Immortal City

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

After school Maddy had to tell another lie, after already hiding things from Gwen. She asked Kevin for the night off, saying she and Gwen had decided to work on their senior projects together. It was Kevin’s turn to be skeptical.

“You hate working in groups,” he said as he plated a Reuben sandwich and fries. “You end up doing all the work yourself. Especially when Gwen Moore is involved.”

“I know,” Maddy said, her thoughts racing. “I just thought I would help her out. If she doesn’t pass all her classes this semester, she won’t have enough credits to graduate. She’s really worried.” Kevin sighed deeply, sending a pang of guilt through Maddy. He picked up the diner’s old phone.

“I’ll call Suzie and see if she can fill in.”

Maddy thanked him, trying not to sound too relieved, and hurried up to the house. The light outside was turning long and golden as the sun set, sending a fresh wave of paralyzing anxiety over her.

She closed the front door behind her and locked it.

Upstairs, she walked down the narrow hallway separating her room from Kevin’s until she came to a small square hatch in the ceiling. She reached up and tugged at it. After a few smart pulls the hatch swung down with a groan and Maddy unfolded the wooden ladder that was attached to it.

With a deep breath, she climbed up into the attic.

The room under the eaves was hot, still, and silent. It smelled of stale wood and rat droppings. Dust particles danced in the air, swirling in the golden shaft of light from the window. As with most old houses, the attic was large and triangle-shaped, and Maddy found she could comfortably stand in it. She took a look around. Against the walls were stacks of cardboard boxes with labels written in black marker. Newer boxes had been added more haphazardly in recent years, mostly without labels, some even left open with their contents spilling out. Kevin was getting soft in his old age, she thought with a smile.

Maddy had only ever been in the attic once before. It was when she was a little girl, and she had still been afraid of every little bump and sound the old house made. Kevin had lifted her up through the hatch one day so she could see for herself there were no monsters living over her bed.

When she had looked around, she hadn’t seen any monsters, but she had seen something else. Today, she had come back for it.

She pulled the boxes aside one by one as she worked her way back. The newer boxes held together okay, but the old ones were brittle and crumbled in her hands. She had to slide them across the floor, which made a terrific scraping sound, and she cringed as spiders went scurrying for cover.

Finally, she saw it. Her heart gave a little leap as she spotted the box tucked far in the back, labeled with a single word.

Regina. Her mother.

Kevin never said much about her parents, and over time he had lost track of nearly all of their belongings. Her parents were gone, he told Maddy, and so it did no good to hold on to their things. So, it was with quiet amazement on the day she and Kevin went ghost-hunting that Maddy saw the box, and she had never forgotten about it.

She worked it out to the middle of the floor and pulled at the cardboard flaps. The aged packing tape snapped almost effortlessly. She opened the box and peered inside.

Jewelry. A watch. Some old books. A comb. She pulled the items out one at a time and set them carefully on the attic floor. It was a lot more emotional than she was expecting.

These were her mother’s things. Maddy’s mother had bought them. Touched them. They had been a part of her — and now they were the only part of her that remained.

After a moment, Maddy found what she was looking for.

It was a stack of clothes, neatly folded. The faintest smell of perfume drifted up to Maddy’s nose as she carefully sorted out the dresses. It was sweet and somehow familiar.

She picked up and unfolded a cream-colored vintage dress with a lace hem. She sat back and looked at it in the warm light.

Her mother had style, that was for sure.

Maddy dragged an old, cracked vanity mirror around, then slipped out of her shorts and pulled off her tank top.

She slid gingerly into the dress, then gently pulled up the zipper. The fabric hugged tight around her curves, wrapping her body as if from memory. It had been a long shot, but Maddy was absolutely right. She and her mother were the same size. She looked at herself in the mirror and felt all the hair on her arms stand up. It was the closest she had ever come to meeting her mother.

She blinked back tears and smoothed the fabric along her body. Then her eyes drifted back to the box and to the small pile of jewelry she had placed on the floor. She picked through the different pieces until she found an unadorned, gold-chain necklace. It was understated and elegant. She fastened it around her neck. Maddy took one last look at herself in the cracked mirror, then put her mother’s things back in their box and descended the wooden ladder.

