Heaven can Wait

by Nicola Lawson

  I don’t usually curse casually but just talking about it had brought it all back to me. My voice was thick with barely contained tears by the time I had finished. Darned emotional impulses. I brought my head forwards so that my hair concealed my face from view, under the pretence that I was still getting it dry. Probably even Selene knew that it was really so that she couldn’t see my face and how close to the edge of tears I was.

  "What were their names?"

  "What?" I wasn’t sure I had heard Selene correctly. Her question certainly didn’t seem to make sense.

  "The cops, that pair that stopped you just outside, what were their names?" Selene’s voice was flat.

  I looked up. "I don’t know."

  Selene didn’t give up. "Would you know them again?"

  At Selene’s question I got a ghostly reminder of thins hands on my body. The memory was so strong that I felt it as near enough a physical pressure on my most intimate regions. I shuddered at the memory and it wasn’t a movement inspired by pleasure.

  "Why do you want to know?" I asked as soon as my voice was up to it.

  Selene’s voice was still a blank. "So that we can hunt them down and kill them."

  With most anyone else that comment would have been a joke. One look into Selene’s calm eyes and you knew that she was deadly serious.

  Even so; "You can’t be serious. You would kill them for that?"

  "What better way to teach them the error of their ways?"

  I tried to keep in mind Fluvius’ advice on the relative differences in moral standards on a realm that was stuck between Heaven and Hell. I didn’t want another argument with Selene, the number of people I could count as friends could be shown on a single hand. I couldn’t really afford to start loosing them. Still some things you couldn’t just let slide.

  "You can’t just go about murdering people because they have caused you some offence."

  Selene set the journal on the floor and pulled herself up to a more vertical sitting position. "They assaulted you, what’s to stop them going even further next time. What if the next poor woman they try that with isn’t as lucky as you? If that pair don’t get taught a lesson they might go just that little bit further next time. That’s forgetting all the other nasty things dirty cops invariably get involved with."

  "I could report them."

  "And who would listen."

  I couldn’t argue with her, I had decided last night that there was no way I could get the officers punished using conventional means. And they did deserve to be punished.

  "When the justice system doesn’t work you have to go out and make your own," Selene said.

  The part of me that had been living on earth for these last few years wanted to take her up on the offer of vengeance. The part of me that was basically a violated woman, a victim, wanted her to help me. But I wasn’t just a woman, I was Celestiluma. I was an angel, who had pretty much clipped her own wings, but I was still an angel and revenge wasn’t an ideal that we lived by.

  "No. It is for their own people to punish them not us. Sometimes we just have to accept that justice will be denied us. I knew what I was getting into when I chose this place to be my home. Maybe one day, if enough of us are patient enough to work within the system then we can truly have justice that is available to us all."

  I don’t think Selene really believed that things would ever work that way. Did I? Sometimes.

  Whether she was moved or not by my grand sounding speech, Selene seemed to recognise that I wasn’t going to be moved from my decision, at least not yet. It also seemed that she didn’t want another argument about what was and was not morally acceptable behaviour, and she let the subject drop.

  "I thought you had some news?"

  I was trying to get myself back to being all business, Selene never seemed to have moved out of that Zone.

  She didn’t get the chance to tell me what her news was because right at that moment my telephone started ringing. I made no move to answer it.

  "Aren’t you going to get that?"

  I shrugged. "I doubt it will be anything important. I’ll let the machine get it."

  I had intended that Selene go on with sharing whatever information it was she had uncovered, I was assuming it had to do with the case Braun had brought me in on but it could be she had something on her Mr X that she wanted to share.

  Selene didn’t go on. Instead the two of us just stayed there, we both looked over at the phone as though that would make it stop. The machine clicked on and we listened to my bland message. Now we were staring at the machine as though it would make us here whoever was calling better.

  At first I didn’t recognise the voice. I didn’t have to wonder about putting a name to the caller because he quickly announced himself.

  "Ms Jones? This is Alex, um, Alex Frost from NIRU. I-"

  I cut him off by grabbing up the phone. The machine was still going so Selene would be able to hear his side of the conversation. But what did that matter he was probably just calling to tell me to keep out of their investigation. No doubt thick and thin had already covered their backsides by reporting my post-curfew activities.

  "Agent Frost, I'm here."

  "I hope I didn't wake you?" That question seemed entirely too friendly for a guy calling to tell me to keep out of official business.

  I looked at Selene. "No, that was already taken care of."

  Selene just smiled and started flicking through the journal she had been reading as though looking for something.

  "Good. Look, Ms Jones," I wanted to interrupt and tell him to call me Faith but I had only met this guy for a moment. "We have another scene for you to look at."

  Three crime scenes in less than a week. Wasn't I the lucky one?

  "I thought Agent Stern had decided you didn't need my help on this case anymore. Something about not being able to trust the veracity of my information."

  "This is a different case and this is my call. Stern wants me to wrap this up quickly so that I can get back to help on the other case. He told me to use any resources and all means necessary to solve this one. One of the resources I want to use is you."

