by Erica Ridley
“I don’t know what to do.” Her voice shook. It was the first time he’d ever heard her say I don’t know. Maybe the first time she’d ever felt indecision. Her life had always been black and white, good and evil, rules and commandments. She glanced behind, saw the bus had already come too far to turn around, the bridge too imbalanced to hold for more than a few more seconds. The kids already screaming, terrified. Fear laced through him. “Javier, I—”
“I love you, too!” he shouted back, motioning for her to hurry. “Save the children!”
With a final tortured glance in his direction, she turned and flew—literally flew—to the teetering bus, just as the bridge disappeared beneath it.
It was the last thing he saw before the ground opened up beneath him and swallowed him whole.
Chapter 14
Sarah concentrated every feather of her being on holding the bus steady. She’d gotten there in time to save the children from falling, but it was going to take all her focus to keep them safe.
There were too many variables, too many unknowns. The bridge was gone, which was actually one less thing to worry about, but the bus was packed to the gills with a dozen sobbing children and one terrified father who didn’t seem the least bit comforted at being suspended in midair over a forty-foot drop filled with jagged rocks and a deadly current.
She would’ve already set the bus down safely, except she couldn’t find anywhere safe, couldn’t seem to do anything safely. The shore had fallen into the river, and what was left of the road was already chasing the rain down into the currents.
And now instead of having one soul to keep safe, she had thirteen. Thirteen personalities she didn’t know, thirteen sudden movements she couldn’t predict. Thirteen precious wildcards that she needed to get to safety as soon as possible so that she could go protect Javier.
She was going to have to set the bus down on the far side of the river, on the side they’d just come from. It was the only way.
No. Bad idea.
Separating the children from their mothers, from their frantic, panicked families, would cause much more harm than good.
But what was she supposed to do, then? Fly them to safety in the middle of the village? Who did she think she was, Superman? Toast of the Daily Planet? She was no hero. She was a very scared, very solitary angel who had broken every rule she’d sworn to uphold in order to save the lives of the people inside this bus.
Screw it, she was flying them to the village, even if it cost her job. Sarah couldn’t let them die. The Heavenly Council could deal with their memories later. She flapped her wings. Time for a true miracle.
While the bus was levitating relatively safely, she stabilized the sides of the river as best she could. She couldn’t undo time, but she could stop the landslide from getting worse. And more.
Maybe she didn’t need to fly beneath the bus in her elf costume and best Superman pose, but hey. It was Christmas.
But now that the bus was safe on land, there was no extra time for holding hands and drying tears. Javier was still out there. As long as he’d held on to that tree...
She missed it at first, because she couldn’t find her landmark. Any landmark.
Couldn’t find the tree.
Couldn’t see Javier.
She saw the sinkhole, obviously she saw the sinkhole, but it wasn’t like Javier was in the sinkhole, no, nothing like that at all. She’d seen the sinkhole, and seen Javier safely on the other side, right there next to the tree with all the presents.
So where the hell was he? And where the hell was the tree?
It wasn’t a big tree, okay, sure. It was a small tree. Slender tree. Unassuming, really. Nothing special. Except it was very special. It was the Christmas tree, the one the kids had helped decorate, the one the presents were under, the one where Javier had teased her with the mistletoe.
It couldn’t be gone.
She flew around, and around, and around, and almost didn’t see it because of the rain or the tears or whatever was in her eyes, but there was a sparkle in the mud, a definite sparkle, something... something sparkly and Christmassy and joyous, something that shouldn’t be buried in the mud at all.
She dropped like a stone, landed hard. She dug in her hands, flinging mud and dirt over her shoulders like a wild thing.
Silver bells. Tiny bells, long strand. Javier’s garland for the Christmas tree.
She didn’t even recognize the mewling, haunted whimpers coming from her throat. She had to dig. Where there was garland, there were presents. Where there were presents, there was Javier.
There had to be.
Her shoulders ached, but it didn’t matter. She’d dig until her arms fell off if she had to.
She would’ve miracled up a shovel except she didn’t want to risk hurting him, with no way to know how close he might be to the surface, or if he was hurt. He better not be hurt. She’d kill him if he was hurt. She dug with her hands because it was safer for Javier, even if her fingernails were torn and her knuckles bled freely. She couldn’t even feel it. Couldn’t feel anything, except a great yawning emptiness where there used to be light.
His hand. She’d found his hand!
Dirt flew until his hand was in hers at last. His fingers were cold, too cold.
No, no, not too cold, she assured herself. Of course they were cold. Obviously he was cold. She herself was chilled to the bone, to the soul, shivering and shaking as if she’d never be warm again. His fingers weren’t shaking. They were stiff.
She kept digging.
His face! She’d found his face. His beautiful, beloved, blue-lipped face.
Her arms kept digging, because they didn’t yet know what her eyes already knew, what her heart refused to admit.
No.
