by C. L. Coffey
“No,” he responded. “But I’m going to use it anyway.” Before I could dodge him, it was dumped over my head and he grabbed my wrist. I knew he had transported me somewhere the moment my feet touched the ground, but instead of reaching for the bag, I spun and punched, aiming low – for the bigger body mass. There was a grunt of pain, but by the time I had removed the bag, he had gone. Another sliver of satisfaction ran through me as I once again straightened the cap on my head: I didn’t care if I was supposed to act all angelic-like, the douchebag deserved it.
It took me all of thirty seconds to work out where I had been dropped off – right outside the Superdome. It was still early morning and I had a clear view of the I-10 from my spot outside. Great… if my picture ended up on the front of another newspaper, Michael really was going to kill me.
I pulled my cap down, hoping that the passing traffic would have been too preoccupied to notice a figure appear from thin air, and set off walking back towards the Quarter. I had to keep my pace at a ‘normal’ speed and I was a good half hour walk away from the convent. Thankfully it was a dry day; too hot for the middle of November, but certainly manageable for someone who didn’t feel the heat.
By the time I had bought the onions, and a few other supplies, I had calmed down from my encounter with the cherubim. Calm, or losing my mind, I wasn’t sure. When I stepped into Qube, I figured the latter was certainly a realistic possibility.
Qube was a small bar on Bourbon Street. It was home to delicious crêpes during the day and above average cocktails on the evening. (Actually, both were served all day long, but many an hour spent upstairs on the bar’s balcony had taught me that crêpes were where their sales lay).
It was also the home to Tyrone Hamilton.
I’d thought Ty was my friend. Initially, I’d wanted a fake ID from him so I could get into Bee’s. In exchange, he’d wanted my help with a project for his photography class – or at least, that’s what he had claimed. As I’d spent time with him, I’d realized that actually, I kind of liked him. And then I found out that Ty had been using me.
Ty was a nephilim – the offspring of a human and an angel. In Ty’s case, his father happened to be Beelzebub, one of the most famous fallen angels after Lucifer. Now don’t get me wrong, the fact he didn’t tell me that had upset me, but my biggest resentment came from the fact he had gotten me into Bee’s. It had been a trap in order for his father to literally throw me (and Joshua) out of a window, so that Ty could take photographs of it. The same photographs that had accompanied the news article which had announced the existence of angels in the world and consequently had me under house arrest.
So why exactly was I here?
“Angel?” Ty’s voice startled me from my thoughts. I looked up and found him staring at me like I was a ghost, frozen, mid-conversation with someone sat at the bar.
My eyes scanned the otherwise empty bar, falling on the one person in there beside Ty. I barely acknowledged the dark haired guy before I looked back to Ty. I sighed. “This is a mistake,” I muttered, more to myself than to him. I turned on my heel and marched towards the door.
“Angel, wait!” he called after me. I had no intention of waiting, but he ran, cutting me off at the door. “I never expected to see you again.”
“Neither did I.” I folded my arms across my chest. “What do you want?” I demanded.
“You came here,” he pointed out, though he kept his distance like I was a cat ready to attack.
“And I have no idea why,” I shot back at him.
“I’m glad you did,” he said, before I could step around him. He frowned, glancing over his shoulder at the guy at the bar. “Zeke, could you give us a minute?” I waited until Zeke had gathered his things and exited the bar, leaving Ty and myself alone. “I wanted to call by the convent.” When I narrowed my eyes, he shifted his weight. “We know where Michael’s House is,” he admitted, sheepishly.
“Of course you do,” I muttered with a sigh.
“I did want to call by,” he repeated. “But I also didn’t want Michael to kill me.”
I glared up at him. “I can assure you, Michael would be the least of your problems.”
“I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “I really am.”
“Sorry is not going to remove me and Veronica from any newspaper archive,” I told him.
