by C. L. Coffey
I made it to my bedroom, slamming the door shut behind me. It didn’t take me long to peel the sweaty clothes from my body, dumping them unceremoniously into a heap on the floor, before jumping in a cool shower. I got out, wrapped the towels around me, and collapsed on the bed.
There was a very good chance that being an angel was going to kill me.
CHAPTER FIVE
A Detective in Training
I awoke from my nap feeling much better. The pain had gone from both my ankle and my cheek and I no longer felt exhausted from the running. It was also dark outside now, although I wasn’t sure of the time. Amongst the things that I needed, a clock was definitely up there.
I rose, contemplating getting changed into the nightdress and getting back into bed, but I was far too awake now. Instead I opted to see if I could find Joshua, by myself. Considering my previous failure with Joshua and my epic fail in the gym, I really didn’t want to see the disappointment I kept seeing in Michael every time I got something wrong.
I headed back to the bathroom to dry my hair and was pleasantly surprised to discover that despite the fact I had fallen asleep with it wrapped up in a towel, it still flicked out. I had a feeling that the novelty of that would wear off quickly when I wanted to do something different with it though. Back in the bedroom I explored the contents of my wardrobe and drawers. They were well stocked – possibly because someone knew I was never going to keep the outfit looking smart – but they were all variations on what I had been wearing earlier. It also hinted at the fact that I was going to be permanently working. I would have to ask Cupid if angels really did get a day off, like he alluded to earlier, and what they usually did on them.
For now, I pulled on a pair of trousers, opted for a lilac shirt under the waistcoat, and a pair of shoes. This time, when I left the room, finally looking presentable to the beautiful men I shared a floor with, there were none in sight. Once again, all the doors were shut. Oh well. Maybe an eternity without relationships would be easier if I couldn’t drool over the eye candy I lived with.
I headed downstairs, and ducked behind the reception desk to look for the car keys. They weren’t hard to find. They were in the top drawer... unlocked like everything else in the building appeared to be. As there didn’t seem to be anything to sign them out with, and Cupid was nowhere in sight, I scribbled a note on a Post-it and left it in the space where the key had come from.
Outside, the humidity had yet to subside, even though the sun seemed to have long since set. The gardens were buzzing with the chirping night insects, and I had to swat away a few mosquitoes that had yet to disappear for the night. I could still hear the noise drifting over from Bourbon Street, but otherwise, it was a nice, peaceful night.
I neared the fleet of Yukons and pressed the button on the central locking. The buildings could be kept unlocked, but cars as expensive as this would definitely include an auto-lock device and an immobilizer. Two cars along the lights flashed at me.
Back in my previous life I was used to driving an old Jeep, so the height wasn’t an issue for me. The amount of buttons and options in the car were a little overwhelming though, and I was tempted to pull the handbook out and give it a once over. However, the thought of being spotted by any one of the males I lived with soon put a stop to that idea.
I started the car and glanced at the dashboard. It was only 9pm so there was still a good chance that I should be able to find Joshua and that he should still be awake. I leaned over and fiddled with the radio, finding a station that played the current hits.
After locating the control for the gates, I backed out and set off into New Orleans. I wasn’t sure where I was headed. I had contemplated walking down Bourbon Street first to check out the bars in case Joshua was there, but my gut was telling me a car ride was in order, otherwise it would be a very long walk.
I wasn’t really paying much attention to where I was going, only on what the traffic in front of me was doing, as I sang along to a song I knew. As such, I was a little surprised when I found myself outside the police station I had been in that morning.
I found a spot to park and pulled over, staring up at the gray building. Great: he had been arrested again.
I jumped out of the car and crossed the road, heading for the visitors entrance. Whereas earlier today, it had been a young woman on the front desk, it was now a bored looking man. Give it a couple of hours and I bet he would be busier.
I walked over and gave him my best smile. “Hi,” I beamed. “I know it’s late, but I was hoping I could visit Joshua Walsh?”
