Broken Wings (An Angel Eyes Novel)(24)

"Dad . . ."

"It doesn't matter, kid, I'm fine. Just let me get through this." He takes a haggard breath, his shirt stretched tight across his chest. "Miss Macy helped. To tell the truth, I couldn't convince her not to."

"I loved your mom, Elle."

Dad soldiers on, brushing Miss Macy's words aside. "So Miss Macy helped. She'd sit with your mom when I couldn't, and she'd keep you when Grams was too tired. It was a hard time, kiddo. Impossibly hard. When we knew your mom had only days to live, that there was nothing more to be done, I brought her home. She wanted to be here. With you."

Tears pour down my face, but I'm silent. Her pain, the cancer, these are things I've known or assumed. Dad's response to it all, his own agony, is something he's never discussed. But I see it on him now. Even without the halo on my head, without celestial eyes, his pain is all I see.

"Miss Macy and I were both here that last night," Dad continues, producing a handkerchief and blowing his nose. "And you. You were here. You were with your mother."

"You were brushing her hair," Miss Macy says. "Painting her nails with that Hello Kitty nail polish you loved so much. They were the most precious moments I've ever witnessed."

I pinch my eyes shut, trying to remember, willing my mind to paint the picture. But there's nothing. Only blackness. Only fear.

"And then she was just gone," Dad says.

My eyes snap open.

"What do you mean, gone?"

"Miss Macy was cooking dinner," Dad says, looking at my teacher fully for the first time. There's tenderness there-a memory shared. Miss Macy nods, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes. "And I'd just stepped out to grab a book. She liked it when I read. There was this . . ." He shakes his head. Whatever he was going to say, he's changed his mind. "It was quiet. Very, very quiet."

"Keith," Miss Macy says. Her voice is soft, but there's something of a reprimand there.

Dad ignores it, his eyes back on me. "And then your mom's machines went haywire. The alarms beeping. We'd been expecting it, knew it was coming. Her breathing had been so weak. We both dropped what we were doing and ran to the room."

He stops, unable to go on.

"You were there," Miss Macy says. "Asleep on your mama's bed. A Cinderella crown on your head and ballet slippers on your feet."

How I wish I could remember that. "And Mom?"

"She was gone," Dad says.

Gone?

Miss Macy turns me toward her, her soft, wrinkled hands firm on my forearms. "The bed was empty, honey. She must've walked out, walked past us when we weren't looking."

"How? You said yourself she was weak, her breathing frail."

"We don't know," she says, shaking her head. "We've never known."

"Could someone have taken her?" Noah says.

I'm still not sure why he's here. This information seems new to him as well.

"Perhaps," Sheriff Cahill said. "It's a theory we considered. I was just a deputy back then, but we combed the county. Had help from other agencies. Never found a thing."

"Several weeks passed with no sign of her, no leads. And with some . . . help," Dad says, looking at Miss Macy, "I finally realized that even if she was out there somewhere, she was surely gone. Her body had so little life left in it, baby, she couldn't have made it far, even with medical attention."

My head spins. My stomach aches, and I just want to go back to wondering what happened. To come up with my own unlikely scenarios. "But why the grave? Why bury an empty casket?"

"For you. For Grams," Dad says. "She begged me. Said you needed a place to go, to visit. Weeks before your mother . . . passed," he says, flinching at the outright lie, "Grams had already picked out the plot, paid for it, and selected the grave marker."

"The weeping angel."

"She was convinced it had to be done right," Dad says with a stiff shrug. "She convinced me."

"Many people have a memorial for a lost loved one," Miss Macy says. "It gives us a place to pay our respects, Elle. To mourn."

They're all so . . . nice. So benevolent about this deception.

They did it for me. For Grams.

Whatever.

"That grave wasn't a memorial to Mom. It was . . . a lie."

"Elle . . . ," Dad says.

"I had a right to know," I say, slamming my fist into the couch. "Maybe not when I was three. I understand that. Fine. But when I was old enough to know, you could have told me, and you didn't." I let my eyes rest on Dad. "You lied to me."