He had to be alive. He had to be, because she’d told him she couldn’t undo death, she’d been very, very clear on that point, and there was no way he would leave her, just up and die after a thousand lonely years of waiting for someone exactly like him to fill her heart fuller than she’d ever imagined it could be.
So of course he wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead because he was the other half of her soul and she was still alive, and fate would never be so cruel as to leave her alive and him dead, just minutes after he’d said I love you.
She should’ve said it back. She’d meant to say it back. She should’ve been the one to say it first, dammit. She should’ve said it over and over again until he was so tired of hearing about how much she loved him, he would’ve covered her with kisses and then made love to her.
Her eyes fell to his blue, blue lips.
There would be no kisses. Not anymore.
He wasn’t breathing. Probably hadn’t been breathing since the earth rose up around him.
She didn’t want to think about that, didn’t want to think about anything, except maybe the earth rising up to swallow her, too. She wouldn’t mind not breathing. It would be much better than continuing on for eternity with a despair so deep it felt like the lightning-crusted sky had ripped out her very soul.
“Seventy,” she whispered brokenly. “You were supposed to live to be seventy.”
And it was her fault he hadn’t.
She’d made a choice. She’d chosen saving the bus over saving him, and now he was gone and he wasn’t coming back and she’d never even gotten to say I love you even though she’d been thinking it forever.
Her head was spinning, her breaths coming much too fast. But she couldn’t stop digging his lifeless body out of the muck. He didn’t belong here. Not like this.
She’d tried to make him stay home. She’d tried so hard, dammit. And he— And he—
He’d said I love you, too, which meant he knew, he’d figured out on his own that she loved him too, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t wanted to say it, to have him hear her say it, now that she wasn’t invisible anymore. Now that she was finally Sarah.
But it was too late. He wasn’t Javier anymore.
He was gone.
No one could undo death, not even the Heavenly Council, but there were other choices besides languishing on for eternity, now that she’d known true love. If death was the final answer, then let it be hers, too. So be it. But first, she had some choice words to share with the Council. A threat. And a promise.
She would make them an offer they couldn’t refuse.
Chapter 15
Her wings shaking with grief and anger, Sarah took to the skies and flew straight toward the Governing Council of Heavenly Beings.
When she crossed the first barrier, Nether-Netherland stretched out in all directions. Its familiarity did little to calm her fears. Colorful tents and glittering poofs of pixie dust indicated the bimonthly bazaar underway. Disgruntled genies picketed for freedom in front of bored riot trolls. Flying horses soared high overhead.
In other words, her homeland was exactly the same as every other month, the same as when she first left a thousand years earlier. For all its magic and miracles, Nether-Netherland followed an archaic set of unforgiving rules, and those rules rarely bent for anyone. Sarah fully recognized how difficult it was going to be for her to change the minds of immortal angels. If effecting change were easy, djinns would have their freedom and working for transportation services wouldn’t be synonymous with “pack animal.”
But it didn’t matter. She still had to try.
She touched down on the marble steps to the Governing Council’s floating palace and slipped in through the front door. An immense antechamber filled with endless rows of waiting supplicants faded into seeming infinity. There was no other choice but to sit and wait. The Council didn’t take appointments or offer a numbered ticketing system. They knew each angel was there as soon as he or she walked in the door, and they heard each case in whichever order they chose.
None of which made waiting any easier. Especially if the waiting took years. Or centuries.
In some ways, Sarah supposed she had it better than Nether-Netherland’s non-angelic citizens, who fought drawn-out legal battles in courts of law with prosecutors and judges and government-appointed legal counsel. Instead of wasting time with gathering evidence and presenting testimony and hand-picking a jury of their peers, angels simply went before the Tribunal, whose word was the final say.
Then again, she supposed there was something to be said for due process. This would be her voice alone against the three highest-ranking angels in the heavens. That is, if she ever got the chance to speak. She half-suspected the Tribunal’s strategy was to keep claimants on ice in the waiting area until they’d completely forgotten whatever it was that—
“Sarah Phimm, level two. Miss Phimm, please report to level two.”
Sarah leapt to her feet, her heart thundering. She’d barely touched her feathers to an empty seat before her name was called. Disconcerted, she made her way to the second level. Maybe this was a sign. An indication that the Tribunal was open to alternate viewpoints, to hearing other perspectives. A harbinger of good things to come. She only wanted one thing: Javier. Maybe they were calling her so quickly because there was some loophole, some miracle the Governing Council could perform to make him whole and happy once again. Hope flooded her veins.
As soon as she reached the second level, her hopes plummeted.
Level two was a single vast chamber, so wide and so deep that its boundaries blurred into shadow, cold as a tomb, barren as the tundra. Not a place for miracles. The cavernous space was devoid of all decor, functional or otherwise, save for three tall pillars, upon which stood the three angels of the Tribunal:
Abram Junior, cofounder of the Heavenly Alliance of Guardian Angels.
Raphael, archangel and elected representative of the cherubim workers’ union.
Dom, conductor of celestial virtues and presiding chief of the current Tribunal.
