by Barbara Taub
Loss, thought Gaby. Carey and Connor. Luic… She leaned toward the younger girl, a sympathetic hand extended.
Leila’s voice dropped to a growl. “The thing is, Thomas will know if something happens to me because he’ll be dead too. But how will I know if he’s okay?” Leila’s eyes glowed an eerie red. Carefully pulling back her hand, Gaby inched away.
When Leila spoke again, the growl was gone. “So anyway, Thomas went off to Nephilim School at the Court of the Watchers, and I’m on my way to Fallen Court to check out my Donor’s place.”
She looked at Gaby’s lap. “Where are you going?”
Following Leila’s gaze, Gaby glanced down at the envelope on her lap. She pulled out two Metro tickets, one to “Court of the Watchers” and the other to “Court of the Fallen.”
Leila looked impressed. “I didn’t know you could have more than one ticket. Which one are you going to use?”
Gaby stared at the tickets.
“Right.” Leila glanced at the clock on the wall. “Looks like we have plenty of time, although I do wish I had coffee. Let’s start at the beginning.”
The train arrived before Leila finished telling Gaby her story. Both entered the first car and Leila continued. “So there we were in London. Thomas’ grandfather took one look and said he’d know a Chapel anywhere. I want to tell you, it was weird to know he would be meeting me again in a hundred years to give me my Donor’s jewelry and never say a word about this time. He got your telegram with the message about my favorite coffee. But when he tried to follow up, he found out you and Luic had both been killed.” Her eyes glowed again, and her voice dropped to a growl. “By that POS, Alex Menard.”
I was wrong, Gaby thought as Leila’s words added shards of glass to the swirling void inside her. Guess it still can hurt even more.
“No.” Her voice rivaled Leila’s growl. “Alex didn’t kill him. I did.”
“Ooh-kay.” Leila settled back against the corner of the Metro seat and stretched her legs along the seat in front of her. “Want to tell me about it?”
The river of words pouring out of Gaby finally dried up. Her eyes were on Leila, but she could only see that last shadowy outline of Luic’s face in the dark. “I killed him,” she repeated. “And I failed the twins.”
Leila offered neither pity nor comfort. “My mom says when you don’t know what to do about the big stuff, you should just do the next little thing that needs to be done. I think your next-thing might be to decide which ticket you’re going to use.”
Gaby just looked at her.
“It might help if I tell you what I know about each place. The Court of the Watchers is set up to be as close to what they remember of Heaven as possible. Thomas’ grandfather says everything is beautifully organized and devoted to being as much like Paradise as they can manage.
“According to my Donor, the Court of the Fallen isn’t anything like Paradise. He says the Fallen brought a lot of things to humans—but almost all of it has a good and a bad side. You know what I mean: teach humans to cultivate plants and they use them to make food and medicine, but also poisons and drugs, yada, yada. And all that stuff—good and bad—is what’s happening over at Fallen Court. Apparently it doesn’t run too well, but it sounds like a good party to me.”
“I don’t need to think about it.” No way was Gaby going sign on to spend eternity someplace perfect. She needed to organize things, fix patterns, and—if she got really lucky—get in a bit of accounting. Gaby pulled the Watchers Court ticket from her envelope and ripped it up as the train pulled into the station with the mosaic sign, COURT OF THE FALLEN.
As they stepped off the train, neither noticed a former rock star sitting alone in the last car. He was staring down at the old-fashioned hairclip he was turning over in his hands and didn’t look up as the train pulled out.
GABY AND LEILA, Chapter 14
Raqia
Leila waved a hand at the handsome stranger dressed impeccably in morning coat and cane who was waiting on the Fallen Court Metro platform. “That would be my Donor. Don’t let the Fred Astaire get-up fool you. He’s dangerous.” She introduced him with a casual wave. “Ramiel, Prince of Hell. Meet Gaby Parker, Queen of Guilt.”
“Miss Parker.” He bowed and held out a hand. “Please call me Raymond.”
He was the devil? Given she was already dead, Gaby’s supply of awe was at an all-time low. She shrugged and shook his hand.
Leila was looking around. “So, are we demons now?”
