Grace of Day - BK 4 of the Grace Series

by S. L. Naeole

“Don’t go over there,” Lark hissed as soon as she knew Mrs. Lorimax was out of earshot.

  “Why?”

  “Because when she’s got you alone and to herself, she’s going start interrogating you like you’re a suspect in a presidential assassination plot or something and you might never leave.”

  I laughed at this, but Lark didn’t seem all that amused. “It’s not funny,” she grumbled. “She’s a holy terror. I hope Stacy comes when it’s dark, otherwise Mrs. Lorimax will see her and turn us all in to the CDC.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  Lark’s face was as serious as a bleak streak, and I tucked my lips into my mouth to keep my giggle from slipping out.

  “I’m not joking. She called the police just two weeks ago when Graham and I were a little too…loud. Graham had to wrap himself in my sheet when the cops burst in—I was so…focused on what we were doing that I didn’t even hear them until they were at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Mrs. Lorimax told them that he was assaulting me, that he was committing statutory rape! I was very tempted to tell all of them that I’m the older one, and that I was technically robbing the ovary but I didn’t. She seemed to think that because I was making so much noise that something was wrong.”

  Robert’s head buried itself into his hand as he shook with unspent laughter. I pressed down on my teeth, biting back my own little outburst. Lark’s face went slack when she realized she wasn’t going to be getting any sympathy from us.

  “Well, Graham should be back any minute now with groceries. I gave him a list so hopefully he sticks to it.”

  My lips made a funny, wrinkled line as I tried to imagine Graham grocery shopping. It seemed fairly likely that he’d return with dozens of bags of pretzels and cheese dip instead of vegetables and chicken.

  “He’s gotten very good at it,” Lark interrupted. “Don’t discount him just because in the past he’s been irresponsible. A lot has changed in him.”

  “Okay,” I said, suddenly feeling tired. “Can I lie down somewhere?”

  “Yes, follow me,” Robert said before pulling me up the stairs and down a short, narrow hallway. We reached a closed door at the end of the hall, and Robert opened it, leading me into a room that was nearly identical to my old one in its layout, with the exception of the bed—it was larger than the twin I had.

  I needed no further invitation and collapsed onto the bed, my head hitting the soft pillows beneath the snow white comforter that covered every inch of it except for the headboard. It wasn’t like Robert’s other bed, with its pictures of the two of us. This one was plain, almost like the types of beds you bought at the hardware store. I didn’t care, though.

  My lids were heavy, and my body fatigued. I watched as Robert removed his shirt, laying it across the dresser that faced the foot of the bed, before climbing into the bed beside me, pulling me against him so that my back was pressed up against his abdomen. His cheek rested against my temple, and I sighed with contentment.

  It was short-lived, however. The sound of a car arriving, followed by doors slamming, voices booming, and things being jostled around downstairs tore Robert away from me, his eyes focused as his thoughts left a warning in my own. Stay here until I return.

  I nodded, sitting up and staring after him as he disappeared behind the door, the sound of his movements nonexistent. Violence. That was all I could hear downstairs. Unchecked violence. Three times I was tempted to run downstairs, my worry over Robert and Lark overshadowing any fear I might have had for myself. Each time, a little voice in my head told me to relax, that everything was fine. It had to be fine—who could harm Robert?

  The afternoon sun was beating down fiercely through the window, turning the bed unnaturally warm as I waited. Finally, Robert returned, his face bearing a satisfied smile. “Come, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  “Meet? What?” I was confused. More than that, I was annoyed.

  “It’s alright. It was a misunderstanding. Graham arrived just as he did…you’ll understand when you come down.”

  Despite my doubts, I followed Robert out of the room and down the stairs. Graham was there, busily picking up scattered vegetables and canned goods, while Lark stared angrily. Beside her was a boy. He looked to be no more than ten, a beautiful, red-haired boy with slightly pink cheeks and a rather plump looking mouth.

