No Angel Page 12

  My back hit the window.

  “I mean that your previous teachers were probably all men, pet,” Ms. Wormwood said with a slight smile. “And there are some things that need a female perspective.” She crossed her legs, her long split skirt falling away down one side, and patted the sofa again. “Don’t worry. I don’t bite.”

  Given she’d just revealed she was wearing thigh-high leather boots with steel stiletto heels, I wasn’t so sure about that. I reluctantly perched on the sofa, as far away from her as I could get. “Now, Raffi, there’s no need to be shy,” Ms. Wormwood said earnestly. “I know that adolescence is such a difficult time for young men. Your body is changing in so many unexpected ways.”

  “Man, you have no idea,” I muttered to myself. Desperately embarrassed, I stared out the window. A flash of brightness over by the edge of the woods caught my eye, morning sunlight glinting from long, gold hair. Faith?

  I stifled a yelp as Ms. Wormwood patted my knee. “And with hormones raging through your veins, I can understand why you’re so attracted to Michaela Dante.”

  “What?” I said, distracted. That was definitely Faith kicking through the fallen leaves, with her distinctive hair rippling behind her. What was she doing out of class? “I’m not attracted to Michaela. Actually, I’m interested in someone else.”

  “How wonderful.” Ms. Wormwood’s face lit up. She edged a little closer to me. “Tell me, who’s the lucky girl, pet?”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to. Ms. Wormwood followed the direction of my gaze, and her expression froze. “Not . . . Faith?”

  “I know it’s a bad idea,” I said wretchedly. “In fact, it’s a really terrible idea, for more reasons than just her mother.” Oh, what the hell. I needed to talk about this with someone. “Ms. Wormwood . . . do you believe in true love? I mean, that it’s a sort of magical power that can defeat any darkness?”

  Ms. Wormwood put a hand over her eyes as if praying for strength. “No,” she said forcefully. “It can’t. There’s no such thing as love at first sight, no mystical bonds, no soul mates. You have to forget about her, Raffi.”

  I looked out the window again, though Faith had disappeared by now amidst the trees. “I know I should,” I said softly—and then stiffened. “Oh, no.”

  Michaela was striding rapidly across the lawn, her long legs flashing like knives as they devoured the ground. Even at this distance, I could see she was pissed off, her entire body one tense line. Within seconds, she’d disappeared down the same path as Faith.

  In that moment, I discovered something. I might be ambivalent about saving the world. But I damn well wasn’t about saving Faith. I didn’t care how many extra heads I sprouted. I was not going to leave her in danger. My mind spun, generating horrific images of what the demon might do with her knives if she caught Faith alone—

  Which was nothing compared to the horrific situation I abruptly found myself in as Ms. Wormwood tackled me.

  “Let me help you forget Faith, Raffi,” she breathed into my ear, her body pressed against mine. How could one skinny woman be so damn heavy? “You know I can. Can’t you feel the heat—”

  My flailing hand found the steel heel of her boot. White fire shot down my hidden wings, blasting Ms. Wormwood off me as if a rocket had gone off between us. She hit the wall and crumpled into a heap.

  “Sorry!” I yelped as I shot to my feet. Remembering the Headmistress, I waved my hands vaguely in her general direction. “Uh, be thou raised up! Bye!”

  I didn’t have time to see if it had worked. Flinging the window open, I streaked into the sky. I hoped everyone was really paying attention in class for once. I arced high over the woods, frantically scanning the canopy.

  There. A glint of gold through the bare branches. I dove.

  Faith gasped as I snatched her up, flailing at me for a second before realizing who I was. “Raffi! What are you—eeeep!”

  Her arms nearly crushed my rib cage. “Not—so—tight!” I managed to get out. I didn’t stop climbing. “Relax! It’s okay, I’ve got you! What are you doing out here?”

  Faith was trying to find a platonic way to cling to me, without much success. “My father’s notebooks say you have to be pure and virtuous to commune with angels, so I begged my mother to let me skip sex ed classes. What are you doing here?”

  “Michaela was following you. Didn’t you see her?”

  “No, not a sign—”

  A dozen cold, thick tentacles closed around my wings like a gigantic hand, squeezing them shut.

