Vicki Pettersson - The Given

She swore it on her soul.

Justin scoffed again, though not as readily.

Kit didn’t care if he believed her or not, because the beings she was really swearing this oath to, the angels, did. “The heavens owe me, Justin, and I won’t hesitate to call down the wrath of the entire Host on your head.”

There was a short hesitation and then a long, drawn-out scoff. “And they say Zicaro is loony.”

Kit opened her mouth, snarled reply ready, but the line went dead and reply was no longer an option, and neither was swearing. And neither, she thought, was sleep.

Recalling how lightly Grif slept, Kit was careful to make little noise as she tiptoed down the hall and then the stairwell, rounding the corner into the cozy living room only to confront a single table lamp glowing in the dark. She made out the figure curled in the armchair, and smiled wryly.

“Somehow I knew you’d be up,” she told Marin, taking a seat across from her.

“Funny, I was just going to say the same of you,” Marin answered, and motioned to the coffee table where a second glass of wine was already poured and waiting. Kit smiled as she took it, and felt steadied despite Justin’s threatening call. Her aunt and she might not be on the best of terms, but there was comfort still in being known.

“Where’s Amelia?” she asked, curling her feet up beneath her.

“She went home.”

“Because of us?” The apology was in Kit’s voice.

“No.” Marin smiled. “She has to work tomorrow.”

Kit was again struck by how little she knew of her aunt’s personal life. It thawed some of the anger she’d built up toward Marin these past many months. Her aunt had just been trying to protect her, and Kit may have done exactly the same thing in her place. Still, it was precisely because Marin did know Kit so well that she should have told her what she’d known.

She shouldn’t have had to learn of it from a demon.

Marin Wilson lied to you.

Kit shuddered at the memory. Like their lofty brethren, demons could slip into the mortal world using the bodies of the very young or old, the weak or infirm. Marin had been in a drug-induced coma when this particular member of the Fallen had entered her body and rifled through her memories.

Kit sipped her wine, using the liquid strength to draw herself back to the present. Focusing on the past would do nothing for her. “What does Amelia do?”

“She’s an ER doctor.”

“So she’s a workaholic like you,” Kit said, nodding her head.

“She’s worse,” admitted Marin, but the censure was muted.

“Is that even possible?” Kit teased, pleased that her aunt had found happiness, that she wasn’t alone.

Not like Kit.

The realization lanced through her, and Kit took a long pull at her wineglass.

“You might be surprised at what’s possible, Kit,” Marin said, watching her closely.

Kit snorted as she thought of the angelic human upstairs. “Try me.”

Marin looked down, her hands knotting. “For one, I’ve come to realize lately that there’s more to life than just chasing down the next story. Such as creating stories, and a life, of your own.”

“I could have told you that,” Kit said softly.

“I think you tried,” Marin said, looking back up. Her chin wobbled. “I’m sorry, Kit. For hiding things from you, for trying to protect you from the truth. It’s just, after your breakdown, after you were institutionalized—”

“I don’t want to talk about that.” She wasn’t that person anymore. She didn’t even know who that was, which was comforting. You could actually become someone else in the same lifetime. Maybe it meant she wouldn’t always be a silly mortal yearning for a brooding angel she could never have.

Marin held up a hand to let Kit know that wasn’t her point, and that she agreed. “I simply didn’t feel like I could risk it after you were released.”

“But I put myself back together.” And she’d do so again. She was doing it again. Proof? She wasn’t up there banging down Grif’s door.

“You did, didn’t you?” Marin’s gaze went distant as she remembered for herself, and after another moment she shook her head. “I’ve seen a lot of things in my day, but I swear, that was the gutsiest thing I ever did see. Yet somehow it made me want to protect you all the more. And then you started in with the rockabilly phase—”

“It’s not a—”

“I know, it’s a lifestyle . It’s a way of life. And it’s your armor.”

Kit jerked, but realized it was true. A coat of arms comprising crinoline and cat’s-eye glasses. Half-moon manicures to paint over her vulnerabilities. Fears reined in by the discipline required of heels, in the exactness of a pencil skirt. Why hadn’t she realized it before?

“I didn’t understand that at first,” Marin said, talking faster, like she’d opened a spout and now couldn’t turn it off. “But honestly, Kit, you’re as tough a woman as I’ve ever seen. Tougher than me.” She glanced down again, and swallowed hard. “Tough like your mom.”

And the spout turned off. The relationship between Kit’s mother—the flighty and aristocratic Shirley Wilson Craig—and Kit’s aunt—the plain and steadfast younger sibling, Marin—was a rarely broached subject between them . . . and never initiated by Marin. But the hour was late—or early now—and they were drinking alone in the moonbeams. Besides, Marin seemed different, more open and vulnerable. Perhaps Kit wouldn’t have recognized it without the distance of the past few months wedged between them, but she saw it now, like clouds parting to reveal the face of the moon.

“Do you know she used to lock me out of the house?” Marin said suddenly.

Kit knew Marin and her mother hadn’t been bosom friends. She was starting to understand that the woman she loved then, and in memory, was not the only Shirley Craig that there was. That her mother, though fiercely loving and always supportive of Kit, had also been a bit of a bully. “No. I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, it was in retaliation for always getting As. For being better in track. For, I don’t know, breathing.” Leaning forward, Marin over-poured another glass of wine, though she didn’t drink it. “She stole my first boyfriend just to prove she could. Not that I was really that into him.”

They both chuckled, but Marin’s smile fell almost immediately. “Sisters are weird that way. They can be each other’s biggest champions while still being each other’s biggest adversaries.” She shuddered, evidently remembering a different slight at the hands of her older sister, then shook her head clear of it. “She loomed over me like a giant shadow. I felt lesser, judged. I was nothing like her, and she let me know it.”

“I’m sorry,” Kit said. It wasn’t at all the way she remembered her mother, but who could ever truly know another person? Last summer she’d actually been inside of Grif’s thoughts—again, because of that malevolent demon—and she still didn’t know the whole of him.

“I just want you to know that though I never had a child of my own, never intended to—”

“Until I was thrust upon you.”

“No.” Marin put her hand out, spine straightening. “No, you were a gift. One I never dared dream for myself. I felt this huge responsibility to care for you. You were all I had left, and vice versa, but in addition to grief, there was guilt. Because I had you and I knew she wouldn’t have wanted me to. I hadn’t earned you. You were hers.”

Kit had no idea what to say to that.

“I did what I thought best by you, and have ever since. But I complicated it,” Marin said, and Kit knew this was her way of apologizing.