“Oh, hello,” he says, looking at Christian.

“Dad! Don’t you . . . this is . . .”

“Christian Prescott,” Dad supplies. “I’d recognize those eyes anywhere.”

Christian and I look at each other, him all confused about Dad knowing anything about him, me freaking out because I don’t want Christian to think I’ve been waxing poetically about his eyes to my dad.

“I’m Michael. Clara’s father,” Dad says, extending his hand.

Funny how he says that exactly the same way, every time.

Christian doesn’t hesitate. He takes Dad’s hand and shakes it firmly.

Dad smiles. “It’s remarkable, really, how much you resemble your mother.”

“You knew my mother?” Christian’s voice is almost painfully neutral.

“Quite well. She was a charming woman. A good woman.”

Christian glances down for a minute, then up to meet my father’s gaze. “Thank you.” His eyes flicker over to me, linger on my face like he’s seeing it in an entirely new way. Then he says, “Well, I should go. I just wanted to make sure Clara was okay after she left in the middle of class today.”

Dad couldn’t look more approving of the idea of Christian looking out for me. “Don’t go on my account. I’ll leave you to talk.”

And he does. And he closes the door on the way out. What kind of Dad leaves his teenage daughter alone in her room at night with a boy and the door closed? He’s got a lot of catching up to do, parent-wise, I think. Or maybe he doesn’t really see parenting as his role. Or maybe he’s just that confident that Christian would have to be crazy to do anything inappropriate with an angel on the other side of the door.

“So,” Christian says after a minute. “Your dad’s an angel.”

“So it would seem.”

“He seems cool.”

“He is. Cooler than I ever would have given him credit for.”

“I’m glad for you,” he says.

He is. I can feel it. He’s sincerely pleased to find out that I get to have a dad who cares about me, who is powerful enough to protect me, who can be here for me now during this rough time. He also has something he wants to tell me. It’s right there, like the words are hovering on the forefront of his mind, something he thinks will connect us now more than ever. But he holds it back.

“Come on, what is it?”

He gives me this mysterious, closed-lipped smile.

“I want to take you somewhere, after school tomorrow. Will you go with me?”

I find my voice. “Sure.”

“Okay. Good night, Clara.” He goes to the window and steps out.

“Good night,” I murmur after him, and then I watch him summon his wings, those gorgeous speckled wings, and lift off.

Chapter 17

The Part Where I Kiss You

I drive myself crazy wondering where Christian means to take me, but when he shows up at my locker after school the next day, part of me hesitates. I’m not sure why. Maybe because of the steady way he’s looking at me now, warm gold flecks in his eyes.

“You ready?” he asks.

I nod. We walk out into the sunshine. There’s not even a whisper of Samjeeza here. Dad must have scared him off for good, because suddenly Mom is totally okay with Jeffrey and me leaving the safety of hallowed ground.

Christian unlocks his truck and I climb in. I try not to scan the vicinity for Tucker as we make our way out of the parking lot. He called me last night and we tried to talk about my dad, but neither of us had much to say. I couldn’t come right out and tell him that my dad’s an angel, even though he’s probably already guessed. It would be too dangerous for him, knowing that, a tidbit that Samjeeza would just love to pluck out of his head. The less he knows, the safer he is, I’ve realized, and anyway, he shouldn’t be here—he has a rodeo competition tomorrow and left school earlier than usual today to get in some extra hours of practice. He was preoccupied. He didn’t ask me what I was up to and I didn’t share.

Christian turns up a dirt road that curls up the mountainside behind town. I spot a sign, crane my neck to read what it says.

ASPEN HILL CEMETERY.

All at once it feels like everything inside me turns to stone. “Christian . . .”

“It’s okay, Clara.” He pulls off to the side of the road, puts the truck in park. He opens his door, swings down, and turns to look at me. “Trust me.” He holds out his hand.

I feel like I’m moving in slow motion as I put my hand in his, let him draw me out of the truck on his side.

It’s beautiful here. Green trees, aspens whispering, a view of the distant mountains.

I hadn’t expected it to be so beautiful.

Christian leads me off the road into the forest. We step around graves, most of them standard pieces of marble, nothing fancy, simple inscriptions with names and dates. Then we’re to a set of concrete stairs, stairs in the middle of the forest, with a long, painted black metal bar on one side. My heart jumps to my throat when I see them, a field of gray pressing in on the edges of my sight, something I used to feel last year right before I’d have the vision. I bite my lip so hard I taste a hint of blood. But I don’t go, don’t rocket away to the day of Mom’s funeral. I stay here. With Christian.

“This way,” he says, tugging gently on my hand. We walk, not up the hill this time, not toward the place where a hole will be dug in the ground, my mother lowered into it, but across the hillside to a small white marble bench, framed by aspens, a rosebush planted beside it, which bears a single, perfect white rose.

Christian sees that rose and laughs in this kind of choked-up way. He lets go of my hand.

“I thought you said this rosebush never blooms,” I say, staring at the inscription on the bench. LOVING MOTHER, DEVOTED SISTER, TRUEST FRIEND. There’s a plaque in the ground, too, a plain white rectangle bearing the words BONNIE ELIZABETH PRESCOTT. An etching of a rose. No birth or death dates, which strikes me as odd, but if Bonnie were even middle-aged as an angel-blood when she passed, her birth date would have definitely raised some eyebrows.

“It doesn’t bloom,” Christian answers. “Today’s the first time.”

He takes a deep breath, reaches to touch the rose gently. Then he looks at me. There is so much emotion in him at the moment that I instinctively try to close the door between us; it’s too much, but I can still see it in his face. He has something he wants, no, he needs, to say to me.

“My mother had beautiful hair,” he says.

Okay, not exactly what I was expecting.

“It was this pale blond, like corn silk. I used to watch her brush it. She’d sit at her vanity in her bedroom and brush it until it shone. She had green eyes. And she liked to sing. She sang all the time. She couldn’t seem to help herself.”

He sits down on the bench. I stand there for a minute, watching him get lost in the memory of his mother.

“I think about her every day,” he says. “And I miss her. Every. Single. Day.”

“I know.”

He looks up at me earnestly. “I want you to know, I’m going to be there. When it happens to you. I will be by your side the whole time, if you’ll let me. I promise you that.”

People are making a lot of promises to me lately. I nod. I sit down on the bench next to Christian and gaze at the mountains, where I can barely make out the white point of the Grand Teton. A breeze lifts my hair, blows it onto Christian’s shoulder.

This is the most beautiful place for a cemetery. It’s peaceful here, removed from life and all its worries, but also still connected to it. Overlooking the town. Watching over us. This is the perfect place for Mom’s body to rest, I think, and in this moment, when I imagine her here as something other than a recurring nightmare, it’s the first time I picture what will happen after she dies. Not the funeral or the graveside, or the stuff in my vision. After. We’re going to leave her here, and it’s all right. When it happens we will put her body to rest here, in this beautiful place, by Christian’s mother. I’ll come up here once in a while like he does, and lay flowers on her grave.