  I bent down to shake his hand when a sort of shiver passed over him, his body blurring before my eyes like ripples over water, and the little boy disappeared, replaced by a man with a rather haunting smile that filled his dark lips and white, sharp teeth. His skin was evanescent, transparent one minute and opaque the next, the effect of it unnerving and I felt myself take several steps back until Robert’s chest blocked my way; he was a wall again.

  “Grace, this is Raphael.”

  There was no further need for explanation or introduction. Looking at him, at the pale gray eyes that flickered and vanished before reappearing again, I knew who he was. His thoughts ran like water all around me, and I drank them in like a wanderer dying of thirst.

  He was Raphael, the second angel, the one who healed. He was older than my concept of time could allow, and knew the secrets of the world; he knew my secrets, and he smiled at me a knowing smile that told me he would not share them. I smiled back, feeling as though that simple act had bonded him to me somehow, a friend I didn’t know I needed until he lifted a wispy hand to my forehead and placed his palm there, the almost imperceptible contact hitting me like no hit and run driver could.

  It was jarring, the feeling of his strength. Though he looked short of substance, he contained within him such an immense power that there was no pretending it didn’t exist. It was like being swallowed up by light, and still seeing something brighter up ahead. How that was possible, I don’t know, but my eyes remained open to what was coming. I saw flashes of faces, pale and inverted in my mind, and images of places that I’d never seen before. There were voices that were foreign, and languages that turned into a symphony of thought that expressed every emotion, every nuance of feeling.

  And like a movie beginning to play, I saw the events that had occurred before I had descended the stairs. Graham had arrived with groceries in hand, anxious and proud that he’d done everything in so short a time. He expected to be greeted by an equally pleased Lark, and instead saw her in the arms of someone else, someone who was striking, tall, and beautiful who held her far too familiarly for his liking. Graham was overcome with the feeling of protection, laced with jealousy and envy all in the same broad stroke and in typical human fashion, lunged towards the perceived threat.

  But Raphael was far more attuned to the human emotions of Graham than Graham was to his own, and so simply dissipated into a thin veil of mist, leaving Graham to continue forward, his momentum pushing him towards the short wall that faced the stairs. He crashed into it, stunned and even more enraged. The groceries now scattered on the ground, forgotten in, Graham charged once more, his football days coming back to him only this time he wasn’t the quarterback.

  Lark was stunned, too stunned to act in time as Graham’s arms swung around, and then through Raphael’s body, the motion causing him to twist around and land on the coffee table, effectively shattering it into dozens of splintered pieces across the living room floor, the wooden surface now dented by the force and weight. Robert appeared, and took a hold of Graham before he could launch himself into yet another failed attack, but Graham’s voice couldn’t be contained, and he threw out epithets that were so unlike him I felt myself gasp, an echo of the one that was emitted by Lark.

  Their voices were thoughts in my head, so the sound was richer, the tone giving them more power, more feeling.

  “What are you doing?” Lark asked with a mixture of fear and annoyance in her voice. “Since when do you go around attacking people like some kind of animal?”

  “He was touching you!” Graham bit back.

  “He was hugging me, you idiot!”

  “H
e wasn’t just hugging you!”

  Behind him, Robert chuckled, amusement at the scene obviously taking precedence to any concern. “You humans are so quick to pass judgment, you refuse to see what’s plain before you even when it’s pointed out.”

  “What’s there to see?” Graham argued, his chest rising and falling rapidly with building anger.

  Robert’s eyebrows rose at that question, the answer so obvious that it was almost comical. Graham, finally taking the time to look at Raphael, turned red as he took in the onyx colored hair, the pale gray eyes, and the stubborn chin that was echoed in both Lark and Robert. “Whoa.”

  “Yes. Whoa is correct. Whoa is definitely appropriate in this instance.”

  Feeling comfortable with releasing Graham, Robert backed away, and watched as Lark approached her husband with mild irritation now skimming the surface of the smile she gave him. “This is my grandfather. He is my mother’s father.”

  “Your…grandfather? But he looks…he looks so young!”

  Lark and Robert both looked at each other and their thoughts were clear. He stills sees age as an appearance.

