Smitten by Magic

by Erica Ridley

  He fell asleep smiling.

  In his dream, he floated out of the tent. He was still with Sarah, but not on the hard ground in the mountains. They were somewhere soft, somewhere heavenly, suspended in a luxurious feather bed overlooking the sea.

  He opened his eyes. It was morning. He was still on his side, still in the tent, still on the ground. Although he was awake, the odd sensation of reclining on a feather bed still remained.

  Sarah was awake, too.

  He smiled at her. She grimaced back at him. His smile widened. Maybe she wasn’t a morning person. He used to think he wasn’t, either, but his dad had forced him out of bed every morning at dawn until habit kicked in, and now to do otherwise would be unthinkable. Maybe she just needed some practice.

  “You can get up first,” he murmured. “I’ll let you have first dibs on the bathroom.”

  “I can’t,” she said quietly. “You go ahead.”

  He grinned, a flash of stubbornness goading him to keep teasing her. “Oh no, I insist. Ladies first.”

  “I can’t,” she said through gritted teeth. She turned her face away, but it sounded almost as though she’d muttered something like, “You’re on my wing.”

  He’d reflexively rolled away before his mind processed her words. “I’m on your what?”

  “Nothing.” She sprang to her feet far too energetically, even for a morning person. “I’m fine. You’re fine. We’re all fine.”

  He shook his head, certain he was right. “Did you say I was on your wing? Why would you say I was on your wing?”

  She glared at him, clearly exasperated, and then let out a low sigh. “Fine. I’ll tell you. They’ll wipe your memory anyway after the end-of-month debriefing. I’m your guardian angel and you were lying on one of my wings. I don’t think we should sleep together anymore. And probably no more kissing.”

  “The who what?” he stammered, certain he’d misheard her after all. He bolted upright as the fog cleared. “I’m sorry, did you just claim to be an angel?”

  Her shoulders slumped resignedly. “I don’t know why I thought I could fool you for more than a few hours in the first place. It’s too much work to be human. I’m tired of pretending to eat and sleep. And as cute as you are, it was no picnic having my wing pinned to the ground all night. I’m going to be sore for days.”

  Um, wow.

  Javier stared at her wordlessly. To say he was suffering the first inkling of doubt as to her sanity would be putting it mildly. He was a logical man. Angels did not wear cupcake headbands and drive stick shifts. Therefore, his dream girl was having a psychotic break, or... okay, yeah. She was insane.

  Of course, she was still hot and still otherwise awesome, so perhaps he shouldn’t be too hasty.

  “You’re an angel,” he repeated slowly. Questioningly.

  She nodded. “A guardian angel. Your guardian angel.”

  “So... you do miracles?”

  Her eyes narrowed as if she suspected a trap. “When necessary.”

  “Well, do one now.”

  “Do one what?”

  “A miracle. Prove you have the power.”

  “I’m an angel, not your monkey. I don’t have to prove anything. You’re not even supposed to know I exist. I’ll be lucky if I don’t get fired for this. It’s a very exclusive guild.”

  “I see.” He tapped his chin. “How exactly does one become part of the angel guild?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. Eventually, she muttered, “You’re either born or chosen. Or the third way.”

  Huh? Was that supposed to make sense? He waited, but that seemed to be the extent of the explanation. “Well, that was enlightening.”

  “I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

  “I can see why.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Can we move past this?”

  “I just want to understand how it works. Are you supposed to save me if I fall out of an airplane or get hit by a bus or something?”

  “I can’t undo death.” The bleakness in her tone and the seriousness in her eyes were unnervingly genuine. “I’m an angel, not a god.”

  “So... you guard me from bad things before they happen?”

  “I try to keep you out of danger, yes.”

  Something in her voice, in her face, had him almost believing her. Did that make him just as crazy as she was? He needed something that would settle the argument one way or the other. Something empirical. Inarguable.

  He glanced around the tent, looking for something an alleged guardian angel might be able to protect him from. His gaze landed on a spare tent spike. That should be heavy enough to constitute “danger.” He picked up the spike and held it over his bare foot. He turned it sideways, so as to minimize impact. “So... you’ll keep me safe from this?”

  He let go of the spike before she answered.

  The flat side crashed into the top of his foot, sending a lightning bolt of shooting pain up his leg.

  “Ow!” The spike rolled to a stop a few inches away. Sarah hadn’t moved a millimeter. His foot was already starting to bruise. “You didn’t save me from that.”

  She lifted a shoulder. “My job is to guard you from death, not from your own stupidity.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, his injured foot throbbing. Then he burst out laughing.

  She was trolling him. Obviously she was trolling him. There were no guardian angels, just gullible travelers. She’d even gotten him to drop a metal spike on his own foot to prove her wrong. Next time, he wouldn’t face her in a battle of wits until after he’d had a double shot of caffeine.

  Still shaking his head at how easily he’d been had, he pushed to his feet and held out his hand. “Come on, angel. Let’s go get some coffee.”