“I know,” he acknowledged, sadly. He glanced over my shoulder at the bar, before looking at me. “Can I start to make it up to you with a chocolate crêpe? On me?”
If it wasn’t for the fact I’d had to put up with my pitiful cooking for the last few weeks, I would have turned him down, but I was as desperate as the other angels in the convent for something decent to eat. “Fine,” I conceded, begrudgingly. I stalked over to the bar and dumped my groceries on the barstool next to me. I paused before sitting. “Does your father own this bar too?” I asked, the thought suddenly occurring to me. “Am I about to get pounced on by a dozen different fallen angels?”
I probably should have asked that first.
“No,” Ty replied, firmly. He walked behind the bar and came to a stop in front of me. “I work here because it’s not owned by my dad.”
I narrowed my eyes. “How do I know you’re not lying to me?” I asked. “You are a nephilim, after all. Why should I trust you? Again?”
“Why did you come here?” Ty asked.
I pursed my lips. “I don’t know.”
“But you did come here,” Ty pointed out. “You knew before you stepped in this bar who I am, and who my father is.” He leaned forward onto the bar, resting his forearms on the worn wood. “Which means, deep down, you trust me,” he finished, his eyes watching me, hopeful.
I chewed at my lower lip, considering him carefully. “Maybe I’m just not a good judge of character,” I said, eventually. I reached over and scooped up my groceries. “Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment,” I added. Once again, I turned on my heel and headed for the door.
“For what it’s worth, I think you are a good judge of character,” Ty called after me. “And I’m going to do what I can to prove that to you.”
I took a deep breath and turned around. “You have made my life difficult,” I pointed out. “This is the first time I have been outside the convent walls in weeks, and even then, I had to sneak out.” I took a couple of steps back towards him, but relaxed my shoulders. “But the number of people camping outside the churches in this city has dropped right down, and apparently the newspapers have gotten bored.”
Ty’s head dropped. “About that,” he sighed.
I took another step towards the bar, the brown paper grocery bag crumpling as my grip tightened. “What?” I demanded, sharply.
Ty raised his hand to scratch at the back of his neck. “My dad convinced Claudia to release your name. She ran the story this morning. The last I heard, the network news was planning on running it, although I think they were going more along the angle of you creating the hoax, rather than being an angel.”
I saw red. Hardly aware of what I was doing, I plucked an onion from the bag and launched it as hard as I could at Ty. His reflexes seemed to be supernatural, as he ducked behind the bar, just in time to dodge the onion which exploded against a bottle of whiskey, sending alcohol, glass and onion raining down around him. “I can’t believe I came here to give you a second chance!” I snarled before I stormed out of the bar, ignoring Ty’s cries behind me.
CHAPTER THREE
A Vigilance of Virtues
I was surprised, and incredibly relieved, to discover that the crowd outside St. Mary’s hadn’t grown by the time I had returned. It would be opening soon for morning Mass anyway. Despite this, Ty’s words were still ringing in my head and I chose to return in the same way I had left.
Inside, I had barely finished unpacking the onions from the bag when I heard voices carrying down the hallway. Of late, any voices that I had heard had belonged to the angels, complaining about something. Today, I recognized one of them, but it sounded
so out of place in the convent, that I was sure I wasn’t hearing correctly. I screwed the paper bag up and tossed it in the recycle box which desperately needed emptying, and made my way over to the door.
“I’m aware of the consequences of the public finding out about this place, Michael,” the voice said, firmly. “I climbed over the neighbor’s fences, caught the bus and got off two stops early to make certain I got lost in the morning traffic.”
“Sarah?” I asked as I stepped out of the kitchen. Just down the hallway, my aunt was indeed mid-conversation with the archangel of the House. “What are you doing here? Is everything okay?” Both Michael and Sarah turned towards me with matching grim expressions on their faces. “Why are you climbing over the neighbor’s fences?” Sarah was fifty-six years old, although she seemed younger. She was certainly not the type of person who would go climbing fences unless her life was in danger.
