Immortal City (Immortal City 1)

“Maddy has this thing. She . . . sees things sometimes.”

“What!?” Jessica gasped, her eyes lighting up.

“Shut up, Jessica!” Gwen hissed, but not before Uncle Kevin peered inquisitively out from around the fryer. Gwen gave him a wave. Kevin waved back.

“Not all the time,” Gwen whispered, “just sometimes, she’ll start to see things that don’t really make sense. But they’re usually bad—”

“Three hamburger dinners,” Maddy interrupted as she returned from the kitchen with a tray of food. Samantha and Jessica just stared at her. Maddy stared back.

“What?”

“You, like, see things? Like what?” Samantha asked. Maddy shot daggers at her best friend, who shrank down in the booth.

“Not really,” Maddy said, shrugging, “I guess I’m just a little weird. That’s not exactly news.” She set down the plates and a bottle of ketchup. “It’s just one of those things, like being double-jointed or something.”

“Like being double-jointed?!” Jessica blurted incredulously. “You’re like Wonder Woman or something!” A few other customers turned to look. Maddy felt her face going red. Uncle Kevin came around from behind the counter and approached the table.

“How’s everything going over here?” he asked with a friendly smile.

“Really good, Uncle Kevin,” Gwen offered. “Just having girl talk.” Gwen had taken to calling him Uncle Kevin, just like Maddy, something Kevin liked.

“Oh, okay, sorry to interrupt,” Kevin said, hovering awkwardly. “Dessert is on the house. You girls come by anytime.”

“Thank you!” the girls chorused.

“Would you shut it, Jessica!” Gwen scolded after Kevin walked away. “God, you’re hopeless.” Maddy waited till her uncle was well out of earshot, then crouched down by her friends.

“Listen, if you guys don’t mind, please don’t say anything about it? Kevin doesn’t know what happened and I’d rather it stay that way. Please?”

The three girls nodded. “Sure,” Gwen said, seeming to feel bad about the whole thing. “It’s our secret.”

Relieved, Maddy stood up as the crackling Magnavox filled the silence that had overtaken the table.

“Stay tuned as our life and style correspondent Jamie Campbell will be at the Halo Magazine party later tonight for an exclusive interview with the one and only Jackson Godspeed. She’ll continue reporting on his every move as he prepares for his upcoming Commissioning! Plus more on the absence of bad-boy Angel Theodore Godson from a special gala charity event today. Has his latest divorce already caused ripples in the social world of the Angels?”

“OMG!” Gwen squeaked, turning her attention to the TV. “Jackson Godspeed’s Commissioning!”

“His what?” Maddy asked, craning her neck around to see. Was that what the girl on Angel Boulevard had been talking about?

“Commissioning, duh,” Jessica said, shoveling a fistful of fries in her mouth. Maddy gave her a blank look. “Youngest Guardian ever? First Protections? First save? What city have you been living in?”

“See, everybody but you knows this week is his Commissioning,” Gwen explained, “which means a bunch of parties and events, and then all the Angels dress up and get together and there’s a ceremony where they announce his Protections. And it could be me!”

“If your parents had a crapload of money, which they don’t,” Jessica said snidely through a mouthful of fries.

“They don’t need a bunch of money,” Gwen huffed. “I have the NAS Protection Lottery.” Every month Gwen put most of her allowance into the lottery in the hopes of winning a Guardian for life. On top of their regular protection-for-pay services, it was a big moneymaker for the NAS although five percent of the proceeds went to fund development in Africa and Asia, where only a few disgustingly wealthy political leaders had Guardians.

“You and everybody else!”

“And don’t forget about the NAS charity,” Gwen countered, undeterred. “They raffle off one free Guardian each year.”

“What are odds of winning that?” Samantha asked.

“About one in six billion,” Jessica said.

“Or I could go on . . .” Gwen said. As if on cue, from the TV in the corner blared a promo for the season finale of American Protection, a show in which contestants competed against each other in seemingly arbitrary contests, with the viewers voting who stayed and who went. The ultimate prize was winning the services of a Guardian for ten years and a cash prize of a million dollars.

“Last season sixty-two million of you tuned in to see who YOU chose to be America’s next Protection. You made Sarah the world’s new Protection sweetheart!”