sedona files 05 - falling angels Read online

  That made sense. Yes, at some point they’d have to release the information that the mission hadn’t ended in complete catastrophe, that the astronauts were safe even if they hadn’t been able to stay on the planet’s surface and carry out all their carefully planned observations and experiments. In the meantime, though, NASA and the other space agencies involved in the joint mission would have to come up with a cover story, one tight enough that it couldn’t get too many holes poked in it.

  “Is Logan going to be all right?” My Aunt Kara this time, her features drawn with worry.

  “Yes,” my father said immediately. “The Reptilians got a good shot in, but it’s nothing that the ship’s healing facilities can’t handle. He won’t even have a scar.”

  That reply caused another murmur to go around the room. “So they really do have a base on Mars,” Lance said.

  “Yes,” my father replied. “A fairly large one, from what I could tell. But Raphael seems to think the Reptilians don’t have any immediate plans to come back here and cause trouble, and I’m inclined to believe him. There’s too much risk of retaliation.”

  Lance didn’t look all that convinced, but then, he’d never had too high an opinion of Otto/Raphael, either.

  “It’s late,” my mother said then. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I feel like I’m about to keel over. How about we all regroup in the morning?”

  Persephone Oliver nodded. “I think that sounds like an excellent idea. I know we’re all worried about Logan, but if Martin thinks he’s in good hands, then it’s probably best to let things run their course.”

  Everyone appeared to agree with her statement — some more grudgingly than others, in my Uncle Lance’s case — and the Olivers got up from where they’d been sitting so they could go collect their coats and jackets.

  As Taryn passed by me, she murmured, “So you really were in a spaceship? What was it like?”

  Good question. For all I knew, she could have pulled the images right out of my head if she’d wanted to, but she was far too polite to do anything like that. “It was beautiful. Elegant. And fast. We went from here to Mars in less than an hour and a half.”

  Her eyes widened, but she didn’t have much of a chance to say anything after that, since her parents and brother more or less came by and scooped her up. And after that it was time for my parents and me to go, my mother promising Kara that we’d be back the next morning, and maybe we could discuss all this over breakfast?

  My aunt appeared relieved by that suggestion. I could tell she was bursting with questions. Also, she seemed to be happiest when she was feeding her family, extended or otherwise. Getting debriefed over pancakes and bacon was probably her idea of heaven.

  Even as we left the house, though, and headed out to the car, I couldn’t stop thinking about Raphael, somewhere thousands of miles above me, in a ship that no sensor on the planet could detect. Was he staying with Grace to make sure she didn’t wander off and get herself into trouble, or had he left her to maintain a lonely vigil at Logan’s bedside?

  I had no idea. I also had no way of knowing if I would ever get a chance to speak to Raphael away from everyone else.

  Even so, the mere thought of being alone with him both excited and terrified me.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  My mother wasn’t the only one who was dog-tired, because, even with everything that had happened earlier in the evening, I basically passed out the second my head hit my pillow. When I woke up, bright morning light was peeking past the edges of the blinds in my bedroom, and I cast a bleary look over at the clock on my bedside table.

  Nine-fifteen.

  Could have been worse, I supposed. I’d heard Kara say something about ten-thirty or thereabouts to my mother, so I knew I had a little time, even if I didn’t have the luxury of letting myself fall back asleep for another hour. But time enough to get ready.

  The bathroom in the casita I’d called home ever since I turned eighteen had great hot water, so I took as long a shower as I dared, letting the water pour over me and wash away any residual weariness. It also helped to get rid of any lingering feelings of ickiness I had from being in the Reptilians’ base. Something about the very air there seemed to cling to my skin and the sensitive tissues of my throat, making me feel as if I’d been coated in a thin, oily film.

