Earth Angel

by Siri Caldwell

  Abby looked so intent as she leaned over her harp playing scales, her hands reaching for the strings. Gwynne shivered, remembering how it felt to be in her arms. Was she always like that when she embraced a woman she liked? Focused and sure, giving you her full attention?

  Giving them her full attention, Gwynne corrected herself. Someone else. Not her. Because Abby might possibly, maybe, be an angel, and another frickin’ angel was the last thing she needed right now.

  “They look so desperate chewing on the bars of their cage,” Kira observed. “Should we let them out?”

  Kira. She needed to focus on Kira. She opened the carrier and picked up Nimbus, who was occasionally better behaved with strangers than his brother was, and deposited him in Kira’s arms. “He likes it if you pet him on the forehead.”

  Kira was hesitant at first. While she worked on getting the hang of it, Gwynne got Peter the Fifteenth out of the carrier and scratched his chin so he wouldn’t get jealous.

  “That’s it,” Gwynne encouraged her, congratulating herself because she had managed not to glance in Abby’s direction for at least thirty seconds.

  “He’s soft,” Kira said.

  After a few strokes she’d had enough and put him on the floor in front of the open door of his carrier. Nimbus stared inside, nose quivering with interest.

  “He’ll go in on his own, right?” Kira didn’t look like she wanted to touch him again to give him a boost.

  “Maybe,” Gwynne said. The boys were trained, but only to a point.

  Nimbus turned his head, his nose picking up speed. If she didn’t have Peter in her arms, she’d—

  Too late. Nimbus zigzagged away from the safety of his carrier toward the treatment rooms.

  Megan chose that moment to emerge from her massage room. She froze in the doorway, caught in a stare-down with the rabbit, then swiftly shut the door behind her. Nimbus rammed his head at the crack under her door, optimistic as always that he could squeeze himself into any space he wanted to, no matter how small. Megan double-checked that the door to her room was securely closed, the latch engaged.

  “Somebunny wants to be your friend,” Gwynne said cheerfully, hoping to avert a meltdown.

  Megan rolled her eyes. “You are so weird.”

  “But you love me anyway.”

  Megan glanced down at Nimbus, who had given up on the door and moved on to her shoelace. She calmly watched him chew, then looked pointedly at her girlfriend. “You let her bring her rabbits here? You don’t have to let her do everything she wants.”

  “They have a cage,” Kira said. “And they’re litter-trained.”

  Megan leaned down and freed her shoelace from Nimbus’s teeth. “Not a good source of fiber, buddy.”

  “I’ll get him,” Gwynne said.

  Holding Peter the Fifteenth in her arms, she approached nonthreateningly. Nimbus took off in a gray blur. The little stinker. She stalked him around the room. Too bad it wasn’t Peter, who was older and not as fast, and generally easier to catch.

  Abby got up from her harp and tried to help by chasing Nimbus toward Gwynne. He hopped onto the sofa, jumped off, dashed underneath. Peter jumped out of her arms and started to follow, but Gwynne nabbed him just in time. Once she had Peter in the carrier and secured the latch, she went to the sofa and stretched out on the floor to look for her troublemaker. Nimbus was on the side farthest away from her, of course, staying very, very still in the mistaken belief that this made him invisible. Gwynne circled to the other end of the sofa to grab him, and once again, Nimbus was out of reach, watchful and motionless. But at least he wasn’t chewing on the furniture.

  “Can someone help me and get on the other side of the sofa?” Gwynne asked. “This is a two-person job.” She wedged her shoulder under the sofa and reached as far as she could.

  Abby ducked her head near the floor at the opposite end and Nimbus sidled away from her to the sweet spot in the center where neither of them could reach.

  “Come here, my little spazz,” Gwynne pleaded. “Let’s get you back in the carrier with the spazzette.”

  Nimbus went nowhere.

  “Peter the Fifteenth is a girl?” Abby said.

  “Pete’s such a flamer, he doesn’t mind what I call him.”

