A Terrible Fall of Angels

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I apologized coming up behind him, but then like all tall men, if I didn’t try to be nicer people saw it as aggressive. I’d learned to smile more than I wanted to, because without it some people were afraid of a man over six feet tall. We didn’t have to do anything to threaten them, it just seemed to be a size thing. Of course, if I smiled too much some people thought I was flirting. Two women and one man in line smiled back wide enough that I knew I needed to tone it down. Reggie used to think it was funny that I didn’t know how to modify the smile, until she got jealous of any woman who flirted with me. The men who flirted back never bothered her.

  The man in line who smiled back had his boyfriend jerk his arm to let him know to stop it. The man turned back to his boyfriend with a smile and a kiss to let him know I wasn’t important, just eye candy. I’d seen the interaction too often not to recognize it regardless of the gender involved. The two women were alone in line, so I just stopped making eye contact and hurried after Jamie. I’d been noticing too many women lately; I had to stop before something happened that completely ruined my chances of getting back with Reggie.

  Jamie was already at the table, the woman with the glasses up and hugging him. It had to be Emma. I finally won free of the crowd without offending anyone. The blonde at the table nearest to Emma was looking at me, that appraising look that made me realize she was tall, or at least long-waisted because of how much of her was sitting above the table. Her hair was a rich honey blond that was rare enough in humans that it was probably not her natural color, but that didn’t make it any less eye-catching as it framed her face and complemented a pair of big blue eyes and the almost neutral lipstick she was wearing, so that even though she was wearing a lot of makeup, it was all understated, so it didn’t take away from the eyes and the hair. I wanted to compliment her on it, but she’d think I was flirting. I’d already stared, too long, and her smile was a little surer of itself, her eyes filling up with that weighing and measuring look like she was trying to decide if she wanted to take me off the rack and try me on.

  I looked away a little too fast, making it awkward enough that she laughed, the kind of laugh that a certain kind of beautiful woman seems to practice: throaty, sensual, as if the sound should only be heard in high-end bars and bedrooms. It was a sound that would make men and some women turn to look for its source. I looked before I could catch myself. Her blue eyes were solid on mine, the look on her face a challenge, or an invitation. I still couldn’t always tell the difference, and sometimes there was no difference, because some women see dating like a game with winners and losers, and them as both the prize and the contestant. I didn’t know how to date women like this, but sometimes they hunted me even when I ignored them, something again about being tall and in shape, or so Reggie had tried to explain to me.

  I was blushing by the time I offered my hand to Emma, not the way I wanted to introduce myself to her.

  She laughed, but her laugh was just laughter, not practiced, not throaty, but it made me smile automatically, but what she said next cured my smile.

  “You look like one of the men Shelby would date, but you aren’t, are you?”

  I frowned at her as I let go of her hand, not sure what to say, except, “Who’s Shelby?”

  “The blonde.”

  I glanced back and found the blonde in question still looking at me. I turned away and felt the blush start to flare up again. For the love of Heaven, you’d think after being married with a kid I wouldn’t react to certain things like I was still fifteen and didn’t know that girls liked me.

  Emma used one arm to hug Jamie to her. “You didn’t tell me he was so cute.”

  Jamie pulled a little away, studying her face and frowning. I realized he was jealous. She noticed it, too, because she took his hand and said, “I meant he’s charmingly awkward, I thought police detectives were all worldly and sophisticated.”

  Jamie relaxed, then looked from her to me, and then finally to the woman behind us. “Oh, she’s checking Zaniel out.”

  She bumped her head against his shoulder, smiling. He was five-eight, so that made her about five-six because she was wearing jogging shoes, so no heel to cheat.

  “I love how oblivious you are, Levi,” she said, pulling him down beside her on her side of the table. I slid into my side of the booth so that I could put my back pretty much to the wall and keep a view of the rest of the restaurant. It was a cop thing that Reggie hated, but she knew that if she wanted me to eat out in a restaurant in peace, I had to sit where I could see around me and feel as secure as possible in a crowded restaurant.

  The blonde, Shelby, was still looking at me, as if she thought I’d sat like this to keep a better view of her and not everything else. I raised my left hand up to touch my face, so my wedding band showed more clearly. Her smile just curled up a little more at the edges. Either she didn’t care that I was married, or she liked that I’d felt I had to flash my ring at her. I did the one thing that beautiful women who are very sure of themselves hate most of all: I ignored her and turned to give all my attention to Jamie and Emma.

  They hadn’t noticed the little exchange between me and the blonde because they were smiling at each other, their shoulders touching. I was betting they were holding hands under the table. It made me smile just to see Jamie like that with someone. We hadn’t been allowed to date each other at the College, and when he’d been cast out, he’d been too sick to worry about it. I realized in all the years I’d seen him on the street I’d never seen him with anyone romantically. I’d seen other homeless people that managed relationships, but Jamie had never been one of them. Was this the first relationship for him? I’d have asked, but I didn’t want to point out anything unhappy as I looked at them together. The shy happiness of them together, the obvious newness of their attraction, made something tight and sad inside me lighten up. I wasn’t jealous of it, or afraid for Jamie getting his heart broken anymore, because she was as gone on him as he was on her. They felt good together, like there was a hum of energy between them that was better for both of them. I was relieved to feel it, because part of me had been afraid she was like some of the empathic healers I’d met lately that gave their energy away but didn’t seem to know how to keep energy for themselves. It meant that Emma was already better trained than a lot of the civilian energy workers I’d met.

