Matchbox Girls

by Chrysoula Tzavelas

  more...

  Corbin caught her as she instinctively jerked backwards, trying to dodge the beams and strands and bars of light that filled the room. “It’s called the Geometric Sight. I designed it to appear like a heads-up display, overlaid on your actual vision. To deactivate it, imagine the outline of a circle, a triangle and a square, all on top of each other, and then separate them. Reverse that to reactivate it.”

  Marley barely heard him. Many-colored light had transformed the world: Objects had auras, and faint lines connected the auras to other auras. Corbin himself was a mass of lines and blazing circular nodes, far more complex than any of the simple objects in the room. The hand near her face had a circle of white light on the palm, and inside the light was... complexity. Smaller lines and nodes of every shape, interlocking like the gears of a clock. She couldn’t understand it. Then Corbin drew his hand away and she focused on his face. There was a circular node on his forehead and another hovering near the top of his head, but her attention was immediately caught by the crown of light glowing about eight inches above him.

  The silvery nimbus was only vaguely ring-shaped, and in the center it darkened until the core was a miasma of shadows. She gaped at it for a moment, reaching her fingers out to touch it. To her surprise, she felt a tingle when her fingers brushed where it appeared to be.

  Corbin, still holding her left hand, smiled. “There’s another one down there,” he said, pointing. She looked down at the matching glow wreathing his feet. “They come in pairs. Some art gets it right.”

  He continued after a moment. “If you see somebody with the halo and the chakra nodes, that means they’re nephilim. If someone only has the chakra nodes, they’re mortal. If they only have the halo, they’re the vessel or construct of a celestial creature.”

  She turned her head to the twins, who were both watching curiously. They had both the halo and the circular nodes. But while Corbin’s nodes were each filled with gem-like colors, the children’s nodes were all empty.

  “Okay,” she managed. “What about everything else?”

  He stood up and pulled her to her feet as well. “We’ll get to that. But first...” He gently drew her over to the full-length mirror next to the bathroom door. She flinched as a line of light crossing from the door to the window passed painlessly through her head. “What do you see?”

  She looked at her reflection. She had a series of circular nodes—chakras, she remembered Corbin calling them—running down her body in a line. Two of them were filled with tinted, complex light. And over her head and at her feet, glowing like the moon and its reflection, were a pair of halos.

  -eighteen-

  “I’m... not mortal?” Marley fought against the blankness in her mind. “Does this mean one of my biological parents was an angel?” Suddenly she remembered the not-Penny addressing her as nephil. It'd been convenient to ignore that at the time.

  “Or one of your grandparents. Somewhere in your family tree, somebody attracted the attention of a celestial. I take it there are some missing branches?”

  “All of them. I was adopted.” She shook her head wonderingly. “I always figured my mother was a...” She noticed the twins watching her in the mirror. “Somebody in a lot of trouble,” she finished.

  “Hmm,” he said.

  She flinched, imagining what lay under that noncommittal sound. Quickly, she said, “What did my, uh, halo look like before?” At the moment, it was tall and clean. While there was a shifting shadow at the heart of Corbin’s halo, hers seemed to have a whirling brightness that made her uncomfortable to study.

  “The day before yesterday, it was suppressed almost entirely. Veiled, we call it. If I’d passed you on the street, I wouldn’t have noticed you. Yesterday afternoon and today, it was... blotched.” He sounded puzzled. “Dark, dull spots, with very little fire. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it before.”

  “But how can I be like you guys? I don’t have any superpowers. No dogs or ravens.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not so sure about that.” He glanced down at the thing that had reappeared in his hand. It looked like an elaborate keychain ornament, all cubes and rods moving over each other. Flashes of light cast shadows onto his face.

  “I’d know better than you, wouldn’t I?! What’s that you’re playing with?”

  “This is a fragment of a celestial Machine. I borrowed it from the Senyaza Repository. I wanted to see what it could tell us about the kids, maybe give us a clue as to why the angel wants them in particular.” He turned it over in his hand, and there was a silken sound. “No idea what it was for originally, but it’s been... useful in the past when it comes to newly found nephilim and the trouble they cause. Item number 41, informally known as the Lullaby Plaything.” He held it out to her.

