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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 Cleaners. “‘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.