Raymond looked thoughtful. “We prefer the term Celestially Disabled.”
She shook her head. “No, you don’t.”
“Hellion?”
“Nice, but I don’t think so.”
Raymond sighed. “You’re a demon.”
As they emerged from the Metro station, Raymond gestured at the endless grey expanse overhead. “Welcome to Raqia.” Gaby gazed at the chaotic sprawl of Fallen Court buildings outlined against the pearly light surrounding everything with a soft peach glow. Skyscrapers stood next to shacks, framed by everything from castles to cabins. She looked back at Raymond, who smiled. “We like to try out things here first before we give them to humans. And more and more, we take ideas from humans and see if we can do anything with them.”
He took each of their bags and led the way to the front of the Metro station. Outside, a long crimson car waited, its elegantly spare design a perfect foil for the exquisite hood ornament of Nike, goddess of speed. Leila snorted. “Did you build that one for the humans, Donor?” Gaby was staring at the figure leaning casually against the car. As far as she could tell, it was a teddy bear with a chauffeur’s cap tilted rakishly over dark glasses. That is, if teddy bears came four feet tall with bright red, scaly skin, long tail, and small horns. And if they wore leather jackets. With chains.
“This is Pete, one of our imps.” Raymond held the two carpetbags out to the teddy bear. Ignoring both the words and the bags, Pete pushed back his cap and climbed behind the wheel. Raymond sighed and set down the bags to hold open the rear door for Gaby and Leila. He put the bags into the trunk and climbed into the front passenger seat.
“Does he understand us?” Leila whispered.
“You’ll find that everyone in Raqia understands everyone else.” Raymond glared at Pete. “Some just choose to ignore it.”
As they drove, Gaby noticed the roads in Fallen Court were as varied as the buildings. Broad boulevards turned inexplicably into alleys, only to randomly finish as anything from a winding lane to a dead end. From his built-up seat, Pete drove the massive car as if it had only two speeds—full throttle and slam-on-the-brakes. Leila’s eyes sparkled as they moved faster. Gaby stared out the window, but all she heard was her promise to return to the twins and to Luic. Dying, she thought, really puts fast cars into perspective.
In the front seat, Raymond was trying vainly to get Pete’s attention. “Stop!” he finally roared, red eyes flashing. With a sidelong glance, Pete pounded the brakes and wrestled the car through the ensuing skid before turning off the engine. In the silence, Raymond’s voice resumed its sophisticated drawl. “Please pull into Shipping & Receiving, Pete. I need you to check on a delivery.” Pete swung the car around a curve, pulling onto the shoulder to avoid clipping a pair of imps and a couple of strolling demons. Without decreasing speed, he turned down a narrow, winding drive and pulled to a screeching halt in a scream of tires and brakes. Leila clapped.
Raymond held out a slip of paper to Pete. “Please collect this for me.” Pete removed his glasses to stare back at him in amazement. Looking slightly sheepish, Raymond turned to face Gaby and Leila in the rear seat. “Apparently I’ll be going in to collect my package. I’m so sorry, but it might take a few minutes because it’s such a mess in there. But if I don’t get my … parcel … those imps will get into it. Again.”
A mess? Something needed to be organized? Gaby felt a faint stir of interest. She followed Raymond into the warehouse, which would have easily encompassed several cit
y blocks. Before her the ruler of Fallen Court was pushing unenthusiastically through a tangle of new, old, and unknown items piled haphazardly under a marble sign proclaiming SHIP HAPPENS. Underneath it was scrawled: Stuff left at own damn risk.
“Gone.” Raymond turned to her with a scowl. “Those imps beat me to it again.”
“Can I have it?” Gaby asked.
He looked surprised. “My chocolate-covered cherry order?”
“No.” She waved at the miles of boxes. “Shipping.” She looked around in satisfaction. “This needs me.”