The man gave me the once over and frowned. “Josh?”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” I pressed, keeping my expression pleasant.
“Take a seat,” he sighed, before disappearing into the back.
I wandered over to the waiting area, but instead of sitting, studied the collection of wanted posters on the wall. There were far too many for my liking.
I knew he was behind me before he spoke, and I turned. I had been expecting someone to come to take me to the cells or something – not him to be standing there, arms folded, staring at me. ‘Oh!” I exclaimed, dumbly. “I wasn’t expecting to see you so easily.”
He gave me a confused look. “Yet you came to the precinct?”
I took a deep breath. “I wanted to come and talk to you about this morning. I didn’t mean for you to be arrested.” I peered past him at the guy behind the reception desk. He was leaning forward, trying to hear what was being said. “Is there somewhere more private we can go?”
Joshua glanced over his shoulder. When he turned back to me, he sighed and nodded. “I’m going for a walk. Tell Leon that if he needs me, I have my phone,” he told the officer.
I followed him out of the precinct in confusion. “They just let you walk out of there?” I blurted out as we moved onto the sidewalk.
He turned his head, giving me a strange look. “Yes,” he responded. “I’m not tied to the desk during my shift, you know?”
My mouth dropped open. “You’re a cop?”
“Detective,” he corrected, indicating to his clothing. He was in a similar outfit to what I had last seen him in. Dark jeans and a black dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up and the top two buttons undone.
“But you barely look old enough to drink!” I told him. “How can you possibly be old enough to be detective?”
His eyes narrowed and he looked offended. “I’m nearly twenty-five, so yes I am old enough to drink.”
“Okay, I’m sorry,” I apologized. I ran my hand through my hair as I stared up at him in bewilderment. “But even so, I didn’t think anyone could be that young and be a detective?”
I was trying to be more diplomatic but when we continued walking in silence, I thought I had offended him again. Thankfully, he eventually sighed. “My dad was a lieutenant here. Before he died, he helped get me into the Academy. When I graduated the new lieutenant told me about a scheme: an advanced training program. I have another nine months on probation, and then I’m a fully-fledged homicide detective.”
I gave him another sideways glance and frowned. “I’d never have guessed.”
He pulled a face. “No, I suppose with last night’s behavior, that’s hardly surprising.”
“This morning,” I corrected him. “The sun was definitely up when we got arrested.”
He stopped suddenly and turned, his hand running through his hair. “Look, about that. I don’t normally act like that.”
“That’s good to know,” I agreed.
“Yeah,” he sighed, resuming the walking. “I knocked back a few too many last night,” he glanced back down at me. “Although, I was sure you got a black eye out of the whole ordeal.”
I did. Only it healed while I napped. “Do you have time for a drink?” I asked him, taking a page out of Michael's book and avoiding the question. “And I don’t mean hair of the dog,” I quickly added.
His lip quirked up into a smirk. “Are you still hitting on me?”
; “No!” I objected, flushing. “I - I just need to talk to you,” I spluttered.
He laughed, his blue eyes flashing. “I’m just teasing, darlin’.”
We ended up in small coffee shop, just up the street from the precinct. It was quiet in there and we got a booth opposite the counter. “So what’s the matter?” Joshua asked me when we both had our coffees. I looked up and found him waiting, impatiently.
“You didn’t take this too well when I tried to tell you last night,” I muttered, adding extra sugar to the cup.
“Well, if it helps, the only thing I really remember is being surprised that you knew my name.”
My eyes flicked up to meet his. I had been dreading him mentioning something about trying to kiss me, but somehow this was worse. Given that I was never going to have a relationship, ever, it shouldn’t have bothered of me, but I couldn’t help feel a little crushed that I wasn’t a little more memorable.