“There are reporters camped outside the house,” she said, calmly. “The first news crew arrived sometime around five this morning.” She glanced up at Michael. “The others started to arrive shortly afterwards.”
“The others?” I repeated. “Fallen angels?”
Sarah shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I would call them believers. They were there asking for miracles.”
“Oh great,” I exclaimed. “Now there are crazy people camped out there too.”
“Angel!” Sarah and Michael both chided me eerily at the same time.
“Well they are,” I puffed.
“They are there because they believe in angels,” Michael pointed out. “That is exactly what you and I are. You cannot insult them for believing in something which is true.”
“You cannot insult them for things that aren’t true, either,” my aunt added, sharing a look with Michael.
“Well how do we get rid of them?” I asked. When they both shared the same shocked expression, my mouth fell open. “I am not proposing we swoop in there and kill them!”
“We didn’t think you meant that,” Sarah responded. “But we’re not going to rid them from my lawn.”
I folded my arms. “You’re going to let them stay there?” I asked Sarah. “And you’re happy to continue leaping over fences?”
“No,” Michael replied for her. “She is going to stay here for a while.” He opened his mouth, ready to say something else, but no words came out. He stood frozen, his gaze which had been focused on me seemed to suddenly be looking straight through me.
“Michael?” I said, waving my hand in front of his face.
He blinked, and then turned to Sarah. “I will have a room allocated to you. Cupid will see to that shortly. Please forgive me but I have business to attend to.” He barely waited for Sarah to nod an acknowledgement before he vanished in front of us.
I looked at my aunt. “Weird.” I shrugged and gestured to the large hallway. “Welcome to the House of Michael.”
“What had I interrupted you in doing?” she asked, looking around.
“Preparing dinner,” I replied, smiling as my aunt’s eyes widened in disbelief. “You remember me telling you that the cherubim left, right?” I may have been under house arrest, but I had managed to call her a few times a week to explain my latest disappearing act.
“The ones that did all the chores,” Sarah nodded. Her eyes narrowed. “Wait, you are doing the chores? I thought you were allergic?”
I rolled my eyes. What person liked doing chores? “I want to eat. No one else seems capable.”
She followed me into the kitchen and saw the nine onions waiting for me on the metal counter. “How hungry are you?”
“There are thirty-three mouths to feed in here,” I said. Sarah rolled up her sleeves and walked over to the sink. “What are you doing?” I asked as she turned the taps on.
“You have never been trained to cook for that many people,” she informed me. “You will be in this kitchen all day. I have nothing better to do, and a love for cooking. You leave the kitchen to me,” she instructed me as she started to lather up her hands.
“You know you’re a guest here, right?” I pointed out.
She glanced back to me. “Regardless of the circumstances, you have a job to do. Shouldn’t you see what was so important that Michael had to disappear so abruptly?”
I hurried to give her a hug, then did as she suggested, darting up the stairs, two at a time until I reached Michael’s attic abode. Outside the door, I could hear multiple voices. One I recognized: Michael. There were at least two I didn’t. “… All over the news. Again!” One was saying. “It is unacceptable.”
I knocked on the door and waited for Michael to call me in. When he did, I stepped in, and didn’t wait for the door to close behind me before I spoke. “It’s not Michael’s fault,” I quickly told the two newcomers.
“Not now,” Michael warned me.
“You must be Angel,” one of the new angels said. She was a stunning, ridiculously tall, Asian who could pass for eighteen, with warm honey-colored eyes – the polar opposite of the tone of voice she was using on me.
“That’s me,” I said, making sure to keep my back straight and my chin held high. “You have me at a disadvantage.”
“Which isn’t hard when you’re currently being broadcast across the local networks,” the second newcomer announced. Looking at this guy a Scandinavian college-aged hipster was what came to mind. Even the man-bun didn’t seem out of place with the suit he wore. He was also looking at me like I was the second coming of Lucifer.
