HALLOWED

CYNTHIA HAND

Hallowed _1.jpg

Dedication

For Carol, my mom

Epigraph

When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.

Genesis 6:1–2

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter 1 - Looking for Midas

Chapter 2 - First Rule of Angel Club

Chapter 3 - Other People’s Secrets

Chapter 4 - Freaking Out

Chapter 5 - Find Me a Dream

Chapter 6 - Sooner or Later

Chapter 7 - Go Take a Hike

Chapter 8 - Summer Without Crickets

Chapter 9 - Paradise Lost

Chapter 10 - The Absence of Certainty

Chapter 11 - Storm’s Coming

Chapter 12 - Don’t Drink and Fly

Chapter 13 - Go Out with a Bang

Chapter 14 - Sing a Song of Sorrow

Chapter 15 - Angel on My Doorstep

Chapter 16 - Square Ice-Cream Cones

Chapter 17 - The Part Where I Kiss You

Chapter 18 - The Alternative to Me

Chapter 19 - The D-Word

Chapter 20 - Loving Memory

Chapter 21 - High Countries

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Back Ad

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

In the dream, there’s sorrow. I feel it over everything else, a terrible grief that chokes me, blurs my sight, weighs down my feet as I move through the tall grass. I walk among pine trees up a gentle slope. It’s not the hillside from my vision, not the forest fire, not anyplace I’ve seen before. This is something new. Overhead the sky is a pure, cloudless blue. Sun shining. Birds singing. A warm breeze stirring the trees.

A Black Wing must be nearby, really nearby, if the raging grief is any indication. I glance around. That’s when I see my brother walking beside me. He’s wearing a suit, black jacket and everything: dark gray button-down shirt, shiny shoes, a striped silver tie. He gazes straight ahead, his jaw set in determination or anger or something else I can’t identify.

“Jeffrey,” I murmur.

He doesn’t look at me. He says, “Let’s just get this over with.”

I wish I knew what he meant.

Then someone takes my hand, and it’s familiar, the heat of his skin, the slender yet masculine fingers enfolding mine. Like a surgeon’s hand, I once thought. Christian’s. My breath catches. I shouldn’t let him hold my hand, not now, not after everything, but I don’t pull away. I look up the sleeve of his suit to his face, his serious green gold-flecked eyes. And for an instant the sorrow eases.

You can do this, he whispers in my mind.

Chapter 1

Looking for Midas

Bluebell’s not blue anymore. The fire has transformed Tucker’s 1978 Chevy LUV into a mix of black, gray, and rusty orange, the windows shattered by the heat, the tires missing, the interior a sickening blackened twist of metal and melted dashboard and upholstery. It’s hard to believe, looking at it now, that a few weeks ago one of my favorite things in the world was riding around in this old truck with the windows rolled down, letting my fingers trail through the air, sneaking glances over at Tucker just because I liked looking at him. This is where everything happened, pressed against Bluebell’s beat-up, musty seats. This is where I fell in love.

And now it’s all burned up.

Tucker’s staring at what’s left of Bluebell with grief in his stormy blue eyes, one hand resting on the scorched hood like he’s saying his final good-byes. I take his other hand. He hasn’t said a lot since we got here. We’ve spent the afternoon wandering through the burned part of the forest, searching for Midas, Tucker’s horse. Part of me thought this was a bad idea, coming out here again, looking, but when Tucker asked me to bring him here I said yes. I get it—he loved Midas, not only because he was a champion rodeo horse, but because Tucker had been there the night Midas was born, watched him take his first shaky steps, raised him and trained him and rode him on practically every horse trail in Teton County. He wants to know what happened to him. He wants closure.

I know the feeling.

At one point we came across the carcass of an elk, burned nearly to ash, which for an awful moment I thought was Midas until I saw the antlers, but that was all we found.


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