by Tanya Huff
“The angel?”
“Yes.”
“I have no idea. But I’m telling you, Keeper, there was something funny about that boy.” He shook his head in disgust, halo wobbling a bit with the motion. “Who ever heard of a confused angel, eh? In my day, angels had no emotions, they did what they were sent down to do and then they went home. Is this like to be some New Age thing?”
“I don’t know.”
Another snake ventured too close and was punted off to the left. “There’s going to be trouble, you mark my words. An angel without a purpose is like a…a…”
“A religion with no connection to the real world?”
“Who asked you?”
“Did he use the bed?”
“Aye, he laid himself down although I can’t say I know why since he doesn’t have to sleep. Good old-fashioned angels, they didn’t lay down. Have you heard he’s got himself a…” His hand pumped the air by his crotch.…
…which wasn’t a gesture Diana thought she’d ever see a saint make. “I heard.”
“And what’s the idea behind that, I ask you? You listen to me, Keeper; angels today, they have no…”
Figuring she couldn’t really be rude to a metaphysical construct, Diana cut him off in mid rant. It looked like he was winding up for another kick, and she was starting to feel a little sorry for the snakes.
The hand of Mrs. Verner was apparent in the precision of the bed making—sheets and blankets tucked so tightly in they disdained a mere bouncing of quarters and were ready instead to host a touring company of Riverdance. Not expecting much, Diana checked for anything that might have been left behind—it was, after all, a day when miracles had already happened. Skimming the surface with her palm, she drew a two-toned hair from under the edge of the pillow but nothing else.
“Have you finished?”
The hair went into her pocket as she turned toward the priest. “Yes. Thank you. He didn’t tell you where he was heading?”
“He didn’t tell me he was going to leave,” Father Harris answered shortly. At the bottom of the stairs he turned to face her. “I want you to know that if you kids are mixed up in drugs…”
“Drugs?”
“Yes, drugs. Nothing that boy said last night made any sense.”
“Unless everything he said was the truth.” Widening her eyes and cocking her head to one side, Diana gazed up at the priest. “Don’t you believe in angels, Father Harris?”
“Angels?”
“Yes.”
“His Holiness the Pope has argued for the existence of angelic spirits, and therefore the official position of the Catholic Church is that they are insubstantial.”
“Okay. And you personally?”
“I, personally, remain uncertain. However,” he continued, cutting off her incipient protest with an upraised finger, “I am sure that young Samuel was, and is, no angel.”
“Why?”
“He had…” The priest’s gesture was considerably less explicit than the saint’s.
“An upset stomach? A basketball?”
“GENITALIA!”
Which pretty much ended the conversation.
Standing on the porch, Diana watched her breath plume out and came to a decision.
In the church, St. Margaret began singing “Climb Every Mountain.”
“Uh, Claire, your head’s kind of…”
“Pointy and striped? Don’t worry, it’s just hat head.” She tossed the toque behind the seat and ran her fingers up through her hair, dislodging most of the red and white. “When Diana was ten, she decided to make everyone’s Christmas present and this was mine. I know it looks dorky, but it’s really warm and it’s getting cold out there.”
“Getting cold?” Austin pressed against Dean’s thigh and glared up at her. “Getting? I’m warning you, don’t touch me again with any part of your body or any one of your garments.”
“Look, I’m very sorry that the edge of my jacket brushed against your ear.”
“The frozen edge of your jacket.” He flicked the ear in question. “And I accept your apology only because I seem to be getting some feeling back.”
“Did you get the hole closed okay?” Dean asked as Claire fastened her seat belt. He told himself he watched only to be sure she was secured before he began driving, that it had nothing to do with the way the belt pressed the fabric down between her breasts. Unfortunately, he was a terrible liar and he didn’t believe himself for a moment.
“No problems. It looked like one of those big off-road vehicles actually went off the road, and the driver had no idea of how to use the four-wheel drive because he’d only bought the car to prove his was bigger.”
