She was the woman who made him smile.
“My entire life is shrouded in darkness and pain. You make me feel calm.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
She turned back around and continued painting, and he stood behind her. He placed his hands on her shoulders as she moved, and she didn’t complain. She didn’t push him away, and he liked that. He liked her.
“You like to help people,” he pointed out. She was painting a picture of a young woman: a girl. He was sure she thought her painting was dark and mysterious, sad and troubled, but it looked hopeful to him. It looked sweet.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It’s not. On the contrary, it’s quite wonderful. It’s also quite rare.”
“Plenty of people help others,” she shook her head. “But it’s usually because they’re going to get something for it.”
“You don’t seem to want anyone to thank you.”
“What? At the community center? No. Those kids don’t get much help in their world. Teaching a class a few times a week is the least I can do for them. They’ve given me so much.”
“What have they given you?”
“Hope. Peace. Kindness. Friendship.” She paused, looking at the canvas. She reached out with her finger and smeared a little bit of the paint, giving the girl’s clothes a slightly altered effect. “Things aren’t always what we think they are, not at first.”
“No? What did you think when you first saw me?”
“I thought you were a troublemaker,” she admitted. “I also thought it was strange to see you in my class. No offense, but you aren’t my usual demographic.”
“Charming and irresistible?”
“Sure,” she laughed, and he smiled. Serenity sat her paintbrush down and looked at the painting she had started. “I’ll have to finish it later.”
“I’m sure you will.”
“I need to wash my hands now.”
“Of course.”
“You have to move to let me by,” she whispered, and Wrath nodded, but didn’t move. She looked at him like she was noticing him for the very first time, and then Serenity went up on her toes and kissed Wrath.
Heat soared through his body, like this was the first time he’d ever been touched by a pretty girl he liked. He felt young again, and free. Careless. Suddenly, he could fly. He had wings, and it was because of the lost fallen.
She pulled away and smiled at him. Then she pressed her hand to his cheek. He could feel the paint pressing against his skin, but he didn’t care that he’d have a mark.
“Oh, Wrath,” she whispered, and then Serenity went into the kitchen.
***
Serenity didn’t know why she had kissed him. He was no good for her, and she was no good for him. She was no good for anyone, apparently, if everything he’d said was true.
And unfortunately, she could tell it was true.
There were magic users who weren’t just witches anymore. They were hunters now, and they would do anything to get their prey. They would go to the ends of the Earth if it meant killing a fallen, and Serenity wondered how she’d managed to escape from them for so long.
She’d avoided churches, she knew, but it was more than that.
She’d avoided people.
Oh, she taught her classes and she knew the workers at the community center, but she didn’t get close to people. She didn’t truly engage in their lives. Not anymore. Not since she’d lost Oliver.
She washed her hands, saw the shades of blue and green swirling in the sink, and she wondered what would happen now. She could never go back to who she had been as an angel, to who she’d been before she lost Oliver, but she could move forward.
“Art is what makes me feel human,” she said. Wrath was standing in the doorway behind her. She turned around, facing him. “Nothing else does.”
“Drinking?”
“No.”
“Dancing?”
“No.”
“Making love?” He took a step closer.
“No.”
“Only art?”
“Only art.”
“Then you need to paint,” he said simply, as if it made the most perfect sense in the world. “You need to create, Serenity. You need to find what makes you human because there is no going back for people like us, no going back to who we used to be. This is who we are now, and we have to get used to it.”
“It’s hard,” she whispered.
“You miss your family?”
“Sometimes.”
“Was it worth it?”
She didn’t even hesitate.
“Yes,” she whispered. “It was worth it.”
He handed her a brush and smiled at her. “Then paint, Serenity.”
Chapter 12
Weeks passed. Autumn grew colder with each passing day, and soon Serenity’s long-sleeves seemed normal: not strange. Wrath listened to the people who loitered around the center, but none of them paid much attention to Serenity. She was just normal. Ordinary. She was an authority figure and some people liked that and some people hated it. None of that made any difference to him.
Still, as each day passed, he grew more and more nervous. What if someone realized who she was? What if someone noticed? No one could find out who she really was. No one could learn the truth about Serenity.
He knew the odds of a magic user finding her were, realistically, quite small, but if it happened, he needed to be ready.
They both did.
Serenity listened when Wrath warned her of the danger, and they started taking self-defense classes together. He had been a fighter for centuries, but Serenity had not. She hadn’t been a warrior. She hadn’t even been a guardian. She had simply been an angel who fell in love, and that was now her greatest weakness.
After classes, they would spar together, practicing the things they learned. They would fight each night and then during the day, she would go to teach private art lessons and he would go to the kitchen. His attitude improved, as did his work ethic. Angelica noticed a difference. Everyone did.
“You know,” she said, leaning in the doorway one afternoon. “I’ve been getting a lot of compliments about your cooking.”
