by C. L. Coffey
Angel in
Training
Book One
of the
Louisiangel Series
C. L. Coffey
Copyright © 2015 C. L. Coffey
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1502592096
ISBN-13: 13: 978-1502592095
Cover design by Amalia Chitulescu
Edited by Tina E. Williams and Patrick Gilhooley
Distributed by Smashwords
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval systems, in any forms or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without express permission of the author, unless for the purpose of a review which may quote brief passages for a review purpose.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locations are used fictitiously. Other characters, names, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblances to actual events, locations, or persons – living or dead – is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
To Chrissi, Kris, Donna, Victoria, and Jana.
Without each of you, this wouldn’t be out in the world.
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WAYS TO CONNECT
It is not known precisely where angels dwell - whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.
~ Voltaire ~
CHAPTER ONE
Eternal Life
Mardi Gras
New Orleans
The fake ID was working a treat. I was drunk. Possibly too drunk. The last time I had gone out with my friends, the fake ID I had used then had lasted exactly three bars, before somebody had realized it was fake, and confiscated it. With this in mind, we had drunk a little quicker in the first few bars, expecting the same to happen again. It hadn’t; but by that time, I didn’t care.
It was my twentieth birthday, and I was celebrating it in the heart of New Orleans; bar-hopping along Bourbon Street, which is exactly the last place I wanted to be.
I had spent the first thirteen years of my life living in a small town in the north of the United Kingdom. For as long as I could remember my birthdays had been spent with my mum and dad, camped out in the living room in a makeshift fort, eating ice cream and watching movies. On my thirteenth birthday, I had kicked up a fuss and told them I was too old to be camping in forts, ignored the hurt look on my parent’s faces, and gone out with my friends. Three weeks later they died in a car accident.
Not long after that, arrangements have been made for me to go live with my aunt Sarah in New Orleans. Seven years later, I still hadn’t lost my accent, or the feeling that I didn’t really belong here.
I looked around the busy bar, spotting the doors to the bathroom, and after yelling in a friend’s ear that I would be right back, I made my way over. It wasn’t until I was washing my hands that I realized just how much the world was spinning. I clutched at the sink and stared at my reflection in the mirror … I sucked in deep breaths, and decided it was time to switch to water for a while: the reflection staring back startled me.
My name is Angelina, but everybody calls me Angel. Tonight, my friends had decided we were celebrating my birthday in fancy dress. The four of them were dressed as angels. I, on the other hand, was dressed up as the devil. I had found a slinky red dress, which was short enough that I had left the house wearing a pair of jeans underneath, because I knew my aunt wouldn’t let me leave wearing it, regardless of how old I was. The jeans had been quickly discarded and left in the back of Hannah’s car, along with a more modest pair of heels. Right now, the matching red heels added an extra 4 inches to my height, making me over six-foot.
It wasn’t my outfit, however, which had startled me. It was the matching bright red hair. Normally, my hair hung in loose blonde curls. Earlier in the afternoon I had taken a bottle of cherry red hair dye to my head and accidentally left the color on double the recommended time. The result had been an incredibly vibrant head of hair. I’d also taken the time, along with three bottles of hair spray, to flick out all of the layers. Thankfully, I would be able to wash the color out before I could get used to it.
I finished washing my hands, and quickly dabbed my face with cold water, avoiding my eyes even though my normally green eyes were now bloodshot. I didn’t want my make-up to run.
I stepped out of the bathroom and walked straight into a wall. Or at least, that’s what it felt like. When the wall stepped back, and a pair of arms grabbed my shoulders to steady me, I realized that the wall was in fact, a person.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, looking up. Further apologies died in my throat. My gaze was met by a pair of mesmerizing, warm brown eyes.
The eyes narrowed in concern. “Are you okay?”
I opened my mouth, ready to start apologizing again, when a hand grabbed mine and spun me around. “Nina is bored of the music,” Rachel told me. “We’re going to the next bar.”
I scowled at my friend, and glanced back, seeking out those brown eyes again. Only they had disappeared, along with the guy they belonged to.
I lasted another two bars, still drinking hurricanes - lethally strong fruit cocktails made with both dark rum and white rum. By now, the buzzed feeling had definitely been replaced by double vision and unsteady legs. I leaned against the wall seeking out any of my friends. When I established they weren’t there, I left the bar and stepped outside into the street.
By this point, we had made it quite far down Bourbon Street, away from Canal Street and towards where the bars started thinning out, giving way to a more residential area. I slowly scanned my surroundings, and finally spotted the white dress of an angel, before it disappeared around the corner of one of the streets off Bourbon Street.
