Tread Lightly

by Catherine Lane

  “Better?” Tamiel asked as she took a step back.

  Claire felt the loss of the angel’s touch to her toes. She breathed in deeply, trying to find her equilibrium again.

  “Yes.” She managed to choke out the answer. She swung her shoulder around, just to give herself something to do. Wow. Flexible and fluid. That crick she’d had in her neck since she moved heaven and earth for Grace Kelly to become Princess of Monaco was completely gone. Tamiel had worked miracles.

  I guess that’s what they do.

  “From back here it looks like it never happened.”

  Claire wished she could read Tamiel’s tone. She spun a little on one heel and then shifted to the toes of her other foot, buying time. She raised her head to meet the angel’s gaze. They connected. The flames leaped up in Tamiel’s irises, and the breath caught in her throat.

  They were barely a step apart. Kinetic energy whirled around them, pushing them together. It would be so easy to step into the force and let it envelop her. Wrap her arms around Tamiel and raise her lips to the angel’s. She imagined that healing, wonderful touch on her mouth and almost went weak at the knees.

  But she did nothing.

  Shyness, uncertainty, and a particularly vehement lecture on angel mind control from a weekend workshop in Palm Springs rooted her to the floor. The energy died, and they were just two magical creatures standing by a faux leather sofa from IKEA.

  “Oh, sorry. I forgot your top.” Tamiel took another step back, and cloth spread over Claire’s shoulder in a flash. “So what happened when you reported in?”

  Claire let out a long breath.

  “You can trust me. Whatever this is, we’re in it together.”

  No, that’s not why I’m sighing.

  Tamiel tilted her head first to one side and then the other, waiting for an answer.

  “My boss is taking Frankie for the night and probably throwing me under the bus with Upper Administration. But the real kicker is that no one in the FGC knows where this case came from.”

  “Interesting.”

  “No kidding. What do your superiors say?”

  “We don’t have superiors. I mean, there is a hierarchy, of course; everyone knows that.” She raised her hands and shrugged. “I’m happily at the bottom in the lowest choir. Off anyone’s radar. But with the whole cosmos under our domain, even the big guns are pretty much left to their own devices in the field.”

  “Wow. I can’t even imagine.”

  “I hope you never have to. It gets pretty lonely,” Tamiel said and sat on the couch. “So no one at the FGC is asking why this girl is being attacked by demons?”

  “No.” The impact of that statement hit Claire squarely in the gut. She had been so worried about retaining her job and dodging all the directives about Wand Tech, Medical, and Filing that this particular subject had never come up. Wow, she was no better than Juliette. “No, no one is asking.”

  “I’ll tell you what I think.” Tamiel leaned back into the sofa. “That there is more to this case than meets the eye. Sure, demons attack all the time. They are responsible for a lot of the terrible things that happen in the world. But the fact these demons come from Yakum makes this a whole new ball game.”

  “Why?”

  “Long story.”

  “I’m ready.” She dropped onto the couch near Tamiel. Thank goodness, the angel seemed to be staying.

  “Yakum is the worst kind of angel—”

  “Angel? I thought you said he was a demon.”

  “No, I said he sent out demons.”

  “You guys can do that?” Claire’s mind whirled.

  “The GA is very complicated, and the answer’s much more fluid than a simple yes or no.”

  “Try me.”

  Tamiel rubbed the back of her neck. “Okay. Basically, Yakum started out as a Grigori or a Watcher. That’s the same choir as me, but not the same level. He’s stronger. Much stronger. And yet, strangely, Watchers do a lot of what lower Guardians do. They look out for humans, appear to them in dreams, and give advice, but with Yakum, it went horribly wrong.”

  “How?”

  “Personally, I think he enjoyed the power he had over the humans he was caring for. Like I said, this gig is sometimes really lonely, but that doesn’t excuse what he did.” She took Claire’s hand.