  “I ordered tea for all of us, I hope you don’t mind,” Emma said. She smiled, her large, gray eyes framed by the even larger dark frames of her glasses dominating her face the same way that Jamie’s brown dominated his; if they had children the babies would look like those big-eyed doll paintings, but cuter. I had to shake my head and rotate my neck to help clear the thought away, because it wasn’t all mine. One of them was projecting, and since Jamie had never been projective but just receptive psychically, it was probably Emma.

  I answered her while I thought about that. “It depends on what you ordered.” But I ended with a smile to answer hers. It seemed to be her natural facial expression, like the opposite of resting bitch face—resting happy face, maybe?

  “Earl Grey latte, extra sweet, it’s Levi’s favorite and he said you both like your tea the same.”

  I kept myself from making a face at the idea of an Earl Grey latte, but I managed to ask, “Just tell me it’s not got coffee mixed in with it and we’re fine.”

  “No coffee in it, I promise. That sounds awful.” She laughed, and it was almost a giggle, which usually wasn’t my favorite from a grown-up woman, but it worked for her somehow. It was like she couldn’t do anything that irritated me, which made me instantly suspicious. Was she using magic on me?

  “My guides say to look with something besides your eyes, Zaniel,” Emma said, staring at me with those big gray eyes that were somewhere between the color of rain clouds and gray kitten fur. Everything about her was . . . cute, from the curly shoulder-length hair, the light sprinkling of freckles, the big glasses, the small, upturned nose, the oval face, the lips that gleamed with the barest touch
of lip gloss. She screamed harmless to a point that made me want to doubt it.

  But now she’d given me permission to use my own gifts on her, or at her. It was considered rude to peek at people with active power unless they hit your radar so hard you couldn’t not see them. I didn’t have to lower my psychic shields, I just needed to focus to try to see more than just the physical. She was surrounded by white light; angels fluttered around her like a white, glowing outline. Most people had one, two at most Guardian Angels that hovered near them, around them, but the sense of wings and light around Emma was like a flock, a sense of energy and light that I hadn’t seen around anyone since I left the College of Angels.

  I tried to concentrate just on Emma, just on the human in front of me, but the white light spilled out so bright and full of the movement of angels that Jamie was lost in the shine of it, as if his light merged with hers. I tried not to see anyone else, but it was like the power once opened couldn’t stop with one; it showed me the white flares around the room of other angels, usually just one, but sometimes two, all around the rooms. There were a few people who didn’t glow with angelic possibilities, and I almost broadened my power to see why, or what else was near them spiritually, but I stopped myself in time. It wasn’t my job, and if they were gifted enough to sense me, they’d see it as an intrusion.

  Some of the angels “asked” for help. Give me permission to help my person, because you have to give your angel permission to help you. Free will protects us from many things, but it can also keep out energies that would help us. If you go to church, or temple, or mosque, or a coven, and are a true believer, then the angels have a conduit to you; they can help and protect you daily, but with so many people not having a regular spiritual practice the angels are trapped to watch the horrible choices people make without being able to help or stop it.

  I was trained to give permission and free the angels to help their charges. I gave it without thinking, and the spurt of joy from the angelic as they were free to help was like flashes of relief throughout the room.

  “The angels like you,” Emma said.

  “Sometimes a little too much,” I said, and the moment I thought something that negative, the energy conduit to the angels began to close. Flesh can impact spirit, and the angels didn’t need my negativity on top of what they were getting from the people they were attached to; the angels had enough mortal interference without me being gloomy at them.

  “I could almost hear the angels singing and then something shut the energy down,” Emma said.

  I looked at her and now that I’d seen it once, I had trouble not seeing the shining outline of angels around her. If she had guides that weren’t angelic like Ravensong did, I hadn’t noticed them, but then we weren’t in sacred or warded space; maybe that mattered?

  “Do you hear the angels singing?” I asked.

  She smiled a little more, because the smile was almost always there. “Sometimes, like the edge of music in a room you can’t find, or birdsong seems to have more to it.”

  I nodded. “Some Angel Speakers talk to the birds a lot, or through them. It’s not one of my gifts so I don’t understand all of it. How did you not get recruited to the College of Angels as a child?”

  She shook her head hard enough for her curls to bounce around her shoulders. The smile went away. Her eyes stopped looking kind. “Recruited, you make it sound like high school kids being scouted for sports teams, or college for professional sports, but it’s little kids between five and seven years old. They can’t give consent to go anywhere for anything.”

  “Our parents give the consent just like for boarding school for other children,” I said.

