Uriel: The Inheritance (Airel Saga Book Five)

Chapter VI

WHAT WAS BEST FOR me turned out to be a pretty easy test for me to pass—at least, at first. Two days hadn't gone by before my mom told me she had convinced Dad to allow me to see Michael, but I would have an early curfew now.

"So I need to be home by eight? No exceptions?"

"Not unless you want to be grounded," she said, brushing my hair out of my eyes.

I smirked and sighed in resignation. I felt pulled in five hundred directions at once. I wanted to come back home forever, have it be like it was before I learned I was half angel. But I also felt smothered here, like I was, well, drowning.

Getting back into the routine at school was as daunting to me as preparing for an ascent of Everest. I thought it was going to kill me. I knew I was going to face memories of Kim everywhere and I also thought I would be the class pariah, now not invisible but instead, untouchable.

To my great surprise, though, people were pretty decent and sensitive. My teachers helped me out with all my catch-up work, which, weirdly, only amounted to a couple of weeks of stuff for all the time I felt I'd spent Out There, growing up. And after everyone had gawked at me for a few days, the braver ones actually walked up to me and gave me notes expressing their condolences about Kim. There was real face-to-face relationship stuff happening. Part of that weirded me out a little. But things settled down and I got into a kind of groove. A rhythm.

I still had nightmares. Flashbacks. And I still had a lot of questions, too.

Michael was there, he was always there, and we shared the Thing Secret between us about Africa, about all that had been done and all that had precipitated our time there. We would sometimes sit together for lunch and he would ask me, "Do you think they're okay, wherever they are?" and I would know exactly who he was talking about—Kreios and Ellie—and I would give him a kind of noncommittal answer, a ho-hum-I-suppose.

The truth was, I didn't know the first thing about my angelic grandfather or his only daughter. Though it felt cold and harsh, I thought sometimes they might be gone—dead—and this one thought actually helped me to believe that one day, I might be able to move on with my life.

Christmas break started to beckon in the wane of a rough December, and it was much colder than it normally was in Boise. I had settled back into my American teenager life, my student career path, even having made a few new friends. Life felt normal.

And I wanted that.

Most of me, anyway.

***

Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho—Present Day

HIGH UP IN THE Sawtooth Mountains, Ellie took her time in her father's house. It was a far cry from where she grew up, but he had both the time and the resources to build it the way he wanted it. The emptiness of the corridors saddened her, though, because without Kreios, this house was an empty building made of stone and metal.

Where are you? She reached out again, standing on the porch that overlooked the meadow below. A young eagle bellowed its flight call, and the peal echoed over the green landscape.

Ellie gave up, frustrated. Kreios was either dead or somehow beyond her reach. She prayed to El that it was the latter.

Something about Airel's father, John Cross, bothered her. He, like his daughter, had a secret. The more she pondered it, the more it unsettled her.

South Africa and the circumstances surrounding their return didn't add up. He knew more than he let on—he was more than he let on. Ellie pored over book after book in her father's library, trying to trace her lineage. She looked for the link from Kreios to Airel, but a huge part was missing. John Cross was not mentioned in the line of the Sons of El.

Am I going about this all wrong? Could it be her mother who is in the line?

Ellie ran her hand through her electric blue hair and muttered a string of curses in her native tongue, words that expressed her true feelings. This is going to be harder than I thought.

***

Boise, Idaho—Present Day

I WAS AT SCHOOL walking down the hall to math class a couple of days later when I saw it—blue hair bobbing up and down in a sea of teenagers hurrying to their final class of the day. There was a little pompom of neon coming toward me, converging on the same door I was headed to. We met at the threshold simultaneously, and I couldn't believe my eyes.

"Hey, girlie. Howzit?"

I dropped my textbook and hugged her savagely. "Ellie."