She checked the time. It was 7:52. She went into the bathroom, where she threw on a little eye shadow, mascara, and lip gloss. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. Her hair was going to have to be okay as it was as well. She was just running a brush over her teeth when the sound of the doorbell sent her heart hammering against her rib cage.

Through the small bathroom window she could hear the purr of the Ferrari’s engine. Running back to her room, she slipped on the only pair of heels she owned and fished out a black clutch that Gwen had forgotten over the summer from under her bed. Then with a deep breath and a tight grip on the rail, she descended the stairs toward the Angel waiting politely for her at the front door.

When Jacks saw Maddy, he took a sharp breath and opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it, as if preferring to keep the thought to himself.

“Hi again,” he said at last.

Maddy looked at the nearly impossible sight of Jackson Godspeed standing on her porch. He wore a striking tuxedo jacket over a gray collared shirt, skinny jeans, and crisp, classic Vans. As usual, he looked like he had just stepped off a billboard. His eyes were darker than usual, more of a cobalt, and utterly intoxicating. Maddy collected her scrambled thoughts and tried her best to speak.

“Hey,” she managed, and fidgeted in her heels. “Do I look okay?”

Jacks’s expression was guarded again. “Maddy,” he said softly, “you are beautiful.” He stuck out his arm. Maddy took it and he led her down to the car.

They rumbled down the Halo Strip, drawing looks from people in the restaurants and boutiques and waiting in lines outside the clubs. Maddy felt awkward. She wondered if Jacks could tell how foreign all this was to her. Getting dressed up. Going out. And she wondered what his guarded expression on the porch had meant. Was it possible he had completely changed his mind about her when he woke up this morning? Last night it hadn’t mattered who was a famous Angel and who was a waitress from Kevin’s diner. But maybe things were different now, after he’d had time to think about it in the daylight. Maybe he regretted the whole thing.

“I’m really glad you decided to come with me tonight,”

Jacks said finally.

“Yeah,” Maddy said, playing with the hem of her dress. “I don’t normally do stuff like this.”

“You know,” Jacks said, grinning over at her, “they got a picture of us last night.”

Maddy flushed. “I know, my friend Gwen showed me.”

“Well, don’t worry about it, my publicist killed it.”

Jacks smiled. “You’ll meet her tonight.”

Maddy’s heart hammered. “Speaking of, what is. .tonight?”

“Oh, it’s just an event.”

An event? Maddy felt her palms break out in sweat.

“And what, exactly, is an event?” she asked cautiously.

“Well, it’s like a party, but it’s also part of my Commissioning.”

Party. Even worse. That word carried with it the near inevitability of another word, dancing. And Commissioning? Maddy wondered what would happen if she opened the car door and just flung herself into the street. Would Jacks keep driving and let her get away? Unlikely.

Questions pounded inside her head like hammers.

Who would be there? Others like her? And why had Jacks invited her in the first place?

“That’s okay with you, right?” Jacks asked, snapping Maddy out of her self-induced panic.

“What?”

“Is it okay with you? That we’re going to an event?”

Maddy bit her tongue. “Mm-hmm,” she lied, and looked out the window. Outside, the first stars of the evening winked in the purple sky. Jacks downshifted and turned, and they cruised down La Cienega Boulevard. Maddy could smell the organic, innovative delicacies of the restaurants and cafés at which she could never afford to eat. Somewhere below them, she could see searchlights knifing through the balmy night air. If she was going to do this, she’d have to do better than her usual Angel-illiterate self. She needed information.

“And. . this is for your Commissioning?” she asked sheepishly.

“Uh-huh.” Jacks nodded. “Me and the other nominees.”

Maddy hesitated, trying not to sound like a total idiot.

“Is that when you become a. .” Maddy paused, wishing she had actually listened to Gwen on so many previous occasions.

“. . Guardian Angel,” Jacks finished for her. Out of the corner of his eye he gave her an incredulous look. “You really don’t follow Angels at all, do you?”

“Not really,” Maddy said, a little embarrassed.

“Why not?” Jacks asked, genuinely curious.

“I guess I just don’t really get it.”

Jacks seemed amused. “Well, I’ll fill you in. It’s pretty simple. I get Commissioned as a Guardian Angel, and then the Archangels assign me Protections.”

Maddy considered the words, then looked over at Jacks. “Why don’t you get to choose?”

Jacks’s brow knitted together. “What?”

