Immortal City

CHAPTER EIGHT

Jacks’s Ferrari spun through the crisp Los Angeles night, the city twinkling all around him. He headed east on Sunset, just driving. He felt himself becoming more real, more free, with every mile he put between himself and the party. Was this disconnected sensation going to chase him all his life?

He needed to get over it. He was Jackson Godspeed. It wasn’t like he could just move somewhere and be anonymous. And, he reminded himself, he didn’t want to. He’d been looking forward to saving people since he was a little boy.

After ten minutes his phone rang over the car’s Bluetooth. Jacks checked the caller ID. It was Mark.

“That didn’t take long,” he murmured before picking up. “Hey Mark, I’ll be home in a bit. I wasn’t feeling well, so I decided to—”

“Never mind that now,” Mark said, cutting him off.

“Where are you?” His tone was urgent.

“Somewhere in Angel City. Why?”

“Get off the road.”

Jacks sat up in his seat, alarmed. “What?”

“Something has happened. I’ll explain later, but right now I need you to get off the road, go somewhere out of the way, and just blend in.” His voice sounded almost panicked.

“Make sure no one knows you’re an Angel. And don’t talk to any police. Do exactly as I say, all right?” “Is Mom okay? Is Chloe? What’s—”

“Don’t ask any more questions,” Mark snapped.

“They’re fine, but this is serious, young man. Do as I say.

When you’re somewhere safe, give me a call and I’ll come meet you.” With that he hung up.

Jacks’s pulse quickened. He had never heard Mark so upset. What was going on? He took a hard left and zig-zagged up side streets, through an Angel City he rarely saw, with modest homes and small, neglected lawns. Making a hard right, Jacks slowed and looked around, trying to get his bearings.

He had never been in this part of town before. He saw only one sign lit up, up on the left, a diner called Kevin’s.

His heart racing, he drove forward and pulled into the tiny lot. He parked, took off his suit jacket, and threw on a dark hoodie from the backseat. Then he looked at the diner again through the windshield. The place looked deserted. He wondered if this could all be about Vivian. No, he decided, it had sounded more serious than that. He should do exactly as Mark had said. He got out and pulled his hood up, locked the door, and walked toward the diner’s front door.

Maddy was running a mop over the floor when the door jingled open and someone she had never seen before stepped into the diner. It was past closing and she realized, with regret, that she had forgotten to click off the neon Open sign in the window. Standing in the doorway was a boy Maddy thought looked to be about eighteen or nineteen.

He was oddly dressed in tailored formal pants and a hoodie, and he had the hood pulled up over his head. Stabs of straight brown hair cut across his eyes. Maddy picked the mop up and set it back in its bucket. He looked out of breath and confused, unsure of himself even, and after a moment of what Maddy guessed was contemplation, he turned to leave.

“Hey,” Maddy called after him. He turned around.

“Can I help you?”

“Um, yeah,” he said. “A table for one, please? If it’s not too late?”

Maddy looked around at the nearly empty diner. Just a couple of regulars finishing up, one paying the check. By his tone she knew she could tell him they were closed, and he would accept that and leave. Still, it was her fault for not shutting off the sign. “No, of course not. Right this way.”

She pulled a menu from behind the counter and led him to a booth by the window. As they walked to the table, Maddy realized that even dressed as he was and hiding under a hood, he was absolutely, strikingly beautiful. It was strange how it seemed to radiate off him. She could almost feel it, could almost taste it on her tongue. Maddy’s head swam. Where was this coming from? She was around her share of what everyone would consider “cute boys”: at school, at the diner, even just around Angel City. And sure, maybe they were attractive, but she had never felt herself gushing he’s beautiful. That was Gwen’s job. Maddy was supposed to be the levelheaded one.

She took a breath and tried to collect herself. He was a customer like any other, Maddy thought, and he would be treated as such.

“Here you are,” she said, setting the menu down on the table. “I’ll be right back to take your order.”

