Earth Angel

by Siri Caldwell

  “Ha.” Heather forced the word out with the last of the air in her little lungs before throwing herself on the ground to catch her breath. She eyed her big sister suspiciously. “Did you let me tag you?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  Heather got up from the grass and planted her hands on her hips. “You can’t let me catch you,” she commanded. “You have to try to get away.”

  Gwynne lifted one foot as high as her knee and then stretched her leg in Heather’s direction, balancing dramatically on one leg and flashing monster claws. “I’ll get you.”

  Heather giggled and scooted back a few steps. “It’s not monster tag.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No.”

  Gwynne did her monster roar. Heather shrieked and Gwynne had chased after her…

  “Do you see anything?” Abby asked, jarring her back to the present.

  Abby’s aura wasn’t as green as Heather’s used to be, and Heather’s had never been as bright, but there was a youthfulness that was the same. If you took an angel’s energy system and forced it into the frequencies of the human system, would it remain the bright, golden sunlight it was before? There was no way of knowing. Maybe it would sparkle in swirls of aquamarine, turquoise and teal shot through with streaks of yellow and pure white light, glowing in the dark like the aurora borealis. It was easy to imagine Abby as an angel soaring through the night sky, her freckle-covered shoulder blades rippling with movement, her bra a forgotten memory.

  Somehow it always came down to the bra.

  Or lack thereof.

  “What do you see?” Abby prompted.

  Nothing she could say aloud, that was for sure. “Nothing angelic.”

  Abby looked disappointed. “I asked Grams about it and she said she has some boxes in the attic I might want to take a look at. It’s not like her. I’m going to take the bus down to Baltimore in a couple days to check it out.”

  “You’re taking the bus?” Gwynne said, jumping on the safer topic. “What about your van? There’s only, like, one bus a day.”

  “My license was suspended.”

  Gwynne burst out laughing. She hated when she did that—like her body was a malfunctioning pressure-release valve. It was so wrong to laugh at things that weren’t funny—at things that called for condolences, or understanding, or a sad face at the very least. She clamped her hands over her mouth, but Abby didn’t seem to have noticed. Maybe Abby thought it was funny, since apparently a suspended license was not enough to stop her from driving herself to work or giving Gwynne a ride to their evening’s shindig.

  “For what? Drunk driving?” It was the only thing she could think of that would get your license suspended.

  “Speeding.”

  “Speeding,” Gwynne echoed, letting that sink in. “How fast do you have to drive to get your license suspended for speeding?”

  “Pretty fast.” Abby winked conspiratorially.

  God, she was cute. And crazy. Just the way she liked her women—cute and crazy.

  What a coincidence.

  “Sober,” Gwynne confirmed. Because cute and crazy was one thing, and cute and crazy and drunk was another. Although the way hope seemed to spring eternal around her sequin-covered witch, maybe it didn’t matter.

  “I don’t have a death wish,” Abby said.

  “You must have an incarceration wish if you drive to work on a suspended license.”

  “I’m not going to get pulled over when I’m only driving a few blocks.”

  “Not in that mom-mobile, anyway.” The rusted, ancient, unreliable-looking minivan was so not what she imagined her driving. She understood why she owned it—because it was big enough to transport her harps—but it clearly wasn’t the vehicle her illegally speeding heart would have preferred. “I’m shocked it’s actually capable of breaking the speed limit.”

  “I have a good mechanic.”

  “If you ask me, you have a miracle worker.”

  “Wow, I thought the M-word was on your never-ever-cross-your-lips, do-not-pass-go, do-not-collect-two-hundred-dollars list.”

  How did she know that? It was a little scary, the stuff Abby knew about her.

  “I’ll drive you to Baltimore if you want,” Gwynne said. “So you don’t have to take the bus.”

  Abby hesitated.

  “It’ll be fun.” Yeah, like she didn’t have enough crazy in her life.

  “Thanks.” Abby’s aura danced orange and deep, hazy blue, glowing like a breathtaking sunset. “Elle must be telling the truth, right? I mean, she’s an angel.”

