A Terrible Fall of Angels

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “Neither of us was a clear enough channel for God’s grace and light to shine through us.”

  “Master Bachiel said I was too empty, and the two of you were too full of yourselves, to be a clear channel for the divine.”

  “You mean we were too arrogant in our power to let anyone speak through us, even God.”

  “No, you both had strong enough personalities that there wasn’t room for anyone else. I was always less sure of myself than either of you. Master Bachiel said I didn’t fill up all the room inside myself, that’s why I channeled so easily and why I could hear prayers. I was closer to the angels that sat nearer to God, reflecting his glory and praise.”

  “I don’t remember him saying that to you.”

  “It was in one of our private sessions. He was training me to be his successor at one point, remember?”

  I nodded. “I remember.” I had thought it was a bad idea at the time. Surrie and I had both thought that Jamie was too gentle and felt too deeply to match the sternness of Bachiel. I’d been amazed when the College said that Jamie was the first student in decades that rivaled Master Bachiel’s abilities, and that he should train him. Their gifts from God might have matched, but nothing else did.

  “What are you thinking, Zaniel?”

  I was startled too far into my own memories, so I told him the truth. “I always thought that Bachiel wasn’t a good mentor for you; just because your gifts matched didn’t mean that he was the right teacher for you.”

  “You and Surrie said so at the time, but the College and Bachiel insisted, and everyone else told me it was an honor to be groomed to take Bachiel’s duties on. Why didn’t he help me shut out the pain of all the unanswered prayers, Z?”

  “I don’t know, but I’d like to contact the College and find out.”

  He grabbed my arm and I startled, half expecting her to take him over again, but it was just his hand on my skin, just him and me. Something tight and scared in my gut eased.

  “Don’t go back, Z, if you do she’ll find you.”

  I nodded. “After I told the College what had happened between us, She was put in a place between.”

  “You mean they imprisoned her?”

  “No, She agreed to enter because there’s really no way to lock up one of the seraphim, not really. She agreed to meditate on her transgression to decide if she saw it as an actual sin. She thought I would stay at the College and finish my training if she exiled herself, and she was half right.”

  “You finished your training. I remember you coming and finding me to tell me you’d become an Angel Speaker. I was proud and happy for you, but I was ashamed that I had failed so utterly.”

  “I’m sorry, Levanael, I just wanted to share it with you, but I was selfish and didn’t think how you’d take it.”

  “That was the first time you took me to a hospital and got me locked up.”

  “You were trying to hurt yourself.”

  “I don’t remember everything, but I know it was bad. You were trying to keep me alive; some of the voices told me that you’d help me stay alive. It’s probably why I kept coming to find you sometimes.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t let you stay with me all the time.”

  “I scared your little boy the last time. I remember that much. I’m so sorry, Z. I hope he won’t be scared of me forever. I hope he’ll forgive me.”

  “I think he will,” I said, but thought that I wouldn’t put the two of them in the same room until Jamie had proven the recovery was permanent. Connery would get over one scare, but multiple ones . . . I didn’t want to push it. If I got my best friend back, I wanted my son to love him like I did.

  “I’m too nervous to pray to God right now, Z. Emma introduced me to the Goddess and she’s, they’re both, it’s like the energy I’ve been missing. I’m not sure what God will think about that.”

  “I work with a lot of people that follow the Goddess. They’re good people, and I don’t think God is as jealous a God as the Old Testament makes him out to be.”

  “I think you’re right, but I’d still rather wait to test the theory.”

  “You had an angel, a seraph, speak through you, Levanael. If that doesn’t speak to your purity of heart and soul, I don’t know what does.”

  He smiled then. “I hadn’t thought about it like that. If you’d tried to get me to agree to channel an angel, especially one of the higher orders, then I’d have been too scared, felt unworthy, but it just happened and it worked. It means I’m not damned after all.”

  “Why would you be damned, Levanael?”