  Raphael turned to Graham and shook his head at his grandchildren’s silent words. His mouth opened, but nothing came out. Instead, a wave of thoughts traveled between Graham’s green-eyed gaze and the angel’s light silver one.

  Your choice in vocabulary is surprising. I would have thought that my granddaughter would be interested in someone with a far larger vernacular than what you possess. She loves you, despite your flaws, and that is enough for me to not want to see any harm come to you. Be at ease. We are family.

  Graham mumbled a thank you, and then began the task of cleaning up the mess he had caused. Raphael turned to Robert and one thought flowed between them.

  Bring me your wife.

  ***

  When Raphael released my mind, when he backed away and smiled at me, it was with understanding and acceptance. He held his hand out to me, but I backed away, afraid that it would disappear into nothing, much as he had with Graham. My thoughts gave me away again, and he simply reached for what he wanted, taking my hand in his and holding it against his heart like a shield. The intense rush of everything that lay in his head bombarded me, making my knees quake, my heart race in my chest as though it were beating for its very own life.

  You are Avi’s child.

  I nodded. There seemed to be no point in answering in any other way.

  You look so much like her. You have her spirit, her will, her heart. She was proud of you. She put into you so much of what was right about her, and I can see that her investment has yielded much. N’Uriel has chosen you, and you have chosen him in return, despite knowing what price such a union will exact. You love him that deeply.

  Again, I nodded. In any other circumstance, it would have meant nothing. But here, with this regal angel standing before me, one whose name I’d known even before I’d met Robert, this response told him everything.

  Then you have my blessing. I will strive to aid you in any way that I can.

  I blinked, surprised by this. What did he mean by aid? But he was gone, vanished into a mist so fine, I only saw it in the remnants of sunlight as it streamed through the window.

  “There will be trouble now,” Lark groaned as Graham finished putting away the last of the fallen groceries.

  “Trouble? What kind of trouble? What do you mean trouble?” he asked, a can of tomato sauce in one hand, a stalk of celery in the other.

  “She means that Raphael has never taken a stance on something like this before. The seraphim have always ruled without voice from the oldest. Raphael, Michael, Uriel, and Gabriel, the four fathers of our kind have remained silent since the flood. Everything that mankind has done since then, they’ve done without interference from them. And yet now, one of them is taking an interest in you—and it is not because you’re married to me,” Robert said with slow words.

  “Then why?” I asked.

  “Do you even need to ask?”

  Four heads whipped around to see Stacy coming down the stairs, her hands holding onto a towel that she rubbed over her hair. “Your mom was a freaking angel. She conceived you the old fashioned way—with magic and crap—but you were raised like any other girl here in Heath, and now you’re married to Mr. Doom and Gloom over there, who’s supposed to kill you, and you’re okay with all of it. What kind of sane person, angel or otherwise, would do that? This is basically one long, drawn out suicide.”

  “That was uncalled for,” Robert growled.

  “No. No, what’s uncalled for is Grace being attacked by one of your kind. How many times does she have to come close to dying before you realize that?”

  My dark angel moved up against Stacy, his body rigid as his rancorous words oozed past his lips into the air. “Your kind are the ones who’ve been ravaging parts of this world, creating havoc in places that have known only calm for centuries. Your kind has been nothing but a plague. And seeing what they’ve done within the past few months alone proves to me that you’re all dangerous.”

  Stacy, unmoved, smirked. “My kind might be dangerous, but I’ve never tried to kill Grace. You have.”

  Everyone seemed to move in slow motion: Robert, his wings bursting through his flesh like a dark rose blooming beneath the moon; Stacy, her feet planting firmly onto the floor as her eyes changed from brown to pitch black with flecks of red; Lark, her silky slide through the space between all of us forcing a wedge between her brother and Stacy; Graham, his hands reaching for my shoulders, an attempt to pull me away; and myself, faster than any of them, my body twisting away from hand after hand, until I stood in front of Stacy, ready to protect her with my life if necessary, already shivering as the temperature in the room dropped by several degrees.