  Marley didn’t take it, even though she longed to poke at the little toy. “Celestial Machine? Angels have machines? What for?”

  “Heaven has Machines, anyhow. Huge, amazing things, or so I’ve read.” He glanced down at the Lullaby Plaything again, fidgeting absently with it. More little flashes of light, faster now. “What makes its way out isn’t as impressive. Possession of them is important to the angels. I think the Machines do all the real work, myself. But all we really know in general is that they exist, they’re powerful, and they’re the only things that can stop a celestial from reincarnating when they die. When celestials war among themselves, they use a few of them as weapons. This is just a tiny piece of one.”

  Angels can die. Marley filed that away and stared at the moving rods. “So somewhere up there, the celestial Machine in charge of spring threw a bolt and is now is going ‘clonk’?”

  Corbin smiled. “Maybe. I mean, probably not. They’re not that obvious. But if anybody really knows, they’re not telling. This one, we’ve studied some. It has a calming, focusing effect on the nephilim who play with it, and the little laser show can suggest the nature of a nephil’s heritage, what domain their celestial forebear was associated with, and so on. Take it, it won’t hurt you. When you’re convinced of that, give it to one of the kids.”

  Marley took a calming breath, and then picked up the Lullaby Plaything by one of the metal rods. A cube at the end of the rod rotated as if on a pivot, and another rod, connected to the first near the other end, slid down. It really did look like an engaging little toy, the sort of thing her father would have in his office. She prodded a third rod. Its cube started spinning, with a gentle clicking sound. Small colored lights bloomed on each of the cubes, and dotted the rods. They were pleasantly soothing and she gazed at them for a moment, until her breathing deepened.

  Unobtrusively, her catastrophe vision activated. It was a peaceful device, without the intent to harm anybody. It certainly wouldn’t harm the twins, although its own fate in their hands was obscured somehow.

  Her nose tickled. The campfire scent that had overhung everything for what felt like days now was replaced by the strong ozone tang of thunderstorms. She glanced at the window, but the sky was clear. She turned an inquiring look on Corbin, and recoiled. He was watching her closely, analytically, and his own personal array of catastrophes hung about him like a suffocating cloak. She yanked her gaze away, fumbling with the Lullaby Plaything as she rejected the vision. The lights on the celestial toy dimmed, and the clicking spin of the moving cube slowed.

  Eyes on the carpet, she stalked past him to the twins’ blanket tent. “Hey, kids.” Corbin's Sight overlay showed her the lines of light blazing down their curved spines, and hollow circles of light, seven of them, dotting the central line. Their halos were identical radiant stars with sparkling motes mixing between them.

  “Wait,” said Corbin. “I knew you had a gift. AT said you had a unique sight. What do you see with it?”

  Corbin’s impersonal, diagnostic tone scraped against already sensitive nerves. “It’s a curse, not a gift,” she snapped. “I see the bad things that might happen to somebody.”

  “Why did you suppress it? I’
d like to see it in action more so I can integrate it into the Geometric Sight.”

  “Why? I don’t want to use it. It’s deceptive. Useless. Mostly what it shows doesn't happen.” Before the Lullaby Plaything had activated it, she’d been pleased with how she’d kept it utterly suppressed since the encounter at Penny’s.

  “Oh.” He stared at the ground. “Sometimes celestial powers have trouble manifesting properly within a human framework. It can feel like a curse. But if you—”

  “No,” she said flatly.

  “So you don’t actually want a superpower.” He rubbed the space between his eyes, his face drawn and tired.

  She shrugged and held out the celestial toy to Lissa. “Here. Play with this,” she ordered.

  Confused, the preschooler took the device. She prodded it much as Marley had done, and all of the cubes started spinning. Kari squeezed out of the fort beside her and reached out to brush a finger across the glittering lights. The clicking of the cubes became a choral hum, like the long tones of a water harmonica. The light brightened until it was a flickering aurora. Then the Lullaby Plaything rose into the air until it was near the ceiling, twirled once, and soundlessly, peacefully exploded. The rods and cubes scattered everywhere, thudding into the furniture and carpet.