  Abby stood and lifted her end of the sofa and Nimbus raced across the room and out into the hallway.

  “Crap.” Gwynne scrambled up.

  “I’ll staff the desk,” Kira said, not that anyone was listening to her.

  Gwynne and Abby were already halfway down the hall. They caught up with Nimbus in the lobby just in time to see him dart out the front door as a guest entered. Not good.

  Gwynne ran after him and Nimbus headed straight for the street. Gwynne stopped, horrified, but Abby sped after him, straight into traffic, waving her hands at the cars and yelling at them to stop over the sound of squealing brakes.

  Gwynne followed more safely. When she reached her, Abby was crouched at the curb, trying to grab Nimbus and missing each time. He wasn’t even running, just sidestepping her, conserving his energy for the ideal moment to make another mad dash. Wordlessly, Gwynne helped her corner the rabbit against the brick wall of the closest building. She bent to scoop him up, but he dodged her. Then Abby tried. His round eyes went wide and he froze and allowed her to pick him up, the traitor. He did look squirmy in her hands, though, as if he wasn’t sure what he’d gotten himself into.

  “You silly, silly, sweet little boy,” Gwynne whispered, trying to calm him. She hoped Abby had an escape-proof grip on him. “Don’t do that again.”

  Abby straightened and they returned to the other side of the street, with Abby this time mercifully looking both ways before she crossed.

  “You nearly gave me a heart attack,” Gwynne growled when they reached the sidewalk.

  Abby pouted. “You love that rabbit.”

  Did she actually think she should be thanking her for this stunt? “You didn’t even look before you ran into the street.”

  “I looked.”

  “You call that looking? Those cars were headed straight for you.”

  “They were headed straight for Nimbus too.” Which was why she did it, of course. “I cut it close, but I did look. I’m not completely irresponsible.”

  “You could have been hit,” Gwynne said.

  “Nobody hit me. And Nimbus is okay too, right, Nimbus?” Abby rubbed the lucky rabbit behind the ears. He leaned into Abby’s caress and gazed calmly at Gwynne, lapping up the attention, not acting guilty in the least for the scare he’d given her.

  Abby held out the rabbit to pass him to her, but Gwynne couldn’t handle the possibility of brushing against Abby’s arms or, God forbid, her chest, if they did a transfer, so she turned her back on her and the spazz-case and marched back toward the hotel, even though everything inside her screamed at her to stop being rude. Abby followed silently.

  The silence gnawed at her. She wanted to turn around and kiss her until Abby melted in her arms and forgave her, jerk that she was, but that was not a good idea. Definitely not. Knowing that wasn’t an option made her grouchy.

  “Are you trying to kill yourself?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You are. That angel asked you to and you’re going to do it.”

  “I saw the cars, okay?” Abby sounded pissed.

  “Then you shouldn’t have run in front of them.”

  Abby caught up with her, passed her, and turned around. She looked like she was planning to yell at her. But then their eyes met, and something shifted, and what came out was a soft voice devoid of anger. “Are you shaking?”

  She wasn’t, was she? Gwynne glanced down at herself to check. Her arms were covered in goose bumps, and she rubbed at them impatiently. Abby led her to a stone bench in front of the hotel and they both sat down.

  “My sister almost got hit by a car,” Gwynne said. “A friend was with her and saw her run into the street.”

  “But she didn’t get hit,” Abby sa
id, making it both a statement and a question.

  Gwynne rubbed her arms again. “She made it across the road.”

  “But…?”

  “Her friend said that she thought something was chasing her, something that scared her enough that she ran through traffic. She managed not to get hit. But the road had a bridge, and instead of stopping, she climbed over a guardrail and jumped. She landed in the frozen river below. Crashed through the ice.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “She was hallucinating. She was caught in a fucked-up drug-induced hallucination.”

  Abby placed Nimbus on Gwynne’s lap and rubbed his nose. “Your mom’s upset, Nimbus. Make her feel better.” Nimbus flopped onto his side, looking relaxed and adorable.