  Chapter 7

  Three days later, the roofs were fixed and the frame was set for a small community center that could double as a church or school, whatever the locals needed. The problem was that was the only frame set.

  No. Javier ran swollen fingers through his hair. That wasn’t the problem.

  The problem was the bridge.

  Sarah was right about the bridge’s instability and untrustworthiness. When he’d gone back in the daylight to orchestrate the piecemeal transfer of heavy materials, as he’d promised he’d do, he’d gotten an eyeful of reality. From the SUV, the bridge looked like a bridge. A dangerous bridge but, you know, a bridge. On foot, with the sides and underbelly at eye level, the bridge looked less like a bridge and more like a false-floor death trap. The locals didn’t even dare cross the thing on horseback, which was one of the reasons they were so isolated and helpless.

  They were also smarter than him. He could not believe he’d strutted across in an SUV and pulling a trailer. He couldn’t even see how it was physically possible. Even if the weathered slats could somehow support the weight, the missing sections should’ve swallowed a tire, or sent him careening off the side.

  He’d placed all the right phone calls, but the government was months away from sending help. He finally found a private company capable of replacing the bridge, but they were booked solid and couldn’t break ground until after the rainy season, anyway.

  Which meant triple the work and quadruple the frustration. He’d paid out the nose to find a team to run telephone and electricity lines, and there were the workers on the other side of the river, staring in disbelief at the joke of a bridge.

  Obviously their trucks couldn’t cross. They weighed ten times as much as the little trailer. The men could walk over, sure, but then what? Haul miles of cabling in thick coils on their backs? The company he’d hired to redo the village’s poor plumbing had managed, but they hadn’t needed to bring utility poles across the bridge. Or basket cranes. Construction equipment was much heavier than the SUV, even with an over-stuffed trailer.

  All of which meant that for three solid days, Javier awoke long before dawn, scouted out territory, dreamed up plans, organized men, tromped through mud, shimmied up trees
, scaled roofs, schlepped heavy equipment, mixed concrete, inhaled fumes, barked orders, watched out for children, rationed food, bandaged wounds, kept up morale, directed traffic, cut wires, hammered nails, bent pipes, and tumbled into his tent for a scant five hours’ sleep before getting up and doing it all over.

  He hadn’t had a spare moment to even talk to Sarah, much less contemplate kissing her again. Not that she left him alone to this madness. She was everywhere he was, doing everything he was, always within earshot if he needed an extra hand. She was amazing, the villagers were amazing, the unexpected help from the neighboring towns was amazing, but what they really needed was... more.

  The day after the hearing, Javier had liquidated his assets. He earmarked one third of the money for doing this exact sort of thing for the rest of his life. He donated another third to all the worthy causes he’d ignored during his years as a power-hungry mogul. He used the final third to start the nonprofit Rodriguez Foundation, with the goal of bringing relief to third-world countries and people in need throughout the globe.

  Despite the full subsidization and grant money to anyone willing to donate a year of their time, the Rodriguez Foundation was unarguably Javier’s least successful venture. The few volunteers he did have were stretched to their limits, and there were none to spare for a tiny village in the mountains of Bolivia in the last weeks of December.

  Nonetheless, the faces around him were hopeful—possibly for the first time in years—and Javier was determined not to let them down. The villagers, like the majority of Bolivians, were Roman Catholics. They believed in goodness. And they deserved a Christmas miracle.

  His bruised shoulders had helped haul the thick logs for the utility poles across the bridge and into town, and went back three more times until all the cabling had been brought across as well.

  The men were busy holding poles and climbing ladders and running cable when Javier finally decided he could use a thirty-second break. He glanced around for Sarah and spotted her at the foot of an incline, gathering fruit with some of the local children.

  He was so focused on her that he failed to watch where he was going, and his boot tangled in a nest of forgotten wire. He was bending over to try and untangle his foot when the rumbling began.

  His first thought was thunder. His second thought was earthquake. His third thought was Run!

  He caught sight of Sarah’s terrified face and the screaming children pointing at something just behind him. Still struggling with the nest of wires, he glanced over his shoulder.

  A stack of heavy utility logs had broken loose from the pile and was tumbling down the mountain directly toward him.

  “Oh, fuck.”

  Javier whipped his head back to his foot, frantically trying to loosen the wires enough to untie his trapped boot and hop one-footed down the mountain if he had to, but there was no way, no time, and nowhere to go.

  When the shadows of the falling logs fell over his back, he glanced up at Sarah. At least she’d be the last thing he saw before he was crushed to death under seven-hundred-pound utility poles.

  Her face was no longer terrified. If anything, she looked... confused?

  She was doing the blinky-fluttery thing again, her face tilted not toward him, but toward his impending annihilation.

  He braced for impact.

  The first log bounced overhead, close enough to rustle his hair. The second log... didn’t happen.

  After several long seconds of absolutely nothing, Javier straightened his hunched spine and stared over his shoulder.

  The utility poles had... stopped. Against all logic, against all gravity, against everything he’d ever learned from Bill Nye the Science Guy, dozens of heavy logs lay silent on the muddy incline, as harmless as tinker toys. Even the treacherous wiring entangling his feet had fallen aside like overcooked spaghetti.