  Since I really had no idea what the day might turn into, I dressed casually but nicely, in one of my newer pairs of jeans, and the high-heeled boots I’d honestly thought I’d never see again but which were sitting on the floor of my closet when I opened it that morning. Likewise, the sweater and jeans I’d been wearing had been left folded neatly on top of my dresser. People could say what they wanted about Raphael, but the man clearly had an eye for detail.

  Thinking about him got my pulse racing all over again. Unacceptable. Seriously, I had no idea what was going on with me. Scratch that. The real problem was that I actually did have a pretty good idea — and the mere notion was enough to scare me shitless.

  All right, focus. Soft blue sweater to match my eyes, black leather jacket over that. It was cold enough that I’d still need an overcoat, but I was feeling much better about facing the world once I was dressed and had some makeup on.

  I crossed the courtyard and winced at the chill, but I was inside the main house before the cold could get to me too much. While the casita provided me the privacy I wanted, the closet space there wasn’t exactly what you’d call adequate, so I still kept my coats and some off-season items in the bedroom that used to be mine. My parents hadn’t changed it, either, even though it hadn’t been my room for more than three years; there was the same washed-pine furniture, the same quilt in shades of blue and green on the bed. Really, I wished they would make it over into another office or something. Maybe then they’d realize I didn’t plan to move back in there, that in my mind the casita was my steppingstone to moving out entirely.

  Not that I’d had the guts to do anything about that yet.

  Because we were going to eat at Aunt Kara’s, my father had only made coffee. He raised an inquiring eyebrow at me as I entered the kitchen, and for the umpteenth time I shook my head. No matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t make myself like coffee. Instead, I went to the kettle, which still had some water in it, and turned on the gas so I could make myself a cup of tea.

  “You’re sure she’s our daughter?” he asked my mother, who looked like she was already on her second cup of Italian roast.

  “Last time I checked, yes.”

  I made a face at both of them and got the box of Darjeeling from the pantry. But once I’d fetched my favorite turquoise-glazed mug from the cupboard and set it down on the counter, both their expressions had turned somber.

  “I called Kara,” my mother said. “She told me she hadn’t heard anything from Grace or Raphael.”

  At the sound of his name, I could feel myself stiffen, but I forced myself to turn back toward the stove as I said, “Well, he did say twenty-four hours. It hasn’t been that long yet. If it gets to be past noon and he still hasn’t gotten in touch, I guess that’s when we should start to worry.”

  My father nodded. “That’s what I said, too. But we all know that Kara thinks something’s wrong with the universe if she doesn’t have something to worry about.”

  That remark earned him an icy blue-eyed glare from my mother, but she didn’t say anything, only sipped at her coffee. I knew she would have loved to argue the point with him but realized he was only pointing out the obvious.

  The kettle whistled then, and I busied myself with pouring hot water into my mug and then dunking the teabag into it. It just seemed safer to avoid eye contact. Maybe I was overreacting. After all, absolutely nothing had happened, except that I’d touched Raphael’s arm and felt…something. All right, a whole lot of somethings. Surely just feeling something shouldn’t be enough to arouse any suspicions, though. In a normal family, that could very well be true. But when your parents were alien or at least part-alien, an
d shared an uncanny form of mental communication, in general it was safer to assume that they could sniff out secrets that would sail right over the heads of regular humans.

  As I blew on my tea to cool it down, my father said, “Well, Paul was right. News about the Mars mission was being broadcast this morning, and they’re saying just about exactly what we thought they would say. Catastrophic malfunction of the landing module, immediate recall to the ship, emergency rerouting and return to Earth.”

  “What else could they say?” my mother asked reasonably. “‘Oops, our landing party ran into some bad-guy aliens and we had to rely on some friendly strangers for rescue’? That wouldn’t go over very well, would it?”

  He grinned. “Probably not.”

