Wings of the Wicked

32



FOR AN ENTIRE WEEK, I WAS FORCED TO LISTEN TO every single senior girl run her mouth off about prom. It was to be held on Saturday night at a fancy hotel, and by Wednesday, with only three days left, it was all anyone could manage to talk about. I was so sick of hearing about it.

I must have heard the exact colors of Kate’s and Rachel’s dresses a thousand times. I knew what shoes they were going to wear. I knew what shades of makeup and nail polish they’d get done at the salon. Of course Kate was going with Marcus and Rachel was going with Evan. Of course they’d harassed the guys into matching the colors of their dresses. Prom was going to be perfect.

For them.

I wasn’t going. I’d been gone too long, and I was too exhausted from struggling with catching up in school so I could graduate with my friends, too absorbed with things that actually mattered to have gone out and looked for dresses. Not that prom didn’t matter to me at one time, but I supposed it didn’t matter anymore. The plan had always been for Kate and me to pick out dresses together, but she had to get one while I was AWOL, before the selection at the mall was picked clean.

My grumpiness had not gone unnoticed by Will. I had snapped at him a few times that week, though I hadn’t meant to. My agitation had caused my temper to be short, and I hated that I kept taking it out on him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as we sat in his living room watching TV after I’d done a load of homework. I had been lying across his lap for a little while, but something he’d said had annoyed me for no reason and I’d grumbled slightly nasty things at him and shoved myself to the other end of the couch like a brat.

“Nothing,” I replied sharply.

He let out an aggravated sigh. “It’s not nothing. Frankly, you’ve been on edge for days. I don’t even know what I just said a minute ago to make you mad at me.”

I laid my head back against the couch. “Sorry. I’m just in a bad mood.”

“For days?”

“It’s been a bad week, okay?” I tried to keep my voice even, but I doubted my success at doing so.

“Well, tell me about it,” he offered. “Maybe I can help.”

“You really can’t.” The snark was back. I wanted to smack myself. He didn’t deserve this.

“Let me try.”

I took a long, deep breath and let it out slowly, forcing the tension from my body and the snap from my voice. “I’m just tired of hearing about prom from my friends. It’s all they talk about, and I wish this week would go by faster so it’d be over with. But of course next week, prom will still be the only thing anyone will talk about, and I can’t escape it.”

He looked around thoughtfully, his boy brain visibly struggling to solve my predicament. “It’s this weekend?”

“Saturday.”

“Why don’t you just go then?” he offered foolishly. “That way you can talk about it with your friends instead of being left out.”

I sighed. “It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

“I think you’re the one making it complicated.”

I glared at him from across the couch. “Thanks. You’re so helpful.”

“I mean it,” he said gently. “I don’t see why there’s any reason you can’t go.”

“It’s too late, Will. I don’t have a ticket or a dress or anything. Prom isn’t something you can just throw together at the last second. No one can pull that off.”

“You have three days left, not one second.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass.”

“Don’t be so stubborn.”

My glare got darker. “You don’t get it.”

He let out a small laugh and a shrug. “No, I really don’t. I know how much you want to go. You wouldn’t want to miss out on this. You’ve worked so hard to get yourself through your last couple months of high school, so I’m not buying it. You deserve to go.”

“Why do you even care?” I asked. “You’re centuries old. Prom is a silly high school thing to you.”

“I don’t think it’s silly,” he said with a frown. “Especially since it’s important to you. Nothing that’s important to you is silly to me.”

I watched him, the sincerity in his eyes, and I crawled back across the couch toward him and rested my head on his shoulder. He kissed the top of my head. I was being ridiculous toward him, but I honestly couldn’t bring myself to go to prom. I didn’t want to go alone, even though I’d be with all of my friends, and there was only one person I’d want for my date and he would never agree to it. I wasn’t even going to ask him. Marcus might have been going with Kate, but he seemed to enjoy parading around pretending to be a perfect human boyfriend like it was a game to him to see how good he was at it. He was the weirdest person I’d ever met. Will was weird, too, but at least he made sense. Kind of.

“Marcus asked me something strange awhile ago,” I said.

“What was that?” he asked into my hair.

“He asked me what Heaven is like,” I said. “I have no idea. I don’t remember what Heaven is like, but I remember missing being human. I missed feeling—feeling anything, feeling happiness, sadness … I missed touching, being close to others. I missed you, Will. I don’t really want to go back there. To Heaven. I want to stay here.”

He paused for a few moments, as if digesting what I had just said. “I want you to stay here, too.”

“But I’ll have to go,” I said gently. “Eventually.”

He didn’t respond to that. The voices from the TV show we weren’t watching filled the silence between us.

