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