Wings (A Black City Novel) by Elizabeth Richards Page A

to protect the children, Hector.”
    Grandfather slides a look at Mr. Langdon. “I always do.”
    A muscle flexes in Mr. Langdon’s jaw.
    “Will you be attending the dance tonight?” Mrs. Langdon asks me, her eyes constantly drifting toward the Howler girl. I suspect she wants the girl’s long, snowy white hair—Lupine fur is worth a lot of money.
    “Yes. I’m taking Catherine, actually,” I say.
    Grandfather arches a thick brow at me.
    “Oh, that’s . . . wonderful,” Mrs. Langdon replies, clearly disappointed. “You’ll have to come by the shop later, so we can fit you for a new suit.”
    I glance down at my brown woolen pants and jacket. I’d intended to wear these.
    “I can’t . . . um . . . A new suit would be very expensive,” I mutter.
    “Don’t worry, Edmund. It’s on the house,” Mr. Langdon says, brushing some imaginary dirt off his own expensive frock coat, which has faint fleur-de-lis pattern on it.
    “Thanks,” I say, feeling anything but grateful. I hate charity; it’s the same thing as pity.
    “Will you please excuse us?” Grandfather says.
    I reluctantly follow him inside the church, giving Catherine one last, lingering look. She’s too busy talking to Eric to notice me leaving. We head upstairs to our living quarters. There are just four rooms in the apartment: a kitchen, a tiny bathroom, Grandfather’s bedroom, and the attic where I sleep. The best word to describe our home is
sparse.
The walls are white, the hardwood floors and furniture all the same shade of brown.
    There aren’t many objects in the kitchen, which is the main room in the house. On the table is a glass jar filled with dead butterflies, while mounted on the wall is a telephone and an old photograph of my mother. We look a lot alike, with matching gray eyes, dark hair and a wide, thin mouth. Did she really kill herself, like Mrs. Hope said?
    Grandfather turns to me. “You’re not going to the dance with that Langdon girl. What were you thinking, Edmund? You know it’s forbidden for Darklings and humans to date.”
    “Only because the Guild says so.”
    “And for a very good reason. You only have to look at yourself to understand why.”
    I flinch.
    “I’m sorry, Edmund. I didn’t mean . . .” Grandfather gazes down at me with kind eyes, which are so much like my own. I praise His Mighty every day that I inherited my mother’s eyes and not my father’s. “I know you’re not like the other Darklings; you’re a good boy. But His Mighty never meant for our species to be together. That’s why their offspring are—”
    “‘Cursed with a heart of ice,’” I mutter, reciting from our scriptures. “It’s not fair.”
    “I know, Edmund,” Grandfather says. “I pray to His Mighty every night to take pity on you and bless you with a heartbeat. It’s all I want for you.”
    I pull away from him and walk to the window. Most people have gone home by now, but a few mill about the town square, including Catherine and Eric Cranfield. They’re with her brother and the O’Malley siblings. Patrick is checking his silver dagger while the brother-and-sister act lounge on the steps outside the Langdons’ store. I watch them for a moment, imagining what it would be like to be them. They don’t need to make excuses when they get invited over for a meal because the food makes them sick, or hold their breath when someone’s bleeding because the scent makes their insides tear apart. They didn’t have to have their teeth ripped out of their heads when they were babies to hide the fact that they were born with fangs, or lie to their best friend about what they are because if they ever knew, if they ever
knew.
They don’t have to do any of these things because they’re alive, and I’m . . . I touch a hand to my chest and feel the silence beneath.
A demon.
    Grandfather says I’m not like the other Darklings, that I’m good. But I’m certain that’s only because of him and my faith, which keep