  No other law enforcement agency would have an agent working two unrelated cases at once. It showed how thinly stretched the non-human investigation and response unit's resources were.

  He told me about an incident in a club where a roomful of people chose to spontaneously combust and run about as screaming human torches. Something rang familiar and I glanced at Selene. She was holding the journal like she had found what she was looking for, she wasn't looking at the journal she was looking at me.

  "Get the name of the club."

  I asked Frost for the clubs name and he gave it to me. Selene could still hear his side of the conversation and she just nodded at me.

  "So will you see if you can give me any help with this?"

  I agreed and Frost said he would come by himself to pick me up.

  "They're investigating your Mr X," I said.

  "Someone was bound to."

  Selene was looking at me with a look similar to the one that had sent me running for the bathroom.

  "What?" I asked.

  "This Agent Frost of yours is he cute?"

  Whatever I had expected her to say that wasn't it.

  "I guess." I had no idea where she was heading with this.

  She opened the journal she was still holding and showed me the page she had saved. It was in the middle of an article and without reading some of the print I couldn’t tell what it was an article on. But it wasn’t the text that she was interested in. She showed me the picture of the man who had written the article down at the bottom of the page and I did a double take.

  I probably shouldn’t have been surprised, it made sense that an agent working in the non-human branch of law enforcement would have some expertise in the field. The fact that the article said Alex Frost had completed two masters degree’s relating to areas of supernatural study and was currently working on his do
ctorate was a bit of a surprise, still no-one said he couldn’t be intelligent.

  "Do you like him?"

  "He seems friendly enough." Selene had moved closer to me after handing me the article and I could feel her breath on my skin. I got goose bumps on areas of my skin that her breath definitely hadn’t touched.

  My body reacted to Selene’s closeness in a way it hadn’t reacted to anyone before. Thank goodness I wasn’t a man and my reaction wasn’t put out on show. This level of attraction was definitely new. My discomfort with these new and very confusing feelings made me hurry to get Selene and myself out of my apartment.

  As she left me waiting for Frost and my ride Selene didn't look the least bit rejected by my reaction to her. Granted she hadn't made any really overt advances on me but it had been clear what she had been doing, hadn't it? Or was I reading too much into things? Were my own confused feelings colouring my judgement?

  I didn't realise until she had gone that she never had told me what she had found out.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  "Well, this is certainly a more pleasant place than the last time we were together."

  We were over at the side of the club nearest the offices, furthest from the stage. This time I was visiting the crime scene more than twenty-four hours after the action had taken place. There were no other police officers or NIRU agents in the club with us.

  "Just as long as you can forget that each of those char marks on the floor used to be a human being."

  I turned my attention from the partially burned floor to look at Alex Frost. "I had put that out of my mind."

  Now I couldn't look on the once abstract burn marks without seeing grotesquely twisted human shapes. Of course this meant that I had to have my eyes on Frost more often than not. I gave Frost another appraisal, fair enough this was a much more attractive view even without the marks.

  This time there were no remains. From what Selene had told me I knew I wouldn’t be getting anything like the meaty messes I had witnessed recently. All that would have been left of the victims this time would have been blackened skeletons if that. Even if they had all been reduced to ash somebody had come along to retrieve them before I got here.

  "So, why am I here? Spontaneous human combustion isn’t something that I’m particularly familiar with."

  Frost nodded towards one of the offices. It wasn’t the one with the fire damage to the door and frame with the extra strands of yellow and black crime scene tape across.

  "Why don’t we discuss it in here?"

  Since there was nobody else in this part of the club I didn’t know why we were going into one of the offices, it wasn’t like we needed the extra privacy. I was still in something of an odd mood, my confused feelings didn’t seem to be confined to Selene, Frost was starting to feature in some extremely unusual fantasies in my head. Since I was in the uncharacteristic mood, and since Frost was willing to take the lead towards the office I didn’t question him. Instead I found myself studying him as he walked ahead of me. My eyes kept drifting down so that by the time we reached the office I could describe the seat of his trousers in minute detail. The pocket on his right cheek was buttoned closed but the threads holding the button to the trousers were loose. A careless hand rubbing across that tight backside could easily break those threads and dislodge that button.

  Damn, I had to get myself under control, keep my thoughts on track. My body was reacting to Frost in the same way it had started to react to Selene earlier, again I gave thanks for the benefits of female over male anatomy when it came to concealing embarrassing arousals. I was doubly thankful for the short fake-leather jacket that I had on to help cover my braless chest. I made certain that the jacket was covering the suddenly sensitive parts of my ample assets that would have given me away to Frost.

  I hoped I was doing a better job of covering what I was feeling than what it felt like. I was still a virgin not through lack of opportunity but a lack of desire, well the desire had definitely caught up with me now.

  "After you."

