The A-Word Read online

  Bo smirked, even though something serious fluttered behind his eyes. “I like you, Jenna Samuels.”

  I didn’t respond. I had not yet formed my opinion of Bo Shivers other than that he was a person who could walk off balconies and be none the worse for it and who, when he used both my names to refer to me, made it sound pleasant. He also could have hid the truth that his former self was dead and gone, like Amber had for so long, and pretended whatever he wanted. But he hadn’t. He might turn out to be the world’s biggest liar. Maybe he already was, and more, too. Bo was not, I suspected, always a nice guy. But I had heard one important truth, even if it was the only truth he ever told: he was trapped here, just like Casey and Amber. Which meant that whatever he’d done, Management wasn’t moving him forward. But most of all, I knew he was sad. I could smell it and taste it—like the juices from an overripe peach that’s crossed into rotten. Sadness lay shallow under his skin, crisscrossing him like those scars on his hands.

  Who had he saved? Why had he done it? Where was that person now?

  He could say what he wanted. I’d always know it was there. Did I know this because I’d spent almost a year hanging out with two angels? Maybe. Or maybe it was all those years of it being just me and Casey while our parents drifted for one reason or another. Maybe I was just the type who could feel things like that. Either way, I was as sure of it as I was sure of the outfit that Amber had given me this morning. It was the best damn signature look yet. If Ryan Sloboda ever actually asked me out, I would wear it for him. Knock him out of his boots.

  Jenna Samuels, he would say, I am your love slave for life.

  Or at least ask me to Homecoming. He might even kiss me. And I might even kiss him back. If he was lucky.

  This was what I was thinking here among my personal team of angels. Mags would have been proud. But I listened to them so that eventually I could write it all down. That way I could remember. If there was one thing I’d learned from all this, it was that memory is a precious thing.

  Here is the short version:

  Bo sipped his whiskey and occasionally got up to pace. He did not seem the nervous type, but he didn’t like to be still. We had that in common. Only I didn’t know if he’d mind me walking around the loft or if it would look like snooping. So I stayed put.

  Amber and Casey did, too. Casey sat at the edge of his seat, hands on his knees. Occasionally he glanced over at me like if he didn’t, I might do something crazy. Somewhere in between all the fidgeting and pacing and Jack-sipping, the following was established:

  • Bo was in charge. Casey brought up Management again, not so subtle-like, and Amber shot him down with, “Let Bo talk.”

  • Bo had a thing for chaos. “It attracts me. I attract it.” Amber had used the same chaos theory, right down to the letter, in explaining our accident last year. Casey had loaned our Prius to stoner Dave who smashed it in the Jack in the Box sign and made it unstable, and thus we’d had our accident. I felt now what I’d felt then: This was the fancy angel way of saying “shit happens.” And in Bo’s case, that was just fine.

  “Meaning what?” I finally piped up. “You like to jump off roofs?”

  “Meaning I can tell when something’s coming,” he said. A hint of a smile curved the corners of his mouth. “Things shift and I feel it.”

  “We know something’s coming,” my brother groused. “We told you that when we walked in here.”

  A breeze whipped up in the room even though Amber had shut the door to the balcony. The muscles in Bo’s arms tensed, then rippled, veins rising. My first thought: he must work out a lot. My second thought: he was causing the wind. My third thought: he knew way more than he was saying and he was trying to pass it off like he was playing games. My fourth thought: Why?

  “You told me what you think you know,” Bo said. “If you knew it all, you wouldn’t be here. You and Ms. Velasco are quite the team.”

  “They are,” I snapped even though no way was it true.

  Bo’s brow furrowed, even though the hint of the smile remained. The wind settled, but not all the way. “You know that Oak View is up and running again?” It was a statement more than a question. He walked to the windows again and placed his hand on the balcony door, swigging Jack with the other.

  Again, something flickered in his eye.

  “I put a Google alert on it,” Casey said, meaning Oak View. “On Renfroe, too.” I know he must have thought this would sound proactive. Mostly, its sounded geeky.

