The Angel's Fire

by Holley Trent

  “I’ve…always taken precautions,” Tarik hedged. The conversation wound down without much further explication and Tamatsu walked off in search of the object of his obsession or affection or possibly both.

  Tarik let out a breath and checked his watch.

  That time of day, Angela was probably readying for dinner. He’d already seen Angela, though. She was sweet but growing increasingly frustrated with his comings and goings.

  “Should I not return until you ask?” He’d taken her some out-of-season fruit she’d been craving.

  She’d barely looked up from the computer screen that had been occupying her so thoroughly when she’d sighed and said, “You know I don’t want that, Papa. I’m just…” She’d shrugged and called over to Elizabeth. “Want to help me peel these? I want a tart. Let’s make a tart.”

  Tarik dreaded the day she broke out of her pretty little prison. The world would consume her.

  Tarik had just left his perch at the middle school. That was how he spent his time when he wasn’t working contract gigs—figuring out ways to annoy the ever-loving shit out of Lola. He could never get genuine emotion out of her unless she was annoyed.

  He waited at the bench, stretching his legs out in front of him and crossing them at the ankles. Again, he checked his watch. 12:15.

  He whistled, rousing the attention of the Cougar in the food truck parked nearby.

  “What’s up with you, man?” Tiny called out.

  “Just waiting.”

  “You’re a scary motherfucker when you’re just waiting. Sure you don’t want something to eat?”

  Tarik glanced at his watch once more. 12:16.

  “Hmm.” He stood and ambled over to the window. “What did Lola last order?”

  Tiny rubbed his chin and considered the query. Of course he knew who Lola was—not just that she was Cougar-affiliated, but that she was the reason Cougars existed. She’d had to out herself in recent years due to certain local paranormal disturbances. Tiny was one of Tito’s best friends in the Cougar group, so naturally, he was in the loop more than most.

  “She don’t really have favorites so it’s hard to remember,” Tiny said. “She’d eat it all if she had the time.”

  “Give me whatever’s good today.”

  Tiny huffed with indignation. “It’s all good.”

  Tarik gave him a quelling glare.

  “Fine, be like that. I’ll pick out some things.”

  12:18.

  12:19.

  12:20.

  Lola came storming down the street like a bat out of hell wearing a scowl…and her kindly social worker face. She changed her appearance for each of her jobs. Most people in Maria assumed each belonged to a wholly different person.

  Grinning, Tarik accepted the food bag from the Cougar, paid the man, and hooked his arm through Lola’s before she could get a word out.

  “Quit stalking me,” she spat on a whispered rush of air. “I saw you perched on the school roof with Tamatsu. You have to—”

  He thrust the bag into her free hand. “You’re just hungry, Butterfly. Eat that and the world will seem like a brighter place.”

  “I hate you.” She opened the bag, gave him an inscrutable side-eye, and then cleared her throat. She held the bag a little tighter against her body and let him steer her toward a lesser-used park near the yarn store. The park was generally only occupied between nine AM and naptime. That was when most of Maria’s stay-at-home-parents made their daily vigils into the sunshine.

  She folded herself onto a picnic table bench and unpacked the contents of the bag.

  He didn’t feel like sitting. He paced nearby, stretching and retracting his wings.

  Five minutes had passed before she slowed down her eating and looked at him. “People are whispering.”

  “About?”

  “You. Me.” She grimaced. “All of the versions of me. The rumor is that you have a type.”

  “Angry Mexican women is my type?”

  She rolled her eyes and took a bite of burrito.

  “When you go see Angela, they all think you’re away at yet another of your numerous jobs,” he said.

  “That wasn’t my intent, but I am pleased that is the case.”

  “Do you enjoy the work?”

  She was a licensed social worker and psychologist in New Mexico and several other states. When she’d found the time to take the classes, he couldn’t even guess.

  “I do. Cuts into my time with Cruz now, though.”

  “Ah. Angela asked about her niece this morning. She wants to meet her.”

  Tito had fathered a child with a lovely New Englander whose mother’s family hailed from Portugal. A fair quarter of Maria’s population had informed Tito that Cruz wasn’t a name for little Mexican girls. He hadn’t had a damned thing to do with naming her and her mother most definitely didn’t have him in mind when she did.

  His and December’s rocky coming-together may have been almost as interesting as Tarik’s enduring conflict with Lola.

  Lola set down her food. Leaning her forearms onto the table edge, she stared at some spot across the little park and worked her lips side to side in a rhythm Tarik couldn’t discern.

  He put a knee against the opposite bench and pressed his palms to the tabletop. “You need to tell Tito.”

  “I will.”

  “When?”

  With a jerky shrug, she resumed eating. She didn’t have much time for lunch. Thirty minutes at most, and then she’d have to be back at the school.

  “I’ll make you a bargain, hmm?” he said gently. “You tell Tito. I’ll tell Tamatsu.”

  “Hardly a fair bargain. Tamatsu has no voice. You wouldn’t be able to hear him yell at you.”

  “That may be so, but his cold shoulder is one of the loudest I’ve ever encountered. He really is sensitive.”

  “He’s a good friend.”