I stumbled after it, turning the corner. My friends had disappeared again, but there was only one place down here they could have gone. Midway down a small crowd had gathered around one of the buildings, from which music with a heavy bass-line was escaping.
I had to slow my shaky pace and use the walls for support. I was wobbling past the entrance to an alleyway when a noise caught my attention. The moment I took a few steps down the alleyway, I knew I had made a mistake. From behind, a hand clamped over my mouth preventing me from screaming, as I was pulled back against a torso. The next th
ing I was aware of was several sharp pains in my abdomen.
At that point, I had stopped trying to pull the hand away from my mouth, and instead felt my stomach. As my hand touched something wet, I was released. I fell backwards into the wall, and couldn’t keep myself from sliding down it, the rough brick scratching at my back, before I collapsed on the ground. I was too drunk, and too weak to do much more than stare at my hands in the dim light.
As soon as it dawned on me that I was staring at my own blood, the pain set in. I opened my mouth, ready to cry for help, but all that came out was a wet cough.
At some point I must have passed out because I woke up to a hand pressing at my hands which had been clutching at my stab wounds. “You’re going to die,” a melodic voice told me. He sounded strangely calm, and strangely familiar. “But you have a choice about what happens next.”
I stared up at him, trying to make two dancing figures become one. “Help me,” I rasped, my words quickly turning into a wracking cough.
“I’m trying to,” he sighed, one hand leaving my stomach to grab my elbow. His hand felt wet. “You need to listen to me carefully. You can either, slip away and have eternal happiness, or you can take the other option. You could have the chance at eternal life.”
His voice was growing fainter and I was getting colder. I could feel the flow of blood that had been seeping from the knife wound to my stomach was slowing as it passed through my fingers.
This wasn’t how I wanted to die. I wanted to be in my bed, as old as science would allow, surrounded by kids, and grandkids, and great grandkids. I certainly didn’t want to die slumped against a dirty alley wall off Bourbon Street, dressed in an outfit that would have onlookers thinking I deserved this. But I didn’t have any fight left in me. I couldn’t even keep my eyes open any more.
“I need you to give me the answer,” the voice told me, more urgently now. There was a moment of warmth as I felt his hand pressed against my face. It was enough to make my eyes flicker open and find his warm brown ones staring at me. “I can’t make the decision for you,” he added, his voice softening.
“Save me,” I begged. I think maybe only my lips were moving. All the strength and energy finally escaped me. The last thing I saw were those two brown eyes as I closed my own.
* * *
I awoke feeling completely rested. I stretched, pushing out my arms and legs before allowing my eyes to open. The room I was in was dark, and I could hardly see anything, but when I reached for the lamp, and my hand hit wall, I knew instantly I wasn’t in my room.
I was in my third year at Tulane University, still trying to work out what I was going to do next, even though I was ages away from my graduation. I had done the obligatory first year living in the dorms but had then moved back into my aunt’s house in Lakeview, an area in the north of the city, as soon as I had been able to. When I arrived at my aunt’s house seven years ago, Sarah had given me free reign of how I wanted my bedroom decorated. And this room definitely wasn’t the large bedroom I was used to. For one, my bed stood in the middle of the room - it was impossible to reach out and hit wall, unless I was going behind the large oak headboard.
I closed my eyes trying to remember where I’d gone to sleep. I was supposed to be staying at Rachel’s. Her parents had gone away for an anniversary cruise, leaving her at home with her older brother. Only this wasn’t Rachel’s room, nor was it her spare room.
I couldn’t remember much about my evening’s antics. I sucked in a deep breath and held it. I didn’t feel hung over, and I certainly didn’t feel drunk still. But there had to be a reasonable explanation. I sat upright and swung my feet around, over the edge of the bed. They didn’t hit the ground. I’m on the taller side of average, measuring in at five feet nine without shoes on. Most beds are low enough that when I sit on them, my feet touch the floor. My bed is low anyway - a gorgeous antique four poster that my aunt had acquired from an auction in Mississippi – and I’m frequently catching my shins on it. This one was definitely high and, judging from the fact I could feel both sides, a single – and an empty one at that. This was promising in the sense that I hadn’t gone home with a stranger, but it still didn’t explain where I was.
I gave myself a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I could just about make out a chest of drawers and a wardrobe from the little amount of light that was coming in through the curtains. I walked over to the door, feeling for the light switch and flicked it on, wincing as the room exploded into light.
