Free Everafter (Kissed by an Angel) by Elizabeth Chandler Page A

on Philip, “and I discovered four others. Got a whole Lacey Lovett film fest.”
    “You have Lacey’s movies?” Philip asked.
    “Right this way,” he said, leading them back to the family room. “You have a favorite?”
    “I’ve only seen one,” Philip replied. “A friend pinched it for me.”
    Pinched. Philip was a word sponge, Ivy decided. He’d probably picked up that expression from his friend Lacey and didn’t know it meant stealing.
    They sat on the sofa in front of the big-screen TV, Philip sticking close to Ivy, Tristan sitting down on the other side of her. He reached for a stack of DVDs and handed them to Philip, who sorted through them, reading the descriptions on the backs.
    Tristan couldn’t take his eyes off Philip, and Ivy realized he had missed her brother as much as her brother had missed him. When Tristan finally glanced at Ivy, she read the question in his haunted eyes. Tell him?
    “It’s up to you,” she whispered.
    Tristan swallowed hard and looked away. Ivy wondered if he was afraid of Philip’s reaction. Tristan knew he was Philip’s hero. Did he imagine that Philip would love him less because he no longer had angel powers?
    “Where’s The Revenge of the Zombie Soccer Mom ?” Philip asked, opening the empty plastic case.
    “In the player. Want to watch some of it? Lacey Lovett is the soccer mom’s daughter—and growing up just like her.”
    “Sounds good,” Philip said enthusiastically, then, as if catching himself at being friendly, added coolly, “I guess so. Doesn’t matter to me.”
    At the hospital, before Tristan remembered who he was, Philip had been instinctively drawn to him. Ivy was hoping that Philip would now perceive some sign of Tristan inside Luke; it would reassure Tristan that the same soul was still shining within him. But that wasn’t going to happen, shethought, not as long as Philip saw this stranger as competition for the Tristan he had loved so.
    “It was just getting interesting,” Tristan told Philip, clicking on the remote.
    While the frames of horror, so bizarre they were comical, flitted across the screen, Ivy saw a different set of scenes: Philip and Tristan on the floor of her music room, playing checkers; Tristan wearing a party hat as Philip’s guest of honor at his family birthday dinner; Tristan and Philip in tuxes, the first time they met.
    At the wedding reception for Andrew and her mother, both of them had slipped away to the kitchen storeroom. Tristan, having showered the bridal party with a tray of fresh vegetables, had been fired from his job as server, and was waiting for his friend, who was still working. Philip, upset, afraid, wanting no part of his new life with Andrew and Gregory, had found the same hiding place. When Ivy pulled open the storeroom door in search of Philip, there was the big sports hero from school, the famous Tristan Carruthers, entertaining her brother—unbelievably—by wearing salad greens on his head and olives on his teeth, a stalk of celery protruding from each ear, a shrimp tail stuck in his nostril.
    Ivy laughed to herself.
    “What the heck?” Tristan exclaimed, pointing to the big screen and the strange thing emerging from a moviesewer to stalk zombie Lacey. “What’s that supposed to be?”
    Philip, forgetting his coolness, chortled. “He’s not very scary.”
    “Looks like someone fertilized him,” Tristan said.
    Philip nodded. “Looks like dead celery’s growing out of his ears.”
    “Got a salad on his head.”
    “Shrimp sticking out of his nose,” Philip added.
    “Gross,” said Ivy.
    “Some black olives—” Tristan began.
    “On his teeth,” Philip interjected quickly.
    Ivy felt her brother shifting in his seat next to her, leaning forward, looking across her to Tristan. Tristan turned his head slightly to the right. The profile was Luke’s, but the memory, the boyish humor, was someone else’s.
    Philip got up and stood in front of Tristan. Bending forward, he peered into