by C. L. Coffey
“But,” Cupid continued. “Whatever Jezebeth shot me with isn’t anything I’ve ever come across before. There were very few things on this planet that could injure an angel like that, much less kill them. I could feel the damage the injury was doing, but whatever it was prevented me from escaping my body and finding a new vessel.”
“Henry said he was going to run some tests on it and see if he can work out what was so special about the bullet.”
Cupid nodded. “I think we need to know the answer to that, even though I’m not sure I want to. Just the idea that the Fallen have found a way to attack is terrifying.”
“Do you think it’s the same thing the traps are made from?” I asked quietly.
Cupid scratched at the back of his head, before slowly nodding. “In some ways, I hope so. If not, that means the Fallen have got two new things in their arsenal.”
I leaned back in my chair and started tracing patterns on my jeans. “Speaking of the Fallen…” Cupid groaned and I looked up, finding him with his head flung back on his pillows, eyes closed. “Is everything all right?”
“How can anyone be all right when someone starts a sentence with ‘speaking of the Fallen’?” Cupid asked.
I gave him my best disapproving glare. “When you’re laid up in bed, injured, you absolutely don’t get to make noises like that unless you’re really in pain.”
“Fine,” Cupid grumbled, before poking his tongue out at me. “You know, I see why Michael wanted you to eventually run this House.”
“Until I tell you that Lucifer is heading back to New Orleans because he wants to see me and personally pass on his thanks.”
Cupid’s expression grew grim. “How do you know this?”
“Oh, this story gets better,” I said, weighing my tone with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “His fans, affectionately known as Followers, are getting messages – possibly obvious and out in the open, but more likely subliminally hidden in his music – that anyone that isn’t a Follower can be considered a threat. I spoke to a girl who didn’t even look as old as Veronica, who took great delight in telling me that Luke’s Followers know how to please him, and that includes making sure that non-Followers get what they deserve, which, in this girl’s case, was to drive another to attempt suicide.”
Cupid gaped at me, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. “Anything else?” he asked, though I could tell he didn’t really want to hear the answer to his question.
“Zachary and Savannah turned up this morning, even though the news has been reporting Jezebeth’s death as a gas explosion.” The memory of their accusations irritated me and I was certain that irritation was evident on my face. “Sure a building got destroyed in the process, but it was abandoned, and frankly, with no casualties, I think that’s an acceptable outcome, especially when we defeated another one of the Fallen.”
“You’re ranting,” Cupid noted.
A small growl escaped from the back of my throat. “Of course I’m ranting. They turned up, uninvited, to chew me a new one about a damn news story which wasn’t even front page news, all because they think they should be running this House instead of us.”
“They admitted that?” Cupid’s eyes widened in surprise, and then he rolled his eyes at his own question.
“Yes,” I grunted.
“Dare I ask what you said to that?”
“I may have told them to get out,” I admitted.
“And they listened?”
“Yes.” I dropped my gaze to my hands, suddenly finding my fingernails very interesting. I wasn’t a girl that did manicures or nail polish, but they were a mess. I would have to do something with them before the dance. When I realized that Cupid hadn’t said anything, I finally braved looking up at him and found him staring at me in… adoration? “Cupid?”
“My fledgling is growing up,” he sighed, proudly.
“You are a goof.” I was worried though. I was an angel who had barely earned her wings, and I was yelling at much higher ranking angels. Yes, they were Grade ‘A’ douchebags, but they did have seniority. I hoped Cupid’s pride wasn’t misplaced.
The door opened and Nyle walked in, his expression set to one of worry. “Sorry to interrupt, but I can’t find Eugene.”
“Again?” I couldn’t help but groan. “I swear if he’s disappeared out to the market for chilies, I’m going to ground him.” I glanced at Cupid for his backup, suddenly frowning when I realized he was looking just as worried as Nyle was.
“I can’t sense him.” He closed his eyes and screwed his face up in concentration. “I’m getting nothing.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. “How can you not sense him? I thought we all came with some internal LoJack so the leader of the House knew where we were?”
Cupid blinked; his hazel eyes visibly more round and wide. “Maybe it’s because I’m still getting the hang of this? I don’t know where you are unless I think about it… just let me concentrate for a minute.”
I shared a look with Nyle, but we both remained silent as we watched Cupid stare intently at a section of his green bedspread. When he gasped in pain, clutching at his side, I shook my head. “You’re injured. Take it easy.”
“I can’t sense him,” Cupid said, panting from the exertion. “I can sense everyone else, but not him.”
“Is he dead?” Nyle blurted out.
“I… I think I’d know if something had happened to one of you,” Cupid replied. He didn’t look certain though.
“Guys, this is Eugene,” I said, hoping I sounded calmer than I felt. “I’m sure he got waylaid looking for some ingredient we don’t need and he’s just in a blackspot. I’ll head out and check a few of the grocery stores and the market. He can’t be that far.”
“I have a bad feeling about this, Angel,” Cupid said, using our psychic connection.
I kept my face neutral. “Until we know something concrete, there is no sense in panicking the other angels. Let them continue with what they’re doing and I’ll go out and look while you focus on feeling better.”
