Wish for Santa: Average Angel

by Felicity Green

  The key didn’t work. It was too short. Oh my God, would I have to leave without whatever was inside that locker? Frustrated, I hit it with my fist and suppressed a scream. Really dumb idea.

  Or not. The locker door sprang open. I exhaled in relief and stood on my tiptoes to get a good look inside. Nothing was in there but a thin parcel wrapped in brown packing paper. I guessed it to be roughly eight by ten inches in size. I quickly grabbed it, stuck it inside my coat, yanked the zipper back up, and got the hell out of there.

  9

  I only dared to unwrap the parcel in private, in my room after dinner.

  As I had already suspected, it was a book.

  Also not surprisingly, given Vito’s area of expertise, it was a book about angels and demons.

  I checked the packing paper a couple of times, but there was no letter or note or anything else with an explanation. I still didn’t know why Vito had arranged for me to pick up the book.

  As I sat on my bed and stared at the ancient-looking, leather-bound book, I realized that was probably the only thing I knew. I had a need for information about angels and demons.

  Everything else remained a mystery. How had Vito known I could use this information? Why had he disappeared shortly after he met me? Why had he contacted me now? How was he involved in the whole Vitrella-Zack-Mal thing—or was he involved?

  Thinking about all those unanswered questions started to give me a headache, and I rubbed my temples.

  Maybe the content of the book would give me some clues.

  The title on the cover read Book of Samael, and there was no author name or publishing date. The script looked really old, and the language was, well, biblical, so it wasn’t easy to read. I skipped over a few passages because my eyes started to get tired and my headache got worse, but I really wanted to at least skim through the whole book once. I wanted at least some of those questions answered.

  The first section was titled “Archangels.” I read that there was a hierarchy in Heaven. The almighty God, the creator, was obviously right at the top. Underneath were the seven archangels, with Metatron as a kind of second in command, then Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Raguel, and Ramiel. Each archangel had his own chapter. As far as I understood the sometimes convoluted and often contradictory information, Michael was the leader of the heavenly army and was associated with war. Gabriel was a mystery keeper of some sort. He knew all about God’s secrets and incarnations, whatever that meant. Raphael was a healer, and Uriel was associated with light. He either enlightened souls or led souls to the light—I wondered if that meant Heaven. Raguel was the archangel of justice or vengeance. The most confusing one was Ramiel, who was described as a force of nature, thunder, or even wrath. The book suggested that Ramiel wasn’t an archangel anymore but one of the fallen Watchers.

  I looked up and rubbed my eyes. I hoped that some things would be explained later in the book. Some of it was a bit boring, but I felt bad about skipping pages. After all, Zack had started telling me about the archangels, and he’d revealed that Raphael had been Vitrella’s boss. I had the feeling that this book contained information that I would only get in drips and drabs from Zack. Obviously, it would be much easier for me to read all that in a book. Did Zack know such a book existed? And how did Vito know that this was information I was starting to get from Zack?

  I shook my head in confusion and concentrated on the thin yellow pages with the antique font I had now gotten used to.

  The next section was titled “War in Heaven.” That sounded familiar. After reading a couple of pages, I Googled the term and found similar descriptions citing the book of Revelation and the book of Enoch as sources. What I read in the Book of Samael, though, was much more detailed. Basically, before the archangels were called archangels, there were quite a few more of their race up in Heaven. But there was one, who is now called Lucifer, who rebelled against God. An army, led by Michael, fought Lucifer and his followers. Lucifer had summoned an evil entity—sometimes described as a serpent, sometimes as a dragon—that had created itself in the very inversion of Heaven, the underworld or Hell.

  The entity was called Leviathan. During the deciding battle of this war, the serpent’s tail knocked down a third of the stars in Heaven. They fell to Earth and burned beyond, to Hell. In the process, they destroyed much of God’s beloved creation—the earth and its inhabitants, humans, who were in the very early stages of evolution. God got so angry at the rebel angels that he cast them out of Heaven. They too fell like the stars. Lucifer was first. He was the brightest star of all and burned right through to the very core of Hell. Other angels fighting alongside him were also cast out. Many were killed as the angels and the original Fallen turned on each other.