  “God judged me and found me wanting, and then he cast me out. The original idea of Hell is to be cut off from contact with God, and I have been that for ten years.”

  “I’m so sorry, Levanael.”

  “I’ve been letting you call me that since She spoke through me, but they stripped the name from me when they cast me out of the College.”

  “You know how rare the ability to channel the more powerful angels is even among the trained Angel Speakers,” I said.

  He nodded. “But they took my name and forced me to be Jamie again. I hadn’t been that name in so long that it didn’t feel like me. I was Levanael and they made me Jamie again. He was a child; I was five when I gave up that name.”

  “Sometimes I forget that you were chosen two years earlier than either Suriel or me.”

  “Yeah, we were all seven, but I’d been at the College longer than anyone in my year. They brought me inside at five because I was already hearing voices; my parents brought me to get me some miracle from the angels, and as soon as I went inside the walls and all the wards and mystical shielding, it was better. It was a miracle, but it only worked inside the College, and then it stopped working even inside. When they threw me out . . . it was so much worse than before.”

  His eyes went haunted again, and I didn’t know what to say, because I’d let him go. I’d protested and appealed to everyone inside the College who would talk to me, but in the end that was all I’d done, talk to people. I’d gone back to my own training, because She had been waiting for me, all gold and light and power and . . . she’d been my whole world, and that she consumed me enough to make me forget about what had happened to Jamie was the beginning of me questioning it, questioning her.

  “I’m sorry, Levanael, sorry that I didn’t do more to help you when it happened.”

  “It’s okay, Z, you were the only one from the College who ever came to find me. Even Surrie never came looking, I really thought she would.”

  I debated again on telling him more about her visit, but wasn’t sure if it would help or hurt. A phone rang and saved me the debate, because it was the smartphone in his pocket, not mine.

  “Emma!” The way he said her name was enough for me to know that he had a crush on her, if not more. They talked back and forth for a few minutes. Jamie’s face was more animated than I’d seen it in years. I prayed that Emma was enjoying her end of the conversation as much as Jamie was.

  Jamie’s face sobered a little around the edges and then he held the phone out to me. “Emma says she needs to speak to you.”

  I might have questioned it, but I wanted to talk to the person who had helped Jamie so much, so I just took the phone and said, “Hello.”

  “Hello, Zaniel, if I can call you that. Levi says that you don’t always like people using your full name.”

  “Of course you may.”

  She gave this laugh that made me smile without meaning to, and said, “Then call me Emma.”

  “Okay, Emma, you wanted to speak to me.”

  “Yes, my guides said that you and Levi had experienced a major channeling event.”

  I was quiet on my end of the phone.

  “What’s wrong, Z?” Jamie asked, watching my face.

  I repeated what she’d said.

  He smiled. “Oh yeah, Emma is way hooked up magically. Her guides are good.”

  I was so startled that I said the truth out loud. “I’
m not sure anyone on my unit is this good.”

  She gave that infectious laugh again, but I managed to fight off the smile this time. “Flattery like that will turn a witch’s head clean around.” I almost asked the mundane question of whether she meant that for real before another peal of laughter made me realize she’d made a joke. She was a witch, not a supernatural; her physicality and physics still worked like normal. I knew that, but for just a second, I wondered, and I knew better. I had to meet this woman. If she was this good, then even as a consultant for the unit she’d be valuable. There was a moment where I got that little psychic slap of That’s not what you’re supposed to be thinking. I took a breath and tried to center myself, quiet myself and hear the voice of God, or the angels, or I guess Emma would say my guides. I tried to be still and listen, instead of rushing ahead and thinking I understood everything.

  I was rewarded with a faint warmth, that pulse of yes. I asked, quietly in my head, “What am I supposed to be thinking? What am I supposed to do here and now?”

  Emma said, “There’s a great coffee and tea shop just down the street from where I work. If you and Levi can meet me there, we’d have enough time to talk before my first client.”