  “Raffi!” Faith screamed as we plummeted. I struggled against the invisible grip, but it held my wings tight. The world spun toward us. We were going to smash like eggs—

  The tentacles jerked back. My wings exploded out like a supernova. For a second, the lower pair brushed something icy chill, while the upper encountered fiery heat—and then both demonic presences were gone.

  Breathing hard, I managed to bring us to an almost-controlled landing back in the clearing where I’d first practiced flying. We collapsed in a heap. For a second, all I could do was lie there, my head hanging and my wings splayed out behind me.

  “Raffi.” Faith’s hand touched my face. My halo reflected in her wide eyes. Despite our near-death experience, she smiled. “You have six wings. You’re a seraph.”

  Chapter 17

  I was a seraph.

  Oh, hell yes.

  “Raf,” Krystal said as the two of us patrolled the corridors that evening, “would you give it a rest? That is getting really annoying.”

  I broke off from my hummed rendition of “U Can’t Touch This.” “I’m a seraph,” I reminded her happily. “I’m supposed to sing constant praises.”

  “Not to yourself!”

  “Doo do be do—demons can’t touch this!” I sang again, spinning in a little impromptu dance. I moonwalked backward, grinning at her. “C’mon, lighten up, Krys. Or do you need me to do it for you?” I flicked my wings out momentarily, their glow illuminating her irritated face like a strobe light.

  “Oh, how I wish you’d turned out to be a cherub,” Krystal said under her breath. “Though on second thought, I bet you’d manage to be even more insufferable if you had four mouths.” She paused to peer into yet another darkened classroom. “Not here either.” She chewed her lip for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t know where Michaela could be.”

  “She’s probably hiding somewhere to lick her wounds.” Michaela had been missing in action ever since sex ed. Rumor had it that she’d claimed illness and gone to her room, but she hadn’t been there when we’d checked. I reckoned the demon had been hurt by the blast of heavenly fire when I’d broken her grip on Faith and me. “In fact, maybe she’s already packed her bags and fled the school. She must know she can’t take me now that I’ve unlocked my seraph powers. Come on, I’ll walk you back to your room.”

  We headed out of the main building, back toward her dormitory. Krystal slouched beside me with a scowl, her hands deep in her coat pockets. “I don’t like it,” she burst out after a few minutes. She kicked through the dried leaves on the path as if she had a personal grudge against every one. “What if you’re right, and Michaela’s entire family are a demon-summoning cult? She could be reporting back to Father Dante even now. Summoning reinforcements.”

  “Bring it.” I extended all six wings again, striking a majestic pose. “I can handle any mere demon.”

  Krystal cast me an exasperated glance—and then stopped to study me more intently. “Raf, what’s up with your wings?”

  “Huh?” I swept a couple of my wings forward to look at them myself. The edge of each feather still shone as brightly as ever, but now they darkened toward the middle, with the central quills as black and glossy as obsidian. “That’s weird,” I said, angling a few of them to check it wasn’t just a trick of the light. “They were all white when I rescued Faith earlier.”

  “See, Raf, this is exactly why you can’t get complacent!” Krystal waved at my two
-tone feathers. “We still have no idea how your powers work, or how you can control them, or even what you can do! This could be perfectly normal or it could be deadly corruption from the demon’s touch.”

  I beat my wings experimentally, making her duck. “Still seem to work okay,” I said from two feet off the ground. I dropped back down and shrugged, folding my wings out of sight again. Privately, I thought that the silver-edged black suited me a lot better than that dorky Christmas-card white. “They’re fine. You worry too much.”

  “That’s because neither you nor Faith worry at all!” Krystal practically wailed. She looked on the verge of throttling me. “You don’t know they’re fine. We don’t know anything at all about how this stuff actually works!”

  “So what, as long as it does? I defeated Michaela today, right?”

  Krystal ground her teeth. “That’s beside the point.”

  “Hey, you summoned me to fight evil, and you can’t deny that I’ve got the demon running scared. So chill out and leave things to me.” I smiled beatifically at her. “After all, I am a seraph. The highest of the high, the mightiest of the mighty.”