Whilst waiting for my response, he quirked an eyebrow at me. I ignored the fact the action sent my heart pounding and instead carefully placed my spoon on the table. “My name is Angel,” I told him, carefully. “Angel Connors.” I stopped, chewing on my lower lip as I tried to work out how to continue. Telling him I was an angel last night hadn’t exactly turned out well. “I’m supposed to help you,” I finally told him.
“You have some information on a case?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Not exactly.” I sat back in my seat and shrugged. “You know, there isn’t actually any easy way to tell you this, so I’m just going to tell you and hope you handle it a little better than last night.”
“This morning,” he corrected me, a corner of his mouth quirking up into a half smile.
“I’m an angel,” I told him. “Specifically, your Guardian Angel.”
There was a moment of silence while I held my breath, and then he burst out laughing. “Are you still drunk?” he asked me, between the laughs.
“I wish I was,” I muttered, staring down at my hands which I had clasped around the cup in front of me. “Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to drink. It’s one of the rules.”
“There are rules?” he asked, still laughing.
“Yeah,” I told him hotly. “And they’re not funny. They suck.”
He cleared his throat and managed to control the laughter. “Enlighten me.”
“No drinking, no drugs, no sex-”
He cut me off with another laugh. “That’s not an angel. That’s a nun.”
I was living in an old convent, so I may as well be. Not that I could tell him that.
“Did Leon put you up to this?” he asked, peering around me to see who was in the bar. “To make up for getting you arrested?”
“I wasn’t put up to do this,” I told him, my tone turning icy. “It’s my job and we’re both stuck with it.”
“You do realize there’s no such thing as angels, don’t you?” he asked, looking at me as though I was seven shades of crazy.
“That’s what I used to think,” I sighed.
“So what changed your mind?” he asked.
I quickly shook my head. “You wouldn’t believe me.” I still wasn’t sure I had changed my mind on my beliefs. Honestly, at this point, I was still willing to accept this was a very bad alcohol induced dream – albeit a very vivid one.
“Try me?” he suggested.
Stop it! My mind was quickly taking that one somewhere I shouldn’t. I shook my head – both at him, and my thoughts. “If you don’t believe in angels, you’re not going to believe this. I’ll save myself...” I trailed off as a ringing began. “Can you hear that?” I asked Joshua.
Joshua stared blankly at me. “Hear what?”
“The ringing? Is that your phone?”
“I can’t hear anything,” he told me, now looking at me like I had gone mad. Which was as entirely possible as alcoholic dreams.
I chose to ignore the ringing. “Why don’t you believe in angels?” I asked him chewing at my lower lip.
“Why didn’t you?” he returned, reaching for his coffee.
“Too much crap in the world,” I muttered. That was one way of describing it.
“My thoughts exactly,” he returned quietly. His eyes were saying more, but I didn’t know him well enough to read them yet. He took a sip of his coffee, never taking his gaze off me. I wasn’t going to push it, but I also wasn’t sure how I was going to convince him otherwise. It was only death that had (eventually) changed my mind, and I still wasn’t sure how convinced of it all I was.
“Why would I need a guardian angel?” Joshua asked me, breaking my thoughts.
“Maybe last night might be a good clue?” I suggested, unable to keep from smiling. The smile quickly turned into a grimace as the ringing got louder.
“Are you alright?” Joshua asked me, looking a little concerned.
“Are you sure you can’t hear ringing?” I asked him, looking around for its source.
“I hear the Rolling Stones,” he told me.
“I don’t mean the music that’s playing,” I frowned. I shook my head, trying to clear it of the ringing. “You’re important,” I sighed, returning to the matter at hand.
“I’m sorry?” he asked.
“That’s why you need a guardian angel. You’re important,” I explained. “I don’t know what you’ve done or what you’re going to do, but I have been told that you’re my responsibility.”
“You?” he asked, looking at me like I wasn’t going to be able to protect him from a rainstorm. “You certainly don’t look like you’re old enough to drink. Have you even graduated college yet?”