  “Client?” I made the word a question with the inflection at the end.

  “Reiki,” she said, fully expecting that I’d know it was a type of healing energy work.

  “If Levanael is okay with it, that sounds great.”

  “He doesn’t like being called that name,” she said, her voice more serious.

  “He’s okay with it since the . . . major channeling event.”

  “Really, that’s fascinating. I can’t wait to meet you and find out all the details.”

  “What’s the name of the coffee shop?” I asked.

  “The Cozy Cauldron. Can you please put Levi back on the phone and then I’ll see you both soon.”

  Again, I found myself smiling without meaning to, as if she exuded joy. Was it a spell? I got that psychic poke saying Stop being so damn cynical. I handed the phone to Jamie and tried to be less cynical, but after this many years of being a cop it wasn’t easy to switch gears from cynicism to whatever the opposite of that was, and then I realized that I honestly didn’t know the antonym for cynical. I watched Jamie’s face light up again as he spoke to Emma and fought not to think it was too good to be true. I realized that what I’d lost somewhere along the way was belief in the basic goodness of things, that somewhere in all the everyday mess God still had a plan. Combat had made me question it, being a police officer had made me question it more, but it was losing Reggie and Connery that had finally broken something in me. Something I needed to keep trusting that the loss of Jamie to his illness, the loss of the first person who made me fall in love with Her, the loss of Surrie when I left the College, through all of it I had still believed, still had hope. I stood there watching Jamie’s face, the happy lilt in his voice like a small song of praise to the possibility of love with Emma, and I didn’t believe it was possible. They could fall in love, but the love that is supposed to be the purest reflection of God’s love for us, the love of a man for his wife and children, that was what I’d lost faith in, because I’d believed with all my heart and soul that Reggie was the one, and when Connery came along the love had just expanded until I thought my heart would explode with it. Instead, I had a dinner date with Reggie, and I’d been hopeful until I saw Jamie talking on the phone to a woman he was falling for, and I suddenly didn’t believe that Reggie and I would ever get back to that. We might get back to something, but it wouldn’t be this pure, unstained, shining adoration, and for a second, I hated them both, and then I was afraid for Jamie. Afraid of how hurt he could be if he followed his heart and Emma decided one day that he wasn’t the man she thought she married, and the man he really was, the reality of him, wasn’t what she wanted. How in the name of Heaven did a man cope with that?

  I stood there and prayed that I wouldn’t let my broken heart harm Jamie and whatever was happening with Emma. I prayed for the grace not to be jealous or angry about it, and not to share out loud or by psychic leaks how I really felt.

  He got off the phone and smiled up at me. “Emma says she can’t wait to meet you.”

  I nodded, not trusting my voice, and finally said, “Gotta get a fresh shirt, then we’ll go.”

  “Why did you need to borrow a shirt from your boss?” he asked.

  “Got messy at work, you know how it is,” I said, and kept heading for the far door and the bedroom and away from his questions.

  “I hugged you that last time, my hands touched something.” He started walking after me, saying, “Z, are you hurt? Is that why you have the day off?”

  “It’s not that bad and it means I get to spend more time with you.” I didn’t turn around or slow down. I didn’t want to answer questions about the injury, especially not to Jamie, because I still wasn’t sure how fragile he was, or wasn’t. Talk about demons being corporeal enough to claw a person up would spook anyone.

  “Why don’t you want to tell me about it?” His voice sounded plaintive behind me.

  I stopped with the door to the bedroom partially open. “Because bad things happened today, and people got hurt a lot worse than me. People that I was supposed to protect.”

  “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, Z, but just promise me you really aren’t hurt that badly. If you need to rest, then we can do this another day.”

  I was suddenly tired, as if it had all caught up with me at once, but I shook my head. Jamie was here; he was Levanael again, or sounded like him. I didn’t want to lose a minute of the miracle of it. I’d stay with him as long as I could, or until the miracle started to unravel. In my head, not a voice exactly, but maybe my own self was talking back to me, chiding me, because miracles don’t unravel.

