by L. Penelope
“Do you believe in past lives?” I ask.
She frowns, bemused. “Like reincarnation? In your past life, you were a cow or something?”
“Well, sort of. Not really. You were a person. A cow can’t become a person.”
“Oh. Um, I don’t know. I’ve always believed in heaven, you know? But I don’t think anyone should be discriminated against for their beliefs or anything. No matter how weird they are.” She absently fingers the gold cross hanging on a delicate chain around her neck. I merely smile and don’t point out the irony.
“So you would never, just for fun, go to one of those regressionists who tell you all about your past lives?”
“Goodness, no.” She looks like I’ve just suggested she get vivisected, just for fun. “I’m pretty sure that’s blasphemous.”
Something in my heart sinks. “Are you very religious?”
She notices she’s holding the cross and lets go, then looks up to the ceiling as if for answers. “I don’t know. I go to church. My parents are more into it than me, though. I just …” She shrugs. “I don’t want to do anything to make God angry, you know?”
My smile is brittle on my face, but I nod at her as if I understand. As if she’s not breaking my heart into a thousand little pieces.
“You’re always so deep and intense.” Her eyes dance as she laughs at me. “Do you ever think about normal things?”
“Normal?”
“Yeah, like, what’s your favorite movie?”
“My favorite movie …” I rack my brain for an answer. The last time I’d gone to a movie was when I took Viv to see Gone with the Wind.
“Umm … I’ve always been a fan of the classics. The Graduate. Citizen Kane. Psycho.” She furrows her brow. I just picked a few off of a list I’d memorized of the hundred best movies of all time, but it doesn’t seem like the right thing to say. “But really, if I had to pick just one, it would be Terminator.” She smiles at this, and I release a breath. I stood behind two guys in the cafeteria this morning as they debated the relative merits of the various entries in the Terminator film franchise.
“What about you?” I ask.
She turns her head shyly. “It’s really embarrassing.”
I doubt it’s more embarrassing than my knowledge or lack thereof of modern cinema. I reach over and squeeze her hand. “You can tell me.”
“Yeah, I know. You’re not all judgy. That’s one of the really cool things about you.”
“Judgy?”
“You know, you’re so laid back. You’re different. I feel like you really understand me.” Her eyes are clear and open, guileless. So different from Maia’s dark, tortured gaze.
I blink to clear away the image. “You’re trying to avoid telling me. I promise not to get ‘judgy.’”
“Napoleon Dynamite.”
Those two words put together mean nothing to me, but I can tell she expects me to be surprised, so I mock gasp. “Really?”
She shrugs. “Yeah. I know.” She dissolves into a fit of giggles. The joke is lost on me, but I laugh as well.
“Well, there’s no accounting for taste.”
Genna throws her pen at me in mock outrage.
“Thank you,” I say, catching it and using it to write in my notebook.
“Hey, give that back.” She leans across me, her breasts brushing my arm, trying to snatch the pen from my hand. I hold it out of her reach, making her attempt futile, and somehow she ends up halfway in my lap.
My chest constricts at her proximity. Her face is so close to mine, her eyes bright and innocent. She glances at my lips, her intent clear. I’m frozen, locked in a moment of indecision. It took months before I worked up the nerve to kiss Viv. I’m not sure I’m cut out for the speed of this day and age, though there is no time to waste. Still, I release my held breath when a group of chattering freshman walk behind us and Genna slides off me and back into her own chair.
A solitary figure dressed in black follows the freshmen as they walk toward the coffee stand. Maia has her head down, but I get the sense she’s seen us. My heart races, but not for the reason it should. I feel like I’ve averted a crisis, and it leaves me even more confused.
Genna follows Maia with her eyes and flattens her mouth in an expression of pity. Somehow this nettles me, but I suppress the emotion.
“Do you know her story?” I ask, unable to stop myself.
“Only a little. She’s had a hard time — no family or anything. I feel bad for her. It must have been tough to grow up like that.”