  Gwynne hardly noticed. “Her friend said Heather thought she could fly.”

  “And your mother…” Abby sounded like she was trying to fit the pieces together with what she’d heard through the grapevine.

  Gwynne was surprised she hadn’t heard all the messy details, not that the messiest ones were common knowledge. Maybe someone—probably Megan, or by extension, Kira—had been trying to spare Gwynne the awkwardness of being whispered about.

  “They weren’t far from the house,” Gwynne said. “Heather had moved back home because she couldn’t hold down a job. When the friend saw what happened and called the house, my mother ran out there to try to save her. She fell through the ice too.”

  “I’m sorry.” Abby started to put her hand on her shoulder, then jerked back, apparently remembering Gwynne’s reaction the last time she touched her, and changed course to pet Nimbus instead. Except Gwynne was already petting him too, and their fingers ran into each other and made them both jump.

  She hated that Abby was afraid to touch her, but what did she expect? She had pushed her away. Of course Abby was going to flinch at her touch.

  That didn’t make it easier to deal with, though. She wanted to reach for her and give her a hug and apologize for what she’d said in Baltimore, but she didn’t know if she could do that without leading her on. She didn’t know if Abby still wanted her, but either way, it was better if Abby thought she wasn’t interested.

  “I told Heather the drugs were screwing up her aura. She said no, they were changing her, helping her see things she’d never been able to see before. I asked her if she could even see her aura, and she gave me that you-are-not-my-mother look and told me she could feel how clear it was.”

  “It wasn’t clear?” Abby said.

  “Oh, it was clear all right, as clear as the water in a pond when acid mine drainage kills off all signs of life and you can see right down to the bottom. Maybe she could see it. I don’t know. Maybe she thought poisoning herself was worth it.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Abby said.

  Sure it wasn’t. “I could see what she was doing to herself. I should have tried harder to stop her.”

  “She was an adult.”

  “It started a long time ago, long before she was an adult. She wanted to see what I saw. If I had never told her about angels, she would never have gone looking for them.”

  “You don’t know that’s what she was trying to do.”

  “Yeah, I do. She told me. She said I wasn’t the only one with special powers anymore, that now she had them too. She could finally see the angelic beings I was always talking about when we were kids. She was so happy that she could see them. Other times, she sounded scared. The angels were turning into monsters, and there was this vast nothingness she didn’t know how to handle. There must have been something off about it, because for me, the emptiness isn’t anything to be afraid of. But for her…she panicked.”

  “You can’t blame yourself,” Abby said. “It was your sister’s choice to do what she did.”

  Nimbus squeaked, and Gwynne realized she’d petted him too hard. She lifted the rabbit from her lap and hugged him to her chest. Abby could tell her it wasn’t her fault until she was hoarse and she still wouldn’t believe her. “I should get this guy back to his carrier.”

  They headed inside and found the spa’s appointment desk unattended. So much for Kira keeping an eye on things. Gwynne heard a noise in the far corner and turned.

  Kira held Megan by the waist and had her pressed up against the wall, and Gwynne was pretty sure Megan had her hands up Kira’s shirt. She could tell, even from across the room, that Megan’s face was flushed.

  Kira twisted to look over her shoulder. She frowned. “That was quick.”

  Gwynne put her hand over her eyes. “Not in front of the children.”

  She retrieved the carrier and deposited Nimbus next to—and partly on top of—Peter.

  “Go away, Gwynne. Abby.”

  “We’re trying.” Gwynne picked up the carrier and she and Abby skedaddled.

  * * *

  “I thought Abigail would be one of the easy ones,” Artemisia said, hovering beside Elle above the mountains of New Mexico, two fireballs floating in the thin, dry air. “It’s strange that she can’t remember who she is.”

  “You agreed to be recalled,” Elle said. “So will she.” Angels who volunteered to incarnate tended to be fearless. Reckless, even. You’d have to be to sacrifice the beauty of the Angelic Realm and trade it for human separation consciousness. An invitation to return to the Realm, even if you couldn’t remember where you came from, should be irresistible to someone like that. It was the adventure of a temporary lifetime.