  “God, I don’t know.” Gwynne pressed her fingers to her forehead. Everyone thought she was an expert, and she really wasn’t. She’d be happy if no one mentioned angels to her ever again.

  “She has no reason to lie. Why would she lie? She must think I can help them, or she wouldn’t have asked.”

  “Asked what?”

  “Um…” A guilty look crossed her face. “She thinks I can help her with something.”

  Something Abby apparently didn’t want to tell her about. Not that it was any of her business. She didn’t want it to be her business. She didn’t. Because whatever that angel had asked Abby to do, she was sure she wasn’t going to like it.

  Gwynne shrugged, telling herself she didn’t care. “Keyword: think.”

  “You think she could be wrong?”

  “I think anyone can make a mistake. Even an angel.”

  Chapter Nine

  When Abby arrived at Dara’s niece’s house for the birthday party the next day, she found Gwynne wearing a top hat and tuxedo, flat on her stomach on the floor of the living room, participating in a nose-twitching competition with two rabbits. Gwynne was talking to them, egging them on, and for someone loud, she had an amazingly soft, gentle way of crooning to her pets. It was a voice that could pull you through your worst fears and make you want to be brave. A private, intimate voice that made Abby’s insides tense with longing.

  Gwynne rolled up from the floor and tossed her a second top hat, obviously remembering that Abby had said she wanted one. “Nimbus is the gray furball,” she said, introducing the rabbits and switching to her normal voice, making Abby wish she’d approached more quietly so Gwynne wouldn’t have noticed her right away and she could have enjoyed listening to that sexy voice a little longer. “The black one is Peter the Fifteenth.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve had fourteen other Peters.”

  “Yup. Peter was my first bunny. He was great at magic. Just an all-around great bunny.” Gwynne covered Nimbus’s ears like she didn’t want him to hear and get jealous. He twitched her away. “But these guys are great too.”

  The rabbits weren’t too skittish when Abby tried to pet them. Gwynne had her practice holding them, and then practice putting them in their carrier and taking them out. They did a quick run-through of what Gwynne needed her to do during the show, and then kids started arriving at the front door and were funneled to another part of the house for games, leaving Abby and Gwynne alone in the room with the rabbits, waiting for everyone to arrive so the kids could be led to the magic room as a group.

  “Ready?” Gwynne asked.

  “It’s the rabbits I’m worried about. Are they going to panic?” Of course they were well-behaved when Gwynne was there supervising, but that was likely to change in front of two dozen excited children. Combine that with Abby’s questionable rabbit wrangling skills, and there might not be anyone popping out of that magician’s hat.

  Gwynne scooped up Nimbus and scratched him under his chin. Peter watched morosely, then flopped onto his side for an insta-nap. “They probably will mess up, since this is their first magic show, but that’s okay.”

  “Mine too.” Good thing the kids would be more excited about seeing live bunnies than about whether the trick worked. She hoped.

  While Gwynne had her hands full hugging Nimbus, Abby brushed pale gray rabbit hairs off Gwynne’s official magician’s black tuxedo jacket. It was an excuse t
o touch her—and not a very subtle one, judging from the way Gwynne met her gaze at the touch, making it clear she’d noticed.

  She wished she’d kissed her the night before. Then she wouldn’t be obsessing about it now, wondering when she’d get another opportunity, worrying that if she did, she’d once again be startled by someone not of this world whose blaze of speed made her impossible to identify, and lose her nerve. She shouldn’t have pulled back. So what if an angel had warned her not to date Gwynne? She didn’t fully trust Elle, and even if she did, her warning was too much like one of her grandmother’s overprotective rules to take seriously. Yet somehow she’d been knocked too off-balance to try to recapture the mood. Now, though…

  “It’s okay if you mess up the trick too,” Gwynne said. “Besides, I’ve got lots of other illusions planned that don’t involve the bunnies.”

  “What about you? Are you any good at this?” Gwynne had talked her through the big trick, but she hadn’t seen her perform it. She hoped Gwynne, at least, had rehearsed.

  “Doubting me?”