He yanks at his collar. "I planned to tell you. One day. I always said I'd do it when you were older. And then you were in high school and it was easy not to. There were reasons, decent reasons not to get into it. And then you went away to Portland, to Austen. And when you came back, Elle, you had more than enough tragedy to deal with."

I'm trying to see this from his point of view. From Miss Macy's even. From the point of view of everyone who let me sit and stare at a stone statue for years and years and years.

But I can't.

I want to yell now, but Miss Macy's here, and Noah. Pastor Noah, who's the most soft-spoken man in the world. I bet he's never yelled. Ever.

Maybe that's why Dad asked him here. Anything to keep me quiet. To keep me from losing my mind. I pull away from Miss Macy and stand. "You did what you thought was best, but it sucks. A lot."

It's an awful way to exit, but they don't seem to have anything else to say and I'm through with the sympathetic stares, so I walk from the room, through the kitchen, my sneakers squeaking against the linoleum floor.

Dad's pancakes are all soggy now. The entire stack stares at me, begging me to forgive him for a lie that's stretched my entire lifetime. I'm tempted to take the plate and slam it against the floor, against the wall. I'm tempted to make a statement, to show him how mad I really am.

But I don't do mad well. I'm a crier and I know it.

I do slam the door on my way out. That's about all the violence I have in me.                       
       
           



       22



Pearla





Pearla crouches atop a roof on Main Street. Below her, in the recessed entryway, is her mark.

Damien.

She's been following him for hours, waiting for him to do something, anything worth reporting to Michael. He's taken his human form now. Tall, olive skin, dark eyes. He leans against the wall, staring at the empty street.

It took her some days to locate him. His new eyes spotted her at once and she had to lie low for a time, but today she's managed to stay hidden, discreet. Still, he's done little to merit report.

His first stop was a farmhouse skirting the highway. He circled once and dropped through the roof. She watched as he strolled the house, his black wings brushing everything with fear. Down the hall he went and into a bedroom.

She knew right away that a Shield had made his home here. She could tell that by the onyx chest in the dwelling place. That Damien would enter a Shield's residence showed a reckless disregard, and Pearla wondered then just how much stock he was putting in those new eyes.

At first Damien ignored the chest. He walked the house, sniffing each room, leaking fear onto the furniture. But before departing, he re-entered the Shield's room and glared at the chest. He hacked at it with his talons, beat it with his wings. He attempted to pick it up, but the chest would not move.

Finally he crouched before it, and with taloned fingers he lifted the lid.

Pearla clung to the roof, out of sight, amazed that the Throne Room would give up its secrets to one of the Fallen. She watched as he lifted a dagger from its depths. Watched as he opened his mouth and howled with delight. And then watched as his face turned hard. He tried to take the dagger, tried to slide it next to the curved sword at his waist, but the moment he sheathed it, the dagger vanished. Damien cursed as, with a heavy clunk, it rematerialized in the chest below. He tried again to retrieve the dagger. And once more the weapon would not be removed. In a fit of rage he left the house, flying past her, his mouth screaming hate.

Pearla doesn't understand the demon's actions, doesn't understand the significance of the dagger, but it's the one piece of information she has to report, so she tucks it away for her rendezvous with the Commander.

Soft footsteps pull her attention back to her mark. A woman approaches, crossing the street and stepping into the entryway next to Damien.

His human voice is low, threatening. "You came highly recommended."

Fear presses through the woman's satin shirt, but her voice is steady when she speaks. "So you said."

Damien steps closer. "I'm reminding you because I've yet to see progress, and my fingers are just itching to send that e-mail."

"Oh, stop. I'll get it. Things take time." She turns to go.

"You're stalling," he growls, yanking her back into the doorway.

The fear multiplies, but Pearla's impressed by the woman's ability to sound unmoved. "And why would I do that?"

"I don't know." Damien's eyes rove her face. He really doesn't know, and Pearla can see that bothers him. "But you being here, in Stratus, now, seems far too convenient."

She pokes at his chest with a long fingernail. "You didn't care where I was when you found me. You just wanted that bracelet. And I'll get it."