She covered her gaping mouth with her hands, let out something that resembled the squeak of a hamster wheel, then said, “This is the coolest day of my life. Oh, except where Wade tried to kill you. That wasn’t cool.”
“Thanks,” I said, fighting my own grin, but I’d lost Crystal. She was looking past the ambulance door.
Kenya and I leaned over to see what she was ogling. A figure walked forward. One with a familiar shape. A familiar gait. My heart stopped beating as I watched my oldest friend on earth walk forward.
He stopped in front of me, his face full of relief and joy. “Do you just start crap wherever you go?”
“Glitch,” I whispered before jumping down and almost tackling him to the ground as I rushed into his arms.
He wrapped them around me and laughed. I laughed, too. Kind of. I mostly sobbed like a girl dumped at prom.
Glitch was one of my very best friends from Riley’s Switch.
After a long while, the EMT brought out the Jaws of Life and peeled me off Glitch. By then, I’d finally calmed down enough to ask, “What are you doing here?”
“I came for you.”
I couldn’t have wiped the smile off my face if he’d paid me to. “I’m glad. I’m ready to go home.”
Even though Glitch stood only three inches higher than I did, he seemed to tower over me at that moment. His short black hair and coppery Native American skin glistened under the lamps overhead, as did the green in his hazel eyes, a testament to the fact that his mother was about as Irish as one could get. He was such a beautiful mixture of ethnicities. I’d forgotten how striking he was. Or maybe I’d never known. Never paid attention. But I sure did now. He looked like an angel. A really short angel. One that had lost weight since I saw him last. He looked tired no matter how hard he tried to hide it behind that bright smile of his.
“McAlister.”
I turned to where Kenya gestured. The Hamptons were pulling up. They looked like their hearts were broken as they spoke to their son before the police led him to a squad car and put him in the backseat. I could see the venom in his features. He was not going easy on them, his animosity evident in every expression, every sharp movement. That was one conversation I was glad to be excluded from.
After a moment, they looked over at me, their faces full of sadness and regret. It wasn’t their fault. Kenya was right. Their son was a douche. Sometimes nature overrode nurture like that. They were good parents. I could see it clearly. Kindness radiated out of them.
I could tell they wanted to apologize, but didn’t know what to say. I stepped to them and hugged them both, not entirely certain they would want me to. But they hugged me back with a fierce regard. I was surprised. After everything that had happened, they still thought highly of me.
“I can’t believe you came all this way,” I said to Glitch when I walked back over. “How is everyone? How is Grandma and Granddad? Brooklyn? Cameron?” I lowered my head. “Jared?”
“They didn’t send me, if that’s what you mean. Your grandparents.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Brooke and I … snooped. We went through your grandparents’ mail at the store and found an invoice to this school. Once we figured out where they sent you, I got on a plane. Unfortunately, we couldn’t afford for both of us to come. We didn’t tell Cameron or Jared. Cameron would have been here before we could blink. He still takes his role very seriously. And Jared.” He turned away. “I just don’t know what he would have done.”
“You found an invoice. I thought … I thought they got me a scholarship somehow.”
“No. They must have hocked the store to send you here. This place is pricey.”
Wonderful. They’d lied to me, then. And Granddad was a pastor, for heaven’s sake. “So, they didn’t tell you where I was?”
I could feel him withdraw. He resented the fact that no one told him, and I could hardly blame him. I would’ve felt betrayed as well. I would have felt abandoned.
“No. No one told us. Jared ordered us to leave it alone, said you’d come home when the time was right. But Cameron…” He bit the side of his mouth before continuing. “Cameron was furious with your grandparents for a long time. He still is, actually. I’m not sure what he would’ve done if his dad hadn’t been there when he found out. I’ve never seen him so mad.”
Cameron was a part of this whole prophecy thing as well, only from a different standpoint. He’d literally been created. Apparently, when the angels in heaven found out the prophet was going to be born, the one slated to stop the war, they sent an angel down to a human woman, Cameron’s mother, to create a protector. They had relations, as my grandfather would say, and nine months later, out popped a bouncing baby nephilim. Since Cameron was part angel, he was much stronger and faster than your average human. And he took his role as protector very seriously. So when Jared first came to town to take me, Cameron was all over him. They fought, almost destroying downtown Riley’s Switch in the process, and they still felt a niggling of animosity toward each other, though they now had parallel goals.
“I’ve seen Cameron angry,” I said, remembering the first time they fought. I’d been terrified and awed at the same time.
“Not this angry,” Glitch said. “Not this enraged. I thought he would tear apart that store looking for you.”
And here I thought I couldn’t feel any worse than I already did. “So how are they? My grandparents?”