“What happened to her family?”
“I think her mom died when she was born — like giving birth to her. I didn’t even know that still happened in this country. And her dad’s in jail or something. It’s really sad.”
I nod in agreement, my heart going out to her. I’d only seen a piece of Maia’s nightmare, but it makes more sense to me now.
“She has nightmares a lot, too. I’m actually kind of worried about her. Health Services has free counseling. I go sometimes when things get crazy. I’ve invited her, but she always shoots me down. Says she hates shrinks. But it’s really just about finding the right one, you know?”
Genna launches into a story about the various therapists she visited throughout high school. I force myself to focus, staring at her lips as they form the words, her eyes as they shine merrily. Even in a slightly disturbing tale of the deficits of various mental health professionals, Genna is unfailingly upbeat. It's an effort not to search for Maia through the wide arched doorway leading to the inner library. I wonder what she’s doing at this moment.
Genna ducks her head and smiles in a certain way, and suddenly Viv shines through her, calling to me through the years.
* * *
Before
“Caleb!” Viv says my name on a laugh as we race up Parliament Hill.
“What, my love?”
“Slow down!” Though she increases her pace and grins over her shoulder at me. “It’s impolite to beat a woman in a footrace.”
“I didn’t realize this was a competition.”
“Well, we must beat the sun if we expect to watch it set.”
At the crest of the hill, we stop and turn to see the greens of Hampstead Heath spread out before us with a view of the heart of London beyond. I spread the blanket out and we sit facing west, watching the progression of the sun as it gives its last hurrah for the day. Night meanders toward us, but the earlier heat lingers. We lie back in one another’s arms and talk. She tells me of her hopes for the future: completing secretarial school and seeing her younger sisters attend university. Her worries for her father, whose back has been giving him trouble, making it harder to manage his shop. She gets teary-eyed thinking of the poor lost souls on the Athenia, the passenger ship sunk by Germany, but avoids the topic of the war.
“It’s just too horrible, Caleb. I don’t even want to think of it. Mother says that Papa was never the same after he came back from the Great War. I can’t bear to think of you having to go away.”
I let the topic slide away. The idea of fighting in a human war is indeed troubling — the warrior angels must have been planning this for quite a while. Two of them had ascended to the ranks of the Seraphim during the last Adjustment, so this conflict was bound to be unlike any before it.
Kalyx followed all the politics and maneuvering very well, and at times like these I missed asking her to translate the inner workings of Euphoria for me. But another struggle is at the forefront of my mind.
I’d spoken with Viv’s father at his shop this morning. A man of few words, with skin like leather and a manner just as sturdy, he had never objected to my courting Viv. He’d even hushed his wife’s protestations with nothing more than a few quiet words and a stern look. Even with his tacit acceptance, I was nervous to ask for his blessing to marry his daughter.
He’d answered with a brusque “If it makes Vivie happy, I’ll not stand in your way.”
I’d almost left it there, but my curios
ity got the better of me. “Many men would object to a colored man seeking to marry their daughter.”
He’d shifted his pipe to his other hand and stared off into the distance. “My father was colored. Never met him myself; he died when I was a lad. Vivie’s mum knows all about it, of course; she just pretends to forget. I don’t advertise it, but I’m not ashamed. You work hard and you love her. My daughter could do a sight worse.”
Now her head rests on my chest as we look up at the stars, newly visible in the inky sky.
“Look there.” I point to a bright cluster. Humans named the groupings, but I can’t recall the lore at the moment. “If you are very careful, you can hold the stars in your hands.”
She laughs, and the sound sparks a warmth in me. “I cannot figure out if they are too small to capture or far too large.” Her voice dances when she speaks.
“Well, we shall have to conduct an experiment. I shall pluck them from the sky and place them in your hands, and then you will know.”
“I should like to see you try it.”