  Many angels decided to follow Lucifer later when God concentrated his efforts on saving mankind. He assigned a lot of the remaining angels in Heaven as so-called Watchers, tasked with overseeing the humans and making sure they were thriving. Time and again, Watchers broke the rules—for instance, the book of Enoch described how the Watchers had lain with the daughters of men and had children with them called Nephilim. Those fallen Watchers were cast out of Heaven into Hell.

  The number of angels in Heaven got so decimated that God decided to raise humans up. Special and deserving humans would become angels after death. The archangels would oversee them. Thus, Heaven was repopulated with many formerly human angels. They could still be cast out, fall as shooting stars, and be reborn on Earth—given a second chance, so to speak.

  After I read that chapter, I immediately wanted to know what had happened to the Fallen and what would happen to humans who didn’t get chosen to be angels. Luckily, the next chapter was on archdemons. It was much shorter, though. It seemed that the author knew a lot about the angels but not quite so much about the demons.

  I yawned and skipped over much of the description of archdemons. The Abaddon entry pretty much told me what I knew about “the destroyer of the world” already. There were many others—more archdemons than archangels. But it wasn’t quite clear who was in Lucifer’s inner circle. There was mention of Azazel and Belial, but the hierarchy of the archdemons was not quite as clear-cut as the order in Heaven. What I found interesting, though, was that when God decided to give humans the chance to ascend to Heaven as angels, Lucifer found a way to make other humans he found deserving into demons too.

  As I turned to the last section, I wondered what happened to human souls that didn’t end up as demons or angels. I was thinking about my mother, of course.

  My heart almost stopped when I noticed a thin piece of paper stuck between the pages of the book. There was a note after all! It wasn’t even addressed to me, though, nor was it signed by Vito.

  “You will find this section particularly interesting. It might be better if you hide this book somewhere safe once you have studied its content.”

  The last section was only a few pages long, and as far as I could tell, it was a prophecy of some kind.

  In summary, there would be another war between Heaven and Hell, between archangels and archdemons. The human world would be caught in the crossfire. If this war played out, that pretty much meant the end of the world.

  There was one who could end this war and save mankind. This had to be neither angel nor demon but someone born of mankind—someone with grace and faith equal to an angel who could descend to the pits of Hell at the same time.

  What a cliffhanger!

  I was dead tired, but when I closed the book, I was far too excited to go to sleep.

  Basically, I was forewarned that the end of days was near. That sounded to me like an apocalypse. Wasn’t it Zack’s job to prevent exactly that? But this book said that a human was to prevent this apocalypse, not an angel.

  And why would I find that particularly interesting? Because of Zack… or… A dark suspicion crept up on me, but I suppressed it immediately. That couldn’t be. Talk about delusions of grandeur, seriously.

  I was only a regular girl. And while I o
ften bemoaned that fact, right now, I wished that things would stay that way.

  10

  On my next day off from the diner, I visited my friend Sarah at her dorm. She had a real knack for makeup, something I pretended not to really care about. The truth was that I could only do so much with a face full of freckles. If I caked on the foundation in an attempt to cover them, I looked ten years older.

  On this occasion, this was actually to my advantage, and I told Sarah to slather on that too-dark-for-my-skin-tone foundation I had brought. She hadn’t blinked an eye when I asked her to miss class that morning because I needed her help. She’d swallowed a sarcastic remark when I entered her dorm room and took off my jacket, revealing the unflattering beige pantsuit I had pinched from Allison’s closet.

  She was that type of friend, loyal to a fault. But she also had a sharp tongue, and all those snarky remarks had been building up, ready to burst out, when I explained to her what look I had in mind.