I waited for my eyes to become accustomed to the brightness only to discover that I was still no closer to recognizing the room. The floor was wooden and dark, matching the furniture. There was nothing fancy about any of the pieces in the room; they were very plain, like the furniture in a college dorm would be. With the exception of the thick claret curtains which matched the blankets on the bed, I could have sworn I was in a single dorm room that had yet to be decorated by its occupant. The only thing on the wall and the only thing that was remotely decorative was the large ornate wooden cross hanging above the headboard. There wasn’t even a mirror on the wall.
I turned, reaching for the door handle, but stopped, my hand hovering mid-air. My attention had been distracted by the white lace around my wrist. I glanced down, my mouth finally dropping open. “What in God’s name am I wearing?” I muttered as I gaped in horror at the monstrosity that was covering me.
This was most definitely not the little red dress that I had gone out in. It was white, came down to my ankles and it hung like a sack. Either someone with a really weird fetish had kidnapped me and dressed me in a Victorian nightdress, or I had taken my drunkenness to a whole new level.
I shut my eyes and I took a deep breath, turning the door handle. I didn’t realize until I exhaled deeply, that I had been expecting it to be locked. The door didn’t creak when it opened. I peeked out into the hallway which was brightly lit by long fluorescent lighting tubes. The walls were the same dull cream color as the room I was in, and the woodwork the same dark wood. To my left, the hallway ended abruptly with a window, again covered in the thick claret curtains. To my right, the hallway stretched out, a half dozen doors breaking up the cream.
I stepped out into the corridor and pulled the door closed behind me, noting the cross with small golden numbers of 238 engraved in the centre. My stomach chose that moment to start churning. Rather than the normal butterflies feeling, it felt more like there was a flock of geese flying about in there.
I took another deep breath. It still looked like a dorm. I was alive, unhurt, and dressed … albeit in a very odd outfit, but there was still a small possibility that I had put it on myself. I walked down the hallway, ignoring all the numbered doors that I passed, aiming for the one at the end.
This door opened into another hallway, almost identical to the last, and eventually, another door at the far end. This time the door opened up to the stairway, the wooden steps curving downwards.
For some reason though, I kept walking past the stairs. It’s hard to explain but something in my gut was leading me elsewhere. I walked to the other end of the building and took the last door on the right. This one led to yet more stairs, stone this time, and less elaborate – like an unlabeled emergency exit. I followed the flight of stairs down, walked along another corridor, and then finally, came across a door to the outside.
It was still night time. The inky night had the orange tint to it which most cities have, the street lights barely making anything other than the moon visible. It was quiet too, although I could hear noise in the distance – I don’t think I was too far from Bourbon Street.
I rounded a corner and bit back a scream. It took me a moment to get my breathing under control as I realized that the thing that had startled me was a nun. More specifically, it was a statue of a nun with a serene face, her hands in prayer, glowing in the moonlight.
As I glanced back at the building behind me, another wave of confusion washed over me as I realized where I was. The Old U
rsuline Convent. It was situated a few blocks from Bourbon Street, easily in walking distance, but it was also a museum which certainly should have been closed at this time. I had been past it a couple of times with my aunt, though never inside it. I was definitely trespassing, and I still had no recollection of how I had gotten there.
“What have you done this time?” I asked myself as I hurried for the exit. I was near the gates when I spotted the light coming from the small church within the grounds. Again, that same gut pull had me changing direction and heading to the side door of the church.
This door, like all the others was unlocked and opened noiselessly. Inside, although equipped with electric chandeliers, it was lit with hundreds of candles, bathing the room with a soft and inviting glow. I took a couple of steps in, looking around in awe.
I’m not religious, I don’t believe in God, and the last time I went to church, despite my aunt’s disappointment, was the day of my parent’s funeral. That being said, this church was beautiful.
It was bigger than I expected, with high ceilings and row upon row of uncomfortable looking wooden pews. Above the main entrance was a gallery, which looked down upon the altar. The altar itself was simply magnificent. There were columns, gold moldings, and a truly impressive painting of what I would guess was a depiction of some verse in the Bible – angels flying alongside a man on the ceiling. It wasn’t the Sistine Chapel, but it was a work of art.
The painting held my attention for so long that I didn’t even notice the figure that sat a few rows from the front. I walked towards him, my bare feet barely making any sound on the marble floor. My eyes nearly popped out of my head as I drew close. He was wearing a light gray suit with polished shoes: an outfit that seemed exceedingly expensive, and made him look older than he was. Looking at his profile, he was only about twenty-five at most. The clothes, while perfectly fitting, made him look like he was closer to thirty. He was also beautiful.