With a gentle tug, I blink out of my old room and appear in Kaleb’s. He’s lying in bed reading what appears to be one of those annoying human behavior books his parents make him read. The room is dimly lit with only the bedside lamp on. He startles with my entrance, dropping his book in his lap.
His dark eyes turn saucer shaped, and he angrily whispers, “What are you doing here? If my parents catch you, they won’t care that you have unfinished business, particularly since I’m not of age to be helping you with it.”
“Then you’d better keep it down,” I whisper back. This time I concentrate, and I’m able to sit/ hover on the side of the bed. “This is really important.”
Calm, patient Kaleb makes an appearance. He sets his book on his bedside table and gives me his full attention. “What is it? Are you okay?”
He has one of those deep radio voices that girls go nuts for. They titter like wild birds every time he says good morning, and he’s pretty much the designated reader for every English class.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” A heavy breath whooshes out of me. Even though I’m dead, I can’t seem to break the habit of breathing, even though it literally does nothing. I can’t even smell. “So, this is going to be a weird question, but is there a chance someone can be nephilim and not know it?”
He frowns and looks off in the distance, the expression he wears when he’s thinking. To me, it always looks like he’s going through a mental rolodex, picking through all the knowledge in that big brain of his. I’m smart, but he’s out of this world smart, quite literally, being nephilim and all.
After a moment, his gaze shifts back to me. He always looks people in the eye when he talks to them. “It’s possible, I suppose. If only one parent was nephilim… any coupled nephilim are recorded… and he or she kept what they were a secret, then something happened to that parent before they could tell their offspring. Granted that means the nephilim parent would’ve broken all ties with the community first. If anyone knew of their death, the child would’ve immediately been fostered by another nephilim family. Why?” He keeps his tone light and scholarly, but there’s a bunching tension in his shoulders that doesn’t bode well.
“You see, Aunt Gertie was finally able to rent out my old house to out of towners that didn’t know about the whole mass murder thing, and I wanted to check them out. See what kind of people they were.” I rub at the back of my neck, a nervous gesture I’d almost given up since I died. There isn’t much to be nervous about when you’re a ghost. “Well, it’s a woman and her niece. Nice people, by the way. Her niece is actually staying in my old room…”
“And?” Kaleb waves his hand in a circular motion, encouraging me to get to the point.
“And,” I huff, “the niece can see me.”
“What?” Kaleb cries, sitting up and throwing his legs over the side of the bed. “Can the aunt?”
“Nope,” I assure him. “I was walking all over the house, and she didn’t even twitch.”
He nods. “Okay,” he whispers absently to himself then stands up and walks over to his dresser.
“Uh, what are you doing?” I ask, as he pulls out a pair of jeans. He’s currently in a pair of grey sweats and a white t-shirt that practically glows in the dim light against his dark skin.
“Going to see this girl. She must be terrified. Knowing nothing of our world, then suddenly seeing a spirit in her house.” He strips off his sweats, flashing me an eyeful of blue boxer briefs, before quickly throwing on his jeans. “And I can only imagine how her abilities are manifesting, though it’s strange that her wings haven’t surfaced yet. At least, I’m assuming they haven’t. How old is she?”
“Whoa, hold up,” I squawk, reaching for him, and my hand going right through his shoulder.Argh!“First, she’s our age, and after I convinced her I wasn’t a hallucination, she was pretty cool about the whole ghost thing. Second, it’s 10:30 at night, she was going to bed when I left, and third, I told her my friends were people she could trust, which will be harder to believe if you go charging over there.”
Kaleb turns to look at me, stopping before reaching into his drawer for socks. “She’s seventeen?”
“Somewhere around there. We didn’t really get into specifics.” I pause, realizing I don’t actually know a whole lot about her, other than she has a complicated family history and a strong dislike for stairs. Thank God, I can’t blush anymore. “I told her I’d meet her at the front of the school tomorrow morning with one of you guys. You can get the specifics then.”
He looks at me intently, the scholar in him burning holes into my head. “Did she mention anything strange about herself? Increased strength, near perfect memory, or you know, wings suddenly sprouting from her shoulders?”
“She strikes me as a private person, so no, we didn’t really get into whether she had super powers,” I grumble, annoyed that the whole time I was with her, we talked about me. “I wanted to talk to you first, before I went‘Hey, you might be a nephilim’on her. Finding out she’s essentially a lackey for angels for the rest of her life seemed like a day two type of conversation.”
Kaleb sighs, running his hand over his short, black curls. “You’re right,” he mutters, sitting back down on his bed. He groans. “What if she’s dark nephilim? It would explain why she would’ve been hidden from her own kind.”
I suddenly feel like I’m made of ice. Skip being a lackey for angels. Try being destined to fight demons and pretty much everything evil for the rest of her life, because she just so happened to be a descendant of a fallen angel. Yeah, I could see that as a good reason to keep her in the dark. Maybe one of her complicated family issues was her witnessing her parents being killed by demons. It’d explain why she thought she was crazy.
“Crap!” I plop down next to Kaleb, except I fall through his bed instead. My head barely pokes out above the mattress. “Double crap.”
Kaleb chuckles, more breath than sound.
“Whatever she is, we’ll help her,” he assures me.Ah. There’s my Obi Wan.He fidgets a bit before asking, “You staying the night?”
I snort. “And have your parents send me off to the pearly gates early, no thank you. I’ll go stay with Nolan or Connor.”
He nods and gets up to retrieve his sweats. “I’ll make sure Donovan is up early, so we can both meet her before school. That way she knows no matter what she faces, she isn’t alone.”
Getting up off the floor, I tell him, “Thanks. You’re a good friend, Kaleb.”
He shrugs and concentrates on putting his sweats back on. He has a hard time with compliments. Parents expecting perfection will do that to a person. They’re nice people who clearly love their son, but they demand a lot out of him.