  “Why would you do that to yourself? I love you, but sorry, your legs look like pigs in a blanket in those trousers. I thought to myself that maybe you were going on an interview for a job you hopefully weren’t going to get, because no job should justify dressing like this. But why would you uglify your pretty face? I don’t get it.”

  I sighed. “I want you to make me look older.”

  Sarah’s eyebrows shot up. “Do you have to get into a bar or something? Hey, why am I not invited?”

  “Sure. At ten in the morning,” I replied. “Makes total sense. No, I need to look older so I can pull off pretending to be a social worker.”

  “O… kay.” Sarah waited for me to explain, makeup still in her hand. I so wanted to tell her everything and get all the incredible things that had happened to me off my chest. I wanted to discuss my crush on Zack with my best friend, but something was holding me back. Maybe I was scared that she wouldn’t believe me. We had known each other since kindergarten, and I really didn’t want to risk our friendship.

  “Let’s just say, it’s kind of… a job I have to do. I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

  She furrowed her brows. “Like… undercover?” Her eyes sparkled with a sudden flash of amusement. “Have you been recruited by the FBI?”

  I didn’t laugh. “Something like that.”

  She looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Oh. Wow.” She didn’t believe me. If she couldn’t even believe that, no way she would believe my angel story.

  I challenged her. “Are you going to help me or not?”

  “Of course.”

  Sarah went to work and made me look… well, ugly and old. Sam’s mother had to believe that I was a social worker checking up on her. My work shadowing had prepared me for that role. I knew what questions to ask, and it wasn’t a stretch that someone from DHHS child protective services would come by again since Sam wasn’t at school. I was curious what Mrs. Sullivan would have to say about Sam’s absence.

  Mrs. Sullivan certainly didn’t seem surprised to see me and didn’t ask for identification. She was reluctant to let me in, however, and when I entered her apartment, I could totally see why. It was a complete mess, as was Mrs. Sullivan. She looked as if she had just stumbled out of bed with a bad hangover. She wore leggings and a T-shirt—no bra. Her mascara had smeared, and she had dried bits of pink lipstick stuck to her lips. When I walked into the living room, I could see that my initial evaluation had probably been right. A table was cluttered with magazines, plates of dried moldy food, candles, lighters, tobacco, glasses, and mugs. Among all of that were several open and empty bottles of Jack Daniels and red wine. I moved a few items of clothing from the couch with pinched fingers before I sat down.

  Mrs. Sullivan slumped down on an armchair, which was covered in even more clothing and other unidentifiable stuff, without even offering me so much as a glass of water.

  I cleared my throat. “Mrs. Sullivan, can you tell me where your son is?”

  “Sam? He… um.” Irene Sullivan scratched her head, and I immediately started to get an itch. “He’s staying with a friend.”

  I tried to sound as strict as possible, modeling my tone after the one Allison used when she scolded us for not having done our chores. “He should be in school, no?”

  Mrs. Sullivan stared at me.

  “On a Thursday,” I prompted.

  “Oh? Is it? He… the friend went to a dinosaur museum with him. Sam, he’s always going on about dinosaurs. I wanted to… how do you say… to afford him that opportunity.” Mrs. Sullivan seemed pleased with herself for coming up with that line. She was obviously lying through her teeth, but at least she knew about her son’s passion for dinosaurs. There was hope.

  I tried to steer the conversation in the right direction. “A friend, you say? Or is Sam with his father, maybe?”

  When she didn’t answer straight away, I followed up. “If he is under parental supervision, we might make an exception and—”

  She jumped at that ridiculous suggestion. “Yes, yes, sure, he’s with his father.”

  “We don’t have any information on Sam’s father in our files.” I mock-checked the notes I had made in Louise’s office. Of course, I knew that statement to be true because it had been the first thing I checked. “What can you tell me about him?”

  “He… he’s not around that much…” she said slowly, obviously thinking hard. “Because of… his work.”

  I smiled encouragingly. “So I guess you’d take any opportunity for Sam to spend time with his father even if that would mean missing school?”

  “Yeah, that’s it!” Irene twisted a curl of her dry, bleached-blond hair.