“Is that right?” He didn’t look up from the meal he was plating. He’d perfected his grilled salmon, and was learning how to make different sauces for it. He wanted to help Angelica expand the menu. She could have hired an experienced chef, but she had chosen to give him a chance. He owed her this much. He would give her his all.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were cooking like a man in love, but that’s not you, is it, John Smith?”
He looked up at her and slowly shook his head. “I suppose not,” he told her.
“No,” she repeated. “I suppose not. Well, whatever’s responsible for this change,” she said. “Keep it up. The customers like it, which means I like it, which means you’ve still got a job.”
She left the kitchen and he let out a sigh of relief. He had been pouring his heart and soul into his work lately, and it showed. A server came into the kitchen and Wrath handed off the plate before disappearing out the back for a smoke.
He lit his cigarette and leaned against the wall.
He didn’t realize how long he’d been waiting to hear those words from Angelica until she offered them. His work was paying off, finally, and it felt good.
“Got a light?” The man appeared out of nowhere, and caught Wrath off guard. That wasn’t good. He was supposed to be on edge at all times. He wasn’t supposed to be relaxed enough that someone could sneak up on him.
“Yeah.” He tossed his lighter to the man in the shadows.
“Thanks.”
The man lit his cigarette, leaned against the wall a few feet down from Wrath.
“Busy day?”
“Every day is a busy day when you work in restaurants.”
“I hear ya, man. Been a busy day for me, too.”
Wrath didn’t particula
rly want to have a conversation with the stranger. He didn’t much care for people he didn’t know. Not after trying to watch over Serenity. He grunted in response, but the stranger kept on talking.
“Lots o’ new people in town, man. All the shops are busy.”
That did catch his attention. Why would there be new people in town? There were no festivals coming up, nothing exciting happening. There were no new restaurants opening, no new businesses launching. There was nothing.
“Why are there people coming to town?” He asked, trying to sound more casual than he felt.
“Some sort of convention,” he rolled his eyes. “A geek thing.”
“What kind of geek thing?” His heart jumped into his throat, choking him.
Not magic.
Not magic.
Not magic.
“Magic of some sort, something like that. People saying they’re witches or some sort,” the man shook his head. “I don’t know about anything like that.”
Wrath’s entire mouth went dry. This couldn’t be happening. They had been so careful for so long, and he should have gotten some sort of heads-up if there was something like this happening. Someone should have warned him. Someone should have let him know.
“That sounds a little crazy,” Wrath finally managed to say. He let his cigarette fall to the ground and crushed it beneath his boot. He pulled another one out and reached for his lighter, but he didn’t have it.
“Sorry,” the guy handed him his lighter back. “Guess I forgot to return it to ya.”
“Guess so.”
Wrath lit his cigarette and breathed. He focused on breathing. Soon the nicotine would calm him and everything would be okay. So there were going to be magic users in the city. So what? There were magic users everywhere in the world. There was no escaping them. Besides, most of these “witches” and “wizards” were nothing more than young adults who read too much sci-fi when they were kids.
No, most of the magic users were harmless. They were simply congregating to share their weird hobby with their friends. They weren’t going to be able to do any harm.
Not really.
Only, as Wrath continued to smoke, he realized that wasn’t entirely true. There didn’t have to be an entire group of magic users to hurt Serenity.
There only had to be one.
It would only take one person to capture her, to snatch her away. It would only take one person to try to hurt her, to drain her blood, to capture her life force. It would only take one, and Wrath had to be ready.
“Where are they meeting?” He asked.
“What?”
“The magic people. Where is their conference?”
“Oh,” the man shook his head. “The hotel next to the community center. You know the one. It’s got the run down sign out front.”
“Bradshaw Community Center,” he whispered.
“Yeah, that’s right,” the man said, but Wrath was already gone.
Chapter 13
“Nice work, Peter,” Serenity smiled at her student.
“Thank you, Miss Serenity.” He grinned up at her with his lopsided smile. Peter was only seven, but his parents were determined to give him a well-rounded education. She spent an hour each week with him, helping him to learn new techniques for painting, drawing, and sculpting. Sometimes they even worked on art history together, and she had the chance to teach him about some of the greatest artists of their time.
“I want to make something else next week, though,” Peter told her.
“What would you like to make?”
“Hmm,” Peter tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Maybe a dinosaur.”
“I think we can make that happen,” she smiled. “We’ll have a lot of fun.” Their lesson was over, so she stood, gathering her things. She waved goodbye to Peter and headed out of the sitting room to the kitchen, where the housekeeper was waiting with her weekly check.
“How’d he do today?” Mrs. Olsen was a middle-aged woman with white hair and a bright smile. Both of Peter’s parents worked, so Mrs. Olsen took care of him between tutors and lessons. He used to go to private school, but was diagnosed with several medical conditions that meant he couldn’t always go to class. This was how his parents got around that.