  Elle drifted closer to earth. It looked like another hapless hiker had ventured off the faintly worn trail trampled by elk who were smart enough to stay clear of certain areas. Oh, joy—a second hiker. They shouldn’t be here. It wasn’t safe.

  She plunged at the two hikers to scare them away. Artemisia zipped around her in circles to enhance the effect.

  The hikers looked at each other and inched back. “Is that a UFO?”

  “It’s an optical illusion,” said the other hiker.

  “An optical—?” Artemisia sputtered and zapped furiously around their heads. Static electricity sparked in her wake.

  Elle glanced heavenward. “I cannot believe…”

  “Maybe Gwynne could help us convince Abigail,” Artemisia said as she darted aggressively at the hikers. “If you would stop hiding from her…”

  “No. She sees too much.”

  “Abigail trusts her.”

  “She’s supposed to trust me.” Bringing Gwynne Abernathy into the situation was too risky. Gwynne was an aberration. Everyone loved her because she could see them and hear them, but no one knew for sure what she was capable of. It figured Artemisia would want to risk it, though.

  “Why did I incarnate if you’re not going to listen to me when I tell you how humans think? Abigail could stall forever.”

  “I’m not showing myself to Gwynne. And neither are you.” Elle grew larger and larger. She advanced menacingly on the hikers like a tumbleweed on fire, rolling closer and closer until they got scared and ran. Worked every time.

  “Fine.” Artemisia stared after the retreating hikers. “But we need to step up our efforts to convince Abigail. Look how long it took us last time to get everyone back.”

  “I know.” That was fun—everyone dying of the plague and the incarnated angels turn out to be immune.

  “We can’t afford to wait another sixty years for her to die of natural causes,” Artemisia said as they drifted away from the mountain and morphed into winged form. They caught an updraft and floated on the warm air, letting it take them where it wanted them to go.

  “The bridge hasn’t collapsed yet and we have only one holdout,” Elle said calmly. “We’re in a much better position than we ever were before.”

  “All it takes is one.”

  “Deep down inside she knows she’s an angel. Part of her knows that although her circumstances appear to have changed, reality persists. She’ll come around.”

  “What if she doesn’t?”

  “She will.”

  Chapt
er Fourteen

  Abby woke at four in the morning and lay on her back with her eyes open. She wondered if Gwynne’s rabbits were awake. Were rabbits nocturnal? She had no idea.

  She gave up on trying to go back to sleep and padded out to the living room and stopped next to one of her harps. She ran her hand over its curved neck, smoothing off dust that wasn’t there. Her fingers itched to play, but her neighbors were only a thin wall away and would be furious if she did. They were understanding about her practicing during the day, but waking them before sunrise was not part of the deal. That didn’t mean she couldn’t play somewhere else, though. She returned to her bedroom and pulled on a pair of jeans, dug out the hurricane lamp she kept for emergencies, and packed one of her smaller harps in its padded case. She knew just the place.

  She checked that she had the right tuning wrench stashed in the zippered pocket of the harp’s carrying case and headed out to the woods at Sea Salt, to the boulder Dara had shown her, the one she called Angel Rock. Dara had said Gwynne thought angels liked to gather there, that it was a doorway for them, an accessway to their dimension. Was that why it called to her? Because she wanted to feel close to the angels? Or to feel close to Gwynne?

  No, it was because it was a nice, isolated spot where she could play her harp and not bother anyone. Besides, she didn’t see any angels around, glowing in the dark. And Gwynne…Something was going on with Gwynne and she didn’t understand what it was, but she needed to give her some space.

  Even if she couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  She settled on the sandy ground, one leg bent and one leg stretched to the side. She set the hurricane lamp where it would shine on the harp strings and not in her eyes, and warmed up with a series of scales. She plucked out a few bars of a new tune she was learning and noodled around, experimenting with the arrangement as she committed it to memory, repeating it, gradually picking up speed, training herself to smooth out the timing.