Jacks slid into the booth and glanced at Maddy as she walked away. She was really pretty, he thought, even if she was just an ordinary girl. As she disappeared into the kitchen, he was surprised to realize he was still watching her.

He pulled out his cell phone and texted Mark his location.

Kevin was hanging up his apron when Maddy appeared. “One more customer,” she told him.

“Really?” Kevin asked wearily. “You didn’t just tell him we were closed?”

Maddy looked down at the floor, thinking about her reaction to the cute stranger. “Uh, he seems a little shaken up. I didn’t want to send him away.”

Kevin gave Maddy a look. “All right, go get his order,” he said, putting his apron back on. “The sooner he gets his food, the sooner we can go home.”

Maddy poured a glass of ice water and placed it on her tray. She headed over. “Long night?” she asked as she set the water in front of Jacks and pulled out her notepad.

Mark’s text came in. Jacks glanced at it: STAY THERE, COMING TO YOU. Jacks flipped the phone over on the table and looked up at Maddy.

“Something like that. I just needed to get off the road for a second.”

“Well, you came to the right place. What can I get you?”

“Ah,” he started, then stopped. Maddy waited. His gaze had drifted outside. Maddy looked up. Two ACPD cruisers had just pulled into the parking lot.

Jacks picked up the menu. “What do you recommend?”

As Maddy ran through the specials, Jacks’s eyes darted outside again. The cruisers had parked in the lot, and two policemen stepped out.

“Any of that sound good?” Maddy asked, and waited for a response. Jacks watched as the officers examined his Ferrari with flashlights. At once they turned and looked in the direction of the diner. Jacks instinctively sank down in the booth, his mind racing. “The meat loaf’s good too,”

Maddy continued, trying to spur a decision, starting to feel guilty that she was keeping Kevin.

“Actually. .” Jacks said, trailing off. And then he noticed it. There was a sign in the window. Even facing away from him, he could still read the red lettering: HELP

WANTED, and below that, scrawled in black Sharpie, Part-time position available. Jacks looked at Maddy. “I’d like to apply for a job.”

Maddy blinked. “Okay, I’ll bring back an application with your food.”

“I was actually hoping I could apply right now,” Jacks said, a little urgently.

“All right,” Maddy said, a little surprised, “I’ll bring you the application.” Maddy turned to go in the back, oblivi-ous to the officers approaching just outside the window.

“Miss?” Jacks called. Maddy turned. “Isn’t there someplace we could go in the back? So you could interview me? I’d like to get that part out of the way.” His eyes flickered to the door, where the police were just entering, their hands were on their holsters. He looked back at Maddy.

“Please.”

There was something different about him, Maddy thought. Something beyond the obvious good looks. It was in the way his eyes caught the light. The way he looked at her. They way he held her gaze. The funniest thing was, it made her want to trust him.

She was surprised to find herself speaking.

“Okay, follow me.”

Jacks jumped to his feet and followed Maddy around the counter and into the back. He couldn’t believe she didn’t recognize him, but at this point he didn’t care. He wasn’t concerned with anything except getting out of the dining room.

Maddy’s uncle was cleaning the griddle as they passed. Before Kevin could look up, Maddy had taken Jacks into their tiny office and closed the door.

The room was dingy and cramped. A battered metal desk was covered in piles of receipts and bills, an old picture of Maddy and Uncle Kevin in a frame poking up out of the mess. Maddy’s backpack, exploding with textbooks and college brochures, sat on the floor. She smoothed her uniform and found an application among a stack of forms. Jacks took a seat in the creaky chair opposite the desk and pulled his hood back.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Sure.”

Closed in the small room with him, the fact struck Maddy that this boy’s beauty was nearly overwhelming.

Who was this guy? It didn’t even seem real. His pale blue eyes were piercing under strong, dark eyebrows, and his model good looks sat on a sturdy face, giving him a slightly rugged quality.

“Okay,” she said, assembling her thoughts and grabbing a pen out of a nearby coffee mug. “I didn’t get your name.”

