The Wrong Enemy

by Jane Lebak

  “I can’t help it.” Rachmiel closed his eyes. “I’m scared.”

  At his back, Voriah started praying, and Rachmiel opened his heart to join him. It was Voriah who compacted the whole situation into one thought, one need, and presented it before God. The response came like light through both angels, illuminating every corner of the translucent material that made their souls. The response wasn’t a solution, but reassurance: God was near; God was helping; God loved them.

  Voriah stepped aside so Rachmiel could spend the time with God, heart open and soul engaged.

  Seven

  About a week later after bedtime, Josai’el followed Bridget into her granddaughter’s room to drop off her laundry. Tabris looked away from the window and said to Josai’el, “Would it be all right to do introductions tonight with the parents?”

  Josai’el felt Rachmiel’s heart jump from across the room, and she grinned, projecting to Tabris that of course it would be fine. Rachmiel kissed Elizabeth on the head and followed them into the hallway.

  First they stopped by Andrew Hayes, Mithra’s charge. He had a job in St. Albans that kept him busy even when he was at home, often working late in his basement office. Mithra added, a little grim, that much of this work served as an escape from his family. He had a presence that could quell conversation just by being in the room, but at other times he was surprisingly friendly. He’d cultivated for himself the idea that a good father was a stoic man and a reliable provider, and he’d achieved both, an accomplishment he sometimes regretted.

  Josai’el watched the interaction between Mithra and Tabris, taking place over Andrew’s desk, and remembered Mithra’s arrival almost fifty years earlier: his exuberance, his energy. His delight with the potentiality of the new human he’d vowed to guard. Now as they spoke, she noted the dimness of his eyes, a certain character she had to call “careworn” because although Mithra had seen the heights of which his charge was capable, he’d also seen the depths. And for his part, Tabris avoided Mithra’s gaze while he talked. Later, he avoided Hadriel’s.

  Hadriel guarded Connie, Elizabeth’s mother, who had recently returned to work in order to defray college costs. Her part-time job allowed her to drive the children to and from school and to an assortment of after-school activities.

  Tabris said, “She always seems tired.”

  “Most days, I’m pumping energy into her just to get her through to the evening,” Hadriel said. Josai’el had already known this: Connie’s job was boring, her children demanding, and her husband non-demonstrative. For that reason, Bridget shouldered much of the housework.

  Tabris said, “That must be difficult.”

  Hadriel offered a dry chuckle. “At least she’s too tired to sin.”

  Small consolation, Josai’el knew. Bridget had lived through years like that as well.

  By then Bridget had gotten ready for bed, so Josai’el joined her in evening prayers and then turned to Tabris. “What do you want to know?”

  Tabris looked Josai’el in the eyes, blank, and for a moment she wondered if he really wanted to learn about the people, or if he was feigning interest to get Rachmiel off his back. A glance at Rachmiel revealed nothing. She said, “Well, for starters, Bridget is seventy-two.” Which also meant that as the most-experienced guardian in the family, Josai’el was the nominal head of household. “The house and property have been in her family ever since they came to the United States. She inherited it from her father.”

  “And it goes to Andrew next?”

  “There will have to be some kind of split in the inheritance,” Josai’el said. “Andrew has brothers, but Bridget will take care of it in the will. She sometimes resents having to share the house with Andrew’s family, but she understands it’s too big for her to maintain alone, and she couldn’t bear to sell it.”

  Tabris frowned. “It’s unusual to live your whole life in one place nowadays. Didn’t she want to get away?”

  “She’s a homebody.” Josai’el chuckled. “It’s exotic enough to take long walks and appreciate that the air she’s breathing has emigrated over the Canadian border.”

  Rachmiel laughed. Tabris wore a disbelieving look. “If you say so.”

  “That wouldn’t work for you,” she said, “but it works for her.”

  Tabris turned to Rachmiel. “Elizabeth needs to travel. A lot.”

  Rachmiel grinned at him, projecting that it was hardly decided. Tabris replied, “We’ll see.”

  He’d relaxed, sitting on the foot of Bridget’s bed. When Rachmiel shot Tabris a look, he returned a mischievous smile, and for a moment Josai’el wondered what Tabris had been like long ago, before God had given him a child to guard and Tabris had given it back.