“And you could tell that from the hole?”
She flashed him a grin. “I extrapolated a little, there really wasn’t much there. I probably only got Summoned because it was on the shoulder of a major highway and could have caused accidents. And, of course, the more accidents it caused, the bigger it’d get. You know.”
He didn’t, but he was beginning to get the idea. Shifting into first, he pulled carefully back out onto the 401. “Can I ask you something?”
“Seven. But none of them meant anything to her.”
“Austin!”
“And Jacques was dead, so maybe he shouldn’t…”
Claire grabbed a piece of turkey out of the box behind the seat and stuffed it in the cat’s mouth.
“That wasn’t actually the question,” Dean admitted.
“And it certainly wasn’t the answer.” It was almost dark, and the dashboard lights left Dean’s face in shadow. She wished she knew what he was thinking. She could know what he was thinking, if she asked in the right way. She only had to say, “Please tell me what you’re thinking, Dean.”
It slipped out before she could stop it.
“The headlights look a little dim; I’d better clean them next time we stop.”
That was it?
“And, Claire? Don’t do that.”
“That? Oh. Right. Sorry. It’s just…”
“You’re used to having your own way with Bystanders.”
“Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“Okay, yes.” She slumped down in the seat. “So what was your question?”
“How could Lena create an angel? I thought angels just were.”
“The light just is, but where angels are concerned, you can’t separate the observer from the observed. Every angel ever reported has been shaped by the person doing the reporting—by what they believe, by what they need. If you need an angel to be grand and glorious, it is. Or warm and comforting. Or any other combination of adjectives. Wise and wonderful. Bright and beautiful. Great and small…”
“At the same time?”
“Probably not. Thing is, they usually deliver the message they were sent with and disappear.”
“Message?”
“Oh, you know: Be nice to each other. Fear not, there is a supreme good and it hasn’t forgotten you. Don’t cross that bridge. Stop the train.”
“Feed the cat.” He looked up to see both Claire and Dean staring down at him. “Hey, it could happen.”
“Anyway,” Claire continued as Dean turned his attention back to the road, “message delivered, the angel goes home. This one seems to be hanging around.”
“Why?”
“No message,” Austin told them, climbing onto Claire’s lap. “You two opened wide the possibilities, Diana made possible probable, and her little friend defined it—but it has no actual reason for being here. It’s going to be looking for a reason.” He pushed Claire’s thigh muscles into a more comfortable shape. “But let’s look at the bright side. At least she isn’t Jewish, and it isn’t Hanukkah. Old Testament angels were usually armed with flaming swords.”
“I’d rather have flaming swords,” Claire sighed. “It’d be easier to find. Given the stuff Lena had in her bedroom, we’re probably talking a New Age kind of angel; human appearing, frighteningly powerful,
smug and sweetly sanctimonious busybody.”
“Kind of like a jed…”
Her palm covered the cat’s mouth. “We don’t have enough problems?” she demanded. “You want to add trademark infringement?”
“What I don’t understand,” Dean interjected before someone lost a finger, “is how an angel can be a bad thing.”
“This kind of angel isn’t, not in and of itself—ignoring for the moment the way they always think they know what’s best for perfect strangers.” She paused, and when it became apparent Austin was not going to add a comment, went on. “But I can’t help thinking that much good walking around in one solid clump is well, bad.”
“Good is bad?”
“Metaphorically speaking.”
“And a remarkably inept metaphor it is, too,” Austin sighed.
They drove in silence for a few minutes, then Dean said, “So what do we do?”
“We hope Father Harris tells Diana where the angel went and that he went with a purpose so that, purpose fulfilled, he’ll go home. If not, we hope someone convinces him to go home before…”
“Before what?”
“I don’t know.” She stroked Austin’s back and stared out at a set of headlights approaching on the other side of the median. “But I can’t shake the feeling that something’s about to go very, very wrong.”