  “Did you now?” Bo sighed like the teachers at Ima Hogg used to when Corey Chambers asked idiotic questions just to get us all off topic because he was high on weed and hadn’t done his homework. “Did your alert tell you that it was owned by a European conglomerate now?”

  It had not.

  “Is that a problem?” Amber asked. “This conglomerate?”

  “Don’t think so,” Bo said. “But there’s something.”

  “What?” I eyeballed Bo as hard as I could. “If I hear the word ‘something’ again I’m gonna scream. All that Spidey sense stuff is starting to seem like bull. We drove all the way down here for nothing, didn’t we?” I stood. “I bet you know. Can’t you just tell us?”

  “There are rules, Jenna,” Amber started, as if I wasn’t fully aware of all the stupid angel rules. As if I didn’t already spend a large chunk of time with two dead people. As if I weren’t the only living person in this ridiculous fancy loft. I kept my glare on Bo Shivers.

  “It works the same as it’s worked for centuries,” he said.

  “Centuries? How the hell old are you?”

  “Jenna!” Casey grabbed my arm.

  “Old enough to know what people are capable of. And what they’re not.” Bo cut his gaze to Casey. “Let her go.”

  My brother removed his hand. What had Bo Shivers done? Maybe Houston was where you went for punishment. It was hot enough in the summer, that was for sure.

  So maybe he was being punished.

  Maybe, a voice inside me whispered, he’s punishing himself.

  “The human condition is nothing but repetitious.” Bo’s voice was a low growl. “Follow the power. Follow the riches. One or the other or both. That’s the way it works. The way it’s always worked. If we do it enough, then maybe …” He glanced at Amber. Then his eyes flicked to the balcony, going distant, like he was remembering something.

  “How long you been trying to beat the system, anyway?” Casey asked.

  “Longer than you’ve been hiding in your room beating your dick.”

  I tried not to laugh. I really, really did. I would never be disloyal to my brother. Not ever. This is the one absolute truth in my life right now. Maybe the only absolute truth I’ll ever have. Not just because he was my guardian angel. But because he was, even in life, good and solid and as true as north on a compass. Even with his bad habits.

  But here is what was on my tongue, almost sliding off: I like you, Bo Shivers.

  I did not say the words. First of all, I wasn’t sure they were true. The whole angel pheromone thing messed with people’s minds. That’s why folks had no clue my brother and Amber weren’t exactly human. It was entirely possible that’s all it was. I was generally immune to my brother’s appeal. But I had no idea if that carried over like a protective device—an angel immunization because I was related to one. I knew what was going on behind the curtain.

  Either way, I started thinking that this visit hadn’t been a waste. Bo tickled my funny bone. In that darker way. Not like people’s uncles or grandpas who asked you to pull their fingers or flicked loose change from behind your ear and expected you to believe that you were sprouting quarters from your head. Those types looked right past you. Not Bo. Maybe to change the subject to safer territory—something that wouldn’t make my brother’s eyes gleam dark—or maybe because I wanted to know, my mouth flapped: “You paint all these pictures?”

  “That I did,” said Bo Shivers. His eyes cut to that painting of the lady over by his bed on the fa
r side of the loft. Just for an instant. If I hadn’t been so focused on him, I would have missed it.

  “Bo?” Amber asked, “When you said, follow the riches—”

  “Darlin’,” Bo drawled, the accent sounding pure West Texas even though I was positive he was not from here, not really. “We’ve talked enough. You need to do what you need to do.”

  “Follow the money trail, right?” Casey pressed. His voice was calm and controlled, which I knew he was not. “Like what? Manny’s cartel? There’s money there. Least there was. Maybe still with those memory drugs. But we solved that whole thing, didn’t we? Police are dealing with it now, right? Maybe even the FBI. Even if Renfroe’s on the run. I mean it’s not like he can hurt my family any more. We’d see it coming.”

  I had to give my brother props: he was a stubborn cuss. Of course let him get a whiff of Lanie Phelps—even now that he seemed resigned to let that moron Donny Sneed have her—and the whole thing went to hell. It was odd, though. The Lanie Phelps thing made a secret part of me happy. Not because he was a horndog. Just that at those times he was thinking about her, I could pretend that none of this had ever happened. Forgetting to protect me because he was leading with his nether regions was a comfort. That Casey was still the old Casey. Unlike now.