  Josai’el sat by Bridget’s side. “I didn’t know what Bridget’s life would be like either. It’s impossible to predict. But she’s done quite a lot with it, and she’s at peace.”

  Tabris said, “Given what you said about sharing the home, and how she’s helping Connie, she must feel resentful sometimes.”

  “Yes, but when she tells me that, I pray with her to channel that energy toward growing more holy.” She touched the woman’s shoulder. “Sometimes the greatest holiness is doing the work right in front of you.”

  Rachmiel’s wings raised. “Excuse me—she talks to you?”

  Josai’el nodded.

  “You never said she talks to you!”

  Josai’el flushed. “It doesn’t happen often.”

  Tabris said, “But ever? How does she know?”

  “She doesn’t know my name.” Josai’el laughed. “But yes, when she was a child, someone told her to talk to me when she needed help, and sometimes she does. Then I pray with her, and I also know a little better what she wants or needs.”

  Rachmiel whistled. “Could you encourage her to tell the grandkids to do the same? Because I’d like Elizabeth to talk to me. And Tabris,” he added. “How well can she hear you?”

  “Probably no better than Elizabeth hears you.” Josai’el sighed. “She did tell Andrew to talk to Mithra, but Andrew forgot all about it. Connie blew her off. She’s never talked to the children about angels because she doesn’t want to interfere with what their parents are teaching.”

  Rachmiel looked awed. “All the same— I’d be overwhelmed.”

  “I was, too, the first time.” Josai’el ran her fingers over Bridget’s hair. The woman had fallen asleep. “But that’s all beside the point. Tabris wanted to get to know her.”

  “This is fine,” said Tabris. “She sounds a lot like— Well, I know her better now. Thank you.”

  Now there was an opening large enough to drive a truck through. Josai’el said, “Did you have any questions?”

  “Well—” Tabris checked Rachmiel, still enraptured by the idea of Elizabeth talking to them. “I guess. Does she ever— Did Bridget—” Josai’el caught the image of a brown-eyed boy, a sense of rising guilt. “Does it bother you when she sins?”

  Behind Tabris, Rachmiel pulsed with curiosity. Josai’el felt it surge and worried that Tabris might lock down.

  “Of course it does. I encourage her to look at her actions for what they are, and when she’s no longer defensive, she will feel remorse, and I help her ask forgiveness.”

  Tabris was staring at his hands. “And— the first time— how did you handle it?”

  “She was just a child.” Josai’el looked Tabris in the eyes and tried to keep him from noticing Rachmiel’s curiosity or sudden self-consciousness. Leaning closer, she dropped her voice to match Tabris’s tone. “It was a shock, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I worked with her until she felt remorse for what she’d done, and fortunately it was something she could un-do on her own.”

  Tabris studied his hands, staring hard. Josai’el caught it again: an image of the boy, a yearning.

  Tabris said, “Theft?”

  Josai’el chilled. The flatness of his words, but also the way he was fishing—and why would he want to know that except to think badl
y of an old woman? Or of her as a guardian, maybe trying to level the playing field? But on the other hand, the image of that boy kept presenting itself. That wasn’t condemnation. It was a drowning man flailing for a handhold.

  Josai’el said, “Yes.”

  “I think maybe the first one is theft for most of them.”

  Rachmiel excused himself from the room with, “I’m going to check on Elizabeth.” And abruptly he left.

  Tabris hadn’t noticed (or if he had, he wasn’t reacting to) what Rachmiel had just sacrificed. He’d given Tabris space. It was the biggest gift he could offer.

  Tabris hadn’t looked up. “It’s difficult. That first serious sin.”

  Josai’el took his hand. “I remember. They recover from that, though. Far worse are the sins they love, when you try to talk to their conscience and it refuses to hear. Those are the sins that kill.”

  Tabris blinked hard, and Josai’el took his hand. “Sebastian never got to that point?”

  He frowned. “No. But I’ll have that to look forward to with Elizabeth, won’t I? They say it happens to even the best guardians.”

  “Who says it?”