  “Um…no?” Abby laughed and fussed a bit more with Gwynne’s jacket, plucking at a few stubborn hairs and straightening her collar.

  Gwynne leaned into her, her shoulders subtly responding to her movements. But then she settled on the floor with the rabbits, and Abby pulled herself together and stopped touching her, and Gwynne stroked the rabbits’ furry bodies with a technique that had them lolling on the carpet in ecstasy while Abby stood and watched.

  Kiss her? Now? What was she thinking? They had a show to do.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve been doing this trick since I was a kid. I thought pulling a rabbit out of a hat was the coolest trick in the world. That’s how I got the first Peter. It took me ages to convince my mother I couldn’t be a real magician without a bunny, but my sister and I spent so much time practicing the trick and got so good at it that she finally gave in. On one condition—that there would be no sawing of holes into the kitchen table, the dining room table, the card table, or our desks.”

  “Your poor mother.”

  “She didn’t need to worry, because by that point I didn’t need a trick table—it was all sleight of hand. My sister Heather came up with all these off-the-wall ideas for distracting the audience, like twirling around dancing or telling knock-knock jokes, so they wouldn’t see me sticking the bunny into the hat.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Yeah, it worked great, since our audience was Heather’s stuffed animals sitting in a row, all lined up on the dining room chairs. Great audience. They never saw it coming.”

  “Oh my God.” Abby wished she could have seen Gwynne at that age. She must have been adorable, doggedly practicing her magic trick and conning her little sister into helping her.

  “They loved it when I asked for a volunteer from the audience to be the rabbit in the hat. One of them really was a rabbit, so she got to volunteer a lot.”

  “The others must have been jealous.”

  Gwynne shook her head with a rueful smile. “Not if they heard me arguing with Heather that real magicians’ rabbits were white, not pink. I thought it was a pretty convincing argument, but Heather wouldn’t let me bleach her stuffed animal.”

  “I would think your mother wouldn’t let you bleach your sister’s stuffed animal.”

  “She knew I’d never go through with it.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  Soon the kids trooped in and piled onto the floor in front of the makeshift stage. Gwynne got the show rolling with some knock-knock jokes and an impressive array of card tricks and other illusions.

  When it was time for the rabbits’ star appearance, Abby handed Gwynne’s top hat to the birthday girl and asked her to look inside. The girls didn’t quite grasp the concept of waiting their turn or passing the hat around; instead, they all had to get in on the action and huddle around it to confirm that yes, it was a normal, untricky, unsuspicious, empty hat. Abby returned the hat to Gwynne.

  “And now, for my next trick, I will pull a rabbit out of this hat,” Gwynne announced. “But first, the magic words. Abracadabra…” She reached into the hat. “Rabacadabra…” She fumbled inside the hat, like she knew the rabbit was in there but she couldn’t find it. “Rabbitcadabra…” She pulled her hand out of the hat and raised her arm aloft in victory, showing off what she’d conjured—a faded pink plush rabbit. Its pale blue glass bead eyes were loose and its ears were worn and furless. “Yes! I knew I could do it!”

  The kids giggled.

  “No?” Looking puzzled, Gwynne lowered the stuffed animal.

  The stuffed animal shook its head no.

  “Let’s try this again.” Gwynne made the plush rabbit disappear underneath her table, which was covered by a floor-length drape, the better to hide the cuddly black rabbit who was snoozing in a black hammock hooked within easy reach. She placed the hat, brim down, on the table. “Abracadabra…”

  Abby stepped behind the folding screen that was off to Gwynne’s right. She crouched by the rabbit carrier and lifted the black rabbit’s brother out and nudged him toward his favorite person. He hopped out from behind the screen.

  “Look!” squealed the girls, wiggling with excitement.

  Gwynne peered over the table and jumped in exaggerated surprise at the gray rabbit on the floor. The kids’ squeals turned into giggles.

  “What is that?” Gwynne said.

  “A rabbit!”

  The kids were having so much fun, and she could tell Gwynne was too, which was nice to see. She liked seeing her happy.