  “Yes.”

  “Must be nice.”

  “What do you mean? You have friends.”

  She emitted the tiniest of scoffs and shook her head. “I would love to be able to count those who know most of my past as my friends, but that would be a dangerous thing.”

  “Why not let them make the choice?”

  Another shrug from her, but slower to come.

  He was certain that she counted Elizabeth, at the very least, as a friend, but he wasn’t going to press. He knew things were different with her, being knitted into a place, whereas he was a drifter.

  He put his hands in his pockets and straightened up at the sensation of cold, smooth stone against his fingertips. “Ah.” Revealing it with a grin of triumph, he handed the small idol to her.

  Her brow creased deeply as she held the little goddess figurine in her hands. “Where did you find that?”

  “Dig site near Mexico City. I dug it out of the rubble before the archeologists could find it.”

  She turned it over and studied the backside, rubbing her thumb against a little nick in the neck.

  “It is you, yes?”

  “Some version. Or some conflation of myself and another. Thank you. I am certain Cruz would like to have it.”

  “Not Angela?”

  Lola scoffed. “I offered her many relics. She would prefer to trade them for her freedom.”

  “She’s as stubborn as her mother.”

  Lola didn’t argue the point. That surprised him, but perhaps the point wasn’t really arguable. If Angela were as stubborn as her father, she would have already found a way to leave, consequences be damned.

  When she’d finished the meal that could have kept a burly longshoreman moving for two days, she discarded the trash, straightened her floral print dress, and tidied her hair bun.

  Her missed her face—the other face—but he held his tongue on the matter. Her body was hers to do with as she pleased.

  He hoped that one day, when they could trust each other, she’d share it with him again. He didn’t know if they ever would, though. Perhaps they’d never u
nderstand each other.

  “Back to work you go,” he murmured.

  She nodded and tucked the idol into her purse.

  He smoothed a swath of her hair behind her ear as she walked past. Wrong color. Not enough blue in the black.

  She stopped. Her mouth opened. Closed. Then she started on walking again.

  “Say it,” he said in a rush. He’d gone more than a century being starved of her words. Enough was enough. “Whatever it is, say it.”

  “It is…not important.”

  “Any words you speak are important to me.”

  “Some things are not my business.”

  “Let me decide if they are or aren’t.”

  For a moment, she stood with her back turned to him, fidgeting with the straps of her canvas tote bag. He didn’t think she would speak, but then she asked, quietly, haltingly, “When you…left…and returned, you smelled of—”

  “Yes, I smelled of death,” he confessed, equally quiet. “It lingers, hmm?”

  A slow nod from her.

  “You have always scolded me for interfering when I should not, but some things must be disrupted. Do you understand that?”

  “I suppose,” she whispered. “After what I did to the sheriff… For the longest time, I shut myself off from people who cared. I was going to leave here. I’d broken my own rules. Reacting is one thing, but I lashed out in excess.” She turned to him and there was sadness in her dark eyes. “Sometimes, I cannot tell where the lines are drawn, and so I stay as far back from them as I can. That way, no one gets hurt. That way, nothing is ever my fault.”

  “I constantly risk fault, Butterfly. I have no fear of it.”

  “That is the difference between us, then. You are not so public a creature that the blame will erode your name until people forget you altogether. Me—”

  “You, you have people to either serve or ignore.” He crouched to look into her eyes. “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “I may seem oblivious to your struggles, but I am coming to understand what reputation means and how it impacts you and your family. You try to be good, don’t you? Because people will judge you harshly if you are not, and then Tito will bear the brunt of that, and Cruz.”

  “And Angela.” Lola fidgeted the straps some more and turned back to the sidewalk. “Who did you kill? When you left, I mean.”

  “Some other fallen ones. That is why the stench on me lingered. Their essences are so much stronger than those of men.”

  “What did they do?”

  He laughed because it all seemed so ridiculous now. “They disrupted the order. I killed them because they were disrupters. Seems ironic, hmm?”

  “Disrupters how?”

  He didn’t want to get into it. It’d piss him off all over again and there were no more of them left for him to kill. He’d have to find some other way to sate his bloodlust if he got pissed. He would much rather find a nice bench in Maria to sit on and heckle lovesick Tamatsu from than to go around killing things. “They targeted some lower level angels whose jobs were to assist children and others who are unable to be independent.”

  “Like Cruz?”

  Cruz had a watch angel. His name was Mikey and he’d been made a guardian angel after dying in a boating accident. He was a little annoying in a hippy surfer kind of way and was scared as shit of Tarik. Tarik hadn’t yet done anything to disabuse him of that feeling. Mikey’s fear was not only hilarious, but it somehow helped to douse his bloodlust. If being silently reproved by pesky lower tier angels was the cure for his curse, he would gladly accept the torment.

  “Yes,” he said. “Like Cruz.”

  Lola nodded slowly and started the short walk back to the middle school.

  “Well,” she said after a few feet. “Maybe that’s okay. I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Take your time, Butterfly.” He suspected she’d already done all the thinking she needed to.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Current Day Maria

  “So, you two are talking, is what you’re saying?” Angela’s smirk held hints of Tarik that always made Lola sigh deeply.

