Wings of the Wicked - By Courtney Allison Moulton Page 0,5

was forbidden to be any more than that, and Will was not one to disobey. He could be my friend, but Michael believed it would be improper and dangerous for Will to become romantically involved with me. To angels, the reapers were nothing but instruments to be used up so Heaven’s forces wouldn’t have to get their wings bloody. If Michael thought Will wasn’t good enough for me, then he couldn’t be more wrong.

As much as I hated to admit it, it had been easier to be around him before he’d kissed me that first time. I was a seventeen-year-old girl. I wanted to be loved by a great boy, and I was, but I couldn’t have him. And it broke my heart.

“You’re very quiet.” His voice startled me.

“I’m just tired.” I rested my head against the cold window and closed my eyes, relaxed by the gentle hum of the moving car. I’d come so close to dying tonight, so, so close. More than anything, I wanted to curl into his arms and just be held. We were confronted by our mortality so often that it gave us an intimacy that few shared, even those in love. It was heart wrenching to have something so amazing just out of reach. It would be simpler if he was just there to protect me because it was his duty, and not because he was in love with me.

“How are you feeling?”

I shrugged. “Just another night on the job. I’ll live.”

“You had quite a fall.”

“Well, you caught me, didn’t you?”

He was silent after that. When he pulled into my driveway, I knew that in a moment he’d slip into the Grim and be gone. He was my secret, but he wasn’t mine.

It was the last week of January, and I was finally off the hook after my mom had grounded me for almost two months when she’d discovered I’d lied to her. I was forced to confess to her that instead of going up north with Kate for Thanksgiving weekend, I’d been with Will the whole time, though I left out the “flying to Puerto Rico with a fake I.D.” thing. As far as she knew, Will was my boyfriend, but since he’d tried to distance himself emotionally from me after our trip, she thought we were broken up. It was best to leave it at that.

“See you tomorrow?” I asked him. “We can train after my homework is done and hunt at dusk.”

“Perfect. I’ll meet you at Nathaniel’s, then.”

After I’d destroyed the old warehouse where we used to train (incidentally, in the process of avenging Marshmallow), Nathaniel had set up a full workout room in the basement of his house for us. If we wanted to spar and take it up a notch, he made us go outside. We didn’t need what happened to that warehouse to be repeated in Nathaniel’s house.

I sneaked into my house through the back door by traveling invisibly through the Grim. Will returned to his post on my roof, where he always stayed until dawn, keeping a lookout. Demonic reapers tended to come out only at night. They were sensitive to daylight, and while they didn’t burst into flames from anything but my angelfire, they smoked like chimneys under the bright sun, and direct sunlight was extremely painful. Will spent his days hanging out at Nathaniel’s so he could eat and shower and relax while I was in school. It was good for him, and school was good for me too. I needed my friends, and while school threatened to eat me alive, it helped to feel like a normal high school senior on occasion.

Except on exam days. I’d rather face Bastian than an econ test any day.

3

THE NEXT DAY, MY BODY WAS STILL SORE AND I WAS still shaken up. I never thought I’d have a fear of heights, but I guess falling a thousand feet was enough to ignite that fear. At one point after homeroom this morning, I stood up too fast and had a swirling bout of vertigo and nearly fell to my knees. My class right after lunch was psychology, and it was my favorite. There were only thirteen students in the class, including my friends Kate and Chris. Landon had tried to get into the class with us, but enrollment was closed before he signed up. Served him right for sitting on his ass about scheduling. Today we were working in groups of mostly three on a learning-and-conditioning project. Instead of