“Take a seat, Miss Phimm.” Raphael’s low voice boomed through the hollow emptiness and disappeared into the shadowy perimeter without so much as an echo.
Before the three white pillars was a small stone bench. Presumably, this was Sarah’s assigned seat.
She sat.
Abram Junior was her boss’s boss, in the sense that he governed over the principalities who managed the guardian angels’ end-of-month debriefings. She’d vaguely realized he would’ve been receiving copies of all her monthly reports, but although she recognized him and the other angels from various industry holidays or Tribunal campaign buttons, this was the first time she’d ever come face-to-face with any of them.
She’d never felt smaller or more insignificant.
Partly due to the power play of the three of them literally standing upon high, while she hunkered down on a lowly stone bench. But mostly it was because, yikes. Raphael. Dom. Abram Junior. The three most powerful angels in all of Nether-Netherland and beyond.
She cleared her throat and tried to think of an opening line. One that would somehow simultaneously convey her awe and respect of them and their positions, while inoffensively (yet effectively) pointing out the need for immediate change and a reversal of—
“I presume you know why we’ve called this meeting.” Dom’s harshly angled face turned toward her, made all the more terrifying for its complete lack of expression.
Sarah swallowed. Crap. They had called this meeting? That meant they weren’t remotely interested in her unsolicited advice and self-serving demands. Worse, that meant they wanted to talk about—
“Javier,” she whispered.
Raphael inclined his golden-crowned head. “Yes. Javier Rodriguez. Your assignment.”
She straightened her shoulders. “He’s more than an assignment. He’s my—”
“You were instructed to keep him safe and alive until his seventieth year,” Dom reminded her coldly. “Is he safe, Miss Phimm? Or alive?”
Her heart clenched, and fresh tears clogged her throat. “No. He is not. Which is why—”
“Are you aware of the rule prohibiting guardian angels from appearing in physical form to their clients; visually, aurally, tangibly, or otherwise?”
“Yes, I—”
“Although perhaps not stated using detailed examples of every possible variation, did your comprehension of that rule include a correlated prohibition of interacting verbally, physically, and sexually with the assigned human under your protection?”
All three of them fixed her with penetrating stares.
“I...” Sarah’s face flamed and her stomach churned. They didn’t interrupt this time, though she fervently wished they would. This was not the direction she’d intended the conversation to go, and it was obvious by the phrasing of the question that the answer was already known and judgment had been passed.
“He’s my one true love,” she mumbled, then rose to her feet and stood tall upon the low stone bench. “He’s my One True Love,” she repeated loudly, confidently, letting the truth of the words condemn or absolve her as they may.
Rafael cocked a brow. “Do you think such a detail positions you above the law, Miss Phimm?”
“I know it does,” she answered fiercely. “And so do you. Nothing in this world or any other has or shall have the authority to usurp or override true love.”
Dom’s smile was terrifying. “Are you saying the two of you were in love at the moment you first became visible to him?”
“Well... no. I—”
“Were the two of you in love at the moment you first began performing miracles that affected more than just your assigned client, thereby knowingly and willfully going against the rules you had sworn to uphold?”
“I don’t know! Both the question and the situation are unfair.” Her voice shook with anger. “Does the Council expect angels to stand idly by and let in
nocent children suffer simply because their names weren’t assigned to a list?”
Raphael’s blue eyes glittered. “Do you know why the Council only assigns one name per guardian angel, Miss Phimm?”
“Honestly?” Sarah’s hands curled into fists. Why did they bother asking questions when her answers clearly didn’t matter? They had no intention of changing, now or ever. She bit out, “I have no idea.”
Abram Junior’s low voice sliced through the resulting chill. “The rule is in place to enable guardian angels to stay focused. Fragmented focus is what causes mistakes.”
“Mistakes like the death of assigned clients.” Dom’s expression was pointed. “Javier Rodriguez was under your protection, Miss Phimm. His death was your mistake.”
“It was not a mistake,” she replied softly. “True, I neither wanted nor chose for him to die, but nor could I allow a busload of children to fall to their deaths right in front of me. Saving their lives wasn’t a mistake. It was a choice. One of the hardest I’ve ever had to face, but one that I deserved to be able to make.”
Raphael smirked. “You value an individual snap judgment over the combined wisdom of the Governing Council of Heavenly Beings?”
Sarah’s feathers trembled. “I value the lives of innocents more than I value bureaucracy, yes. Do you know what I’ve learned after nearly a millennium looking after humans?”
“Do tell us, Miss Phimm.”
She straightened her spine. “Although their lives are but a blink compared to ours, the vast majority of them would give up every one of those paltry years in a heartbeat if it meant saving the life of someone they loved. Some humans, whether they be firefighters or preschool teachers or complete strangers, are willing to lay down their lives for people they don’t even know, simply because they believe all life is precious. Are you saying the Governing Council believes otherwise? If all life is precious, then the rules are wrong, and it is past time for a change.”
Rafael’s smile was chilling. “You realize we cannot continue to allow you to operate as a guardian angel.”