  Adrenaline pulsed through Claire’s veins as her heart leaped in her chest. What was Tamiel doing? She glanced down. Tamiel intertwined her fingers with Claire’s to hold her still and then ran her other hand with featherlight touches up Claire’s burned forearm. Claire willed her heart to slow. This was all part of the service. Tamiel didn’t mean anything else by it. The skin on her arm turned slowly pink and then white under Tamiel’s touch as the healing energy buzzed through it. Not fair. How was she supposed to concentrate?

  Claire jerked her head up to the angel’s face. Watching the fire dance in her eyes and her mouth move wasn’t much easier.

  “Yakum was really smart about how he connected with the humans. He started out small with gifts of mirrors and cosmetics. Just to get them hooked. And then he moved on to knives and swords and the killing blows those weapons could yield. Sometimes he even went as far as teaching them enchantments and sorcery.”

  Moving again in small circles, Tamiel caressed a particularly tender spot.

  “Ooh.” Claire tried to bite back the moan before it was all the way out.

  “Yeah, right here’s pretty bad.” Tamiel smiled softly, and Claire’s heart did another flip-flop.

  “Anyway, one day, apparently, he was watching over this beautiful young girl in Samaria, and he appeared to her with, you know, the kinds of gifts that would get her attention. Abal was her name, I think. He was tall and handsome, and the fire rose in his eyes with kindness. One look in those eyes and she was his.”

  Or maybe he ran his fingers up and down her arm.

  “In the beginning, Yakum was everything Abal had ever dreamed of. Attentive, loving, generous, and before she knew it, they were spending every waking moment together. Pretty soon the whole town started to gossip about her and the mysterious stranger and her immodest behavior. This was Samaria in the Iron Age after all, and before long, the talk got so bad that the whole town stopped buying grain from her uncle. His business—the one he had stolen from Abal’s father, by the way—started to fail. The uncle, of course, blamed Abal.”

  Claire shook her head. “The girl’s always the scapegoat. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen that from my end too.”

  Tamiel nodded. “It’s an easy way not to take responsibility. Abal’s uncle tried to lock her up in a tiny room in the back of the house. But each time, as soon as the key turned in the lock, she would vanish. Yakum’s magic was very strong. But, of course, the uncle didn’t know that. He only knew that Abal, despite his very best efforts, was disappearing and making a royal fool of him in front of the whole village. The uncle got madder and madder each time it happened, and soon, he was fit to be tied.”

  Tamiel flipped Claire’s arm, and her fingers slid delicately down its underside. Chills spread to every part of Claire’s body.

  “And…” Tamiel took a deep, strategic breath. “Brace yourself. One night as Abal was sleeping, the uncle crept into her room. He meant to beat her so badly that she would no longer be pretty. He thought if he did, Yakum wouldn’t want her and he could rebuild the business and his own reputation. But the moment the uncle raised his cane to strike the first blow, a great, flaming light burned through the room. Yakum stepped right out of that fire. He raised a long finger at the uncle and cried, ‘Judgment has come,’ and slammed a fireball into him. The uncle crumpled to the ground. Instantly dead and never able to hurt anyone ever again. When the fireball dissipated, Abal readied herself to see a horribly burned corpse. Instead, she gasped at what lay before her.”

  “What?
What did she see?” Claire leaned in closer. Her arm was almost in Tamiel’s lap.

  “Her uncle’s body was fine. His face, however, was all black and blue and beaten almost to a pulp. She raised her hands and screamed, only to find she was holding the very same cane the uncle had carried into her room. And that’s how her cousin found her. Standing over the beaten, dead body of his own father, clutching the murder weapon. This time, there was no escape for Abal.”

  Tamiel’s fingers froze on Claire’s arm as Abal’s dire predicament spread out all around them.

  “That was the plan all along. Wasn’t it?”

  “Yep.” Tamiel smiled grimly and started up again. She stretched Claire’s fingers wide with one hand and rubbed her open palm with the other. This time, Claire found the willpower to suppress the groan.