  Corbin ducked a cube that flew past his head. “Uh.” His eyes were wide.

  Marley looked at him inquisitively. “Not supposed to happen?” She bent down and picked up one of the rods. A cube came tumbling out from under a bedspread and bounced up into her other hand, and then tugged itself over to the rod as if by magnetism. They snapped together. The little girls, unfazed by the exploding plaything, oohed appreciatively.

  Corbin said, “That wasn’t in the documentation, no.”

  Lissa looked up. “Did we break it?”

  Corbin stared down at her. “I hope not.”

  Kari squeezed out from behind the table. “Here’s another piece.” She held a cube hopefully out to the rod Marley still held, but nothing happened. Her face fell. She patted it against the other cube a few times, until Lissa took it from her.

  Tilting her head, she said, “It needs to rest for a while.” She carefully put it on the table and then scurried around the room finding the other pieces. After piling them on the table, she took the rod Marley held and added it to the collection. “There. Now it can take a nap.”

  Corbin was still staring at the remnants of the Machine. “Corbin?” said Marley. “Are you all right? Are you going to get into trouble?”

  He shook his head. “That was really weird. But for all I know, maybe the kid is right. As for trouble... I’m already in trouble. This is at least interesting trouble.” He shook his head again. “I’m more worried about how tired I am than trouble from Senyaza. I should have gotten more information from that.”

  Kari said, “Maybe you need a nap, too!”

  He mustered a smile. “Nah, I’ll be fine.”

  Kari shook her finger at him and then ducked back into the blanket tent. Lissa lingered outside, patting one of the cubes. Marley watched her for a moment and then turned and threw herself on the bed, covering her eyes. That gave her a close-up of the line of light running down her arm, but when she actually closed her eyes, the—what had Corbin called it?—the Geometric Sight faded away. She said, “This ‘detect-if-they’re-an-angel’ vision is pretty good, even if the Machine test didn’t work. It’ll tell me if someone’s marked by an angel, too?”

  “Yes. The mark appears in the place where the halo would be.”

  “That’s great,” she said. “That’s a useful superpower, I think. Doesn’t impact the rest of your life, either.”

  “Marley—” he said, and stopped. When he spoke again, she could hear the frustration in his voice. “Are you really hoping to go back to your old life when this is over? Do you think you can make it all just... go away?”

  She took her arm off her face and looked at the ceiling. “What? People trying to kill me? Exploding children’s toys stolen from Heaven? A monster inside my friend? I sure hope so.”

  “I meant what’s inside of you—what you are—and you know it.”

  “Can we just not worry about the catastrophe vision, please? I’ve got it under control at the moment. We don’t have the time or space for me to turn into a screaming, weeping wreck, here or on the highway.” She shuddered reflexively as a flash of the nightmare of multiple driver consequences flashed before her mind’s eye.

  “I’m pretty sure there’s more to it than that,” he said tiredly. “You should be able to influence what you see.”

  “No, I can’t!” she snapped, and sat up. “I tried, with Penny! When I saw that thing inside her, I tried to make her safe. And it didn’t work. There is no safety. Except for them.” She pointed at the blanket fort as Lissa vanished into it, and realized she’d gotten very loud.

  He stared at her silently, his eyes shadowed. Finally, she said, “If there are angels, are there also demons?”

  “There are. Why do you ask?” His voice was perfectly neutral.

  “Because if Ettoriel doesn’t let Penny go, I’m going to make him regret it. And I bet demons would be the folks to go to for help there. You said angels could die.”

  Cautiously, Corbin said, “Machine Blades can end a celestial. And my people have developed a way to kill them, but it's not as permanent.”

  “How impermanent?”

  “Something eventually appears with the same name, and the same tendencies, but without any of the memories of the previous bearer of that name.”

  “That sounds pretty good,” said Marley, with vicious satisfaction. “How is it done?”