  Bo shrugged. “Amber’s in charge of you. This is your issue, not mine.”

  “Well, this was useless.” Casey’s mouth drew into a line. He glanced around, all judgy now, like he was sniffing milk gone bad. I followed his gaze as he lighted on something I hadn’t noticed before, a pile of typed papers on a pretty wooden desk near the bed. There was a laptop there, too. And a printer and some other tech stuff.

  “So what?” Casey went on. “You writing a book or something? You planning to get rich, yourself?”

  “Bo teaches history at St. Thomas,” Amber said. I’d almost forgotten she was there, what with all the testosterone in the air.

  “That your cover job?” I asked.

  “Ancient Civilization through Medieval Times,” Bo confirmed.

  I decided not to ask if maybe he’d experienced any of this firsthand.

  “Coaches teach history at our school,” Casey said with a dismissive sneer.

  “And what do you do, Casey?” Bo asked.

  “He takes care of me,” I said.

  My brother’s face turned red. And not in a good way.

  “It’s a big job,” I added. “I’m quite the handful.”

  Bo laughed. “Casey’s got his hands full in all kinds of ways.”

  It probably goes without saying that we left soon after that.

  If Bo Shivers had a functioning Spidey sense—if it were real and not just some of Amber’s hopeful bullshit that my brother seemed willing to believe—he wasn’t going to tell us today.

  “Y’all come back real soon if you discover anything,” he said as he shut the door behind us. “I’ll be around.”

  “Can I practice driving on the way home?” I asked as we rode the elevator down.

  It was still my birthday. Wasn’t I supposed to be calling the shots? Of course Casey said no, and we piled into the Merc—angels in front, me in back—and chugged our way through a construction traffic jam on I-45.

  “So what, then, Amber? You’ve known Bo since you …” Casey trailed off. Usually he didn’t pussyfoot around death. Bo Shivers had thrown him off his game. He’d thrown all of us off.

  “Since then, yeah.” Amber looked out the passenger window rather than at Casey.

  “He’s really a professor?”

  “Yes. Cover job, but yes. You have a problem with that?”

  “Did you meet him right away?” I asked, joining in because if it was up to my brother, he’d dance around the right questions.

  In my head, I had a vague recollection of Amber’s face as she pulled me from the wreck. The night Casey died. The night they sent him back. She had been there from the beginning. I figured she’d tell me that she didn’t remember or she didn’t want to talk about it. Instead she said, “Pretty much,” which for Amber was a Rare Personal Revelation.

  “But he teaches history,” I said. “So how did that work? I mean you’re an EMT. It made sense that you were there with the ambulance. And after, at the hospital. But what’d he do? Walk in and tell you about the Lincoln assassination and then say, hey, you got sent back. Let me explain?”

  “Doesn’t work that way,” Casey interjected.

  The Number One Classic Angel Excuse For Everything, I thought, sulking in the backseat. I wasn’t even going to answer him. But a thought bloomed, like a tiny plant popping from a very muddy soil: Bo had never said those words. If I was one-on-one with Bo Shivers and asked him how things worked, he would tell me. He might tell me in a weird way, like by flinging himself off a balcony. But if he lied—because his secrets were too big or too old or too sad—I’d know. He wouldn’t give me a pathetic non-answer because he thought I was too young or too innocent or too alive to handle the truth.

  Amber cleared her throat. “I thought I’d dreamt him at first. Because I saw him when I … well, I saw him after I was gone. I told you, I was living in Austin.”

  “With your boyfriend,” I prompted her.

  She sighed. “Yes. With my boyfriend. And I was alone in the apartment that night. Someone broke in. I remember that much. I remember that I struggled. That it hurt. I … you know what? I don’t want to talk about this now. It’s not what you asked, anyway. You asked about Bo. So here’s what I can tell you. He was part of, let’s call it my greeting committee. I heard him in my head. He said that they were sending me back. That I was a guardian now. That he would be in charge of me. And then I woke up in my apartment, the place trashed to hell, and he was sitting on the couch with me like he’d come to visit.”

