Sari got there first. Of course she did.
Her Civic came around the corner off Main with its headlights still on and its tires squealing, and she was out the door before it had fully stopped, in pajama pants covered with cartoon cats and a hoodie inside out, her purple-streaked curls going in every direction. She ran into the alley, skidded to a stop, and looked up at the roof across from my fire escape.
At Cael. At Aurelle.
She stared for a long, long moment.
"Oh my God," she breathed. "Oh my God. That's—Eva, that's—are those—"
"Yes," I said.
"They're so tall," Sari said.
"Yes," I said.
"Is that your best friend? The goody-goody one? She's so pretty." Sari's voice rose to a squeak. "Why is the big one looking at me like that?"
"He looks at everyone like that," I said.
"Okay." Sari swallowed hard. "Okay. Cool. Super normal Monday. I'm coming up."
She climbed the fire escape in her cat pajamas, clanging on every step, and dropped down beside me on the landing, and threw both arms around me so tight I couldn't breathe.
"Clay told me on the phone," she said into my shoulder. "What they said. What you have to choose." She pulled back. Her eyes were red. "Eva. Babe. I need you to hear me, okay? I'm not gonna tell you to stay."
I stared at her.
"I want you to. I want you to so bad. I want you to stay and be my best friend and learn to drive without screaming and come to my wedding someday and be the weird aunt my kids love. I want that more than anything." Her chin wobbled. "But you gave up everything to come down here. Your wings. Your whole—your whole everything. And if you stay, you lose the one thing you came down here to do. And I can't ask you to do that for me. Nobody can. You have to choose it for you."
"Sari—" I said.
"Whatever you pick, I'm gonna love you. Okay? If you go back up there and heal sick babies for a million years and never think about me again, I'll still love you. That's not a condition. That's just a fact." She wiped her nose on her inside-out sleeve. "I just wanted you to know that before you decided."
I pulled her into my arms and held on.
* * *
Kade came ten minutes later. He didn't run. He walked into the alley slowly, his black truck parked crooked at the curb behind him with the engine still running and Lug Nut's head poking out the window.
He looked up at the archangel on the roof.
The archangel looked down at him.
Neither of them said anything. It went on for a long time. Long enough that Sari grabbed my hand and squeezed it and whispered, "Is he gonna smite him? Can he smite him?"
Then Kade nodded, once, the way you'd nod to a stranger on a mountain trail, and Cael inclined his head the smallest fraction of an inch, and Kade turned and climbed the fire escape.
Sari scooted over to make room. He sat down on my other side. The metal landing was barely wide enough for three. His shoulder pressed against mine, warm and solid.
He didn't say anything for a while. He just looked out at the mountains, where the light was coming up gold behind the peaks.
"Clay told me," he said finally.
"I know," I said.
"You lose the healing. If you stay," Kade said.
"Yes," I said.
He nodded slowly. He was quiet again. When he finally spoke, his voice was careful, the way it was when he was explaining something hard to a customer. Something that would cost them.
"Kade—"
"Let me finish. Please." He took a breath. "I want you to stay. You know I do. I think you know I'm—" He stopped. His ears went pink. "I think you know how I feel. But I watched my dad give up his whole life to keep that garage open, because people needed him. Because he couldn't stand not helping. And I know what that looks like now. I see it in you every single day. It's the best thing about you." He looked down at his hands. "I can't be the reason you stop being able to do it. I can't be the guy who takes that away. I'd never forgive myself."
"You wouldn't be taking anything," I said.
"Wouldn't I?" He finally looked at me. His gray-green eyes were wet. "If you stay, it's because of me. Because of Sari and Clay. Because of this. And every time somebody comes into that diner sick, every time you see somebody hurting, you're gonna feel it in your hands, and you're not gonna be able to do anything. And you're gonna think about what you gave up." His voice cracked. "I don't want to be the reason you hurt like that."
A chapter from www.NovelPhoenix.com was reproduced without the author's consent, while reading there supports the writer.
I looked at him. At this good, stubborn, impossible man who was sitting on a fire escape at dawn trying to give me permission to leave him.
"Is that what you want?" I asked. "For me to go?"
"No," he said. "God, no. I want you to stay more than I've ever wanted anything in my life." The corner of his mouth tried to tilt up and didn't quite make it. "But it's not about what I want. It's your engine, Eva. You've got to decide what you can live with."
* * *
The sun was nearly at the peaks now. A thin line of fire along the top of the mountains, getting brighter.
I stood up.
Sari grabbed for my hand. Kade didn't. He just watched me, his jaw tight, his hands in fists on his knees.
I climbed down the fire escape to the alley. To the cracked pavement where I'd landed, naked and freezing, a little more than two months ago. Clay was standing in the back doorway with a coffee mug in each hand, not drinking either of them. He didn't say anything. He just watched.
I looked up at the roof.
"Aurelle," I said. "Come down. Please."
She looked at Cael. He didn't stop her.
She came down slowly, drifting, her wings half open and trembling. She landed on the pavement in front of me, bare feet on the wet asphalt, as out of place as a star in a puddle. Her face was wet and shining.