“As I have said, Zachary, this will soon blow over,” Michael said in exasperation.
“You are not hearing us, Michael,” the woman said. “We are not here because Angel and Veronica decided to announce the existence of angels to the world.”
“Oh, come on! ‘Announcing the existence of angels to the world’ is a little extreme,” I jumped in. “We didn’t want that to happen, any more than I wanted Beelzebub to throw me out of that window.”
“Angel, be quiet,” Michael said, trying to keep his cool.
“That is why we are here,” Zachary said, pointing his finger at me.
“She is a little brash and certainly needs to learn when she should be quiet,” Michael said, seemingly forgetting I was in the room. “But I still think she will make an excellent archangel.”
My eyes widened: he did? Today was the most I had seen Michael since the day after Halloween – the morning after the night’s events which were being discussed – when I shouted at him for not realizing what was happening in New Orleans under his nose. If my aunt hadn’t have turned up at the convent, I was certain we could probably go the same length of time again before we crossed paths. He thought I would make an excellent archangel? I started to smile, but as quickly as it had formed, it disappeared: that meant these two didn’t.
“She seems surprised,” the woman mused, smiling at Zachary, mistaking where my surprise came from.
“Why don’t you show her, Savannah?” Zachary suggested.
“There is no need for this,” Michael objected as Savannah walked over to one of the brown leather couches in the corner of the room.
I was momentarily distracted by the grace with which she walked across the room, wearing what looked to be five inch stilettos. No wonder she looked so tall. She was dressed like she worked in a boardroom, but she looked like she belonged on a runway. She plucked an iPad from a purse and stalked straight back over, switching it on as she did so. She handed it over as a saved video of a news report started playing.
“Thank you, Ryan,” the reporter was saying as she stood in front of a painfully familiar blue house. “I’m standing outside the home of Angelina Connors; the girl KWN News has identified as the person responsible for the angel hoax three weeks ago in New Orleans. Angelina, who goes by the name of Angel, has perhaps taken her namesake a little too seriously. You may remember the pictures which dominated the national headlines.” The shot switched to the all-too-familiar photographs of me and Veroni
ca outside of Bee’s as my mouth fell open. National headlines?? “KWN News has been trying to figure out how these photographs were staged, and to what motive. Theories on the internet range from a girl desperate for her fifteen minutes of fame to a political statement about the importance of religion in today’s society. Either way, one thing is for certain: Luke Goddard has certainly been reaping the benefits of this stunt as his fans claim it was a sign of a true Follower. This is Regina Ward reporting for KWN News.”
I was too busy staring at the small screen in astonishment to stop Savannah from reaching over and selecting a different saved video. This one was a local breakfast show my aunt watched all the time. The presenters – Brent and Candice – were sat either side of a widescreen monitor with the same photograph displayed between them.
“I have to say, Brent, this doesn’t surprise me at all,” Candice said, gesturing to the screen. “This is a girl crying out for attention.”
“I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t think the drunken antics of a college student qualify for a cry for help.”
“This alone, maybe not, but when you look at everything else?” Candice shrugged. “She ran away from home six months ago.” The monitor between them flashed to a rumpled missing poster. Although the contact number was blurred out, I was certain it was something that my aunt had created. “And then when you look at her Facebook profile…” The missing poster was replaced with various photographs of me, taken across my first two years of college, clearly on a night out, clearly drunk, and clearly drawing attention to myself. I actually winced at the one my friend Nina had taken of me, dancing on top of a bar.
“Candice, if you were to look at any other college student’s Facebook profile, you’d likely find similar things. She’s young, she’s having fun. I bet you were the life and soul of a party too, when you were her age,” Brent pointed out.
“I didn’t go out and encourage someone even younger to join in. That raven-haired girl looks like a high school junior, at best, and look at the stunt she’s pulling.”
