I fumble in my purse for my phone, then call. Mom picks up on the first ring.

“What’s wrong?” she asks immediately.

“I think . . . maybe . . . there’s a Black Wing.”

“Where are you?”

“In the car, on 191, driving south.”

“Go to the school,” she says. “I’ll meet you there.”

It’s the longest five minutes of my life before Mom lands in the parking lot at Jackson Hole High School. She gets in the back.

“So,” she says, reaching up and feeling my cheek like sorrow is some kind of fever, “how do you feel?”

“Better now. I guess.”

“Did you see him?”

“No.”

She turns to Angela. “How about you? Did you feel anything?”

Angela shrugs. “Nothing.” There’s an edge of disappointment in her voice.

“So what do we do now?” I ask.

“We wait,” Mom says.

So we wait, and wait, and wait some more, but nothing happens. We sit in the car in silence, watching the windshield wipers push the rain off the glass. Occasionally Mom asks me how I’m doing, which is hard to answer in any clear way. At first, what I feel most is terrified that any second now Samjeeza’s going to show up and murder us all. Then I downgrade to just plain scared—that we’re going to have to run now, pack up and leave Jackson, and I’ll never see Tucker again. Finally I arrive at mildly freaked out. Then embarrassed.

“Maybe it wasn’t sorrow,” I admit. “It wasn’t as strong as before.”

“It would surprise me if he came after us so soon,” Mom says.

“Why?” Angela asks.

“Because Samjeeza’s vain,” Mom says matter-of-factly. “Clara mangled his ear, burned his arm and his head, and I don’t think he’ll want to show his face until he’s healed, which is a long process for Black Wings.”

“I would have thought they could heal quickly,” Angela says. “You know, like vampires or something.”

Mom scoffs. “Vampires. Please. Black Wings take a long time to heal because they’ve chosen to cut themselves off from the healing forces in this world.” She touches my cheek again. “You did the right thing, getting out of there, calling me. Even if it wasn’t a Black Wing. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

Angela sighs and looks out the window.

“Sorry,” I say. I turn to Mom. “I guess I’m kind of on edge.”

“Don’t be,” she says. “You’ve had a lot to deal with.”

She and Angela switch places. Then she pulls out of the school parking lot and onto the road, heading back toward town.

“What do you feel?” she asks as we pass the restaurant.

“Nothing,” I say with a shrug. “Except I have a feeling I might be losing my mind.”

“It doesn’t matter whether this is a false alarm or not. Samjeeza will come after us, Clara, eventually. You’ll need to be ready.”

Right.

“How does one get ready to be attacked by a Black Wing, exactly?” I ask sarcastically.

“Glory,” she says, which immediately gets the told-you-so look on Angela’s face. “You learn to use glory.”

“Hey, I think I see a flicker,” Christian says, startling me. “You’re doing it.”

My eyes snap open. Christian wasn’t here earlier, when I got up onstage and started trying this bring-the-glory thing, but here he is now, sitting at one of the tables down in the audience at the Pink Garter, staring up at me with amusement like he’s watching a show. For a split second our eyes meet and then I glance down at my hand, which is definitely not glowing. No glory.

Clearly I suck at bringing glory if it’s not a do-it-or-die situation.

“What flicker?” I ask.

One side of his mouth hitches up. “Must have been my imagination.”

Uh-huh. Insert another one of the classic Christian-Clara awkward silences. Then he coughs and says, “Sorry I interrupted your glory practice. Carry on.”

I should close my eyes and try again, but I know it’s no use. There’s no way I’m going to achieve glory with him watching me.

“God, this is frustrating!” Angela exclaims. She slams her laptop closed and pushes it across the table, blowing out a long, aggravated breath. She’s been scouring college websites, trying to figure out what college she’s supposed to go to, which to most people is a pretty big deal, but for Angela, it’s a huge deal, the hugest, since she thinks it’s a college campus she’s seeing in her visions. Talk about pressure.

“Didn’t get that ancient text you wanted on eBay?” asks Christian.

She glares at him. “Funny.”

“Sorry, Ange,” I say. “Can I help?”

“The vision doesn’t give me very much to go on. There’s a set of wide steps, a bunch of stone archways, and people drinking coffee. That describes practically any college in the country.”

“Look for trees,” I tell her. “I have a good book if you’re trying to identify what area certain trees grow in.”

“Well, I hope I get something decent to go on soon,” mutters Angela. “I have to apply, you know? Like, now.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Christian says nonchalantly. He glances down at his notebook, where I think he’s working on calculus homework. “You’ll figure it out when you’re supposed to figure it out.” Then he looks up, and his eyes catch mine again.

“Did you?” I can’t help but ask, even though I know the answer. “Did you figure it out when you were supposed to?”

“No,” he admits with a short, almost bitter laugh. “I don’t know why I said that. Drilled into me, I guess. That’s what my uncle always tells me.”

He hasn’t talked much about his uncle. Or his purpose, outside of the initial “I was having visions of you in the forest fire, I thought I was supposed to save you, and now I’m confused” conversation. Once, he showed us that he could fly without flapping his wings, Superman style, hovering over the stage like David Blaine while Angela, Jeffrey, and I gaped up at him like idiots. Occasionally he gives Angela some random angel fact, so she’ll be satisfied with what he’s contributing to the group. He seems to know more than we do, but mostly he’s been pretty tight lipped.

“So,” Angela says, and the expression on her face makes me nervous. She gets up and crosses to stand next to Christian’s table. “What happens now?”

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“You haven’t fulfilled your purpose, right?”

He stares at her.

“All right,” she says when he doesn’t say anything. “At least answer this: when you had your vision before, did it come during the day, or at night?”

He looks off at the shadows in the back of the stage area for a minute, deciding, then glances back at her. “At night.”

“You dreamed it?”

“Usually. Except one time I was awake.”

Prom. When we danced, and then we had the vision, together.

“Well, Clara’s having a new dream,” Angela says. I give her what I hope is my most angry glare, but she ignores it, of course. “Like maybe it could be a vision. We need to figure out what it is.”

Christian looks at me, immediately interested. I’m literally standing in the spotlight, so I jump down from the stage and walk over to them, feeling his gaze following me.

“What vision?” he asks.

“It might only be a dream,” Angela answers for me. “But you’ve had it what, Clara, ten times now?”

“Seven. I’m walking up a hill,” I explain, “through a forest, but not like the hill in my—in our vision. It’s a sunny day, no fire. Jeffrey’s there, and he’s wearing a suit for some reason. Angela’s there—at least she was last time I had it. And some other people too . . .” I hesitate. “And you’re there,” I say to Christian.

I can’t tell him about how he takes my hand, how he whispers straight into my mind without saying anything out loud.

“It’s probably only a dream, you know?” I manage. “Like my subconscious working something out, my fears, maybe, or like those dreams where you show up to school naked.”

“What does the forest look like?” he asks.

“That’s the weird thing about it. It’s like a normal forest, but there are these stairs—a set of concrete stairs in the middle of the trees. And a fence.”