The darkness that had been seeping through the tiny hole in the woods behind J. Henry and Sons Auto Repair since just before midnight Christmas Eve struggled to keep itself together. While adding a constant stream of low-grade evil to the world might have been an admirable end result in times past, this time, it had a plan. It didn’t know patience, patience being a virtue, but it did know that rushing things now would only bring disaster—which it wasn’t actually against as long as it was the stimulant rather than the recipient. Had anyone suggested it was being subtle, it would have been appalled. Sneaky, however, it would cop to.
It had been maintaining this isolated little hole for some time, carefully, without changing anything about it, unable to use it but keeping it open when it might have sealed on its own—just in case. The hole was too small to Summon a Keeper, and because it was in the woods behind a closed garage outside a small town no one ever came to on a road that didn’t actually go anywhere, it was unlikely that either Keeper or Cousin would ever stumble over it by accident.
When the other end of the possibilities had opened and shifted the balance so dramatically, it saw its chance. It allowed the change in pressure to squirt it up through the hole and the concentration of the light to help keep it together.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
Physics as metaphysics.
It grew steadily, secure in the knowledge that the nearest Keeper was too far away to stop it.
But, because inactivity would make them suspicious, it indulged itself with a little misdirection.
In the parts of the world that had just celebrated Christmas, holes created by family expectations widened and the first strike capabilities of parents against unmarried adult children became apparent.
In other parts of the world, low levels of annoyance at the attention paid to exuberant consumerism cranked up a notch, and several places burned Santa in effigy. The people of Effigy, a small village in the interior of Turkey, took the day off.
Somewhere else, a man picked up a pen, stared at it blankly for a moment and, shuddering slightly, signed his name, renewing “Barney” for another season. But that might have been a completely unrelated incident.
SEVEN
ANXIOUS TO GET AT WHATEVER IT WAS he was supposed to be doing, Samuel had slipped out before dawn.
Dawn. The first light of day. The rising of the sun. The sun. A relatively stable ball of burning hydrogen approximately 150 million kilometers away. Higher knowledge hadn’t mentioned anything about how early it happened.
He yawned and scratched, then walked to the road, stepped over a snowbank, and stood looking around at the world—or as much of it as he could see from the sidewalk in front of St. Patrick’s. It wasn’t what he’d expected. It was quieter for one thing, with no evidence of the constant battle between good and evil supposedly going on in every heart. He’d expected turmoil, people crying out for any help he could give. He hadn’t expected his nose hair to freeze.
Actually, until he’d traced the tight, icy feeling to its source, he hadn’t known he had nose hair.
Wondering why anyone would voluntarily live in such temperatures, he started walking down the road.
Lena Giorno had called him because she wanted to see an angel. She’d seen him. Over. Done. Ta dah. Frank Giorno had wanted him out of his daughter’s bedroom and in clothing. Both taken care of—with some unnecessary violence in Samuel’s opinion, but no one had asked him. Father Harris, a fellow servant of the light, didn’t need him, and, although he hadn’t said it out loud, had practically been screaming at him to go away.
He hadn’t gone far, but he’d gone.
So what now? He had to be here for a reason.
His sense of self had grown overnight, but he was still having a little trouble with the vague components of Lena’s initial parameters. The whole higher knowledge thing seemed a bit spotty and, so far, not very useful. He understood mobility; he only had to want to go somewhere to be there except that he didn’t know where he wanted to go. His hair was great. No argument.
And apparently, he was supposed to have come with a message. If he had, he’d misplaced it. Oh sure, he could come up with a few off the top of his head—Love thy Neighbor, Cherish the Children, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Check Your Tire Pressure—but they were so commonplace—not to mention common sense—they seemed almost trite.
I don’t know what I’m doing here.
I don’t know how to rejoin the light.
And while I know where I am, I don’t know where I’m supposed to go.
If higher knowledge hadn’t informed him that he was wiser and more evolved, he’d have to say the whole situation sucked. Big time.