  She finished trimming the split ends of the woman’s hair and shooed her away so she could sweep up the deck. “Why are you so anxious to get us in the same room?” Lola asked her as Angela paced the stone path by the deck.

  “Because I’ve never seen you in the same place at once. I’d like to be able to sit in the same room with my parents at least once in my life.”

  “You plan on leaving it somewhere soon?”

  “No!” Angela laughed and eased onto the swing stationed near the beach path. “Gods only know how long I’ll live, but that doesn’t mean I want to wait and wait to have all my family in one place.”

  Lola stopped sweeping.

  All her family, she’d said. That meant Yaotl, too. Cruz was an adaptable child. She rolled with the punches and was never confused by the fact that her grandmother wore different faces at different times. She had her own magical instincts and rarely questioned some things humans would. She just knew. Like her mother, December, Cruz was a people person and a nurturer, and wouldn’t be distressed at all by the circumstances.

  “I’m sure she’ll work something out,” Elizabeth called through the open window. “Give her some time.”

  Angela looked doubtful, but she didn’t say anything.

  Lola kissed her cheek and gathered up her purse and shawl.

  “Having lunch with Tito, huh?” Angela asked.

  “Hard to catch up with him nowadays. I think I see you more than I see him.”

  “Fair.”

  Lola didn’t remark on the note of scolding in her child’s tone. They’d be quibbling for hours if she brought it up, and she was starting to suspect that Angela enjoyed the grueling repartee.

  She wrapped her shawl around her neck and vanished back to Maria.

  No sooner did she land in her quiet house did Tarik appear in a white flash.

  Reflexively, she swung hard and hit him with her purse. “Stop doing that!”

  “It’s only taken me five hundred years to figure out how to consistently track you,” he said, unbothered. “Give me some credit for my hard work, Butterfly. I was just about to follow you to Bermuda.”

  Lola set her belongings on the kitchen table and scoffed. “Angela was in quite a mood. Seems to be taking a darker turn as of late.”

  “A phase, perhaps?”

  “Angela doesn’t have phases, or at least hasn’t before now. Maybe she’s been spending too much time on her computer. She claims her friends live in there, whatever that means. I should ask Elizabeth if she’ll open up to her about whoever they are because she certainly isn’t particularly forthcoming with me.” Lola found the chicken and rice casserole in the refrigerator and slid it into the oven. Yaotl didn’t expect a home-cooked meal during lunchtime but she’d been anxious the night before and had needed something to do to occupy herself. The big house had been so quiet since Yaotl, December, and Cruz had moved into their own place. They’d stayed with her temporarily while waiting for a suitable real estate option to become available for them. She missed the noise.

  She transferred her purse to the hook near the laundry room door and started to drape the shawl over, too, but Tarik took it before she could.

  He rolled the corners between his fingers and stared at her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “What became of that mantilla I bought for you back in Mexico City?”

  “I—” Her impulse was to tell him she’d finally thrown it away, but she held the retort in check. She didn’t like letting him win, but they weren’t in competition. He wasn’t going to gloat. He never had. She took a breath and gently rescued her shawl from him. “For a long time after you last asked, I kept it stored. I put it away where I couldn’t see it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was still too good to throw away and because I didn’t want you to consider my keeping it a
trophy.”

  “I bought it because you looked like you wanted it.”

  “I did. And I did wear it, despite what I had you believe before.” She twirled the frayed edge of one corner around her index finger as she tried to digest the emotions. Sometimes, she wondered if she’d gone into psychology more to figure out if she were fixable than to fix other people. She still wasn’t sure, but at least she no longer berated herself for adopting certain human weaknesses. She embraced them.

  “When it was time for me to move on from Mexico City,” she said, “I wore it proudly. I needed to look nice. I was playing a part and wanted to look monied. Later, I wore it so much that eventually, the lace went thin as spiderwebs. I salvaged what I could. The edges, mostly. I wrapped all those bits around a spool and put it in my trunk before we moved to the ranch from the saloon.”

  “Why?”

  He was asking her to bare her soul and didn’t even know it. Some timid part of her recoiled against the sharing, while another one—a louder, stronger one—insisted that she’d feel freer if she did. She missed feeling free.

  “It was the memory, I suppose.” She hooked her modern shawl with her purse and set about the kitchen collecting dishes and utensils for lunch. “I…felt a certain way when you gave it to me, and perhaps the feeling wasn’t entirely negative.”

  “That’s hardly a compliment, Butterfly.”

  She concentrated on putting the plates, napkins, and utensils in precise and proper order, not wanting to look at him. If she looked at him, she couldn’t be held responsible for what she did or said. She couldn’t help that he was the one creature on the planet who could really hurt her in a way no one else could. He was the only one she could look at and have her body stage a pitiful hormonal revolt over.

  And the only one she wanted to touch a certain kind of way.

  “Coming from me,” she murmured uneasily, “it is a compliment.”

  He chuckled.

  She could feel the heat of him looming immediately behind her. Too close. If she were to stand up straighter, she’d be pressed against his front. That was a memory she wasn’t certain she wished to refresh.