  From there they headed into a discussion as to whether Raphael’s assessment was correct and that the Reptilians really would keep their hands off the Mars expedition ship and its crew as they made their laborious trip back to their home world. Too bad Raphael couldn’t have lent them some of his own ship’s super-duper propulsion systems so they could get back more quickly, but I supposed that would have raised even more eyebrows, not to mention giving our scientists access to technology I was pretty sure Raphael’s bosses didn’t want to end up in the wrong hands.

  And then I was done with my tea, and my parents with their coffee, so we put our mugs in the dishwasher and went to gather up our coats. New Year’s Eve had been clear, but overnight clouds had swept in, muting the bright colors of the red rocks. I wasn’t sure if the weather would be cold enough for snow or not, but it felt that way.

  As we headed out to the garage, something compelled me to say, “I think I’m going to take my own car.”

  My father paused, gloved fingers resting on the handle of my parents’ Mercedes sedan. “What for?”

  I shrugged, hoping I looked casual. “Oh, I was thinking about doing some shopping on the way home.”

  “On New Year’s Day?” he asked, and my mother shot me a narrow look, half concerned, half puzzled.

  “Sure,” I replied. “You know almost everything in uptown will be open because of all the tourists being in town for the holiday.”

  Neither of them could really rebut that statement, because it was the simple truth. Yes, those same stores were always closed on Christmas Day, but New Year’s didn’t have that same significance when it came to spending time with your family.

  To be honest, I wasn’t really sure why I’d made the request, except some pricking of my thumbs or my spider sense or whatever you wanted to call it was telling me that I needed to be free to travel on my own and not be tied to my parents’ schedule. Yes, my aunt had said we were all getting together for breakfast, but those gatherings tended to turn into all-day affairs. Once that group started talking, it could be pretty hard to shut them up.

  “Okay,” my father said after a long pause, during which I purposely thought of nothing except the amethyst necklace I’d spotted in one of the uptown shops and had been secretly coveting for nearly a month. I still didn’t know for sure if he could actually read my thoughts, but I figured I might as well be careful.

  Then both he and my mother got in their car — the sedan, not the 4-matic they used when they were planning to head out into the wilderness that surrounded the town, or when they drove up to Flagstaff. I climbed into the BMW SUV that had been my high school graduation present, then said, “Aunt Kara’s.”

  Of course the vehicle knew exactly where to take me. After my parents had backed out of the garage, the BMW did the same thing, following at a safe distance as we came down the winding road from our hilltop property and into the town proper before heading out toward Oak Creek and the big house Kara and Lance shared, and which Grace had once called home.

  Usually I would have taken control of the SUV, because I liked to drive myself rather than have the car do it for me, but right then my thoughts roiled just enough that I thought it was probably better to have the onboard computer handle driving duties. Instead of the road before me, all I could see was Raphael’s face, the despair in his eyes. He’d known. He’d known there would be this strange, impossible attraction between us.

  I recalled then the way his gaze had rested on me when he first appeared in the family room at my Aunt Kara’s house. At the time, I hadn’t thought anything of it, except that possibly he was curious about me, the offspring of the man he’d exiled here a quarter-century earlier. But now I realized his interest was probably much more complicated than that. He’d known he would have that reaction to me, if we were ever to touch.

  My parents had spoken of it a little. That was the way of my father’s race, and of the blood my grandfather Gabriel had passed down through my mother. Those star-folk always recognized the mate of their soul, even if it took centuries to find that one particular person. Not that they were completely celibate up until that moment, but the parties involved always knew those liaisons were temporary, and only existed to release some biological backpressure. They didn’t marry, or have children, until they found their one.

  So did this mean I was Raphael’s “one”? It was entirely possible I’d read things into my reaction — and his — that weren’t even there. On the other hand, I knew I hadn’t imagined the heat that had flooded through my body, or the sorrow in his expression before he pushed it away and went blank-faced again.

  I needed to talk to him. How I would manage that feat, I had no idea, since I didn’t even know if he would bring Grace and Logan back here with him once Logan was done healing, or whether he’d simply beam them back to Earth and stay safely away.