  “And then?” I leaned forward, shoving my head between the front seats. My brother swatted at me, but I stayed put.

  “And then we went on from there,” Amber said, shutting the confession down. “He told me what I was. I realized it was the truth. I pulled myself together. Moved here. Started the EMT gig. The bartending. And I waited. There’s a lot of waiting, which you already know. I watched people in a way I never had. I saw what made them happy and miserable and scared. And then last year he gave my first assignment: You.” She jerked her shoulder toward Casey.

  I chuckled. My brother did not. And I wondered why it had taken almost a year for her to say these things. Or maybe she had. Just not to me.

  “But you don’t see him all the time like I see you.” Casey said it as a statement not a question.

  “No. I—I told you. Bo’s different. He’s difficult. He does things his way. I saw him more at first when I was learning the ropes. Now, not as much.”

  “But you talk to him,” Casey pushed. “You’ve been talking to him all this time.”

  “I thought we had established that,” Amber grumbled. “Look, he’s stuck here. I don’t know why. He won’t say. He’s never said. He keeps testing Management, though. The balcony thing is his favorite party trick. But he’s tried it other ways.” Amber turned to us with a tired smile, which surprised me. “Leapt off Congress Street Bridge while the bats were flying one time in Austin. Scared the pee out of the tourists.”

  “He let people know what he was?” Casey swerved. The Merc shuddered when he yanked the wheel.

  More Amber quiet time. “Yes and no. He did, but they don’t remember. There are cleanup procedures. Y’all know that. Bo’s … older. Powerful.” She sighed again. “But he wants what we all want. To move on. Management won’t let him. So he jacks with them. Acting like he has a death wish just puts an ironic spin on it. Simple.”

  I got the irony; he was already dead. But I didn’t think it was simple.

  “But it’s not flight, is it?” This came from Casey. “What he did back there. Falling without wings …”

  I pondered the crazy angel physics of it.

  Amber repeated that Bo was powerful. Different. Falling and re
appearing wasn’t flying. It was all she would say on the matter.

  “What about your boyfriend?” I said, partly because I wanted to know and partly because I believed she was holding something back, like always.

  “We broke things off,” Amber said. “I didn’t—” Her cell buzzed then, loud enough to make us all jump.

  I peered over the seat while she pulled the phone from her pocket. It was a number I didn’t recognize. She said “well” a couple dozen times and added an “I don’t know” in there, while her eyes got bright and her cheeks pinked up and the worry line in the middle of her forehead scrunched. “Okay,” she murmured. She bit her lower lip. “But only a few minutes.” She clicked off and slid the phone back into her pocket, all business again. “We need to make a stop. Won’t take long.” After which she shook her head—at what I had no idea—her cheeks still rosy.

  IN THE NEXT half hour, I learned the following:

  1. We were going to Chateau Hills Subdivision to Terry the lab guy’s house.

  2. Terry the lab guy was her boyfriend. I knew it! The guy she’d lived with in Austin. The guy who didn’t know his girlfriend had come back from the dead as an angel. “I moved out the next morning,” Amber said. “Bo thought it would be for the best.” (But what about you? I wondered. Did you think it was for the best? Casey hadn’t moved out like that. On the other hand, Amber had not been sent back for Terry.)

  3. Those Management folks had emotional flaws in their system. If I ever met them, I would tell them so.

  4. Bryce happened to live near Terry. (I learned this after my brother went off about how Amber should have told us the truth about Terry considering she’d trusted him with our mother’s blood sample.) Bryce was the assistant manager at BJ’s BBQ where Casey waited tables—the chubby guy with the dorky sense of humor and an alphabetized collection of comic books, Dark Horse being his favorite. He lived in a double-wide on his parents’ property. It was Bryce who had hooked us up with his pinball wizard pal Zeke at Manny’s Real Tex Mex. Zeke was one of the last people to see our father before he disappeared and it was because of him that we had found some clues to help us solve the whole mystery last year. In short: there were coincidences piling up, and I couldn’t tell what mattered and what didn’t. Which stank.