If they couldn’t send Peter to school, they simply brought school to him.
Serenity admired their tenacity. Both Peter’s father and mother loved him very much and spent as much time as possible with him. She wondered if she would be as brave as them, if she were ever to be a mother, but then Serenity pushed the thought from her head.
She’d be lucky if she lived long enough to fall in love and find a husband, much less have a child with that man. Besides, she had a bounty on her head. There was a price for killing a fallen angel, and she wouldn’t want to bring a child into the middle of that.
“He did wonderfully,” Serenity told Mrs. Olsen.
“Lovely to hear,” Mrs. Olsen handed Serenity her check, along with a bag of cookies.
“What’s this?”
“Chocolate chip.”
“My favorite.”
“I know.”
Serenity gave Mrs. Olsen a hug and headed out the door. She had a little bit of time to kill before her class at the community center that night, so she went to a little coffee shop, ordered a drink, and selected a table in the back. She sat alone with her back to the wall. She always sat this way. She could see everyone coming in and out of the little coffee shop, and this gave her some semblance of safety.
She knew it was silly. She shouldn’t be afraid to drink coffee in the middle of the day in the middle of a coffee shop, yet she was. Serenity was growing more and more uncomfortable each day, and she knew it was unreasonable.
Nothing bad was going to happen to her.
So Wrath knew a woman like her who had been killed.
So what?
Plenty of people knew other people who died. That was the sad part about being human. Death was inevitable, and it sneaked up on you when you least expected it. It wasn’t fair. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It was reality, though, and Serenity knew this.
“Mind if I join you?” A soft, feminine voice asked. Serenity looked up at a young woman with blonde hair and a big smile. “Sorry, I know it’s weird.” She shrugged and glanced around the room. “But there’s nowhere else to sit and, well, I really want to sit and drink my coffee.” She chuckled, and Serenity nodded.
“By all means,” she motioned to the seat across from her.
She didn’t feel like talking, but maybe sharing stories with a stranger was exactly what Serenity needed. During her time in town, she hadn’t made that many friends. After Oliver died, she just didn’t really have the energy. It took all of her strength just to get out of bed. The idea of having to actually talk to people seemed terrible to her.
Now, though, things were different. She was different.
“Pretty busy today, huh?” Serenity said.
“Yeah,” the girl nodded. “You come here a lot?”
“Not too often, but it’s a nice quiet place to get a cup of coffee before I head to work.”
“What kind of work do you do?” The girl smiled. She seemed friendly, but young. Serenity guessed she was probably 24 or 25. Physically, they probably looked about the same age, but Serenity was so much older in her heart.
“I’m a teacher. What about you?”
“I’m a student. Grad school,” the girl grinned. “I’m planning to be a journalist.”
“Wow, that’s really interesting. Sounds like a challenging line of work.”
“It is, but it’s so exciting,” the girl gushed. “I’m Susan, by the way. Susan Miller. I’m just in town for the conference.”
“The conference?” Serenity asked. She did her best to keep up with all of the Bradshaw community events, but this was something she hadn’t heard about.
“Yep! It’s my first magic event and I’m really excited. You know, I’ve only been interested in witchcraft for
a short time, and…”
The woman’s voice droned on, but Serenity felt herself pale.
There was a magic conference.
Magic users from across the country were gathering.
Here.
Of all places.
Not only was Serenity not safe at churches, but now, she wasn’t even safe in a coffee shop. It’s a good thing the girl talking to her was a new magic user, or she’d probably start to ask questions. Serenity instantly became nervous. She needed to act human. She was human, but she was suddenly very aware of the fact that she had to be extra human.
She had to be a normal human.
She just had to be real.
And suddenly, she didn’t know how to do that. Everything she’d practiced and learned over the last few months suddenly disappeared. Suddenly, she didn’t want to do anything but go home. She couldn’t remember what she was supposed to say or what she was supposed to do. She just looked at Susan Miller.
“It’s really informative, you know, especially for new people like me. There isn’t always a lot of support for people who want to do magic.”
Susan took a sip of her coffee and leaned back in the chair. She seemed at home here, like this was her element. The idea of magic didn’t embarrass her or make her uncomfortable, but it bothered Serenity.
Hearing there was a conference in town full of magic users made her feel like something was crawling beneath her skin. She began to scratch at her arms as she listened to Susan talk. Susan didn’t notice, but with each sentence the witch spoke, Serenity grew more and more uncomfortable.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Chapter 14
Wrath burst into Serenity’s classroom.
“There’s a conference!” He said. He glanced around the room at other students, who were all staring at him. Well, that’s what he got for just bursting into the room like he owned the place.
“Yes, I’m aware,” Serenity said coolly. She was still wearing her normal clothes. Her arms were still covered. Luckily, there was nothing drawing extra attention to her.
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