“Oh my god,” said Cassie. “He was your boyfriend, wasn’t he?”
“Cassie! That is so not the point.”
“No,” Aunt Jo said. “It’s true. I’ve never loved anyone like I loved Aaron. I doubt I ever will. He’s been impossible to replace, even all these years later. The only one who’s ever truly understood.” It made sense. Aunt Jo had been alone for as long as I could remember. I always figured she was just too independent to settle down. She was always out on some trip to the back country with her outdoor adventure company, fending off bears and sucking the venom out of rattlesnake bites. She could kill a massive spider with her bare hands and bake a mean batch of cookies to boot. I couldn’t imagine her actually needing somebody.
“He’s the one in the picture,” I realized. “The photo I found in the shoebox.”
Aunt Jo nodded. Neither of us mentioned the other thing in the shoebox—the diamond ring—or the dress that she’d given me to wear to prom, the one she said had at one point been intended to be a wedding dress. I shook my head in wonder at Cassie. She was right. It was lost love, all these years. I always laughed at Cassie’s ability to jump to the most tragically romantic conclusion, without fail. But you kind of had to hand it to her, the girl knew her stuff.
“So that’s what we have to do,” I said. “We have to reunite the three of you. And we have to find the fourth.”
“Skye, how—”
“I’ll use my visions. I’ll find a way.” I was my mother’s daughter, with my mother’s blood. She was dead, and now it was up to me. Maybe I was stronger. Maybe I’d find something she couldn’t.
“I don’t know. . . .” Aunt Jo’s eyebrows knitted together. “There has to be some other way.” Without looking at me, she began clearing up the plates and silverware.
“What way?” I asked, standing up and helping her. “I can’t think of any other way. And I don’t have time to. It has to be this. The Order and the Rebellion aren’t going to waste any time now that I’ve gone off on my own. If they’re not hunting me already, they’re going to start soon.” I shuddered as I remembered the flashes of white feather I’d catch glimpses of between the trees. I would never get used to the chilling sight, but I had a feeling my days of being stalked by angels weren’t nearly over.
Aunt Jo brought a stack of plates into the kitchen, and I followed her.
“Is it because of Aaron? Don’t you want to see him again?”
“That was another life, Skye,” she said, setting the plates just a bit too heavily on the counter and turning to me. “Another time. I was a different person then.” She opened the dishwasher and began to load each fork, spoon, and knife, one by one. “I don’t want to be reminded of it.”
I took the rest of the silverware and shoved it into the dishwasher all at once.
“Skye!”
“What is wrong with you? Since when are you afraid of anything?” I knew my eyes were flashing silver in frustration.
“You couldn’t understand.”
“Try me,” I said through gritted teeth.
She crossed her arms and turned to face me. I had never seen this side of her before.
Aunt Jo smoothed a hand over her graying blond ponytail. Then she walked to the refrigerator and pulled a bottle of bourbon down from the cabinet above it. Without saying a word, she took a tumbler from a different cabinet and poured herself a generous glass. She downed it in one gulp.
When she turned around, there was fire in her eyes. It looked so familiar, I flinched. She reminded me of Asher—when he was serious, determined, on a mission to protect me. When he let his intensity show instead of masking it behind jokes. It’s the Rebel blood in her, I realized.
“When I was your age,” she said, as if she was reciting a speech she’d practiced in her head for a long time, “I was mad at the world. I knew that I was different, and I knew why. I never knew my father, and my mother didn’t know what to do with a problem kid like me. I felt like there was no real place for me. I distrusted a lot of people—and strongly distrusted the rest. I picked a lot of fights. Did some things I would kill you for doing.” She narrowed her eyes at me.
I didn’t say anything. A lot of things were clicking into place for me tonight. Aunt Jo’s famous wrath made a lot more sense now, for one.
“It isn’t fun for me to tell you this. But if you’re going to go digging up the past, you may as well hear it from me. I’m telling you this because I think it’s important that you know. What things were like for me, before.” She paused and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “And what they’re like now. What I’m like. What’s changed me.”
I gulped and nodded.
“Everyone has a past,” she said. “So did I. But with Aaron, I didn’t have to carry the whole world alone anymore. I could lean on someone, finally, who understood. And then he just . . . left. When things got hard. Or maybe it was my own fault, I don’t know. I didn’t ever really figure it out because you came into my life, and from then on it wasn’t about me anymore. I finally knew what it was like to take care of someone else. Your parents gave me an unimaginable gift, Skye. You changed me. I grew up.”
“What was it like,” I said carefully, “when you met them?”
Aunt Jo closed her eyes.
“Like I belonged. I got an instant hair-prickling when I saw them. I knew them, but I didn’t know from where, or how I possibly could.” The same feeling I got when I met Asher and Devin, I thought. Angel blood recognizing angel blood. “They explained everything to me,” Aunt Jo continued. “They gave me a mission, a life. They were my family. And they gave me you. The best gift anyone could have given me. Even if it came out of the worst tragedy.”
“What about the legend Ardith told me? What about your distrust?” If Aunt Jo was in the mood to share, I was going to get as much out of her as I could.
“Parts of the legend are right. Rogues have an inexplicable distrust of Rebels, for one thing. I understand, now, that initially I trusted Mer and Sam not because they were kind to me, but because they were human. But I had the strange, vague sense that something was off—they had a tinge of angel blood, after all, and I guess the Rogue in me picked up on that. From what I understand, most Rogues can’t distinguish other Rogues, but they get a sort of sixth sense about full angels. Mostly Rebels, but Guardians a little bit too. I don’t know why I know who, and what, I am. But I always have. Anyway, there are millions of us. Scattered across the earth. If every Rogue knew they were a Rogue, I wonder if there wouldn’t be some kind of uprising.”
“Is that why you never trusted Asher?” I asked. “Because he’s a Rebel?” Aunt Jo grinned and raised an eyebrow at me.
“That’s one of the reasons.”
I smiled sheepishly. “Do you trust him now?”