  “What does he do?”

  The delay in her answer told me that she either didn’t know or that it was a job that a social worker wouldn’t be impressed by.

  “Construction?” She didn’t even sound convincing. This wasn’t getting me anywhere.

  “Really? Why didn’t you tell us about Sam’s father earlier?” I asked. “Is he not interested in visitation rights? Or are you afraid that he would in fact be more suitable as a primary caregiver?”

  “Um…”

  I suspected that she would actually be quite happy if someone else got custody of her son. After all, she didn’t seem to miss him. She hadn’t even reported him missing and was now covering it up. I had to face the fact that I wouldn’t get the truth about Sam’s father out of her, not by just talking to her.

  Looking at Mrs. Sullivan, I couldn’t help wondering if she even knew who Sam’s father was. I knew it was prejudiced of me… Well, the whole supernaturals-mating-with-humans thing was new information to me, but I had to wonder what made them do it. Were demons so sex starved in Hell? If a woman was exceptional in some way, extraordinarily beautiful, smart, or talented, so that the supernatural creature would fall in love with her—or would want her for her promising gene pool—that would make sense. But Irene Sullivan was… well, she didn’t come across as the sharpest tool in the box. She wasn’t particularly attractive, either. I squinted. She might have been pretty once, before too much booze, too much partying, and too much makeup and hair dye had ruined her looks.

  I checked my notes, this time for real. “What do you do for a living again, Mrs. Sullivan?” I felt as though I was beating a dead horse, but I was desperate. I was here, in her apartment, and this might be my only chance. How else would I find out about Sam’s father?

  “I’m currently unemployed.” She answered too quickly, and it sounded as if she had rattled off that sentence often.

  I looked up. “Okay. May I ask how you make a living and support your son?”

  “Um.” She bit her nails. “Savings.”

  I looked at her again with my best impersonation of Allison’s I can see right through you stare. “It is very important that you’re honest with us, Mrs. Sullivan, or else I can’t help you. I will have to report that—”

  “Okay, okay, Sam’s father gives me money sometimes. I know, I should have told you that,” she rus
hed to say. “But it’s really irregular, honest. Not like maintenance or anything.”

  I almost forgot to play my role because I was so excited to hear that she was in touch with Sam’s father. This time, I was sure it wasn’t a lie.

  “We need to get in touch with Sam’s father, Mrs. Sullivan.” She looked panicked, so I hurried to reassure her. “I’m sure whatever arrangement you have with him is completely fine. We just have to check up on him.” When she just sat there, still as a stone and silent, I carried on. “This could actually help your case, you know—if there’s another suitable parental guardian in Sam’s life. That could mean our visits will stop.” Of course, I was bullshitting her, but she seemed to buy it.

  “That would be nice,” she sighed. Then she tensed again, curling up even more into a ball on the trashy armchair. “But I just… I can’t give you his information, okay? He… doesn’t want me to. He wants to stay off the radar. Off the grid. That’s what he calls it.”

  “What is he, like a recluse?”

  She shook her head. “That sounds harmless. He’s not harmless. I mean… he’s totally okay where Sam is concerned. He would never…” she stuttered when she realized how bad that sounded.

  “We just want to check him out,” I repeated. “We don’t have to tell him that you gave us his name. In fact, we might not even talk to him. Just do a background check.”

  “Oh, he’ll know. And you won’t find anything, anyhow.” She looked more and more like a scared child, and her longing gaze returned again and again to a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the table.

  Maybe I had judged Irene too quickly. Maybe whoever or whatever Sam’s father was had driven her into the lifestyle she was leading and made her look and act the way she did.

  Being a single parent had to be tough, and it occurred to me that my dad must have struggled a lot after Mom died. I suddenly felt very lucky that he had found Allison and that we all had each other. Maybe Irene Sullivan had nobody. That was still no excuse, however, for not looking after or caring for Sam properly. I left Mrs. Sullivan’s apartment after more fruitless questioning.