Hallowed (Unearthly 2)

“I have to mention one thing, though,” she adds good-naturedly, after a minute. “If you hurt my brother, you’re going to have to deal with me. I will bury you in horse manure.”

“Right,” I say quickly, “I’ll remember that.”

“So, what’s the big emergency?” Jeffrey says. He jogs down the aisle of the Pink Garter toward where Christian and I are sitting, waiting for Angela, who is uncharacteristically late. “I thought we weren’t going to meet this week because we like, you know, spent all weekend together. I’m kind of sick of you people.”

“Glad to see that you decided to grace us with your presence, anyway,” Christian says.

“Well, I couldn’t miss it,” he says. “You do know this whole club rotates around me, right?

I move that we change the name to the Jeffrey Club.” He grins as he reaches the table. On pure sisterly instinct I stick out my foot like I’m going to trip him, and he scoffs, steps over my leg and shoves my shoulder.

“How about the doody-head club?” I suggest.

He snorts. “Doody-head.” That was our highest form of insult when we were kids.

We tussle around for a second, trying to give each other noogies. “Ow,” I say, when he accidentally bends my wrist backward. “When did you get so freaking strong?” He steps back and grins. It feels weirdly good, roughhousing with Jeffrey. He’s been almost his normal old self since we came back from the congregation, like he has finally given himself permission to move on from whatever it was weighing him down before.

Christian is staring at us. He’s an only child and could never understand the delicate joys of sibling abuse. I give Jeffrey one last push for good measure and take my seat at the table.

Jeffrey plunks down on the chair opposite me.

Angela comes in from the back. Sits down without a word. Opens her notebook.

“So. Emergency,” I say.

She takes a deep breath. “I’ve been looking into the life span of angel-bloods,” she says.

“Does this have anything to do with you asking Mr. Phibbs how old he is?” I venture.

“Yes. After seeing the congregation last weekend, I was curious. Mr. Phibbs is a Quartarius, I’m pretty sure, but he looks a lot older than your mom, who’s a Dimidius. So you can see why I was confused.”

I don’t see.

“Either Mr. Phibbs must be a lot older than your mother,” she goes on to explain, “or your mom must age at a different rate than Mr. Phibbs does. Which made me think, what if Quartarius, who are only a quarter-angel—seventy-five percent human—age at like seventy-five percent the rate that humans do? Humans don’t live much past one hundred, typically, so a Quartarius angel-blood might live to be a hundred and twenty-five. Which would account for Mr. Phibbs looking old.”

She stops. Drums her pen against her notebook. Looks worried.

“Go on,” I say.

Another deep breath. She doesn’t look at me, which is really starting to freak me out. “I thought Dimidius, who are only half human, might live at least twice as long, somewhere between two hundred and two hundred and fifty years. So your mom would be a middle-aged angel-blood. She’d look like she was forty. Which she does.”

“Sounds like you have it all figured out,” says Christian.

She swallows. “I thought I did,” she says in an oddly flat voice. “But then I read this.” She flips a few pages in her notebook, then begins to read. “When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God— that’s angels; at least it’s largely interpreted as angels —saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.”

I know this passage. It’s the Bible. Genesis 6. Enter the Nephilim: angel-bloods.

But Angela keeps reading: “The Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not remain in man forever, for he is mortal, his days will be a hundred and twenty years. Then it goes back to talking about the Nephilim, when ‘the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them’ and all the ‘heroes of old’ stuff, and it occurred to me that something’s weird here. First we’re talking about the Nephilim, then God sets a limit on the life span of man, then we go back to talking about the Nephilim. But then I realized. It’s not a limit on the life span of man. That part in the middle isn’t about man. It’s about us. God wants us to be mortal.”

“God wants us to be mortal,” I repeat cluelessly.

“It doesn’t matter whether or not we’re capable of living for hundreds of years. We don’t live more than a hundred and twenty years,” concludes Angela. “I researched it all last night, and I can’t find a record of a single angel-blood, Dimidius or Quartarius, who’s lived longer. Every single one I’ve been able to find a paper trail on dies either before or during their hundred and twentieth year, but nobody ever makes it to one hundred and twenty-one.” Suddenly Jeffrey makes a choking sound in the back of his throat. He jumps up. “You’re full of crap, Angela.” His face contorts into an expression I’ve never seen on him before, wild and desperate, full of rage. It scares me.

“Jeffrey—” Angela begins.

“It’s not true,” he says, almost like he’s threatening her. “How can it be? She’s completely healthy.”

“Okay,” I say slowly. “Let’s all calm down. So we get a hundred and twenty years. No biggie, right?”

“Clara,” whispers Christian, and I feel something like pity from him, and then it all hits home.

I’m so stupid. How could I be so stupid? Here I am thinking it’s fine, a hundred and twenty years is fine, because at least we get to stay young and strong. Like Mom. Mom, who doesn’t look a day over forty. Mom, who was born in 1890. Margaret and Meg and Marge and Margot and Megan and all those strangers, those past lives she got to live. And Maggie, my mother, who turned a hundred and twenty a few weeks ago.

I feel dizzy.

Jeffrey punches the wall. His fist goes right through like it’s made of cardboard, spilling plaster everywhere, his blow strong enough that the whole building seems to shudder.

Mom.

“I have to go,” I say, standing up so fast that I knock over my chair. I don’t even stop to pick up my backpack. I just run for the exit.

“Clara!” Angela calls from behind me. “Jeffrey . . . wait!”