  “The cockiest of the cocks,” Krystal muttered.

  “It’s not arrogance when you actually are the highest form of life in all creation.”

  “God, I hope a demon eats you,” Krystal said with feeling.

  “I shall forgive your blasphemy.” I patted her head in benediction and jumped back from her answering shove. We’d reached her window, so I held out my cupped hands to give her a boost back up into her room. “I’m going to go check on—whoa, what happened here?”

  “Just the usual,” Krystal said sourly, barely sparing a glance for the wreckage of her room. All her clothes had been pulled out of the closet and trampled on the floor. Drifts of paper covered every surface like an indoor snowstorm. “Someone thought it was funny to come in and mess up all my stuff this morning while I was in class. It happens. At least whoever it was didn’t tip a bucket of pond water over my bed again.”

  “I think I know who it was,” I said grimly, thinking of Michaela striding away from sex ed. Then I blinked. “What do you mean, again? Michaela only got interested in you today.”

  “You think it was Michaela?” Krystal considered this for a moment. “Well, if it was, I don’t see what good it did her. Whoever it was didn’t find the notes hidden in the magazines. Faith’s dumb disguise actually worked.” She frowned. “The only thing missing is my jewelry box. That had my old angel-summoning charm in it, the one I used to call you. But the only thing that would tell Michaela is that there’s an angel named Rafael Angelos here, which is hardly news to her.” Krystal shrugged. “So no harm done. And like I said, I’m used to girls trashing my stuff.”

  I folded my arms on the windowsill, resting my chin on them for a moment as I watched her move about the room, putting things to rights. “Hey, Krys . . . tell me if there’s anything I can do to help, okay?”

  “Close the Hellgate?” Krystal cast me a half-wry, half-resigned smile over her shoulder. “No matter what Faith says, I still think it’s influencing the students, making them act like complete fiends from Hell. It’s got to be the reason behind the bullying.” She sighed. “At least, I hope it is,” she added, so quietly I almost didn’t hear it.

  “I’ll work on it, I promise. And in the meantime, if you do ever want me to smite someone with angelic wrath, just say the word.”

  Krystal snorted with a more genuine look of amusement. “Tempting. But considering that so far you’ve mown down more teachers than demons, maybe you’d better keep your cool.” She waved me off. “It’s okay. See you tomorrow.”

  With a quick glance around to make sure that nobody else was looking out of their windows, I spread my wings and took off. Rather than head for my own dormitory, I flew toward the Headmistress’s house. Krystal was right. The Hellgate had to be closed. And that meant I had to talk to Faith.

  I was halfway to Faith’s house when I realized that my feathers were brilliant white once again. It was kind of inconvenient, given that it meant I was now about as subtle and unnoticeable as a second moon.

  “Great,” I muttered sourly, diving back to the ground again. I trudged the rest of the distance on foot, getting a new collection of scratches and bruises from the undergrowth on the way. My caution proved worthwhile, though—despite the late hour, light glowed from the front window, and two silhouettes were clearly visible through the closed curtain. I guessed the shorter figure had to be the Headmistress, but I couldn’t immediately identify the other one. Then she turned, showing an unmistakable profile of short, spiky hair, and my heart skipped a beat.

  Ms. Wormwood.

  On the one hand, it was a relief to know I hadn’t killed her outright. On the other hand, she could even now be getting me into deep trouble. I was pretty sure that striking down a teacher with holy fire was grounds for expulsion, even if it wasn’t actually listed in the school rule book. The window was cracked open, the edge of the curtain fluttering in the cold night air. Holding my breath, I skulked closer.

  “—Reckless and irresponsible!” the Headmistress was saying. I had a sinking feeling she was talking about me. “Throwing yourself at the boy like that! What were you thinking?”

  I blinked. Then, slowly, I grinned. I wasn’t the one getting bollocked.

  “I’m sorry, Headmistress! I’ve simply never encountered a male like him before!” Ms. Wormwood pleaded. “I didn’t anticipate his reaction. Then I panicked—”

  “Yes, yet again! This is not the first such incident. Do you think I had not noticed your incompetence? You endanger this entire school with your lack of thought!”