I buried myself deeper into him. “I wish I had more time.”

“You have all the time in the world.”

I exhaled and disentangled myself from him while climbing to my feet. “I’m going to head out. Thanks for letting me come over to do my homework.”

“Of course,” he said, and politely stood with me. “I love when you come over. I miss having you here every day.”

“Want to go for a run tomorrow?”

“Definitely,” he said. “Have a good night. Try not to worry about so much at once. Everything will work out the way it’s meant to.”

I smiled weakly at him. As I left with my backpack over my shoulder, I repeated what he had said to me in my head. Everything will work out the way it’s meant to.

On Saturday evening, I was alone in Nana’s house. She was out again (it was pretty bad that her social life was more exciting than mine these days), and my friends were all getting ready for prom. I, on the other hand, was already in sweatpants and a way-too-big T-shirt that I suspected may have actually belonged to Will and finagled its way into my laundry, and I was ready to fall asleep to a movie in my room. I was determined to go to bed early so I wouldn’t sit up all night thinking about what everyone else was doing.

Halfway through my movie, I heard a knock at the door. I ignored it for a moment, since I was not climbing out of my ridiculously comfortable bed-and-blanket burrito. There wasn’t an iceberg’s chance in hell that I’d move.

Another knock.

“Really?” I grumbled aloud to no one.

I gave in and climbed out of my little nest to turn off the TV and force myself downstairs to the front door. When I opened the door, my heart kicked in my chest. Will stood there in the doorway, dressed in a sleek tuxedo, a corsage in a plastic container in one hand and a long garment bag in the other. His tuxedo was perfectly tailored around his broad shoulders and his waist. His hair was neatly combed back, and it looked like he might even have had a haircut. He looked excruciatingly handsome and adorable all dressed up with a terrified look on his face. Parked behind him in the driveway was Marcus’s shiny black Maserati.

“Don’t be mad” was the first thing he said. He really was terrified, as if the most frightening reaper on the planet was no scarier than a mouse, and yet put him in a tux and it was the Apocalypse.

The noise that came out of me was some kind of freakish, embarrassing cross between a laugh and a sob. I could barely breathe and, as a result, could barely speak. “I’m not mad, Will.”

“It was my idea,” he rambled quickly and nervously. “So don’t yell at Kate, but she helped me a lot. She got two tickets for you weeks ago, because she knew you still wanted to go even though you told her you didn’t. She helped me to pick out a dress for you the day before yesterday, and she made sure I wore something that fit me. Honestly, she scares me a little. I tried so hard to do this right for you, so please forgive me if I did anything wrong.”

My lips and hands were trembling. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

His eyes were so bright and wide as he fumbled over himself. “Will you go, then? Will you come with me? Please say yes.”

Then the tears came. They were hot against my cheeks, making my eyes burn, and I had to cover my mouth as I cried. He gave me a worried look as I fell apart in front of him. I put down my hands and nodded, smiling at him from ear to ear. “Yes. I’ll go.”

His entire body seemed to relax at once, and he gave me a little smile. “Please don’t cry,” he said.

I wiped at more tears. “I can’t help it.”

He lifted the garment bag and held it out to me. “Go put it on,” he said. “I think you’ll like it.”

I took it from him, feeling the weight of the heavy dress in my arms, and I went up to my room. I hung up the bag on my closet door and unzipped it to pull out the dress inside. I climbed out of my baggy pajamas, pulled the gown over my head, and tugged it over my hips. The zipper was on the side beneath my arm, and I had no trouble with it. The dress fit like a glove. I stepped back and gazed at myself in the floor-length mirror. Kate was a genius. The rich, deep plum fabric gleamed, crisscrossing over the strapless bodice, and beneath an elegant, ruched empire waist, the folds of chiffon fell to the floor. I stood up on my bare tiptoes to see what it would look like in heels and decided that I looked rather silly being barefoot in this extravagant gown. I needed the right heels. I rummaged through the closet and tossed out unwanted shoes until I found a pair of strappy gold sandals, and I slipped them on. With the added inches of height, I nodded in approval.

Will knocked at the door. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” I answered nervously. “Come in.”

The door opened and he stopped dead in his tracks. I fought the urge to fold my arms over myself in embarrassment as he stared at me. He swallowed hard as he came into the room, each of his steps slow and careful. His lips moved soundlessly for a second before he finally made words come out. “You’re beautiful.”

My cheeks flushed as red and dark as my hair. “Thanks. I don’t have any makeup on and my hair isn’t done.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

The flush was only getting worse. I touched my cheeks and they were red-hot. “I don’t have a boutonniere or anything for you.”