Is it okay to thank God for Hell? Gaby wondered as she stepped to the door of the warehouse to wait for Leila. She sniffed the air appreciatively. At first she had tried to identify its slightly spicy scent. Cinnamon? Lemon? Maybe a hint of fresh sawdust and gasoline? Behind it all there was a deeper scent of ripening olives or perhaps figs, although she never saw any direct evidence of either. While the residents of Fallen Court could eat and sleep, she had learned, whether they actually did so seemed to be a matter of individual preference. But thanks to Raymond’s bemused agreement to turn Shipping over to her, she didn’t have much time for speculation.
He had moved her into a comfortable little guest house on the grounds behind his palace, but whenever she tried to relax, the faces of Luic and the twins accused her of failure. It was easier to spend time at the warehouse. Right away she identified two problems. How was she going to get back and forth to Shipping? And who could she get to help her turn it into an efficient operation? Leila looked doubtful when Pete suggested Gaby drive herself when he wasn’t around, while both flatly refused to help in the warehouse. Imps, Pete explained, only worked when they wanted something. Gaby looked pointedly at the car behind him. He shook his head. “I don’t work for Raymond. I just like to drive the car.”
If Gaby had known it would provide the answer to both problems, she might not have used the same language when the first box she tried to move broke open to spew several pairs of old-fashioned roller skates onto her feet, adjusting keys and all. Leila looked thoughtful when she saw Gaby strap them on the next morning to roll over to the warehouse. Now three days later, Gaby was waiting outside of Shipping where Leila had promised her a surprise. She stared as Leila glided up to the warehouse door where she executed a showy pirouette ending in a bow. It looked like she was wearing ice skates, only with a line of wheels instead of blades. Leila held out a second pair to Gaby. “We call them rollerblades. My donor’s friend Rag is a brilliant inventor. When I told him you needed to take breaks from your warehouse and have fun, he made up a pair for each of us.”
“I don’t need fun.” Gaby turned back to the warehouse.
“No, you just need to mope around all day, sorting packages everyone else has forgotten about and feeling sorry for yourself.”
“And how about you? Has all your fun let you forget about Thomas?”
When there was no response, Gaby turned back to a stricken, white-faced Leila. They stared at each other, motionless. Gaby silently held out a hand for the skates.
Objecting to Leila’s demands, Gaby soon realized, took more energy than she could spare from her full-time commitment to the despair, loneliness, and guilt that defined her. When she couldn’t evade or hide from Leila’s campaign of fun enforcement, Gaby reluctantly strapped on the rollerblades and they explored Fallen Court. Pete’s eyes grew wide with admiration the first time he saw them, and soon every excursion was watched by lines of imps, pointing and elbowing each other for a better view.
Somehow, Leila already was on a first-name basis with most of the Fallen they encountered. She took Gaby around to see their works in progress, warning her first not to reveal too much about the actual future. Gaby realized she would once have stared in amazement at the Fallen projects. One demon had produced an airborne garden that allowed plants to grow in a fraction of the time they would normally take. Another had discovered a way to extract energy from the movement of waves as they crashed onto shore. Still others were experimenting with everything from medicinal crystals to passenger kites. Nobody was particularly concerned if something didn’t work. It would just become another of the uncounted multitude of failed projects that filled Fallen Court. But right now, Gaby’s goal was to stay too busy to think, either about the incredible projects of Fallen Court or about dead rock stars and missing siblings.
One day Leila stopped by the warehouse to pick up a package and insisted that Gaby join her in delivering it to Raymond’s inventor friend Rag, who had asked to meet her. She obediently pulled on her rollerblades and followed Leila to the door of a building that looked from the front like a Roman temple. But a side view revealed that it actually backed onto a huge cave.
Through the clear glass door was a long, white hallway with tile floors. Beside the door, a surprisingly modern-looking doorbell was set into a sign that read, GO AWAY. SERIOUSLY. Leila eyed the bell. “I wonder if Rag figured out his doorbell yet? Last time I tried to ring, it sounded like I was caught in a giant bell echo chamber. I couldn’t hear properly for days.” Gingerly, she pushed the bell and stepped back quickly. To their relief, the chime triggered a light that jumped to a second bell, causing that to chime as it sent another flash of light down the hallway. Through the little window in the door, they could see flashes and hear chimes growing fainter. Finally, a tall demon wearing a miner’s lamp on his head peered out an upper window. He removed his dark spectacles, blinking in the ever-present pearly light that glowed over Raqia. Rubbing his glasses absently on his lab coat, he adjusted them back on his nose and gazed down. “Leila?”