“You may have been a little preoccupied with fighting last night, but while you were taking on one college guy, I had thrown the others across the room,” I snapped at him, irritably.
“Of course you did,” he agreed, giving me a truly patronizing smile, which I would dearly have loved to wipe off his face. Then maybe kissed it better... my mind was delving into places it shouldn’t again. “How old are you?”
“I’m twenty,” I admitted, scowling as he pulled a face. “I’m not that young.”
I could hear the ringing again, this time accompanied by a bleeping. This time, the bleeping was Joshua’s phone. He pulled it out of his pocket and quickly read the message. “I need to go,” he told me, shortly. He drank the rest of his coffee and slipped out of the booth, leaving me wondering if that had gone well or horribly wrong.
I wasn’t able to ponder it for long. The ringing was becoming incessant and I could barely hear myself think over the top of it. I abandoned the remains of my coffee and left the cafe. The air was a fraction cooler, but still just as humid. Despite the fact I was heading away from the cafe and towards my car, the ringing was still just as loud.
By the time I got back to the convent, my head felt like a jack hammer had taken up residence in my head and I was desperately hoping that there were some painkillers in the building somewhere.
Cupid was back on the front desk and he greeted me with a frown when I walked in. “Where have you been? Michael has been calling you for hours.”
“I don’t have a phone,” I pointed out, even as I patted my pockets just to check I hadn’t missed anything.
“He doesn’t use a phone,” Cupid informed me. “Don't tell me you can’t hear the bells?”
My mouth fell open. “That’s him? My head is pounding.”
Cupid leaned over to take the car keys off me, dropping them back in the drawer. Before he closed it, he pulled out a small tube of ibuprofen. “Take these,” he sighed, handing them over.
I took them off him and headed for the cypress staircase. By the time I had arrived at Michael’s door I had already taken two of the painkillers, without waiting for water. I knocked on the door, and the ringing suddenly stopped. Without waiting for a response, I stormed in, glaring at the archangel. “It’s the twenty-first century,” I told him. “These days we use things called phones.”
“You’re late,”
he told me, giving me a disapproving look. “Now we must hurry.” He stepped out from behind his desk and walked up to me. “This is going to be disconcerting.”
He took my hand. He was right – it was disconcerting. It also wasn’t what he was referring to. There was a sensation of being unable to breathe, like someone was pouring water over my head. It was followed by the room spinning, and then we weren’t in his room anymore.
I looked around. We were in a corridor, just outside a large glass door labeled Intensive Care Unit 2. Inside, surround by a dozen different machines, a girl was lying in a bed, almost hidden beneath the wires and tubes that came from her body.
“I’m going to be sick,” I mumbled as a wave of nausea washed over me. I spotted a bathroom and ran to it, only just managing to get to a toilet before I emptied my stomach. It wasn’t the sight of the girl in the bed, but the effect of being transported from one side of the city to the other faster than a blink of an eye.
I moved over to the sink, running the water cold so I could rinse my mouth out. If there had been any doubt about angels, it was now gone.
By the time I emerged from the bathroom, Michael was deep in conversation with a doctor. She was little, with jet black hair and pale skin. As soon as she spotted me, she gave me an evil glare.
I blinked. What the hell had I done to piss off the doctor? I cautiously walked over to Michael. As I drew near, the woman walked off in the opposite direction, taking a seat just down the corridor and pulled some charts from the side of a nurse’s station. “What did I do?” I asked Michael.
“You chose eternal life.”
“She knows?” I asked in surprise. “You told her?”
Michael gave me a look that said I had asked something stupid. “Lilly is one of the Angels of Death.”
My eyes nearly popped out of my sockets. “Aren’t they evil?” I quickly shook my head. “There’s more than one of them?”
“Of course there is more than one of them,” Michael told me. “And they are not evil. Dying is not always a bad thing.”
“You’re not dead,” I muttered under my breath. “What are we doing here then?”
