“Then we’ll lie low with you. If you’re hurt, Jeremy should check you out.”

Mom took the phone and clicked it off speaker.

“Hey, Adam,” she said, as she put some distance between us. “I know you’re worried about Savannah, but I promise she’s fine, and she’s right, we need to lie low …”

Her voice trailed off. After a few minutes, she came back and handed the phone to Jaime.

“Adam isn’t happy, but Lucas agreed with us. He’s recalling them to Miami on the jet that’s coming for Bryce. We’ll follow as soon as we can.”

As we trudged through the forest after making the call, it finally hit me. Really and truly hit. My mother was here. Now. With me. I could hug her. Talk to her. Except I couldn’t. Not really. I could talk and I could touch, but not the way I wanted to.

I wanted to take her hand and find a place for us to sit down and say to her, “Tell me everything.” Tell me about your new life. How did you become an angel? What’s it like? Are you happy? How’s my father? What was it like getting back together after all those years? Are you happy? That was the big one: Are you happy? Of course I could have asked her that anytime Jaime contacted her for me, but I never did because I wouldn’t trust the answer unless I could see her face. Now I could. And I still couldn’t ask. It wasn’t the time or the place.

How many times had I fantasized about this moment?

When we’d been in that underground cell together, and she’d figured a way out, she’d made me stay behind until she was sure it was safe. I remember sitting in my cell. Waiting. Waiting. Then our captors came and told me she was dead and I thought They’re lying. They’d caught her escaping and they were keeping us apart to punish us. But as days and nights passed in that tiny cell, I’d had to face the truth. If my mother was alive, she’d have moved heaven and earth to come for me. So she had to be dead.

Yet I indulged the fantasy. After I went to live with Paige, there were plenty of nights that I’d lie awake and imagine the door opening, my mother there, come back for me.

Now she had, and it wasn’t anything like my dreams. Yes, she’d come back for me. Yes, she’d saved me. But I wasn’t a child anymore. I didn’t need my mother now to rescue me from a hellish life. My life was fine. It had always been fine—my issues with Paige had been ideological clashes and teen angst, long since worked out.

But this was still a dream come true. Maybe even better, because I didn’t need anything from her now. I just wanted to be with her. Spend time with her. Private, quiet time … completely impossible under the circumstances. So I trudged along through the woods and snuck glances her way, reassuring myself she was still there, and watching her do the same to me. Keep moving forward. That was all we could do. That and pray that the Fates would let her stay long enough for us to have some time alone together.

The forest trek wasn’t easy on Jaime, even in sneakers. Werewolf partner or not, she didn’t spend a lot of time in the woods. I did—plenty of camping and hiking trips with Adam. And Mom was holding up fine. I kept expecting her sword to snag a tree, but she dodged and sidestepped obstacles, as if it was part of her anatomy.

“When we get to town, you need to get rid of that,” I said finally, pointing at the sword.

It was slung on her back. Just slung there, stuck on a thin cord, as if magnetized. Physically impossible to do with a hunk of metal that big, but I guess the rules of physics don’t apply for celestial gear.

“She can’t,” Jaime said. “Big no-no in the angel corps.”

“Under the circumstances, I think they’d make an exception,” I said. “We needed to take it out of the station, because it was a murder weapon. But now we’re heading for civilization, and that ain’t a pocket knife. You need to get rid of it.”

“I know. It’s just …” She nodded and stopped walking. “I’ll try.”

As she pulled it from her back, I stepped off the path and found a shallow gully filled with dead vegetation. She plunged the blade in sideways. When she covered it, I could still see a glimmer. I waded in and reached down to push it under.

Mom grabbed the back of my jacket and yanked me back.

“Uh-uh, baby,” she said. “You’re not touching that without oven mitts. Industrial oven mitts.”

She pushed it down farther, covered it with more debris, then dragged a huge fallen branch over it. Seemed like overkill, but I left her to it. When she was done, she walked backward away from it, murmuring, “So far, so good.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “If you have to return for it, it’s marked. Now—”

A tremendous crack had me diving for the ground, arms over my head. As I dropped, I saw what looked like that massive branch sailing into the air, broken in two. A whirlwind of dead vegetation swirled up, then exploded, wet and stinking of rot. I clawed it from my face and looked around.

Jaime was crouched ten feet away. My mother stood where I’d left her. On her back, the sword glowed blue, so bright I had to look away.

“Damn,” she said. “I was really hoping that wouldn’t happen.”

She helped me up and brushed the dead leaves from my clothes.

“So you can’t leave it behind,” I said. “Literally can’t. That’s … inconvenient.”

Jaime stood, picking leaves from her hair. “You can hide behind a blur spell when we aren’t alone. Probably a good idea. You’re so used to being a ghost, you’re liable to walk into walls and plow down old ladies.”

That wasn’t an ideal solution—Mom couldn’t stay under a blur spell for very long at a stretch. We didn’t tell Jaime that. We’d figure things out when we had to.

We set out again, and I fell in step beside my mother. “So how long have you had the sword?”

“You mean, how long have I been an angel?” Her voice dropped. “I’m sorry. I know this is a big shock.”

“One that could have been avoided.” I glanced back at Jaime, trudging behind us.

“No,” Mom said sharply. She shook her finger at Jaime. “Don’t give her that look and don’t apologize.”

“I—” Jaime began.

“You feel bad and you shouldn’t.” Mom looked back at me.