“Hey, Rag! Love the new bell. You wanted to meet my friend Gaby, so we brought over your coffee delivery. How’s that new grinder we talked about?”
He shook his head. “Made a few changes, but it still needs work. Meet me in the workshop.” Leila opened the door and led the way through the temple facade to a stairway leading down to the colossal cave floor below. Gaby blinked. From their vantage point above, she could see the cave had been meticulously subdivided into dozens of pie-shaped room-sized sections, each opening like spokes of a gigantic wheel. A huge central area of cabinets served as the hub. Each lab section had a spotless worktable in the center, often holding an unfinished-looking structure or model. Pristine white cabinets lined two walls of each workspace, while each section’s remaining wall held large bulletin and chalk boards with carefully mounted blueprints or shop drawings centered between.
In the exact center of the well-organized space was a massive old-fashioned partner’s desk. Three large books labeled Deployed, In Process and Back to Drawing Board were centered precisely across the desk, each raised slightly in its own stand. Gaby hadn’t seen him move from the upstairs window, but Rag was sitting at the desk. In the circle of light from his miner’s lamp, she saw that, while he was as tall and handsome as the other Fallen demons she’d seen, his hunched shoulders and rimless spectacles made him seem somehow older. He picked up the In Process book and flipped to a page near the end of the G section. “Let’s see. Glider—human-powered … gold—synthesized … Oh yes, here we go: grinder—coffee. I think the blades need to be curved more.”
Suddenly the cave shook with an enormous explosion. Rock dust filtered down over the desk followed by jets of water pouring from overhead hoses. Rag pulled three umbrellas from under the desk and handed one each to Leila and Gaby before opening the third. He turned to another section of the In Process book, removed several pages, and sighed before moving them to Back to the Drawing Board. Frowning down at the last entry, he opened the desk drawer again and removed a pen. Making a precise notation on the page, he recapped the pen and returned it to the drawer. Still frowning, he adjusted the three books until they were again precisely aligned.
Leila had been trying out the coffee grinder in one of the lab sections. She shook her head at the resulting grounds, but prepared coffee anyway in a beaker improvised into a coffee press. When the sprinklers stopped, she set the three mismatched
cups onto Rag’s desk. His hand bumped Gaby’s as both reached out to align the three cups with the largest in the middle. They smiled slightly as their eyes met. “Napkins and spoons?” suggested Gaby. In perfect accord, they centered each cup with a napkin on one side and a spoon on the other. As Leila picked up her cup, Gaby and Rag frowned. She rolled her eyes but said nothing as Rag produced three saucers to anchor each setting. He gravely toasted Gaby with his cup.
Gaby just had to ask. “Are you a harmonia?”
Rag smiled. “You could say I was the first one. I used to be known as Raguel, the angel of harmony and justice. After I fell, my descendants became harmonia.” He paused and the miner’s lantern on his head flared briefly before he looked directly at Gaby. “I asked Leila to bring you today because there are two things I’ve learned that you should know. The first is you have to trust in your faults.” He smiled as she gaped at him. “Your harmonia gifts are normal for you. It’s no good trying to be someone else’s normal. When we Fell, I took a human wife and tried to fit into her world. But those patterns were never right for me.”
He stood and Gaby thought it might be a trick of the light in the cave, but he looked taller, younger. The light on his head flared to point upward, and for the first time she noticed the huge sword suspended over Raguel’s desk. He pointed and his eyes blazed red as he growled. “The second thing you should remember, Gaby: harmony and justice must always go together, because the opposite of both is discord. Perhaps that’s why so many harmonia become warriors. There’s a good chance your real task is not harmony but justice.” He held out the hand that had been extended toward the sword. A small sheathed knife stretched across his open palm. Spreading the woven leather cord, Rag put the knife around Gaby’s neck and then held it up before her eyes. He pointed to the worn, faded symbols worked into the subtle silver of the sheath. “This says Justice, justice you shall pursue.”