something small and stupid, no doubt—but I was a bad enough daughter that I let her leave without warning her. The truth was, the Abbey would want nothing to do with me.
“Why do you think they did it?” Hunter shook me out of my miserable musing. “Because of the journal?”
“Maybe. She named it ‘Demon Strongholds,’ and it has a bunch of drawings of three different buildings.”
“If you have maps into demons’ strongholds, you’d better be careful. They will not take losing those lightly. Obviously, if they killed your mum for them. Do you know where the buildings are?”
“No. I don’t recognize any of them.”
“Take pictures with your phone and send them to me. Maybe I’d know them.” I knew Hunter was anxious to prove herself to the Abbey, and I was happy to help her get in. Let her dreams come true, even if mine couldn’t.
“What about the letter?” she continued. “What did it say?”
I read it to her.
“‘Soldiers’ definitely means Warrior angels,” Hunter said. “Like Gavin. No wonder he just showed up in your area. He’s probably scouting for this program. You live in Aviemore, right? With an A? Has anything weird been going on in your area?”
“Just some crazy dogs or something. Nothing serious.”
“Well, you’d better keep an eye out, because it’s likely to get serious soon. And don’t tell anyone anything about this,” she warned. “Not your grandparents, not your friends . . .”
“Why not?” I thought about Jo. I’d already told her about meeting Gavin, and I was planning on showing her my mom’s stuff. I would feel terrible keeping such a big secret from her.
“For their own protection,” Hunter said with no small amount of gravity. “Trust me, the less they have to do with demons, the better.”
She was probably right, although the minute I started having bad dreams starring Jo, all bets were off. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake I’d made with my mom.
“Except Gavin,” she added. “You should tell him about the journal if you see him again.”
“I’m sure I won’t,” I sighed. “He’s gone, and he can’t stand to be around me.”
“I wish I had a hot angel who couldn’t stand to be near me, so much so that he took me home with him,” Hunter teased.
“Yeah, well, now he hates me.”
“I highly doubt that,” she said. “Angels don’t hate anyone. You probably just have him so mixed up, he doesn’t know what to do with himself—because he’s definitely not supposed to love you, either. So he threw a big, bad tantrum and stormed off. He’ll show up again, especially if something happens in your town.” She crunched into the phone, as if she was eating popcorn as we talked. “Who knew angels were so much like kindergarten boys?”
Gavin was nothing like a kindergarten boy, I thought to myself, recalling his muscular chest, the way his hair fell over his dark blue eyes, his gorgeous lips. He was nothing like a boy at all. He was nothing like anyone I’d ever met.
In spite of myself, I hoped something bad would happen so I could meet him again.
The next week, something bad did happen. Bertie’s mauled body was discovered in the woods.
The official cause of death was reported as “attacked by wild animals,” but I knew better. The “wild animals” were demons, but like Gavin said, they seemed to have moved out of the area.
The animal madness, however, hadn’t. It migrated from dogs to bigger animals, like horses and cows. Farmers were told to kill even prized animals that showed any signs of sickness to stop the spread of the unknown disease, but so far, it hadn’t seemed to work. A woman died after being kicked in the head while milking her family cow. A man was thrown from his horse when it apparently went berserk. More people turned up dead in Aviemore that week than had in the past four years.
The local government was investigating, but all they could really advise was to keep your pets inside, and avoid walking by yourself. Word was they were afraid the large deer in the area might gore someone.
True to his word, I didn’t see Gavin. I thought about him all the time, though. So much, I had trouble concentrating on just about anything else. I scanned the woods for a glimpse of him. Imagined I saw him on the street. I was always wrong.
I figured he was out doing what he loved best: fighting demons. I fantasized about him tearing up the bad guys, his muscles bulging, his eyes blazing. I found myself sketching my own pictures of him in the margins of my notebooks. And every night before I went to sleep, I replayed the best day of my life—the day I visited his village. I recalled every moment in painstaking detail: holding his hand, lying against his chest on the warm rocks, what it felt like being held in his arms. I relived every caress, memorized every smoldering look, remembered every word he said to me in his amazing accent.
I added a million new scenes in my mind. All of them ended with us in a passionate embrace. I imagined that when we were lying on the boulder, he reached over and rolled me onto his body, my hair grazing his cheeks as we kissed. I dreamed that as we were walking through the woods, he suddenly pushed me up against a tree trunk and stole a kiss, a kiss I was shocked to receive but more than happy to return.
I reflected on how much my life had changed since I was little—not even as little as the tiny angels in Gavin’s village, but just in the past few years. When I was twelve, I had crushes on boys, but most of them were on the posters in my room. I never expected I would have such strong romantic feelings about someone I actually knew.
I had only met Gavin a few times, and I did hardly know him, but I ached without him. He took a piece of me with him when he left.