I rise to my knees, losing the heat of her body against mine. I reach up toward the sky and while she’s looking, cause my hand to glow. I close my fist, like I’m trapping the light inside, and bring it in front of her. Her eyes are wide with surprise. She claps her hands.
“How did you do it?”
I shake my head. “Do you want to see the star I’ve retrieved for you?”
“Yes, of course!” She’s literally bouncing with excitement.
I allow the glow to fade and open my palm. In it lies the white gold ring, delicately carved with a sparkling sapphire embedded at the center. Kneeling, I ask the woman I love to spend the rest of her life with me. When she says yes, it’s a struggle to contain my emotions. I nearly start to glow all over, and have to force myself to stay in my human form.
If she will marry me, surely she will bind with me and forever will be ours together.
* * *
The library comes into focus again. Genna frowns at screen of her computer. The perfume she wears reminds me of late summer evenings in north London, watching the sunset and making plans for a life I never had the chance to live.
Will she react as Viv did? When I finally told Viv what I was, and brought up the subject of binding, she was more shocked than I’d expected. She avoided me for days, retreating to the tiny church at the corner of her street for long conversations with the priest.
I couldn’t help myself — I listened in, staying invisible so that I could eavesdrop on their conversation. So much of human religion was mystifying to me. They had so many beliefs, so many variations, so much fiction.
After a week of avoiding me, Viv returned determined to save my soul, still not believing I didn’t have one. I went along with it, dutifully attending Sunday services, listening to the garrulous priest. I knelt and prayed and took communion and confessed — did whatever she wanted me to, whatever it would take to convince her to bind with me.
We were together just over a year. The last of my powers had faded by the time the Blitz began. But even after all those months, the priest’s voice and admonitions held Viv back. It was only in those brief moments before we died, when the skies opened up and true hell rained down, that she agreed to say the words. But we ran out of time.
I don’t have a year to convince Genna. The Vultures are on the hunt. They may have to search every human on earth, but they will, and it won’t take them very long. Weeks, perhaps a couple of months if I’m very lucky.
This second chance feels like it’s slipping from my grasp, and I don’t know how to hold on.
Chapter Eight
THE CLOCK TOWER chimes the hour, signaling the end of class. The professor is the first one out the door. I slowly put away my laptop, waiting for everyone else to leave before I venture out. Narrow, congested hallways, crowds of any kind really, give me a headache, which is ironic because the dead avoid them too. My life would be a lot easier if I could only be comfortable around large groups of people, everyone breathing and blinking together.
Caleb waits alone in the hallway. There’s no way to avoid him, so I turn up the volume on my music. Shirley Manson snarls out a vaguely disturbing ode to obsession and stalking. My own personal number-one crush follows me to the exit. He holds the door open, so I guess he’s visible now. I make the mistake of meeting his eyes; an entire world is alive in there, and I tear my gaze away.
Walking faster doesn’t do any good, since his legs are longer than mine and besides, he can fly, but still I don’t know what he’s here for. I wish he’d just go away.
Finally, he calls my name. I pretend not to hear. “We should talk.”
I pop out an earbud and round on him. “Talk about what, exactly?”
He’s caught by surprise, like he didn’t expect me to answer. His lips start to form words, but then he changes his mind. He smells amazing, like something I can’t even describe, angel dust maybe — fresh, like laundry just out of the dryer but masculine, a light woodsy scent I want to inhale all day.
“What’s Napoleon Dynamite?”
The question takes me by surprise. “Excuse me?”
“I just … Genna said it’s her favorite movie, and I watched it today, but I don’t think I understand.”
I shake my head and a snort escapes involuntarily. That girl is hilarious. “Genna’s favorite movie is The Notebook. Did you notice the huge poster on her wall? She just said Napoleon Dynamite to impress you.”
He frowns. It’s fucking adorable. “Why would she think lying would impress me?”
How do I explain flirting to an angel? “It’s not exactly lying. She probably likes it well enough. People just enhance the truth sometimes by saying things they think the other person wants to hear. It’s how dating works.”
