Natural Born Angel (Immortal City 2)

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Maddy put the phone down, sighing, sorry she had brought up his wings. She constantly tried to let Jackson know she loved him regardless of whether he was an acting Guardian or not. That love had deepened over the past year as she had got to know Jackson more and more, spending more time with him, sharing their thoughts and feelings and the private little jokes they came up with. They’d sneak away to dodge the paparazzi and have secret picnics high in the Hollywood Hills, or Jacks would have her over for dinner at his own new gorgeous house in Empyrean Canyon, and they’d stay up late cuddling and making out, streaming cheesy TV shows from when they were younger.

Even though he was the Jackson Godspeed, Maddy just felt comfortable with him. Like she could really be herself for once, free to express herself without shyness. And even when they talked about sex, Jacks was a true gentleman. Maddy of course wanted to have sex with Jacks – sometimes she was so attracted to him that she almost couldn’t believe it – but she also wanted the first time to be the right time, and she wasn’t quite ready to take the plunge. They’d talked without embarrassment, and they agreed that she should focus on finishing high school and starting university before they actually took things to a more physical level. “We have a lot of time,” Jacks had told her. She loved him for that.

On her bedroom desk sat a framed picture of her and Jacks in front of the pond in Central Park – he’d taken her on her first trip to New York City as a graduation present that spring. The Plaza Hotel and Midtown skyscrapers rose from behind the screen of lush trees and the duck-filled pond they stood in front of. They had been so happy that week. She picked the photo up and studied their glowing faces before putting the photo on top of her suitcase. There was no way she was leaving it behind.

She walked downstairs, yawning, each step of the staircase in the old house creaking as she descended. Every step had a different creak, and at this point she knew them by heart, like notes on a scale.

Suddenly, a jolt coursed through Maddy’s body. Her hand gripped the banister tightly. Her vision rapidly became blurry – everything seemed to grow grey and foggy. She could see nothing concrete, and she felt like she was going to trip forward into an empty expanse, a grey void that would expand for ever, with her falling through it.

All at once, she felt heat. The worst kind of heat she could imagine. Blistering, searing, inescapable. Smoke appeared, with flames following. Maddy’s pulse raced as she realized it was a fire.

From the smoky darkness suddenly emerged a small boy in a striped shirt whom she had never seen before. His hands stretched towards Maddy as he attempted to escape the flames. The child’s eyes bulged terribly out of his pale skin as he began coughing. Coughing blood.

Maddy shrieked.

And just as suddenly found herself standing on the stairs in her uncle’s house, gasping for air, her fingernails making marks in the wood of the banister. There was no fire.

It must have been a vision. She sometimes had seemingly random, splinter-like visions of grim violence and destruction. Similar visions to this had been one of the signs that she might be part Angel.

But what had this been a vision of?

And who was the boy? She’d never seen him before. She hoped against hope that he was going to be OK. But she had no way to know who he was, where he was, anything. Just those seconds of her vision. For all she knew, the visions weren’t always even truly real, just tricks of her overactive half-human, half-Angel brain.

Step by step, she slowly took the final part of the staircase down to the kitchen on the ground floor. Kevin was there, dashing in for a moment with his apron from the diner still on.

“Hey, Mads! Have you seen my phone around here anywhere?” Kevin asked her.

“Did you leave it by the microwave?” Maddy suggested absently. That was where he always left it.

“Good thinking.” He turned to the microwave and lifted it off the counter. “Aha.”

“How’s the new waitress doing?” Maddy asked, seeking the sanctuary of a familiar topic.

“Oh, she’ll be fine,” Kevin said, playing with a loose thread on his apron. “It’s been getting pretty busy, you know. I might even bring on someone to help me with managing the kitchen.”

Maddy could only shake her head and smile. Yeah, right. She couldn’t imagine anyone manning the cooking besides her uncle. Yet . . . change was in the air.

“How is it out there today?” she said.

Kevin peered out of the slats of the front blinds. “Could be worse.”

They were talking, of course, about the paparazzi that had followed her from basically the first night she went out with Jacks. They were a constant part of her life now, but she was hoping they would leave her alone once she went to university. She mostly tried to avoid them, and when she couldn’t, she would smile and try to be polite. Maddy realized her uncle was studying her.

“Maddy, you’re pale,” Kevin said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I just had a . . . feeling.”

Kevin led her by the arm to the kitchen table.

“Here, sit down.” He pulled a chair out for her, then poured her a glass of water.

“I know your decision was difficult,” Kevin said tentatively. He was always a little stiff with the father-daughter stuff. “You must be having a lot of feelings about leaving Angel City.”

“Well, it wasn’t that, actually. It was a feeling. Like one of my visions.”

A dark cloud passed across Kevin’s brow.