* * *
Things seemed less bleak when I was outside in the, albeit unnatural, sun and heat. I walked east, making my way to the farmer’s market. Cupid had a point – he was new to this, and more importantly, he was also injured. I wasn’t entirely certain how it worked, but I was willing to bet that not being at one hundred percent would affect how it worked.
Eugene had been keen to get those chilies earlier, so he probably had gone out, and, as I realized when I arrived at the market, would have ended up going further afield. I didn’t go to the farmer’s market very often. When I’d been alive and living with my aunt, she had taken care of grocery shopping. At the convent, even when I’d taken over, we used a local grocery store which delivered. As such, I had completely forgotten that the market wasn’t open – it was the wrong day of the week.
I pulled out my phone and did a quick internet search. The Thursday farmer’s market was being held in Mid-City. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Eugene had arrived here, discovered that, and then headed in the opposite direction. With an about turn, I decided that was a good place to start looking. It was a fifty minute walk, but seeing as all the SUVs were accounted for, Eugene had been on foot. I’d also discovered he had a tendency to wander into a lot of grocery stores to investigate.
Since the last time I had been out, more Christmas decorations were starting to appear. That made me happy. Joshua may have been a bit of a scrooge, but I loved Christmas. I would have to check with Cupid to see if there were any decorations in the convent and see if I could convince him to allow me to decorate – and arrange something for Christmas.
I got most of the way to Mid-City without catching sight of Eugene when I passed a store advertising a pre-Christmas sale on cell phones. Just like that, I knew what every angel was getting in their stocking this year. I made an impromptu detour inside.
About an hour later, I had made a sales assistant’s day by ordering 32 iPhones, (I swear there w
as a moment where dollar signs had flashed through his eyes). I’d contemplated a pay as you go disposable thing for each of them, but then realized that firstly, they would never remember to top up their balance, and the fact I could use the ‘Find your Angel’ app, as Joshua had renamed the phone’s ability to be traced, would help when angels disappeared into psychic blackspots.
I also chose to get myself one – it wasn’t fair for Joshua to have to pay for my cell phone bill. The sales assistant was helpful. He arranged for all but one to be delivered to the convent on Monday. The remaining one was mine. The mistake I made was in agreeing to switch my phone number over; or at least agreeing to it before sending a text to Joshua to let him know. I wasn’t expecting it to switch off so fast – and I wasn’t expecting the switch to take up to five days to happen. Oh well.
With the convent getting closer to the twenty-first century, I continued my walk to Mid-City. I called in at a few more grocery stores along the way, but there was still no sign of Eugene. When I got to the other market, I knew I was going to have some trouble finding him. It was packed.
I made my way through the throngs of people bustling around the stalls, trying desperately not to get distracted by the rainbow of colors and the dozens of delicious smells. It didn’t help that every other stall seemed to have chilies on them.
I paused at them all. At first I scanned all the faces of those browsing and buying. Then, the further along I got, I started asking the stall owners if they had seen Eugene. Another thing I needed to do (and I added to my mental ‘to-do’ list), was make sure I had a photograph of every angel.
Somewhere around the fourteenth stall I stopped at – the one which, so far, had the biggest selection of chilies (and about when I’d decided that Eugene’s Christmas present was going to be a bunch of chili seeds so he could grow his own in the convent grounds) – the stall owner told me he had been discussing the chili types with someone who sounded a lot like Eugene.
The man pointed in the direction he thought Eugene had gone. I followed his finger, and then stopped, staring in disbelief as the reason I had come to the Farmer’s Market in the first place completely escaped my mind. Somewhere in the vicinity, most likely on the parking lot of the American Can Company where the market was being held, a bright white pillar of light had appeared, shining up into the clear blue sky. My jaw dropped open.
A potential.
So far, the only experience I’d had of potentials was of them being murdered. Even though we had stopped Lilah, that experience had had a lasting effect on me. I was finding the source of that light and making sure the potential was safe… Ignoring whatever the stall owner was telling me, I disappeared into the crowd. The closer I got, the more blinding the light became. I had to put my hand up over my brow to shield my eyes as I weaved through the crowd.
Then, I was on the other side of the market, stumbling out onto the sidewalk. The potential was on the other side of the street, his arms laden with groceries. At a glance he was tall, black, with short hair, and coltish figure. He had on flip flops, shorts and a white and blue raglan sleeve top, and was about to disappear around the corner.
There was no one else near him, and the light was beginning to fade, so I don’t know what compelled me to follow him, but I did. I lost sight of him while I crossed the road and he disappeared down the next street. It didn’t take too long to catch up with him. The light was almost gone, so I hung back. He was never going to know….
He tripped.
Caught up in one of his flip flops, he stumbled, tried to correct himself when his bags went flying, the contents raining down across the sidewalk, then he went down. I charged to him, but I wasn’t quick enough. With his hands caught up with his groceries, he couldn’t use them to stop himself. Before I could get to him, he had crashed head first into a fire hydrant.
I knew he was dead before I got to him. It was nothing to do with the fact his body wasn’t moving. Rather, it was because his spirit was stood above him, staring down at his own body with a look of complete confusion. “Hi?” I felt as confused as he looked. This was a new one on me.