“Why don’t you get to choose who you’re going to protect?”

Jacks paused. The thought had never really occurred to him before.

“I mean, why don’t you say, ‘Hey, I think. .” She glanced out the window and saw a sign for Carlos’s Clean-ers. “‘ Carlos. . is a pretty cool guy. I’m going to watch his back for him.’”

Jacks laughed. “Carlos?”

“Yeah, I mean, whoever. I’m just saying, why don’t you get to decide?”

Jacks frowned. “It just doesn’t work that way, Maddy.

It’s not that easy. We can’t save everyone.”

Maddy opened her mouth to speak but then thought better of it. She leaned back and re-crossed her legs on the vibrating seat. It seemed perfectly simple to her.

“Were Angels always so. . big?”

Jacks glanced at her seriously, as though really wanting to answer her question. “What do you mean? Like famous?”

“Yes, all the attention and everything.” The neon lights of West Angel City spiraled outside the window as Jacks downshifted the Ferrari.

“Well, at first our saves were publicized in the newspaper, you know, like ‘Extra! Extra! Angel saves Carnegie this afternoon!’ An edition with a Guardian save would sell out almost instantly. Then came silent films. My aunt Clara Godspeed, her saves were famous around the world in the twenties, when she was still a Guardian. They called her the

‘Immortal City Pearl.’ Now she lives out in Santa Barbara, but she could still kick my ass. Anyway, then radio came, then newsreels. You’d be surprised how many Angels got famous from radio. Once TV came around, they started televising saves, and pretty soon came the twenty-four-hour networks.”

Maddy thought about the nonstop ANN coverage on the TV at the diner, how even the non-Angel networks were dedicated to tons and tons of Angel reporting and shows like American Protection.

Jackson continued: “Now that we have SaveTube and the Angelcam, anyone anywhere can watch a save instantly.

Cool, huh?”

Maddy’s eyes lit up in alarm. “Do you have an, uh, Angel. .”

“Cam?” Jacks laughed gently. “No, not yet, they’re still testing them, and I’m not even Commissioned yet, remember?”

They took a right and the searchlights Maddy had seen earlier blazed up ahead of them now, getting closer. A horrible thought suddenly occurred to her. What if that was their destination? She realized, with an incredible surge of anxiety, that it probably was.

“Is that. .?” she said, sitting up and pointing.

“Oh. Yeah, probably,” Jacks said. Adrenaline bolted through Maddy’s veins. How had she been so naive? This wasn’t just going out. This wasn’t just a party. This was a celebration of Jackson Godspeed. It had to truly be an event.

Maddy watched the approaching scene with mounting panic. Metal barricades held back throngs of screaming fans all along the sidewalk. Men in suits with earpieces stood in the street directing a traffic jam of black limousines that were jockeying for position along the curb of sbe’s SLS

Hotel. A red carpet jammed with photographers and journalists came into view. Everywhere, cameras flashed as one glorious Angel after another arrived. Maddy could see them now, beautiful and statuesque. Rows of spotlights lit the scene, so bright they made Maddy squint. Like the glowing gaze of some kind of hungry monster, she thought. A monster hungry for her.

The men with earpieces spotted the Ferrari and waved them in. A pretty woman wearing a headset and holding a clipboard pointed to an open stretch of curb right in front, and Jacks pulled effortlessly into it. The muted sound of screaming girls filled the Ferrari’s interior. Fans, photographers, and even other Angels had turned and waited expectantly for the car doors to open. Maddy sat paralyzed in the passenger seat. She couldn’t will her limbs to move.

“What’s wrong?” Jacks asked, his face the picture of calm.

“N-nothing,” Maddy stammered, “I just. .” Her voice trailed off as she watched a photographer hold his camera over the hood of the Ferrari and take her picture. POW!

POW! POW! went the flash.

“Oh, that?” Jacks said, looking at the chaos outside the car as if noticing it for the first time. “Yeah, annoying, I know. I wish the paparazzi would just get a life. Trust me, the only way to handle them is to ignore them. Just be yourself, okay? They’re going to love you.”

Maddy nodded numbly. What else could she do? For Jacks the moment could not have been more ordinary. For her, it couldn’t be more extraordinary. Or horrific. Jacks gave her a final, reassuring smile. Then the attendants opened the car doors, and Maddy Montgomery stepped into the lights.