“It’s Ja. . Jason.” Jacks looked over to a newspaper sitting on the desk and read the headline: STOCKS SLIDE

AGAIN. “Jason Stockton.”

“Okay, Mr. Stockton,” Maddy said, “do you have any prior experience in serving?”

“No,” Jacks said. Maddy looked up at him.

“Any experience in the restaurant industry at all?”

“No.”

Maddy sat back in her chair. “You know, Jason, to get a restaurant job in Angel City it’s pretty much required to have some experience serving.”

Jacks’s lips pulled up into a half-grin. “Well, how are you supposed to get experience if you can’t land a job to begin with?”

Maddy folded her arms and leaned over the table. She was trying not to flirt, but she almost couldn’t help herself.

“Okay, then, why should I hire you?”

Jacks looked for something, anything, that would keep him safely in the back room. His eyes drifted down to Maddy’s backpack and a college brochure sticking out between two textbooks.

“To save money for college,” he said, improvising.

Maddy paused, her expression softening. Jacks looked at the image of the leafy campus on the brochure’s cover.

“Somewhere back east, actually. Away from Angel City.”

“Really?” Maddy said, her interest piqued.

“Yeah. .” Jacks said unsteadily. He took a deep breath and lied. “It’s always been my dream. Problem is my family, well, we don’t have a ton of money right now.”

Maddy shook her head in empathy. “I know how that is. Did your dad lose his job or something?”

“Actually, he. .” Jacks trailed off, searching Maddy’s eyes. He was surprised she had unwittingly brought him back to the truth. “He died.”

Maddy flushed. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

Jacks shrugged. “It’s okay, I was young. I never really knew him at all.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t make it any easier,” Maddy said, her defenses collapsing with startling quickness. “I mean, I know just how it is. Both my parents died when I was just a baby. I never knew them either.”

“Wow, I’m sorry. I thought I had it rough.”

“It’s okay,” Maddy said, looking away. Jacks watched her. He felt a sudden urge to share something with her that he’d never told anyone.

“You know what? This might sound crazy, but I have no memories of him, right?” Jacks said. “So one day I just started making them up. Making up things we did together, places we went.” He laughed in embarrassment, shaking his head. “Pretty stupid, right?”

Maddy was quiet for a long moment, but her eyes had returned to Jacks and studied him.

“At the park,” she said finally.

“What?”

“My mother, father, and me at the park. Perfect day, you know, a carousel, swans floating on the pond, like one of those old postcards. That’s my favorite. My favorite pretend memory.”

Jacks smiled softly. “That’s a nice pretend memory.

The park. I hadn’t thought of that one.”

“All this time I thought I was the only one,” she said.

“I mean, you know the memories aren’t real, you tell yourself that, but somehow, in some crazy way—”

“They help.”

They said it together. Jacks and Maddy stared at each other as the seconds drew out, and she only now was aware that she had leaned closer to him. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he had come closer too. Now they were only inches apart. She leaned in, willing the moment to sweep them into a kiss, the most delicious kiss of her life. .

Jacks spoke.

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Maddy,” she said, holding out her hand. Jacks reached for it and, ever so gently, took it. His hand was hot to the touch, and Maddy thought she could feel a crackle of electricity, as if a current of energy was passing through Jacks and into her. From the look on Jacks’s face, he had felt something too.

A loud knock boomed at the door.

“Maddy? What are you doing in there?” It was Kevin.

“That’s my uncle,” Maddy whispered to Jacks. “He owns the place.” Jacks’s eyes focused, brought back to the present.

“Listen, Maddy, I need to get out of here. Is there a back door?”

“Yes, in the kitchen. What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Jacks said in a low whisper. “But I need your help. Will you help me?”

“Okay,” she said, a little cautiously. “Stay here.” She went to the door and opened it just a crack.

“Hey Kevin, I was just interviewing someone for the part-time position.”