  “I wouldn’t miss the chance of spending time with you, Levanael, and I meant what I said about asking Emma if what she did for you might help others.” I started to put on a plain dark blue polo shirt that Reggie had grown to hate, she said it was my I’m-not-a-cop cop shirt but it was loose on me now that I’d leaned down so the bandages wouldn’t show. I looked down at myself and realized the polo shirt looked like it was going to a casual Friday office and the bottom half screamed gym. If I just changed shirts then I’d be done, so I settled for another oversized tank top that was cut around the shoulders and neck but left enough material to hide both the bandages on my stomach, my badge, and my gun. I almost changed so I could have my full-sized duty weapon, but I didn’t want to keep Jamie waiting longer than necessary. When you’ve got a miracle sitting in your living room you don’t leave it waiting so you can pack more firepower, or that’s what I told myself as I opened the bedroom door to step out. Reggie told me I didn’t know how to stop being a cop. Was the thought that she’d be pleased that I hadn’t changed everything to carry a bigger gun influencing my choice? I’d have liked to say no, but I try not to lie to myself. Lunch with her wasn’t until tomorrow, but I made the choice as if she was the one waiting in the living room and not Jamie.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  The Cozy Cauldron’s sign was a teacup the size of an old-fashioned witch’s cauldron being stirred by a smiling woman wearing a black pointy hat and a frilly apron, as if the artist hadn’t been sure if they were drawing a witch or a French maid pinup. It made me smile because it was just so fun. If Reggie had been here, she would have thought it was sexist at the minimum. When we met, she’d enjoyed dressing up for what she called Slut-o-ween, but now that Connery was old enough to trick-or-treat, she hated all the women’s costumes. “Don’t you want him to grow up respecting women?”

  I’d been honest before I thought it through. “You used to dress up like that and other people’s little boys saw you.”

  It devolved into a serious fight in which I wasn’t even sure what I was fighting about, but Reggie was certain, and I didn’t know how to get out of the circular arguments.

 
; Jamie touched my arm, jerking me back to the here and now. “You okay, Z?”

  I shook my head and said, “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not.” Jamie said it with such conviction that there was no doubt; I’d forgotten he used to do that before he . . . went away. He’d been able to see through my emotions, no matter how I tried to hide them.

  “I like the sign and I thought that Reggie wouldn’t like it.”

  “Why?”

  I told him.

  He frowned. “I don’t know if that makes sense, but she isn’t here right now, so you can smile at the sign. Emma giggles every time she sees it.” He smiled as if even the thought made him happy.

  Lots of things made me think about Reggie, but they didn’t make me smile. I followed him through the door; it rang a little bell above the door instead of the usual electronic sensor.

  “Bells to keep the bad things out,” Jamie said over his shoulder to me as he looked around the crowded restaurant.

  “Bells don’t keep out everything,” I said, scanning the full tables for a woman sitting alone. The extra height helped me spot two tables, each with a woman sitting alone. A dark-haired woman wearing glasses was sitting against the far wall close to the bathroom sign, and a blonde was sitting almost catty-corner from her. The brunette looked younger, but maybe it was the fact that she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Thanks to living with Reggie, I knew the blonde was wearing a lot more than most men would notice. She looked good, beautiful even, but Reggie had taught me that good makeup could turn a five into a ten, or higher. I’d thought Reggie was a twenty without makeup, but she didn’t, and it was her opinion that counted.

  “What does Emma look like?” I asked.

  “Long, curly hair and the cutest freckles . . .”

  “Glasses and dark hair?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then she’s sitting against the far wall close to the bathrooms.”

  He started through the line waiting for coffee, which had snaked through the tables. He didn’t even apologize as he pushed through. The old Jamie would have hesitated or apologized, but not this one. I wondered what else would stay changed if he stayed . . . okay?