  “The guardians at my old household.” He looked around and noticed for the first time that Rachmiel had left. He stood. “Thank you for talking to me. I know Bridget better now.”

  And like that, he snapped shut. No projections, no stray emotions. Josai’el only said, “I look for excuses to talk about Bridget. Thank you for providing one.”

  Tabris attempted a smile, then left for the pond.

  Reputation. Rachmiel had never thought about it before, but since Tabris’s arrival, he’d noticed it constantly. Noticed it every time Elizabeth walked into a room and every guardian turned toward Tabris, wings flared and with their hands on their charges’ shoulders.

  Information spreads among angels like fire through dry brush. It’s not that they gossip, but anything dominating the thoughts of a spirit can escape, projected without effort and concealed only with hard work. Work Rachmiel had begun doing more often nowadays, and which Tabris did as a matter of course.

  In the seconds after Sebastian’s death, every angel on Earth knew as much as the angels on the scene. The witnessing angels had fled for help: to Raguel, to Michael, to the archangels, to one another. One of Miriael’s friends had appeared at the dinner table, grief streaming from him like water from a colander. He’d begged, “Please pray—now—” and with a sickening finality, the story had burst from him. Josai’el had shot out of the house to pass along the request even as Bridget passed the potatoes. Before the end of the trial, more angels had been praying for Tabris and Sebastian than either could have guessed.

  But now, without immediate need for prayers, the other angels still remembered, and Rachmiel found himself the second ring around the bull’s-eye, with Tabris in the red circle.

  It wasn’t just reputation, though. Tabris had something else, something Rachmiel had to call “presence.” Because if everyone knew about Tabris then they also knew about Rachmiel, yet Rachmiel didn’t find entire rooms of angels organizing their positions based on him. And when he wondered how that felt, he found himself burning inside, seeking out corners, either in the room or in his own mind.

  Many had recognized Tabris even before his assignment to Sebastian. Mithra, who had known him since before the Winnowing, guessed Tabris had to be in the top percentile of his choir, in the top five hundred if not higher. His two-toned wings and dark, dark eyes gave him a peculiar presence, an appearance many angels found disconcerting. Most angels have wings of one solid color, so an angel with two-toned wings is like a human with one eye green and the other brown.

  They knew him. But they didn’t know him, didn’t know the things Rachmiel knew. The few stray emotions that Tabris let slip, or the way Tabris looked sometimes at Elizabeth with a frustration he couldn’t quite pin on her but didn’t fit anywhere else. Or the way every morning, after the household guardians gathered to say the daily guardian angel prayer, Tabris slipped aside to recite it a second time.

  As the family entered church one Sunday, Rachmiel picked up the emanations of the other guardians, and his stomach twisted: confusion, anger, questions about how Tabris dared show his face. Without thinking about it, Rachmiel found himself in front of the “loudest” of the protestors, the force of his will exerting pressure on the angel to get a handle on his own feelings.

  The angel looked startled, and this time, Rachmiel got to experience the attention. But whether Tabris appreciated or resented it, he said nothing.

  After getting home from church, Elizabeth and Alan stayed outside to play in the first snowfall; Andrew, Kyle and Martin shoveled the driveway. While Tabris lay in the snow with every feather spread, Rachmiel craned back his neck to watch the naïve sunlight get snared in the ice dotting the pine trees.

  Voriah perched over the front door. “Tab? Are you making snow angels?”

  “Kind of.”

  Rachmiel stayed beside Elizabeth while she dug lines in the ice crust atop the snow, shifting so her shadow didn’t cover the designs. Shadows were funny. An angel’s subtle body never throws a shadow, so it had startled Rachmiel when Elizabeth’s did. A spirit that pure shouldn’t block the light, and yet wherever she went, this dark Elizabeth followed, joined at the heels, sometimes longer or maybe in a pool beneath, easily ignored and not a part of her, but a part of her regardless.

  Rachmiel looked at Tabris on the snow, and for a moment he imagined him as another being joined to a shadow, always at his heels on the side opposite the light, an image in reverse. A shadow with a name. A dead boy.