  I silently blessed Faith as I edged away from the window. I could never have brought the matter to the attention of the Headmistress myself—what could I do, complain that a woman wanted to have her way with me?—but I guessed that Faith must have told her mother about Ms. Wormwood’s behavior. Now, even if the teacher did remember me smiting her, she couldn’t bring it up without it sounding like the flimsiest of excuses. Feeling even more lighthearted, I made my way around the house and flapped up to Faith’s bedroom.

  “Hey, Faith?” I whispered, peering through the half-open window. “It’s me, Raf.” Duh. As if anyone else was going to be standing on thin air outside her bedroom. “You in here?”

  “Raffi?” Faith pulled the curtain aside, and I nearly bit through my own tongue. She was obviously dressed for bed, in a man-sized T-shirt that looked an awful lot more interesting on her than it would have on a guy. The way the thin, white material skimmed her thighs was particularly riveting. “Is everything okay? Why are you here?”

  “Guh.” I dragged my eyes back up to discover that she was looking worried. “Everything’s gorgeous. I mean good! Everything’s good.” I tried giving her my best slow, sexy smile. “I wondered if you’d like to come flying with me. It’s a beautiful night.”

  Faith looked past my slowly beating wings to the twinkling stars above, temptation showing in her face. Just as I was getting my hopes up, she sighed, shaking her head. “Thank you for the offer, but maybe it’s not such a good idea.”

  I maneuvered myself closer to her window so that I could gaze deep into her eyes. “You don’t have to be worried about Michaela anymore, you know. I’m a seraph.”

  “Yes, so you keep mentioning.” Faith hesitated. “Raffi, you know I like you.”

  “Yeah?” That sounded promising.

  Faith fidgeted with the edge of her nightshirt, avoiding my eyes. “And I understand why Krystal thinks my father might have meant for us to get together.” Uh-oh. “But . . . we haven’t known each other for very long. True love takes time, time and trust. It means getting to know someone on the inside, how they think and feel. We haven’t had that. And then there’s Billy-Bob.”

  I stared at her for a second, then let out a whoop of laughter, losing two feet of height in the process. “Billy-Bob?” I spluttered, clawing my way back up
to her window again. “Your boyfriend’s name is Billy-Bob?”

  “Yes,” Faith said coldly. “Is there something wrong, Rafael?”

  “I know, I know.” Though personally, I thought that Rafael Angelos was a hell of a lot cooler than Billy-effing-Bob. Just thinking the name made me wobble in midair with suppressed mirth. Folding my wings, I managed to drop onto her windowsill, straddling it. “Sorry. Man, poor guy. He needs to get a nickname, like BB or something.”

  Faith looked slightly mollified. “He’s never said anything about getting teased because of his name. Anyway, I think it’s cute. It probably suits him.”

  “Probably? What do you mean, probably?” Faith abruptly found something very interesting about the carpet, and my jaw dropped. “Bloody hell. You’ve never actually met this so-called boyfriend, have you?”

  “We don’t have to have met physically to know that we’re perfect for each other. We’ve been corresponding for years. I know all about him!”

  “Except for what he looks like? You haven’t seen him on webcam? Or even in a picture?” Faith’s silence was all the answer I needed. “Then he’s fat. Or has acne. Or he’s horribly deformed. Or all three.”

  “I wouldn’t care if he was!” Faith flared up. She raised her chin, her long, blonde hair rippling like a battle flag. “I’m not shallow! How he looks isn’t important. I know him. He won my love over time, with words, not just with good looks and flashy powers. We will close the Hellgate together with the power of that love! Just like my father wanted!”

  “Okay, okay!” I held up my hands in surrender. Man, had I ever cocked this one up. “It was Krystal’s theory, not mine.”

  “Krystal overthinks things. And she doesn’t understand true love.” Faith calmed, her voice reverting to her usual soft tones. She dropped her gaze, a faint blush rising in her cheeks. Her bare toes dug into the carpet. “I do really like you, you know. As a friend.”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled, as I ducked back out the window. “Great.” Spreading my wings, I hovered in midair. “Faith?” I called back.