  Gwynne looked at Nimbus suspiciously out the corner of her eye and then made a show of waving him away and ignoring him as she reminded the audience to join her in the magic words.

  “Abracadabra, rabacadabra, rabbitcadabra…”

  Only Abby, standing off to the side behind the screen, saw her scoop Peter the Fifteenth, hammock and all, into the hat as she swept the hat from the edge of the table and flipped it over. She was amazingly fast, moving in that eager, enthusiastic way of hers that could not be called graceful but was certainly not uncoordinated. Abby shivered. She was supposed to be distracting the audience by coming out from behind the screen and chasing Nimbus while Gwynne flipped the hat, but instead, she was the one who was distracted. She couldn’t take her eyes off Nimbus’s mom.

  Gwynne reached inside the hat to free Peter the Fifteenth from the hammock and pulled him out with both hands. Half the kids gaped and the others didn’t realize or didn’t care that they’d missed her big trick because they were scrambling after Nimbus.

  While the adults in the back of the room clapped, Abby took Peter so they could move on to the next trick, and as they transferred the rabbit, her bare forearm brushed against Gwynne’s sleeve. She stilled. Goose bumps rose on her arm. She stared at Gwynne’s sleeve, at the spot where they’d touched, and realized just how close they were standing, with their heads close together, breathing the same air. Why hadn’t they practiced this move before the show? She liked this move. She took her time, making sure she had a secure hold on the rabbit. No other reason.

  Right. She was going to have to do something about this attraction. Soon.

  * * *

  Gwynne couldn’t remember the last time she’d done laundry, and the only clean T-shirt she had left was the one that said Cats are Angels with Fur. Her mother had given it to her—that was the only reason she owned it. Not that she ever wore it. She did have standards.

  Or maybe she didn’t have standards, because she’d broken down and worn the shirt a few weeks ago, even though she was beyond pissed at the angels and didn’t owe them free advertising on her chest.

  As if she didn’t think about her mother often enough already.

  Today, however, she was not in the mood for kittens with cheesy cartoon halos. Not even if those halos were hidden under a sweater, because she wouldn’t last ten minutes at work wearing a sweater or even a chamois shirt—with or without anything on undernea
th—since she and the massage therapists liked to crank up the heat for the clients. Still, there must be something she could wear.

  But there wasn’t. Not a single clean T-shirt in sight. Even her Holy Cow! T-shirt was in the laundry basket. It too featured an animal with a halo, and was another gift she was never going to have the heart to get rid of because it was from—who else?—her misguided but always supportive mother. She rummaged through the rest of her drawers. Oh, wait. A rumpled long-sleeved silk blouse that should have been hung in the closet. Perfect.

  Her phone rang and she snatched if off the bedside table as she tried semi-one-handedly to button her sleeves’ cuffs.

  It was Megan. “Kira has a friend in town visiting from New York and we’re all going down to the beach after lunch. Want to join us? Catch some rays?”

  “What rays?”

  “In case you haven’t rolled out of bed yet, it’s a beautiful spring day.”

  Gwynne pulled on her favorite chamois shirt over her blouse, juggling the phone to get her arms into the sleeves. The chamois probably clashed, but she didn’t have a lot of choices, and she’d need something warm later, when she left work. “Spring, yes. Beautiful, no. Are you trying to set me up with this friend?”

  “Of course not.” Megan’s earnest Minnie Mouse squeak was unconvincing.

  “You totally are.”

  “She’s nice. And she’s a dancer. Not to be shallow, but she has a great—”

  “No,” Gwynne said, cutting her off. “What’s gotten into you? You never say stuff like that. I’m the crass one, remember?”

  “Too feminine?” Megan persisted. “I never did figure out what your type was.”

  “And you never will.” She wasn’t about to tell her she might have finally figured it out herself. “Set her up with someone else.”

  “Like who? Hank?”

  “What?” Hank was taken. Or at least she was the last time she saw her, which, besides third-party gossip, was the only way to know anything about Hank, because she wasn’t the type to broadcast her personal life online. “Don’t tell me Hank and Aisha broke up.”