  But then, there had been the impulse that had driven me to take my own car this morning. Maybe that had been the universe telling me I needed to have the opportunity to get away from my family.

  Any such escapes would have to wait awhile, though, because my car was already headed down the winding lane that led to my aunt’s house. Soon afterward, I pulled up next to my parents’ car and shut down the Beemer. I got out just a few seconds after they did, and the three of us headed into the house, not bothering to stop and knock. They’d been expecting us, after all, and Kara preferred family to simply go on in, even though I knew Lance wasn’t exactly thrilled about the lax security. Sometimes I wondered how those two had ever ended up together, they seemed so opposite in personality.

  I’d spotted the Olivers’ Range Rover out front, too, so it seemed our group was now more or less complete. No sign of Grace or Logan or Raphael when we made our way back toward the kitchen, although there was still time yet.

  After that I didn’t have much time to think about whether I was relieved or saddened that Raphael wasn’t there, because everyone started talking at once — about when we thought we’d see Logan and Grace, and whether people were really going to believe the “official” story about a malfunctioning landing craft. In the end, that explanation would probably be hashed out on a thousand separate conspiracy websites, but that was NASA’s — and the other space agencies’ — problem. We’d saved those astronauts, and that was the most important thing.

  Breakfast was served buffet-style in the big dining room at my aunt’s house, with eggs and bacon and sausage and homemade biscuits and waffles and fruit and just about anything else you could think of to make the meal complete. I would have asked how Kara had managed to pull all that together, since the plans for this breakfast had been made only the night before, but she’d been a field marshal in the kitchen ever since I could remember, so the spread wasn’t quite as astonishing to me as it might have been to an outsider.

  I didn’t want to completely stuff myself, so I had to pick and choose, which was hard. Everything looked delicious. As usually happened at these gatherings, I ended up sitting near the foot of the table with the other “kids” — my cousins Kelsey, Kevin, and Melissa; Taryn Oliver. Apparently her brother Michael had been graduated to big-boy status now that he was in the middle of getting his doctorate.

  Sitting that close to Taryn worried me, th
ough. That’s not to say we weren’t friends, because we were, but when you were trying to hide something, being next to someone with demonstrated psychic abilities could be a matter for concern. I did notice the way her eyes narrowed as I sat down and then took a bite of eggs, but she didn’t say anything.

  My cousin Kelsey wasn’t nearly as reserved. I could tell she was annoyed she couldn’t sit closer to Michael, but that would have required some obvious jockeying, and she didn’t seem quite ready to make her crush on him so obvious. Too late, in my opinion; I had no idea what the man himself actually thought about the situation, or of her, but it was clear enough to everyone else in the family that she was completely gone on him.

  But that was their problem, not mine. I had enough to worry about.

  Anyway, Kelsey didn’t even wait for me to finish chewing before she asked, “Aren’t you going to tell us anything?”

  “Anything what?” I picked up my glass, glad that Aunt Kara had furnished the makings for mimosas. That little bit of champagne would help to take the edge off.

  “About what happened! You and your parents just took off last night, and that Raphael person left with Grace, and the rest of us have just been sitting around, playing guessing games.”

  She sounded irritated — and a little frightened — and I couldn’t really blame her. I probably would have felt the same if our situations had been reversed. Yes, it seemed as if the older generation was covering more or less the same ground at the other end of the table, but when you’ve got twelve people sitting down together, it gets hard to overhear the conversation when you’re separated by such a distance.

  So I took another swallow of my mimosa, then gave her and Taryn and Melissa — and yes, my cousin Kevin, although as usual he looked as if he was supremely bored by everything going on around him — a carefully edited version of what had gone down the night before. Not that I tried to hide much, except my reaction to touching Raphael, and the way he’d looked at me afterward. Our exchange was private, and besides, it didn’t have all that much to do with the way we’d rescued the astronauts, or how Raphael had sent them home afterward.