Immortal City

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Jackson looked in the rearview mirror. His sharp blue eyes met him, filled with uncertainty. He wasn’t used to that look — and neither was the world. He was Jackson Godspeed, after all. He was confident. He was trained. Nothing could shake him. Or so he had thought.

Jacks tried that uncertainty on for size. It felt strange, like the stiff tuxedo he wore once a year at the gala black tie Angel charity event his mother put on. His iPhone beeped again and he turned it to silent. It’d been going off steadily for a couple hours, but he’d just been ignoring it. Knowing it couldn’t be her.

That night Jacks had eaten a quick dinner at home, then left, telling his mom and Mark he was going out to meet Mitch. But instead of meeting up with his friend he’d driven out toward the Santa Monica Pier. Halfway there he had just parked. He’d needed to think. The occasional car crawled past sleepily on the dark residential street. Nobody around seemed to recognize him, and so no one bothered him.

The school — Jacks leaned his head on the steering wheel. He still couldn’t believe Maddy’s fury. He had gone there to apologize, and she wouldn’t even talk to him. Who did that? He was just trying to do the right thing.

After leaving Angel City High, Jacks raced across town to a press junket for the Guardian nominees at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Driving there after his jarring encounter with Maddy, Jacks felt like he was in a dream — everything was blurry and distant and muffled. His phone rang. It was Mark. He decided to take the call.

His stepfather was calling to let him know the ACPD had cleared him of any connection with Theodore Godson’s disappearance. They’d investigated Jacks’s alibi and decided his story checked out. His stepfather told him to get back to preparing for the Commissioning.

“Thanks, Mark,” Jacks said. He supposed he should’ve been more relieved. The last thing he needed was to get tied up in a potential murder investigation. But he wasn’t. As strange as it seemed, what had happened at the school with Maddy continued to weigh on him. “I’ve gotta go now; I’m pulling up to the junket. Think I’m late.”

“Sure thing, kiddo. Call me after,” his stepfather said.

Darcy was borderline panicked when Jacks arrived.

“Where have you been!?” she whispered harshly under her breath as she whisked him toward the suite where he’d be giving interview after interview after interview. She looked ahead, flashing a thousand-watt smile at the journalists eagerly eyeing Jacks. “Well, our star is here!”

“Sorry, Darcy. I had some, uh, business to take care of,” Jacks whispered, thinking back to the Angel City High classroom.

“Jacks, this is your business!” Darcy had responded under her breath. Jackson looked at all the photographers and journalists, hungry for their story. This time he blocked out that disconnected pang before it had a chance to reach his gut.

The interviews all pretty much went the same. How do you feel about becoming the youngest Guardian ever?

Who do you think your first Protections will be? Will you be getting a lottery Protection your first year? What does it mean for you to be a Guardian? They’d all had to sign doc-uments agreeing not to ask about the incident at the diner the night before, per Mark.

Jacks repetitively answered the questions as each interviewer came one by one into the suite. Occasionally, Jacks sipped from a water bottle. Even the most hardened reporters were starstruck in his presence, fumbling over their words and blushing. Jackson usually pretended not to notice, but this time he actually didn’t. After a while it was like he wasn’t even really answering the reporters himself, that instead he had drifted away and someone who looked like Jacks was taking questions. Yes. No. Very excited! Can’t wait for the responsibility. Just part of being a Guardian.

The click and whir of the shutters, the lights, the microphone attached to his shirt, recording his every syllable: it all began once again to seem unreal. His mind focused on what had seemed real that day: Maddy.

Finally, a reporter’s question broke him out of his dazed state, bringing him back to the hotel suite.

“Can you repeat that?” Jacks asked, for the first time actually noticing the man in front of him, an overweight middle-aged reporter sweating in a cheap white cotton shirt and polyester tie. He was poised over a stenographer’s pad and a pencil.

“I asked, how do you feel about the growing movement in America that is questioning a lot about the Angels and what’s going on here in the Immortal City?”

“Jacks, you don’t have to answer that—” Darcy said, getting up. The reporter had broken from the agreed-upon fluff questions.

“No, no, it’s okay,” Jacks said, waving Darcy back.

“What, you mean the HDF? The guy who said he was going to start a ‘War on Angels’ and picked the Godspeeds out as number-one offenders?” He laughed. “Those guys are completely nuts. If we worried about every—”

The reporter looked at him confidently and finished his sentence. “—‘crackpot with a video camera, an Internet connection, and an opinion.’ I’m familiar with your statement. No, Jacks, I’m not talking about the HDF, but about mainstream America. As you know, Ted Linden was just elected to the U.S. Senate as an independent, running on a largely anti-Angel platform. He’ll be the first senator to go without Protection in twenty years. He wants full transpar-ency between the Angels and the government, and some say he even wants to end protection-for-pay in America.”

Blood rushed into Jacks’s face. “I—” He was cut off.

“These interviews are over.” Darcy stood up again and walked briskly to Jacks, pulling his wireless mic off. “As you all know, Jackson has an extremely busy schedule this week.

Thank you all for coming.” She glanced daggers at the reporter. He had a faint grin on his face as he slowly put his pen and pad away.

“Jacks, really, you should’ve just let me deal with that jerk. That’s what you pay me for, right?” Darcy said after they’d left the room. She escorted Jacks toward the lobby, where his car was waiting at the valet.

Jackson just nodded silently, already forgetting the man’s question, not even seeing the crowd of paparazzi dashing over to get his picture, his mind drawn back to a classroom and a girl’s voice.

At home that night, Jacks was almost silent, eating his dinner without even looking at the TV. He’d skipped one of the events set up for the nominees. Mark was apparently working late at the office, so it was just his mom and Chloe around. His little sister talked most of the time, which was just fine with Jacks. He was tired of answering questions.

Restless, but not exactly sure why, Jacks told his mother he was going to meet Mitch and had gone out driving into the Angel City night. Mark still hadn’t returned home by the time Jacks left the house.

Now he found himself sitting in his car maybe thirty minutes later, maybe an hour, maybe two — he didn’t even know. He’d come to the pier to clear his mind. But his thoughts kept returning to the girl. Maddy. Why hadn’t she accepted his apology? Why was she being so stubborn? He just wanted to make it right and be done with it. Move on.

But if he was honest, he knew there was something more. Something that had gotten under his skin. Something about her eyes and her nonchalant beauty, beauty she clearly didn’t even notice, the opposite of Vivian. He thought about what he had felt the night before when they touched. Even though she was human.

He tried to press the thoughts from his mind, but they wouldn’t go away. When he thought of her, she seemed to make everything else instantly seem so small.

At last Jacks came to a decision. He turned the key in the ignition and the Ferrari fired to life. He pulled a U-turn, the headlights throwing momentary sheets of light on the slumbering white stucco homes in the otherwise pitch-black night. When he reached Sunset Boulevard, Jacks whipped his car to the right and headed back toward Angel City, his taillights steaming in the quiet night.