  “Stop!” I pleaded, my voice mirroring my thoughts as I stared at the hardened steel in Robert’s eyes.

  “It’s okay, Grace,” Stacy said with bland encouragement. “He’s right. My kind have been creating problems elsewhere. I mean, if he wants to judge all of us because of the actions of a few, then he should be willing to be judged himself.

  “I mean, it was one of his kind that killed your mother, Erica and Mr. Branke, and probably Mrs. Deovolente; not to mention put Janice into a coma. It was one of his kind that attacked us in the car. But I’m sure he’d say that it was wrong of me to judge him for the actions of others. Isn’t that right, Robert?”

  A flurry of emotions could be seen running across Robert’s face, his eyes widening, narrowing, closing, opening, and finally settling into the one emotion that I knew well. Guilt.

  “Yes,” he said in a low, defeated voice. “I apologize. It was wrong of me.”

  Warmth began to flow around us again, and I sighed with relief. “Thank you,” I mouthed to him, but he didn’t want my gratitude.

  “However wrong I am, however many wrongs I have committed today by associating you with the actions of others of your kind, it does not erase the fact that those like you have been attacking humans. Their actions will only lead to their extermination.”

  “You’d kill all of us?”

  Stacy’s question hung in the air like knife frozen in freefall. Robert’s grim nod was all she needed to buckle; her strength now ebbed to nothing. “Have I made a mistake then? Have I made the wrong choice? I thought that changing into this…this thing would save my life, but if it means that I’m just going to die by your hand then I’d rather have been killed by Sam.”

  “You can’t be serious, Robert!” Lark’s voice was cutting, bitter as she glared at her brother. “Stacy has done nothing wrong. Neither has Ambrose. Neither have countless others who’ve abided by the laws we’ve set for them. To kill all of them would be murder—a massacre! You’d allow that to happen?”

  I suddenly became aware of how difficult this role of Death was for Robert. When the decisions he had to make pitted him against those he loved, decisions he hated himself, yet felt compelled to make based on his loyalty to his
kind, it was torture to his soul. He, who had spent his entire life dreaming of healing, was now planning on killing. No. Not killing.

  Murdering.

  “I have to go,” he said in a rush. “Keep her safe.”

  His order wasn’t directed at Lark. It wasn’t even directed at Graham.

  His eyes were focused, staring hard at the dark eyes that glared back.

  Stacy nodded her head.

  DREAM WEAVER

  Dinner was quiet, with Lark staring off into nothing, and Stacy standing by the window in the cramped kitchen. Graham and I stood with sandwiches in our hands; the only two people who needed to eat. The sun had set and the dull yellow light that hung above us acted like a filter over our emotions. Stacy had yet to say a word to Lark; this, despite their battling together to dispatch of Isis. I still wanted to know what happened, but did not know how to approach the subject without either of them storming off and leaving.

  Graham, still sullen over his attack and subsequent failure, mumbled about bread, meat, and cheese between bites. Lark etched patterns into the table, her fingernail slicing through the wood surface like it was skimming water. I’d tried several times to start conversations, but the silence that met me each time was defeating, and after a while I simply gave up. It felt hollow, consoling myself with a ham and cheese sandwich in a room filled with people all too upset to speak to each other.

  Graham was the first to leave, dusting his hands of crumbs and heading wordlessly up the stairs. Lark soon followed, a petulant look on her face. I stared, speechless. Whatever would happen between the two, I knew it would be equally as silent and I hoped that whatever problems still lay between them could be resolved.

  “You’re quiet.”

  My head perked up to look over at Stacy, who was still staring out the window. “No one was talking.”

  “To us. No one was talking to us, but there was talking going on,” she contradicted.

  “Well, I whatever was being said was something we wouldn’t want to hear at any rate. Besides, I tried to get you to talk but you were all stony over there, and I just don’t have it in me to try and be cheerful and happy. It’s been a really crappy year for me, you know?” I sat in the chair that Lark had vacated, and frowned at my sarcastic outburst.