He looked at the ceiling for a brief second as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. “Oh, right. Yeah, that’s in here.” He held out the corsage box. “Sorry, I don’t know how any of this goes. Kate said to give this to you and you would know.”

I grinned stupidly at him fumbling over himself. He removed the corsage from the container, and instantly I smelled jasmine. The delicate, satiny white flowers dotted a mixture of green leaves and smaller flowers whose colors matched my dress.

“I know how much you love jasmine,” he said, his eyes on my wrist as he slipped the corsage over my hand. “I told Kate that’s the flower you would want.”

I nodded, fighting the tears again. If I was really going through with this, I’d have to clean up my face and put on makeup. I didn’t have a whole lot of time to do it all if we weren’t going to be late. I took out the boutonniere and started to pin it to Will’s tuxedo as he took a deep breath and set his jaw tight. I looked up to meet his eyes.

“Nervous?” I asked with a quick smile before going back to pinning the boutonniere so I wouldn’t stab him accidentally. He seemed to get impaled a lot during fights, so I didn’t want to be guilty of that too.

“Yeah.” He softened and forced himself to relax a little more. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“It’s not so bad,” I promised, finishing and straightening the boutonniere. There were jasmine flowers in it that matched my corsage. “Humans do it every year. I think you’re tough enough to survive prom.”

“I want to do this, though,” he assured me. “For you, because it would make you happy.”

I looked back up at him, feeling the sting of more stupid tears. I was such a crybaby. “Thank you.”

“I’d do anything for you,” he said in a quiet voice. “Gladly.”

“I know,” I replied.

“Are you about ready? What else has to be done?”

“I have to do my hair,” I said, sniffling very unattractively.

“Leave it down, just the way it is. I like it when it’s down.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of folded satin. Within was the beautiful phoenix hair comb. I nearly choked on another sob. “Wear this in it.”

My hands shook as I accepted the comb and headed to the bathroom down the hall. I studied my hair, deciding what to do with it, and settled on pulling bits of it up and pinning it with the comb. The deep shades of red, purple, and gold swirling through the firebird burned in my dark chocolate red hair, matching my dress perfectly. I adjusted the comb and turned my head side to side, admiring the piece. Then I washed my face and dug through my makeup bag to make myself look presentable.

I only needed one more thing. I went back into my room to my dresser, feeling Will’s eyes on me. I grabbed my winged necklace, and before I could put it on, Will was there, lifting the necklace and latching it around my neck. As soon as the glossy pendant touched my skin, I felt warmer, more contented, braver, as if it had a power of its own.

I turned around to face Will, and he was smiling down at me. “Ready?” he asked as his hands settled on my hips.

“Almost.” I threw my arms around his neck and pulled him down to me so that his forehead touched mine. Tears rolled down my cheeks and I cupped his face in my hands. “I love you. I don’t think you have any idea how much.”

He smiled. “I do.” He dipped his head and I tilted mine back to let him kiss me, but he stopped halfway, his mouth inches from mine. His body was stiff against me, his hands unmoving on my hips.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, searching his eyes.

“If I kiss you now, I won’t be able to stop,” he breathed. “We’ll miss the party.”

I considered suggesting that we just stay here in my room, but he’d gone through so much trouble to make sure I went to my prom. Still, it was feeling more right by the second, more right to just take this silly dress back off and stay in.

I slid my hands from his cheek and down his neck and chest, not wanting to let him go, and I wound my fingers around his collar. “We should get going.” The disappointment in my voice was obvious, and I didn’t care.

“Kate said to meet everyone at her house,” he said.

“Okay.”

“She’s having a party there after we get back,” he added. “She said you should bring a bag to stay the night. I’ve already talked to your grandmother about it.”

“Or we could go back to your house,” I suggested carefully. “After Kate’s party.”

His eyes searched mine. “Okay. If you want to.”

I smiled and tugged on his collar so that his face came closer to mine. “I want to.”

He smiled back, his eyes on my lips. “Okay.” Then he kissed me lightly, briefly, and pulled away—only just—and hovered there, as if he was contemplating doing it again. When he didn’t, I tugged on his collar one more time, closing the last few inches between us, and I kissed him. He hands came up and held my face as he kissed me deeper, and with a groan, he pushed himself away and let me go. “We should get out of here.”

I was breathless. “Yeah. Kate’s going to be mad if we’re late.”

“I don’t want Kate to be mad at me. I wasn’t kidding when I said she scares me.”

I laughed and grabbed a bag to shove my overnight stuff into. When I was ready, I came back to him.

He took my hand and held my wrist to his lips. “Let’s go.”

I followed him downstairs and out the front door, heading toward a wonderful night.