Archon(13)

Maybe I’ll get really lucky. Maybe I’ll do it this time.

The blade sank into her skin a half inch deep. A second later it broke with a loud twang, the handle flying onto the bed next to Nina, the rest of the blade dropping out of Angela’s skin and clattering to the hardwood floor, its once sleek metal now jagged at the edges. Warm blood pooled from the cut, soaking into her shirt. Nina stared at the knife on the bed like it was a demon crawling for her own throat. When she decided to look at Angela again, her face was even whiter than a cadaver’s.

“You sick bitch,” she said again, her lips almost slack. She began laughing. “I thought you were going to dye me red. You sick, lucky, lucky . . .”

She slid off the bed, stamping out the light of the fallen cigarette.

“Don’t even bother,” Angela said. She dabbed at the cut with the arm glove. “It’s not as deep as it looks. It never is.”

“How the heck—”

“Maybe there is a real angel, protecting me. That’s the only reason I can figure.” Angela leaned back, resting her elbows on the floor. More blood blossomed on her breast like a flower. “That’s why I have the burns. I got frustrated and tried fire, but I must have just fallen unconscious, and the blaze killed my family instead of me. All I got out of it was some freaky scar tissue.”

She lifted another arm, a leg.

“You didn’t go to jail? Even if it was an accident—”

“My family had good connections, good lawyers.” Angela shook her head. “And a reputation to uphold. My relatives just wanted me out of the picture, maybe so that Brendan could continue with his education, or maybe because they were afraid of me. But no matter what, it was an ironic way to get my freedom back.”

Nina played with her skirt, looking unsure of herself.

“Are you sad?” she eventually whispered. “I mean—that your parents died because of . . .”

Angela hushed along with her. “Because of me?”

Sad.

No. She’d murdered her guilt the second it became clear that nothing about her past could ever be changed. For better or for worse, her failure to die had erased the other lives that had made hers a nightmare. But even though that chapter of her life had ended as painfully as it began, it was finally over. The morning Angela awoke in the emergency ward, she almost felt resurrected. The possibilities for her future, limited as they might have been, somehow seemed endless.

“They were the ones who beat me when I cried. By the time they were gone—I promised myself whatever tears I had left wouldn’t go to waste.”

Nina nodded, suddenly more confident in the face of Angela’s confession. She rubbed a few tendrils of frizzy hair from her forehead. “I can’t say I don’t admire you for that. Most people would do what you said: wall themselves up and cry.” She sighed heavily. “Luz is a hell of a place to start over, though. You could have gone anywhere—”

“I came here to apologize to my brother. But also to see if there was a way I could find him.” Angela stood, walking over to the dazzling portrait next to her dressing mirror, brushing the curl of her angel’s bronze wings with a finger. “If that’s even possible. I’m a blood head, but besides dreams and lacking the ability to kill myself, I don’t have any other powers that I’m aware of. I was hoping that maybe the priests could help me. It’s a long shot, but the Vatican is the worldwide authority on angels, aren’t they? I’ve been thinking that somebody could recognize these two. Tell me who they are and why I dream about them. Or even help me see them somehow. Which reminds me—”

Angela stooped down and picked up the broken knife blade, handing it to Nina.

“I’ve been going over this in my head since last night—and if you came to visit, I thought I’d ask—could you do it? Could you . . . kill me?”

Nina focused on her feet, half biting her lip. “God. What makes you think I’d say yes?”

“I don’t know.”

A lie. Kind of.

“And what makes you think I won’t go to the school counselors and tell them about this? That I won’t get you kicked out of the Academy? Or”—Nina’s face darkened, a wicked light brightening her eyes—“sent back to that institution?”

Angela shrugged. Good questions, but she had an answer for most of them. “Because I know you’re a lot like me. Because I could tell them that you’re a nut who believes she’s talking to spirits, and then suggest that we both end up in an institution together. Though I’d probably be the only one to survive it. And not even by my own choice.”