  He spread his hands. “Somebody performs complicated magic near the celestial's avatar or hidden core. The spell tethers the three parts of an angel—spirit, numina, avatar—together. While the tether is maintained, damage to the avatar or numina can affect the spirit, which is normally immortal and untouchable. It requires a solid team of my people to bring down a celestial, because the celestial needs to be heavily distracted or else they'll disrupt the spell.”

  “But you do it. You kill the immortal.”

  He shrugged. “My team is out of commission right now after trying to help Zachariah. And angels aren't our primary targets, so much. Not these days. There are other kinds of celestials that are more overtly dangerous.”

  “Demons,” she said. “And I bet they're pretty interested in fighting angels, eh? Maybe they'll help me, if your people won't.”

  Both amused and taken aback, he said, “You know, most humans just aren’t worth a Faustian revenge bargain.”

  She pointed a finger at him. “You shut the hell up. Sounding like you’re something other than human. Aren’t you part angel and part human? Well, so far, the humans are worth a lot more than the angel. So as far as I’m concerned, there’s human, and human-plus.”

  “Perhaps I’m part demon, instead. Still human-plus?” He looked at her expression and a number of emotions crossed his own face. “Not that it matters. Someday you’re going to meet a demon and you’re going to be surprised. Try not to be too attached to your preconceptions or you’ll get into trouble. They usually aim to please.”

  Marley gave him a killing look, and stalked over to crouch down in front of the blanket tent. “Everything all right in there?”

  Kari and Lissa were huddled together, clutching their dolls.

  “You were yelling,” Kari whispered.

  Guilt stabbed Marley, refocusing her frustration and irritation on herself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Lissa said, “I want Uncle Zach back. When is he coming back? Can he come back now?” She curled up on her side, and stuck her thumb in her mouth.

  “Not right now, but soon, I hope.” She dropped the makeshift tent flap and turned away, wishing she had another answer to give the two pairs of sad eyes. Corbin hadn’t moved from where he’d been standing, even to turn his head.

  “I’m sorry,” she
said to his back. “There’s just so much I don’t know, and Penny’s in so much danger, and my other best friend is going to hate me soon because I can’t tell her what I don’t understand, and these poor kids are so lost...” She trailed off, thinking about Zachariah.

  Corbin’s near hand clenched into a fist. “I don’t believe he didn’t know what you are.”

  “What?” she said, off-balance.

  “Zachariah. He knew you were nephilim, an isolated one that Senyaza hadn’t found. He must have known. And he chose to keep you ignorant. He could have explained all this and more, and he didn’t. He could have given you days to acclimatize, weeks to learn.”

  “I’m sure he must have had a reason—” But she suddenly didn't know why she was defending Zachariah.

  “Oh, I’m sure he did. Just like I’m sure he had a reason for sending my friends and me off to get our asses kicked while keeping us ignorant as to the real reason. Because he’s a selfish secret-loving bastard.”

  “I think even if he had clued me in, it wouldn’t have protected Penny,” she said quietly. “Why are you angrier at him than at the angel who actually hurt your friends?”

  He crossed his arms and turned his head, but didn’t turn around. There was a pause, longer than Marley expected, until finally he said, “Because angels trying to kill nephilim isn’t unexpected. It's part of their philosophy. They want us all to go away. We... embarrass them. But nephilim have survived by cooperating. It doesn’t matter if your ancestors were angels or demons or kaiju or fae—we’re all nephilim together. That’s what Senyaza is all about. Senyaza doesn't trust Zachariah, but I gave him a chance. And now my friends are all in the hospital. And I know there's more going on than he shared.”

  “I see,” Marley said quietly. “And where’s Senyaza now? I thought you were going to get their help.”

  He finally turned around, spreading his hands again. “I’m it. Apparently there’s something major going down in Europe, so I got a promotion. So to speak.” He hesitated. “And somebody upstairs is pissed about the kaiju hunters being incapacitated. They really don’t believe anything Zachariah is involved in is good for Senyaza.”