I look down. “Because I’m tired of them expecting me to be nothing but their sister. I feel like what I want is more important than me just smiling and nodding. And I worry about my friend because I’m the only one who can help her, so I need to. I want to.”
“Ah. Anne and Jane’s sister no more,” Jude says, a little teasingly, and kisses my palm. “What did the three of you fight over, anyhow?”
“I… I don’t want to talk about it,” I say with a sigh. This doesn’t seem like the time to bust out an explanation of how we have powers.
“Would it help if I made you lunch?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Made me lunch? Are we in a fifties sitcom?”
“No, but I’m an excellent cook. I make peanut butter sandwiches better than any of those television chefs.”
“So by ‘cook,’ you mean… peanut butter sandwiches?” I ask, grinning. Jude lifts a hand to my chin and kisses me quickly.
“It involves more than one ingredient. It counts as cooking,” he says, and rises from the couch. “If we just ate more Popsicles for lunch, see, that wouldn’t count.”
Jude walks to the kitchen and pulls down paper towels to put bread on. I get up, lean on the counter across from him.
“Can I ask you a question?” I say hesitantly. He nods. “You don’t… I mean, the Nightingale syndrome thing. That’s not why you’re here. With me. Right?” Anne’s suggestion that he really does only want me because I saved him, like some sort of pathetic pity romance, it got me more than I want to admit. But I don’t want to hear theories from Anne or Jane—I want to hear the truth from Jude. And whatever he says, I’ll believe, I think steadfastly.
Jude puts down the peanut butter–laden knife and looks up at me, concerned. “You don’t really need me to answer that, do you?”
I inhale. “I… yes. Yes, I do. I just need to make sure.”
He looks a little hurt but nods. “It has nothing to do with you saving me, and it has everything to do with you saving me.” I don’t say anything. Jude licks his lips nervously, comes around to my side of the counter, and leans beside me. “No one, in my entire life, has ever done anything for me. I mean, sure, my mom bought me school supplies, but then she forgot when the first day of school was, so I was two weeks late. No one has ever risked anything for me or…” He shakes his head. “But you went after me in the ocean, in the middle of the night. And you didn’t even know me. So… yes. That’s why I’m here. Not because you saved me, but because you’re the kind of person who saved me.”
“What if I hadn’t?” I say warily. Because I didn’t save him. Not alone, anyway.
“Then… I would be at the bottom of the ocean?” he jokes. When I don’t laugh, he answers seriously. “You’d still be the kind of person who would. But that aside, Celia, you’re interesting. You’re fun to talk to. You’re beautiful. And you don’t fall asleep when I talk about guitars, which is more impressive than you might think.”
I smile—Has anyone ever called me beautiful?—then open my mouth. I should tell him, tell him about Naida, about Lo, about how I didn’t save him, I just watched as she did. About how I tried to do CPR, but I was afraid of all his memories hitting me at once. About how I lied to the EMTs, the doctors, to him.
But I can’t. I would have saved him. I would have, if Lo hadn’t. Right? And that’s what matters. That’s what he cares about.
I feel guilty when he leans in, drops his hands down, and interlaces his fingers with mine gently. But when his lips meet mine, the guilt melts away. I build the wall in my head, stop his memories before they flood my mind. Everything is deliciously normal. Perfect. Beautiful. For the time being.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Lo
It’s the middle of the day, when most of us are sleeping, splayed around the Glasgow like decorations instead of girls. I am awake. I feel like I’m always awake lately, thinking about Molly’s words—your angels. She hasn’t spoken to me since, but I haven’t stopped thinking about what she said. The screaming, her twin sister… Did I really have a twin? Did she die so I could become this? I stretch back along a group of rocks into an area where the tiniest amount of sun penetrates the water—so small that I think I may just be imagining it. I close my eyes, try to relax despite the thousands of thoughts and questions running through my mind.
A shadow passes over the light ahead. I ignore it at first—it could be any number of things. Dolphins, fish, sharks… but then I feel something brush the skin of my waist. Fingertips, hair, maybe, and my eyes spring open.
I almost cry out in surprise but manage to keep the noise hidden. Above me, directly above me, breaking apart the tiny trace of light I found, is one of the old ones.
She looks dead.
She blinks. No, she’s alive, of course she’s alive—she’s just old. She drifts with the current; it sways her limbs and her hair around her body. It’s terrifying and beautiful at once—she looks like some sort of flower, something caught in the water. Everything about her is perfect. Smooth skin, dark eyes, lovely hair.
She is frighteningly beautiful. I feel like I’m hypnotized just looking at her.
And she is leaving. She moves up, up away from me slowly, then faster as the upper current takes hold. I watch, entranced, until she fades from sight, off to become an angel.
Your angels.
I snap out of it—this is my chance. I look around at the rest of us; we’re all asleep. I can follow her if I go now. I can ask the angel why Naida was changed. I can ask him if there’s a way to keep me and Naida alive, if there’s a way out of both of us dying. I can find out if he and his kind really did murder Molly’s sister, if I had a twin. I can ask him a million questions that no one else can answer.
I’m terrified, both because of what Molly said and because knowing the truth might be much harder than believing the fantasy.
Yet I push down on the rocks and jettison upward. The old one isn’t swimming, isn’t struggling; she’s merely being carried along. I’m afraid to get too close to her, and afraid of the surface at midday, so I follow along deeper in the water. I wonder if Key would have come with me. I wonder if Molly would have come.
An hour passes, then another. I keep waiting to see something spectacular—wings blooming out of the girl’s blue-toned back, sunlight streaming through her body and lifting her out of the ocean. Nothing. We’re getting close to the shore, not the shore with the church, but someplace farther south. What if someone sees her? Plucks her from the water, thinking she’s a drowned human? What if they see me? For a moment I wonder if I should grab her arm, pull her deeper, where it’s safer, but no… no, I want to see what would happen if I weren’t here.