  Frost held the door open for me and I moved past him. My hand brushed the back of his on my way past and I jerked it away feeling a literal spark. There was no reaction from Frost, he hadn’t felt anything. The urge to grab the NIRU agent and tear his clothes off and do him right here and now. This so wasn’t like me, and I had to get myself back to acting like myself. Before I did something embarrassing.

  It was a simple answer really. We, angels, weren’t used to experiencing these sorts of feelings because we were usually shutting ourselves off from feeling them. Up there we learned to keep our emotions buried even from ourselves so that we could get on as a society of empaths. But down here I didn’t have to worry about shutting myself off, just everybody else. If I devoted some of the energy I was expending keeping everyone away to keeping my own feelings out of the way . . .

  It was as instinctive as breathing to shut myself off, the difficulty came in keeping my reception of external emotions to a minimum. For a long moment I thought it hadn’t worked properly. The feelings of attraction I had experienced had been toned down but they were still there. I could imagine that extraordinary long blonde hair(?) being dragged across my naked body. The way it would feel as it’s feathery touch brushed my muscular chest(?) and down to my surely stiff-

  I turned around in a rush to see Frost regarding me. Seeing as moments before I had been having similar, sometimes rather more explicit, fantasies regarding him I should probably cut the guy some slack. But I hadn’t always been good at doing what should be done. I gave him the same cough I had used to get Officer Perkins’ eyes off my chest. At least Frost had the decency to blush.

  "Sorry, I was miles away."

  I raised a single eyebrow. "Is there some reason we needed to come in here?"

  "There’s something I wanted to show you."

  My heart jumped. I adjusted the balance of my internal and external feelings. This balancing act was difficult and I had to fight from imagining all sorts of possibilities.

  I had to work moisture into my mouth before I could say, "Yes."

  Frost approached me and I couldn’t believe this was happening. Time seemed to slow so that I had an age to study his youthfully handsome features as he walked. His eyes, sitting above sharp cheekbones, had lashes so long they put many a mortal woman’s to shame.

  I concentrated and finally succeeded in closing my mind to his feelings as well as most of my own. Whatever he thought we were going to do here he was mistaken.

  Frost was up close now, his body only a few centimetres from mine. He leaned in-

  "Stop."

  "What?" Frost asked. His hand was on the video machine behind me.

  "I want to get where I can see." It’s even easier to lie when you are covering up for yourself.

  The look he gave me said he didn’t quite buy it but he waited until I had moved around into a better position.

  "Ready?" There was a half-smile on his lips, he definitely didn’t buy it.

  I nodded.

  Frost hit play and grabbed a control from on top of the machine. He came back to sit on the table next to me. I was back in control now, having something productive to focus on seemed to help, so his closeness wasn’t a distraction anymore. At least it wasn’t for me, how Frost could compartmentalise his feelings enough to get down to business I didn’t know. He obviously has more experience with working past such things than I do.

  "What am I looking at?" I was all business now.

  "This is an edit of the clubs security footage from the night everyone decided to take go up in smoke."

  Maybe it wasn't just older cops who could keep a sense of humour about the most macabre situations.

  Most of the imagery was taken from the main area of the dance floor. It looked like it had been enhanced somehow to put the focus on the entrance to one of the offices. I watched the re-enactment able to pick out the players according to Selene's report of events. I watched what had to be Eric the wease
l getting escorted into the office. A short time later Selene's mysterious Mr X headed inside and a much shorter time after that was when the flaming bodies ran out and chaos erupted in the club. Frost froze the image.

  "Can you take it back to just before that last guy went into the office."

  Frost gave me a look that left me with the impression that he had anticipated the request. I leaned in to get a better look at the screen. My hand brushed Frost's thigh on its way to the tabletop to support me but I barely noticed.

  "Is that distortion on him a result of the enhancement you did on the tape?"

  I could see Agent Frost's reflection shaking his head behind the frozen on the screen.

  "That's the best image of him that we could get."

  "So he's using a spell of some kind, maybe a glamour."

  "That's what I suspect."

  I was still staring at the image. "You suspect that whoever he is he played some part in those people burning up."

  Frost gave an exasperated sigh. "I just don't know. We couldn't get a proper count on how many people were in the office before they started combusting. That guy could be one of those things the clean-up crew had to scrape off the floor or he could be out there getting ready to do this to another roomful of people."

  Frost started to skip through the tape again. "There's more I want you to look at. Whatever that last man was using to mask himself from the security cameras it seems he was doing something similar with the patrons in the club that night. Not a single witness was able to give us even a basic description."

  Frost froze the image again and I was grateful I was already controlling my emotions so tightly. There was no distortion on the figure held static in time on this occasion, although the camera hadn't been positioned well enough to get a very good image. To me, at least, the figure was recognisable enough. But then I already knew that Selene had been here.

  "This woman matches the description given to us by a rather worse-for-wear gentleman who was found in the bathroom with a very bad injury to a very personal area." Frost couldn't keep something slightly pained out of his tone. In this respect at least Frost had as much empathy as I did.