  She did that curl-bouncing head shake again. “You can get your kid out of a boarding school. Once a child is inside the College of Angels the families can’t get them out, you knew that, right?”

  I blinked at her because I hadn’t thought about it that way.

  “You didn’t know either,” Jamie said.

  I looked at him and shook my head.

  “There have been three cases of divorced parents losing a child to the College, because the main custodial parent gave permission. One father fought for ten years before he could even have a visit with his son.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “The boy was a teenager by then and happy where he was, or brainwashed into staying,” she said, and her face was all unhappy suspicion. It didn’t look right on her face, as if she wasn’t meant for doubts and cynicism.

  “I didn’t know about any of this,” I said.

  “Well, my parents knew and a lot of others in the pagan community know, so when the College came to get me my parents refused.” She said it with such pride and respect in her parents. It was rare for a person in their twenties to still sound that certain about them.

  “The angels found you anyway,” I said.

  She smiled then and it was like clouds parting and letting the sunshine spill around me. I had to smile back; it was a type of magic, or glamor, almost like some of the fey and other supernatural beings could do.

  “If the angels want to find someone they can; time and place mean nothing to them, because they are not trapped in time as we are, and that means they can be many places all at the same time. How can anyone ever be hidden from beings that can do all that?”

  “They can’t.” And then I realized what I’d said, and spoke without thinking. “Then how did she not find me sooner?”

  “You said she was in prison, a place between,” Jamie said.

  Emma said, “Who is she?”

  I looked across the table at Jamie and he just shook his head. He hadn’t told her.

  “I’ve never told anyone, unless I raved about it when I was out of my head,” he said.

  I reached across the table and squeezed his arm. “Thanks.”

  He gave a gentle smile that left his eyes sad. “I would never betray your trust, not on purpose, Z.”

  “Same,” I said.

  “If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to,” Emma said; her eyes were still soft, but more serious, and the smile was barely there, as if her lips just naturally fell that way, no matter what she was actually feeling.

  Jamie patted my hand where it still lay on his arm. “She’s good people, Z.”

  I took my hand back, nodding. “I can feel that, Levanael.”

  “Have you taken your angel name back?” Emma asked.

  “Z told me that if I could channel one of the higher angels, then that meant I was pure and not weak like the College told me when they cast me out. If they’re wrong about that, then they can’t take my name away either.”

  She leaned her shoulder in against his and did that fall-into hug that couples do when sitting on a bench together. “I’m so happy you finally see that.”

  I had to fight not to beam at seeing Jamie so happy in such a normal way. It was miraculous and I said another prayer of thanks for it. That little flash of warmth came in reply, which made me grin like an idiot and enjoy all the happiness of the moment. One thing we’d been taught at the College of Angels was if God gave you good things, to enjoy it, be grateful for it, and give your happiness like an offering to God and the angels. I didn’t always remember that lesson, but it was good to be reminded of it.

  “So, tell me, Levanael”—she seemed to savor being able to say the name—“what or who did you channel to make you feel so good? Your energy is even better than normal.”

  Jamie looked at me. “This is more your story than mine, Zaniel. What are you okay with me sharing?”

  I was debating what to say, or how to start, when the waitress came with our drinks. She was wearing a scoop-necked T-shirt with the sign logo on it. I smiled at seeing it, then realized she might think I was staring at her chest. Heaven help me, it was like I didn’t know how to interact with women anymore.

  I was dubious when I saw the foam on top of the “tea.” It looked more like fancy coffee, but it smelled like Earl Gre
y. In fact, it smelled rich and thick with the herby, citrus scent of real bergamot.

  I raised the glass slowly, enjoying the aroma, then blew on it and finally took the first small sip. It was as good as the scent promised. A weaker tea would have been overwhelmed with what they’d done to make it a latte, but the bergamot was strong enough that it complemented it instead of being lost.

  “Levanael drank his first latte here the same way,” Emma said.

  It was like her voice had intruded on the moment and I had to fight not to spill the full cup. I looked at her, putting the cup of hot liquid safely down on the table first. “What do you mean?”

  “Savoring it, enjoying the moment.”

  “I told you, Emma, Master Sarphiel taught us mindfulness.”

  “He taught us to take pleasure in small things, which I guess is what they call mindfulness these days,” I added.

  “Do you always drink tea so reverently?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “No, but if something smells this good, or tastes amazing, then we were taught to honor it with our attention. It’s like a compliment to the Creator for all the wonderful ingredients that came together to make something.”

  “And the barista who made it?” she asked.

  “Of course, it’s a compliment to the cook, or barista.”

  “But if it’s just okay food and drink, you don’t do it?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t do it at work because people would remark on it just like you did. I learned in the army that looking like you were praying over things made the other people give you a hard time.”

  “I want to know how you went from the College of Angels to the military, I can’t imagine the culture shock, but first tell me why Levanael’s psychic experience is your story more than his.” Her eyes didn’t look like soft kitten fur now, more steel gray. There was strength and determination underneath all the smiles and angelic energy.

  I tried to think how to explain it, and how much I wanted to share. “Levanael channeled one of the higher orders of angels.”