“Is that me?” he asked me, pointing down. “Am I dead?”
I slowly nodded. “I think so. I’m a bit new to this.” I dropped down to a crouch and felt his pulse. There definitely wasn’t one.
“Ah, hell!” he moaned. “This is going to kill my mama.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him, meaning it.
He scratched at his shoulder then shrugged. “S’okay, I guess. Unless you’re here to take me to Hell?”
“I don’t think so.” I stood. “Like I said, I’m new at this. The only other time I’ve done this, the guy wasn’t quite dead.” I thought back to when I’d found a dying man – Greg – asked him the question, and taken him to Zephyr Field.
“It’s not like I’ve been dead before,” he responded. He gave me a small smile. “I’m Xavier.”
“I’m Angel.”
“How’d this go last time?”
“Well, he had a choice between Eternal Life and Eternal Happiness. He chose Eternal Happiness.” Xavier’s eyes were surprisingly intense as he listened. “I’m not sure you get the choice at this point.”
He glanced back down at his body and licked his lower lip. “What’s the difference?”
“Eternal Happiness is going to Heaven. Eternal Life would give you the opportunity to earn your wings and become an angel,” I explained.
He continued to stare at me with that intensity, then tilted his head as he considered what I was saying. “An angel?” I nodded. “I would have chosen that option: if my mama knew I’d made it to Heaven, she would have been happy, but if she knew I’d become an angel, she’d be proud.” He folded his arms. “Yes. I’d have liked to try earning my wings.”
In the time it took me to blink, he disappeared.
“Okay, that was not what I was expecting,” I muttered to myself as I checked my surroundings – half expecting that we had been transported to whatever his idea of Heaven was.
We hadn’t.
I was still stood over a dead body in a surprisingly empty residential area. In fact, come to think of it, nobody had come over to help. I crouched back down, pulling my phone out, ready to dial 911 as I checked his pulse once more. And then we did transport.
The moment my fingers touched his still warm neck, we moved. Both of us. Unlike last time where I only seemed to arrive in Heaven with Greg’s spirit, I had somehow transported myself to the convent – specifically, my bedroom. “Oh, please tell me this is not my idea of Heaven?” I muttered. Still baffled by what was happening, I scooped Xavier up and lay him on my bed. Studying his body (at a guess, I’d have put him in his early thirties), he looked more like he was sleeping than dead. Then his chest rose once. “Cupid?” I called hesitantly. “I think I did something…”
There wasn’t a psychic response. Instead, clutching at his side, Cupid appeared in my bedroom. “Do I dare ask?”
I stepped to the side to reveal Xavier.
Cupid’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “When I told you to stay away from Joshua, I didn’t mean for you to go out and bring another man to your bed!”
Forgetting he was injured, I punched his shoulder, scowling at him. “Hey!”
“Hey, yourself,” he scowled back, rubbing his shoulder. “You’re the one with a strange man in your bed! Why is he there, by the way?”
“I… Uh… I asked him the question?” I offered.
I could see the moment the lightbulb turned on in Cupid’s mind. “You what?”
“I was at the Farmer’s Market over in Mid-City. I saw the light and followed it. I wanted to make sure whoever it belonged to wasn’t being targeted, and he wasn’t. Only he fell and hit his head. I saw his spirit, told him that normally there were two options, and as soon as he declared he wanted to be an angel, he disappeared and I ended up here with him.” The words all came out in one hurried explanation which had Cupid staring at me in disbeli
ef.
“I guess that answers that question.”
“What question?” He was muttering more to himself than to me, but I couldn’t help but ask.
“What was going to happen with the potentials. That was Michael’s thing. I was going to ask Grace and Metatron what they thought when it came to new recruits now he was gone, but it looks like that decision has already been made.” He pointed to Xavier. “It looks like we have a new recruit.”
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“Not much.” Cupid shrugged, then winced at the effort. “Unfortunately, the little I do know is that it’s best if we don’t move the potential. I hate to say it, but the best thing is to leave him where he is. You’re going to need to find a new room.”
“Then what?”
“Then we wait.”
“We wait?” I repeated, dumbly.
Cupid nodded. “Going from my experience with you and Lilah, he’s not waking up until the summer. We should make him comfortable and wait for his body to make the changes into being a vessel.”
“How does that work, exactly?” It was something that I had pondered since I had woken up all that time ago.
“I don’t know the ins and outs of it all,” Cupid said. “Essentially, it’s making lots of small changes that make up several big ones. You went from needing food and water on a daily basis to being able to survive without. Your body repairs itself differently. It takes time for that to happen.”
“What about his family? Michael went to visit mine.”
“I suppose I should visit his then?” He clutched at his side again and winced.
I shook my head. “You need to get back to bed. Leave this one with me.”
“Are you sure? That should be my responsibility.”
“Yes,” I said, firmly. “Xavier is not the only one who needs to repair his vessel. Get back to bed.”
Cupid fixed me a grateful smile. “I don’t know why this still hurts.”
“Go back to bed,” I repeated softly. “I’m sorry for getting you out of it.”