I can see him working through this in his head. It’s obvious it still doesn’t compute. “She probably wants you to think she’s cool and quirky. Since you’re all …” I wave my hand toward him. He’s taken my advice and wears solid-colored shirts these days and jeans that hug his ass and thighs in a totally sexy way. I blink and lose my train of thought.
“I’m all what?” he asks.
“Never mind.” I turn away from him to try to clear my head.
“Wait.” From the corner of my eye, I see him reach out to grab my arm. I jerk away and trip on the raised edge of the sidewalk where it meets the grass unevenly. Some dude blazes by on a bicycle, and I lose my balance completely, slamming onto the concrete on my hands and knees. My left hand crumples, unable to bear any weight, and I land hard on my elbow.
Caleb hovers over me like a nervous mother as I stand up. Both palms are scraped and beginning to bleed, plus the knee of my jeans is torn and the skin pulled away there as well.
“That was my fault. I’m so sorry,” he says.
I look at him like he’s crazy. “How was that your fault? It was Lance-fucking-Armstrong’s fault over there. And mostly mine.” There’s some gravel lodged in the cuts, and I start to brush it away. Caleb’s hands envelop both of mine.
“Let me.”
His touch sends tingles through me and I try to pull away, but he’s being stubborn. All of a sudden, I’m tingling in a totally different way. The stinging sensation disappears, and the abrasions all heal before my eyes.
He pushes up my left sleeve, revealing the ugly scar going up the inside of my forearm.
“What happened here? I can sense the damage, but I can’t heal something this old.”
I yank my arm out of his grip and pull down my sleeve. “Long story. Crazy dead girl.”
His eyes get this faraway look, and I wonder what he’s doing. The tingling has faded and I try not to miss it. Try not to remember how his hand felt encompassing mine. I’ve never held hands with anyone. People don’t really touch me.
“I can see your ability,” he whispers. He’s looking in my direction, but sort of through me. At first I’m not sure what he means, but then I feel this … ch
ange, is really the only way to describe it. There’s no tingling, no real sensation, but something is different.
Behind Caleb, an old man who shuffles across the Yard just about every day begins to slowly disappear. My heart catches in my chest. The busy campus pulses all around us, and everywhere people are vanishing. Tears well in my eyes.
“They’re going away. They’re fading, they’re all … they’re all gone.”
I spin toward him, rubbing my head. There’s suddenly a lightness inside me, like my whole life I’ve been carrying this heavy weight, and now it’s gone. This must be what other people feel like all the time.
“They’re gone. What did you do?”
He closes his eyes and frowns, concentrating. “Your Sight, it’s clearly identifiable within you. I just covered it, like putting on a blindfold.”
I hold my breath, scared to ask, but the words come tumbling out. “Is it gone forever?”
Caleb’s face falls and it’s answer enough. “Your power is strong, so anything I can do in this form is temporary. It may last a few hours. With my full powers, I think I could remove it. It’s a part of you, but still separate, not connected to anything vital.”
“You can’t do it now?” I search his eyes for some kind of hope, for something to let me know this wasn’t just a cruel joke fate and the heavens are playing on me. Haven’t they had enough fun with my life?
“To use my full powers, I’d have to take on an angelic form, and the Vultures would find me immediately. I wish that I could.”
I take a step back and try to rein in my disappointment, though I know I can’t really hide anything from him.
“Maia.” My name isn’t just a word he says, it’s a plea. I get myself together, harden all the soft parts again, and turn around.
“How much time do you think you have left?” I ask.
He looks away, his eyes downcast. “Not long.”
“Is she close? To binding with you?” He studies the bench intently instead of answering.
What could the holdup be? The rare times he’s not around, she doesn’t shut up about him. She’s on the phone with her mom, her friends, just about anyone who will listen, yammering on, day and night. He must be doing something to screw it up. “Is there anything I can do to help?”