  “Yes, her cousin was ready to kill Abal right then and there. In fact, when his mother and sisters came skidding into the room only seconds later, he already had Abal up against the wall and by the throat. He was so consumed by his righteous anger and hatred that he didn’t even see the huge, dark Watcher standing by his cousin’s side. But Yakum noticed everything. He turned to Abal and said, ‘Choose. Your fate with him or your fate with me.’”

  “Oh man.”

  “There was no choice, really. Either she could die horribly at the hands of her cousin right then and there or take her chances with Yakum, who eventually did much, much worse.”

  “That’s not much of a choice.”

  “No. Obviously, you know where I’m going with this. He lay with her, against her will. Over and over again until she was broken.

  “Yakum left the girl with child, and when her son was born, he was a monster both inside and out. The boy was big and strong. And he obeyed his father faithfully. Yakum saw the potential in what he had created in Abal. He wanted power. And for that, he needed an army of his own children. He didn’t care what he had to give up to get it.”

  Claire glanced down at her hand. Tamiel had stopped rubbing, and her hand sat in Claire’s like a lover’s. Tamiel pulled away.

  “So that’s what he wants with Frankie?” Claire asked softly, tamping down the desire to grab the angel’s hand back.

  “If I had to guess, I’d say yes.”

  “Why her? There’re a million other women out there.”

  Tamiel shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  They sat in in silence for a long moment. Claire found her voice first. “So what do we do?”

  She knew what she should do. Rush back to Juliette and let the FGC know what they were dealing with. But Claire didn’t even get up. The FGC’s hold was beginning to loosen. Their path wasn’t the only one. She settled back into the couch, telling herself she just wanted to hear what the angel would say.

  “Get Yakum. If we don’t stop him, then Frankie and who knows who else will be in danger.”

  Tamiel’s certainty tugged at Claire. “You make it sound so simple.”

  “It’s not without danger, of course, but we can’t let Yakum take her. I have a plan. And you, apparently, have a secret weapon.”

  “What?”

  “Your wand. Caroman.”

  “Carothann.” Cute how she got it wrong. The mispronunciation from anyone else would have irked Claire.

  “Carothann,” Tamiel repeated and leaned back into the cushions. “So what’s going on? I’ve never seen magic that powerful from the FGC.”

  “I don’t know. It’s never acted like that before.” She produced Carothann from her inside pocket and held it in her palm. Small currents of magic buzzed around it, lighting up various portions of the wand in a golden glow, but otherwise, it looked and felt completely normal—right down to Frankie and Abby’s bands sitting at the bottom of the branch.

  Shit, Abby. Claire had completely forgotten about her. She hoped she was okay.

  “So you need that, right?” For a moment she thought Tamiel meant Abby. She needed Abby like a hole in the head, but Tamiel pointed to Carothann. “You can’t engage the magic unless you have a wand?”

  “No. Not even a little bit.”

  Tamiel nodded. “That’s right. It totally makes sense. You’re part human, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And the other part?”

  “No one knows. A whole bunch of us just popped up in France four centuries ago. And then someone leaked the story of Cinderella to that French author Charles Perrault, although I can’t tell you how many facts he got wrong, and we were outed. The name totally kills us, though. We couldn’t have less in common with fairies, and these days it’s super hard to be a godmother to some of these spoiled girls.” Claire bit her lip, realizing she was beginning to ramble. Silence hung in the air between them.

  “So where do the wands come from?”

  “If you become an apprentice, you get to go to the head office in Paris. You walk in and a wand calls to you.”

  “So that’s the only place?”

  “Yeah, I mean, there’re rumors that there’re wands out in the wild that call to the truly deserving. But I’ve never actually met anyone that’s happened to.”

  “What makes someone deserving?”

  Claire shrugged. “I’m the last person to ask.”

  Silence filled the room. Tamiel reached out her hand just shy of Carothann. “May I?”

  Claire hesitated. She had just divulged some of the FGC’s innermost secrets, and this could be the end game of an elaborate ploy. But Carothann had trusted her earlier. It was the best judge of character she knew. So, for reasons she didn’t entirely understand herself, she dropped the wand into the angel’s hand.

