going to throw all these ridiculous pronouncements out, he’s at least going to look me in the eye when he does it.
I run to catch up, something that isn’t easy to do as a gargoyle, apparently, and finally manage to get in front of him while Jaxon—and Hudson—look on in amusement. The jerks.
“Are you smoking something?” I slam a hand on his chest to make sure I get his attention. “I mean, seriously, are you actually high right now? I can’t fly, Flint. I’ve never even used my wings before. There is no way you’re going to just throw a hot ball at me and tell me to fly and think I’m going to just take off.
“So park your ego at the door for ten minutes, give me some flying pointers and a few minutes to practice, and then let’s ground them into dust. Otherwise, I’m leaving and I’m not coming back.”
Flint’s eyes keep getting wider and wider the longer I talk, and by the time I’m done, he’s actually looking a little shamefaced—an expression that only gets worse when he realizes Jaxon watched the entire exchange.
“Yeah, of course. I’m sorry, Grace. Eden and I have this competitive thing going and it gets the best of me every time.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I smile to soften my earlier frustration. “Just tell them we need fifteen minutes and then teach me how to fly, okay?”
Jaxon laughs. “I’ll go tell them they get to try to beat just me for now,” he says with a surreptitious wink at me, “while you two figure out how to defy gravity.”
Flint watches him go, a pensive frown on his face. But when he turns back to me, he’s all smiles. “So, flying’s easy. You just need to think—”
“Happy thoughts?” I ask dryly.
He cracks up. “You’re a gargoyle, not Peter Pan.”
I roll my eyes at him, but I don’t think he sees it, as we’re hustling to the other side of the field now. “That was pretty much my point.”
“What I was going to say is that you need to think about flying.”
“So, like, I think about flapping my wings?” To my amazement, they flap back and forth even as I say the words.
“Oh my God, Flint!” I grab him, stopping him from taking another step, and jump up and down. “Did you see that?”
He’s grinning hugely now. “Of course I saw it!”
I crane my neck around so I can see it, and then I do it again. And again. And again. “Oh my God! They work! They really work!”
Flint is full-on laughing his ass off now, but I don’t care. I’m so excited that my wings work that I keep hopping around and making them flap as hard as I can.
Even Hudson is laughing now, but it’s with me, not at me. “You look good flapping your wings like that.”
“I do, don’t I?” I flap them again, just because I can. “I have wings, Hudson! And they work!”
“Hell yeah, they do.” He shakes his head with a big smile.
I turn to Flint. “Okay, now what do I do?”
“You just flap super hard until you get off the ground.”
“Really?” I ask, my eyes going wide as I start to try that.
He bursts out laughing, so hard that for a moment he can’t even talk. I’m not sure what the joke is until he finally recovers enough to put a hand on my shoulder. “No, stop,” he says. “I was joking, Grace.”
“Oh.” I blush a little, but I’m having too much fun to be embarrassed for long. Plus, I want to fly! “So tell me what to do. For real this time!”
“Okay. What you want to do is think about flying. Not about falling, not about being able to move your wings, not about getting off the ground. Just think about flying. About catching the wind.”
He looks around, then seems to get an idea, because he reaches out and grabs my hand. “Let’s go to the bleachers.”
“Are you kidding me? I’m not jumping off the bleachers the first time I try to fly! No effing way.”
“We’re not jumping from the bleachers, for God’s sake. You’re not a baby bird.”
Hudson snort-laughs at this, then fades ahead of us, so that he’s lounging on the bleachers with a huge, shit-eating grin before we even get close.
Once we’re there, Flint stops at the railing right in front of the first row of bleachers. “Although, to be fair, if you did jump off the bleachers and started to fall, Jaxon and