Kevin eyed her. “I do the interviews.”

“I know, I just thought I would help out.”

“Okay, well, I need you both to come out. There are two police officers here asking to see everyone.”

“Okay, be right out,” Maddy said a little too brightly.

Kevin walked back to the dining room and said something to one of the officers.

“This way,” Maddy whispered as she led Jacks out of the office and toward the back door. They were halfway across the kitchen when a voice shouted from the dining room.

“There he goes right there!” one of the officers yelled in alarm, drawing his gun. “Jackson, stop!”

“Stop right there, Jacks!” the other echoed as he lunged forward, sending a table and dishes crashing to the floor. Jacks stepped in front of Maddy, knocking her back with such force it took her wind away.

“Back up toward the rear door,” he whispered. “Do it now.”

Maddy did as she was told, her lungs gasping for air.

One of the officers shouted again.

“Leave the young lady! Freeze right there or I will shoot you!”

Jacks stopped. He reached a hand back and touched Maddy’s side, right on the curve of her hip. She could feel the heat of his fingers through her uniform.

“No,” Jacks replied calmly, “you won’t.” Then he took another step back, still touching Maddy.

The officer’s trembling finger squeezed the trigger.

BANG. The discharge of the gun was the last thing Maddy heard before a bright, white light filled the diner, as though the sun itself had risen in the restaurant. As her eyes adjusted, Maddy saw the most amazing sight of her life up to that point.

The entire dining room was frozen.

The two policemen were like statues, their faces masks of fear and surprise. One of them had knocked the coffeepot off the warmer, and it now hovered, mid-shatter, over the floor. Uncle Kevin was frozen too. He had dropped his spatula, and it was rendered motionless just beyond the tips of his fingers. Perhaps the most spectacular thing of all, the bullet that had been fired now hung in the air, absolutely still, like a model airplane on fishing line. Maddy looked up at the boy. His hand stretched out in front of him, as if telling the entire room to stop. He turned and looked at her with his perfect features and his piercing blue eyes.

There was no other explanation. He was an Angel.

The front door burst open, and an impeccably dressed older man rushed into the restaurant, the rest of the diner remaining stock-still. He looked around at the frozen scene and then at Jacks.

“Jacks,” he said sternly, “let’s go.”

Jacks held Maddy’s gaze for another breathless second and then, without saying anything, turned to leave.

Nonchalantly he grabbed the bullet out of the air and put it in his pocket. Only then did he let go of Maddy.

Time seemed to return to normal. SMASH went the coffeepot all over the floor, and glass and brown liquid rushed over the linoleum. Uncle Kevin’s spatula clanged to the ground. Jackson and the older Angel vanished out the front door. The two officers peered at each other, confused.

Maddy just stood there, immovable. It wasn’t just what she had seen; it was what she had felt. As she stood there still breathing his strange, wonderful smell, a conversation came back to her, a conversation with Gwen and Jessica and Samantha from earlier in the evening. A name rose to the surface of her mind.

“Jacks. . Jackson. . Jackson Godspeed.” Her face turned white with disbelief, then blushed pink with embarrassment. Finally, it turned deep crimson. With rage.

Outside, Jacks and Mark walked quickly to their cars.

Mark turned to his stepson. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. What is going on?”

“We’ll discuss it at home. I’ll follow, and don’t ever let me lose sight of you.” Jacks got into his Ferrari and started the throaty engine. Mark went to his M7. He unlocked the door, but before he could get in, a hand seized him by the arm. Hard. With supernatural speed Mark spun around, ready to defend himself and Jacks.

It was Kevin. His stare was cold. Mark relaxed his hand, which was already around Kevin’s throat.

“Hello, Kevin,” Mark said calmly.

“You know the agreement,” Kevin said, cutting him off. “I don’t ever want to see you, or your boy, around here again.”

“I’m sorry, Kevin, it was an emergency.”

Kevin leaned into Mark’s face.

“Stay the hell away from Maddy.”