Okay. I deliver messages. I’m some kind of nonunion, spiritual postal guy. Samuel looked around at a village of empty streets and dark houses. So everything’ll be cool as soon as I can tell someone something.
Although why anyone would want things cooler, he had no idea, and he didn’t even want to guess how a situation could draw something in by creating a partial vacuum.
Unfortunately, the only people currently awake behind the barricades of drawn curtains were young children and the parents of young children. The kids were—well, he supposed hysterical was as accurate a description as any. As for their parents, they didn’t so much need him to pass on a spiritual message as they needed another three hours of sleep and the batteries that hadn’t been included.
He was giving some serious thought to returning to Lena’s room and having her fill in a few details when he heard a vehicle approaching. Turning, he watched the 5.2 liter, 230-horsepower, V-8 SUV come closer with no clear idea of why he suddenly found engine statistics so fascinating. He was wondering how it handled on curves when the surrounding cloud of desperation captured his attention. Someone in that vehicle was about to crack.
Was he supposed to fix cracks?
So now I’m doing spiritual plastering? Which wasn’t as funny as he’d hoped it would be. He took a deep breath and dried suddenly damp palms against his thighs, wondering why he seemed to be leaking. Still, a guy’s got to start somewhere…
And so far, this seemed to be the only game in town.
The vehicle was exactly twenty feet, seven and three-eighths inches away when he stepped in front of it. When it stopped, it was exactly three-eighths of an inch away. An exhausted looking man and an equally exhausted looking woman were sitting openmouthed in the front seats. Brian and Linda Pearson. He flashed them both an enthusiastic thumbs up figuring that, hey, it couldn’t hurt.
“Are you out of your mind?” Face flushed, Brian leaned out the driver’s window. “
I could have killed you!”
He seemed a bit upset. Samuel smiled reassuringly. Never let the mortals sense insecurity. He wasn’t sure if that was higher knowledge, common sense, or some kind of basic survival instinct but he figured he’d go with it regardless. “I have a message for you.”
“Get the fuck out of my way!”
“No.”
“No?” His volume rose impressively.
“No. I need to tell you that no matter how it seems, your kids aren’t deliberately trying to drive you crazy. You just need more patience.” Smile slipping slightly, he added, “And a breath mint.”
“You’re insane!”
“Am not!” He felt his jaw jut out and his weight shift forward onto the balls of his feet. Where was that coming from? Lowering his voice, he fought the urge to challenge Brian Pearson to a fight, saying only a little belligerently, “I’m an angel.”
Exhaustion warring with denial, Brian’s bloodshot eyes widened as they were met and held. “Oh my G…”
Samuel raised a hand and cut him off, glancing around to be sure no one had overheard. “Don’t even suggest that. Didn’t you hear what happened to the last guy who tried to move up?” Whistling a descending scale, he pantomimed a fall from grace. The sound of an explosion at the end was purely extemporary but impossible to resist.
Dragging Brian back into the van, her gaze never leaving Samuel’s face, Linda whispered something in her husband’s ear.
He shook his head and glanced back over his shoulder. “We can’t.”
She whispered something else.
Unfortunately, higher knowledge didn’t seem to extend to eavesdropping.
Leaning back out the window, Brian tried a wobbly smile. “Would you like a ride into London?”
Would he? London, England, seemed a bit far and he was fairly certain the Atlantic Ocean was in the way, so they probably meant London, Ontario, about an hour’s drive down highway four.
“Sure.”
“Good. Get in.”
By the time he’d walked around to the passenger side, Linda had opened the back door. Her expression a curious mix of hope and guilt, she wished him a Merry Christmas and indicated he should climb inside. The second set of seats had been removed and an identical pair of seven-year-old twins, Celeste and Selinka, had been belted into opposite corners of the three seats running across the back of the SUV. If there’d been any more room between them and their parents, they’d have been outside the vehicle completely.