  Just like earlier in Frankie’s room, Carothann didn’t buck or spark. It just lay there as if nothing were wrong.

  “Oh, now I see.” Tamiel stared at the wand. “The FGC constricts the magic with a filter. Mmm. Doesn’t that cut you off at the knees in the field?”

  “There’s no filter on it.” Confusion and indignation rose in her. She snatched it back.

  “Yes, there is.” She pointed near the top. “Right about here. Surely you feel it straining sometimes?”

  She had, but she didn’t want to admit Tamiel knew her wand better than she did.

  “Look. You don’t have to tell me anything.”

  Claire stared at the spot Tamiel had been pointing to. She saw nothing.

  “I get that there’s this thing,” Tamiel waved her hand back and forth, “between our organizations—at least from your side. And you can keep to yourself whatever you want. But you did know, right?”

  Claire struggled only for an instant. “No, I didn’t know.” And then, “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Maybe there is a reason,” Tamiel said.

  “Maybe.” But what, Claire couldn’t fathom.

  “When did yours break?” Tamiel didn’t wait for an answer. “Your filter, it’s broken. This explains what happened at Frankie’s. You were on full power. Was that the first time?”

  “Yes. There sure was something different about it and us.” Claire pushed the betrayal she was feeling from the FGC into a little compartment in her mind to deal with later. “Usually, it just receives and amplifies my thoughts, but for the first time I felt like we were a real team, and it was more than a tool.”

  “See, we can use that to our advantage. You have a mighty weapon there, and the only demons who can reveal that are dead.” Tamiel ran a finger down the shaft, and it lifted ever so slightly to meet her touch.

  Oh God, not you too. Down there, Carth.

  “It’s pretty special.”

  “It’s weird.” Claire shook her head. “It doesn’t usually take to anyone else.”

  “I told you. I’m good folk.”

  A thousand contradictory thoughts swirled in
Claire’s mind. But she trusted Carothann with a bond that soared beyond thoughts.

  “Maybe you are.”

  “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  “What?”

  “Pushing aside other people’s truths. There’s more out there than what the FGC tells you. But I’m not about to start doing the same thing. Controlling your magic or telling you what to think and all.” She leaped from the couch. “Do you need to eat or to sleep? I don’t do either, and sometimes I find these schedules very confusing.”

  At the mention of eating, Claire’s stomach rumbled. “Yes, both.”

  “All right, let’s get you fed and then into bed.”

  Heat rose to Claire’s cheeks, but Tamiel clearly hadn’t meant anything risqué by it. She was bounding into the kitchen and calling over her shoulder, “We have a big day tomorrow. You need to be well rested.”

  Claire followed but stopped at the door. Actually, she was more tired than hungry. It had been quite the day. Two battles, a healing touch, the revelation about Carothann. Too much to take in. Tamiel was right; she needed to eat something and go to bed. “What will you do while I sleep?”

  Tamiel had her hands in the fridge. Clinking noises followed as her head bobbed up and down. “What I always do. Watch over my charge.”

  Dang. So she wasn’t staying.

  Tamiel popped out with a green apple in her hand and cut into Claire’s thoughts. “This looks good.” She had almost dropped it into Claire’s hand when she snatched it back. “Or should it be red? Is this one bad?”

  “No.” Claire smiled and reached out for the apple. “They’re good in both colors.”

  “Just like the truth. It comes in all sorts of colors too.”

  Claire nodded, although apples were a lot different than a lifetime of knowledge shoved into her by the FGC.

  But this she did know. Twenty-four hours ago, the idea of an angel in her home rummaging through her fridge would have given her the heebie-jeebies, to say the least.

  Now Tamiel stood in the kitchen with that goofy smile on her face as she watched Claire sink her teeth into the crisp fruit. Maybe Tamiel was right. The GA and the FGC were like apples. There were red ones and green ones. Different flavors of help.