Things seemed to calm down for a while. It had been over a month since I saw Lilith, and I was beginning to think she had moved on—or at least, that was what I hoped.
Claire and I had kept our training sessions to about three days a week at Falls River Park, around dusk, when we were sure no one would see us. Her patience when it came to teaching was thin to nonexistent, so Nate had taken over that part, explaining everything I needed to know about angels, demons, and heaven and hell. We didn’t have a routine for this, so whenever it was just the three of us we would get to talking.
It was liberating to be finally getting the answers to the questions that had been pestering me for some time. I hadn’t seen or dreamed about Blake ever since, and that saddened me, but I had to move forward. If he wasn’t real, I couldn’t give up what I had for a phantom.
Things at school had changed, too. The new Jade didn’t seem much interested in patience, so whenever anyone annoyed me, weird things would happen. Amy had started spinning stupid rumors the second Avan and I got back together.
One day in the cafeteria, fed up with her crap, I set her tray on fire. Of course, no one knew it was me, because that sort of thing doesn’t really show. One minute, she was gossiping away, and the next, flames had engulfed her whole tray and were spreading around the table. They had gone out instantly, and not by my doing. When I had looked at Nate, he scowled at me. It felt good to see her scramble to her feet and shriek like a two-year-old.
Another time, I made a window explode in class, also a few test tubes in chemistry, when Amy’s friends started making comments about me loud enough that I could hear. Too bad there hadn’t been something nasty in the test tubes.
But even with all the old and new distractions I had been dealing with the past two months, my grades stayed up.
Avan and I had been doing great. When I wasn’t training or with him I would be glued to my computer, looking for anything about sharing divinity. So far, I had found nada. I wondered if he had to bite me or something, but I didn’t want to make any mistakes or take any chances. I still hadn’t told him the truth about me, so I wasn’t completely sure whether I would need to share divinity in the end.
Things had been pretty good between us, actually—so good, in fact, that he had even started mentioning that it was time for me to go over his house and meet his mom. “Make it official,” he had said.
I wasn’t ready. I would take kicking demon ass over this anytime. But he was persuasive, and against my better judgment, I agreed. The first time I met Mrs. Blackwell, I was scared she wouldn’t approve of me. A sixteen-year-old who had just lost her parents and now lived on her own didn’t sound too promising as your only child’s girlfriend.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. She was nothing but sweet and had totally taken me in within the first ten minutes. It felt nice to have a parental figure around—yes, Claire and Nate were always taking care of me, but it just wasn’t the same. Hanging out with a real family definitely made me miss my parents, but at the same time, it gave me a little glint of hope that little by little, my life was getting back on track and I wasn’t as alone as I had once thought.
I had now gone over to Avan’s house for dinner a few times and even spent some alone time with Mrs. Blackwell, out shopping and having lunch together over the weekends. I knew she started doing this partly because she must have felt terrible about my situation, but as we grew closer it was easy to see, that wasn’t the case anymore. It had become natural, and I felt treated as one of her own. I was like a daughter to her now.
I still hadn’t told Avan about my secret yet, but I knew I would have to, and soon. I wasn’t looking forward to it, though. After my dream—more like a nightmare, perhaps—I had been terrified to confide in him. Would that be the way he would react when he learned my secret? I had been battling with this for quite some time, and what it truly came down to was, if he really loved me, he would just have to accept me for who I was. But what if he didn’t? I wasn’t ready to lose him, too. But maybe, just maybe, I was worrying for nothing and we would be happy together, forevermore. Feathermore, I said to myself, and smiled at my own lame joke.