  Elizabeth crunched her feet through the snow, punching out perfect prints, and instead of following her, Rachmiel leaned forward to look at Tabris’s wings, then flashed up close. The outer feathers were jade, putting Rachmiel in mind of the forest during a wet summer. The inner feathers were more like redwood bark. He leaned in, noting the sudden change of brown feathers to green.

  Tabris sat up, pulling in his wings.

  “I’m sorry.” Rachmiel’s heart hammered. “I wanted to see the pattern.”

  Tabris tightened around himself. “Why?”

  The curiosity flowed from Rachmiel. “I— You had them spread out. I wanted a closer look.”

  The two angels locked gazes for a long moment, and Rachmiel drew back. Brilliant move. Stop the church angels from making Tabris feel uncomfortable and then go ahead and do it himself.

  Tabris finally tucked his knees up and relaxed his wings. “Fine. Inspect me.” Then he called, “You too, Voriah!”

  Voriah flashed down, shaken, and projected thanks.

  Rachmiel moved to Tabris’s back and touched the feathers, then preened where the barbs on several feather shafts had gotten detached. Relaxing, Rachmiel worked his fingers over the barbs and relocked them to remove the splits, rubbing some of the pinfeathers until the feathers became glossy. Each was a single color, but although the primary, secondary and tertiary feathers were green, the brown contour feathers at the top of his wings were packed tight enough to hide the flight feathers at their bases.

  “You’re color-coded,” Voriah said.

  Another angel’s laughter stole over the trio, and all three jumped to their feet.

  “You’re a carnival freak to them!” called the demon who recently had called himself Unbridled, standing on the walkway. “They’re inspecting you to gratify their lust for curiosity.”

  Rachmiel flushed, pulling his wings tighter.

  “Get out,” said Tabris. “In the name of the Holy—”

  “But you can’t say His name, can you?” Unbridled folded his arms and raised his chin. “You can invoke it, but He’d never allow His name to come out of your filthy mouth.”

  Rachmiel went cold.

  And then Tabris said it.

  Rachmiel thrilled even as Unbridled flinched, but then the demon turned to Voriah. “Weren’t you the one who told everyone Tabris couldn’t pray anymore becau
se he couldn’t say God’s name?”

  Rachmiel exclaimed “What?” even as Voriah said, “No, and you’re a liar,” and Tabris said, “Shut up. I told you to leave.”

  Unbridled strode toward Tabris. “You’re going to be mine. By virtue of one flick of the wrist, you’re mine.” Tabris took a step backward, and Unbridled laughed. “Do you know it still hurts Sebastian? Every night, he gets shooting pains where you grabbed him. Where you broke him in pieces.”

  Rachmiel called his sword to his hand even as Voriah pushed Tabris behind him.

  Amber eyes blazing, the demon snorted. “You can’t fight all his battles.”

  “You’re not all his battles.” Rachmiel’s sword burned brighter than the demon’s eyes. “Leave.”

  Unbridled sneered for all of a second before Miriael hurtled down from the roof, shooting through the heart of the demon and blasting him apart. The instant Miriael charged, Voriah flashed Tabris into the house, but Rachmiel witnessed the whole thing. Horror and disgust burst out of his heart without being channeled in any direction, and he covered his face with his hands, struggling not to cry out.

  Mithra cocooned Rachmiel in his wings and arms, and Miriael dropped his sword before rushing to join them.

  “You just—”

  “We needed to shut him up. I didn’t want him baiting Tabris.” Miriael’s eyes were round, pouring concern into Rachmiel. “Don’t let the demons talk. Don’t ever let them talk or they’ll wrap you around.”

  Mithra released his hold on Rachmiel. “Are you all right?”

  Rachmiel turned to the snowy yard, covered with demon residue. And yet even now, it began to reconstitute. At some point it would all draw together in one place and retreat of its own accord. Maybe back to Hell. Maybe somewhere else.

  “Could you—remove him?”

  “I will.” Mithra helped Rachmiel stand on his own, and Rachmiel wrapped his wings about himself. They’d gone butter-yellow. “Let’s get you inside first.”

  Elizabeth went inside too, and Rachmiel wondered how much of his fear she’d picked up. She turned on the TV and dropped to the floor to watch, and Rachmiel leaned against her. Tabris had curled around himself on the couch.