"I know what you're going to say," she whispered.
"I know you do," I said.
"Please don't," Aurelle said.
"Aurelle—"
"Please." She grabbed my hands. Hers were cool and light, and so clean. "I don't understand it. I've tried. I've watched you, all this time. Every night. I've seen you laugh, and I've seen you cry, and I've seen you hurt so badly you couldn't stand up, and I don't understand. Why would anyone choose this? The cold and the pain and the dying? Why would you give up forever for—for this?"
I looked at her. My oldest friend. My sister in every way that mattered.
And then I looked around me.
At the brick walls of the alley, and the dented dumpster, and the rusted metal stairs. At Clay in the doorway in his ratty bathrobe, holding two cups of coffee and trying not to cry. At Sari on the fire escape in her cat pajamas, holding on to the railing with both hands. At Kade beside her, his face white, his eyes on me, not looking away even though I knew it was killing him.
At the sky over the mountains, going from gold to blue.
"Because I don't want forever," I said. "I want this."
Aurelle stared at me.
"I spent six hundred years at the Veil," I said, "looking down at all of this, and wanting to help. And I thought that was what I wanted most. To help. To heal. To fix every broken thing I saw. And when they told me I couldn't, I jumped." I squeezed her hands. "But that's not why I'm staying. I'm not staying to heal. I'm staying because I love them."
I heard Sari make a sound up on the fire escape. A small, cracked sob.
"I love Clay, who found me in the rain and gave me his coat and never once asked me where I came from. I love Sari, who taught me to drive and screamed the whole time. I love Hollis, who taught me that letting go is part of the story too." My voice broke. "And I love Kade. I love him so much, Aurelle. I didn't know anything could feel like this. I watched humans love each other for six hundred years and I never understood it. Not even a little. And now I do."
"But the healing," Aurelle said. "Eva. The healing. That's what you are."
I thought about Sari's mom, working night shifts in the ER. About Tyler and Dana in their ambulance, keeping people alive with their hands and their training and their stubbornness. About Kade's dad, fixing brakes for free on a garage floor. About every human I'd ever watched take care of another one, with no grace and no glow and no wings. Just hands. Just love. Just showing up.
"They help each other down here," I said. "Every day. Without any power at all. They just do it. They don't get to see the whole cloth either. They just do the best they can with what's in front of them, and they stick around for what comes next." I smiled at her, and it hurt, and it was true. "I can do that. I can learn how. I can be one of them."
Aurelle's face crumpled. She threw her arms around me and held on, her wings wrapping around us both, white and gold and trembling, and she cried the way only someone who's never cried before can cry. Like it was being torn out of her.
"I'm going to miss you so much," she sobbed.
"I know. Me too," I said.
"Will I ever—can I ever—"
I looked over her shoulder at Cael.
He was watching us. His silver eyes were unreadable. But something in his face had shifted, very slightly, as if a mountain had decided, after ten thousand years, to lean an inch to the left.
"The Healer may visit," he said. "Rarely. If she wishes."
Aurelle sobbed harder.
* * *
The sun cleared the mountains.
Light poured down into the valley, gold and blinding, across the roofs and the fields and the long silver lake, and into the alley behind the Broken Antler where I stood with my arms around my best friend.
"Evanthe," Cael said. "Your answer."
I let go of Aurelle. I stepped back. I looked up at him.
"I'm staying," I said.
He looked at me for a long moment. And then, slowly, he spread his blade-bright wings, and lifted one hand, palm out, toward me.
It didn't hurt the way falling had hurt. It wasn't fire. It was more like the feeling of a long breath going out. Something warm and golden that I'd carried in me so long I'd forgotten it was there, gathering in my chest and my hands and the two small scars on my back, and then, gently, rising out of me like steam off a cup of coffee, and drifting up into the light.
The tingling in my palms faded.
The warmth in my scars went cool.
And then it was gone, and I was standing in an alley in Montana in the bright cold morning, and I was just a girl. Just a girl, barefoot on the wet pavement, shivering a little in a borrowed flannel shirt.
I looked down at my hands. They were only hands.
I'd thought it would feel like losing something.
It felt like coming home.
"Few choose it," Cael said quietly. It was the first thing he'd said that sounded like it came from somewhere other than the edge of a mountain. "In all the ages, very few."
"Is it the wrong choice?" I asked.
He looked at me. At Clay in the doorway. At Sari and Kade on the fire escape. At Aurelle, crying, her hand still reaching for mine.
"There is no wrong choice, Healer," he said. "There is only the one you can live with."
And then the white light flared, once, and he was gone, and Aurelle was gone, and the alley was full of ordinary golden morning, and a bird somewhere started singing again, and down the block the dog started barking, and every streetlight on Main Street flickered back on at once.
Kade was down the fire escape before I could turn around. He didn't say anything. He just wrapped his arms around me and held on, and I buried my face in his chest and breathed in motor oil and coffee and soap, and I felt his heart pounding under my cheek, fast and human and alive.
"You're cold," he said into my hair. His voice was shaking.
"I know," I said, and I laughed, and I cried, and I held on tighter. "Isn't it wonderful?"