  He could walk away. He was fine.

  He jerked his eyes back toward Sarah. She was looking at him, not at the death logs defying gravity just above him. Nor was she doing the epileptic fluttery thing anymore. If he had to put a word on it, he’d have to say she looked...

  Guilty.

  As if she’d made the impossible possible with just the power of her mind. As if she’d saved his life—no, “guarded him from death”—just as she’d promised she would. His lungs seized.

  Holy mother of God. She was a guardian angel!

  He scrambled out of the wiring as fast as he could and raced down the incline. His heart was still thundering from the adrenaline, from the fear, from surviving the freaking impossible. He grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to catch his breath.

  “Did you do that?” he panted.

  She didn’t answer, but her cheeks turned a suspicious shade of pink.

  “You did do it! I knew you did it! I mean, are doing it.” He glanced over his shoulder. Yep, the utility poles were still defying gravity. A crowd was beginning to form.

  As if she’d just realized what he meant, Sarah’s eyes widened in alarm—then fluttered unnaturally.

  The logs were once again on the move, but this time, not dangerously. The utility poles all but meandered down the incline, harmlessly coming to rest against this tree or that rock.

  “You have got to be kidding me.” Javier could barely even breathe, much less think. His heart was still in hyperactive arrhythmia. “You’re an actual angel. You saved my life.”

  “All in a day’s work,” she mumbled, without making eye contact. “Keeping you safe is a full-time job.”

  He stared at her speechlessly. He was pretty sure his brain was going to explode at any moment. She really was an angel. A guardian angel. Which meant there were angels. His mind reeled. So did the rest of him. He had to sit down. No, he couldn’t sit down. There was nowhere to sit. Plus, he was still gripping her shoulders. Why was he gripping her shoulders? Was gripping an angel’s shoulders a sin? Oh shit, he’d kissed her. He couldn’t remember anything in the Bible specifically being for or against making out with one’s guardian angel, but AP Mythology had been pretty clear that god+mortal intermingling had never worked out for the Greeks. Or the Romans. Angel/human hanky-panky was probably an equally terrible idea.

  He totally wanted to kiss her again, though. Right now. On the lips.

  He shoved his hands into his pockets before he could sink them in her hair and further complicate what he’d believed was a very uncomplicated, temporary relationship. What had she said this morning? He’d slept on her wing. She had wings. Invisible ones. And he’d slept on one. Possibly drooled on it. Gallant.

  The memory of their first encounter popped into his head. He’d run into an invisible wall and briefly seen stars. Not stars. Wings. He’d seen wings. He’d discounted them because, wings. And then she’d appeared out of nowhere. But it wasn’t nowhere, it was right in front of him. The wings were hers. First he clotheslined himself on them, then he pinned her down and drooled on them. Why was she even still here? Guardian angel, sure, he got that, but she must have better things to do than get tackled and drooled upon. Everyone had somewhere to be for the holidays.

  Oh God. The holidays! If anyone had epic Christmas plans, it would have to be an angel. The questions came so fast and so furious, he was practically speaking in tongues just to get them out.

  “What are you doing for Christmas? Do you celebrate noche buena? Or is it more like heavenly Hanukkah? Are you right in the middle of a countdown? Or are you down on Earth because December isn’t your thing? Do you guys do more of a Three Kings celebration instead, come January? Or are our dates so messed up it won’t be holiday time for you until March or August? Oh, man, what if I’m off completely? It’s incredibly presumptuous to assume my Sunday school lessons were the correct ones. Were the Greeks right, after all? The Romans? It would be bad-ass if there really was a Medusa. Or Romulus and Remus! I already feel like I’ve opened Pandora’s Box. Is there a Pandora’s Box? Or a golden fleece?”

  She inched backward. Slowly. And then blinked with car
eful precision. As if trying—and failing—to comprehend any portion of his exuberant babble.

  “Never mind,” he said quickly. “Don’t tell me. It won’t change anything, and I don’t really need to know. The biggest miracle of all isn’t that angels exist, it’s that we’ve got one right here in the Bolivian jungle, right where divine intervention is needed the most. Can you magic the utility poles into place? Make sure everyone’s wired up, maybe give them some 4G. It’ll be awhile before the government can send anyone out here, and I really want these people to have a good Christmas.”

  She bit her lip. “No.”

  “And the bridge! They absolutely need a better bridge. And filtered water. And a pharmacy, or at least access to penicillin and—”

  He broke off. Replayed her reply. Stared at her uncomprehendingly.

  “I’m sorry, did you just say... no?”

  She nodded infinitesimally. “I’m your guardian angel. Not theirs. I can only do miracles that directly affect you, and only when absolutely necessary to keep you out of harm’s way. It’s in my contract. You have a destiny. Everything else is… not my job.”

  An uneasy churning began to bubble deep in his stomach. Not my job were the last words he’d ever expected to hear from an angel. Perhaps they defined the term differently wherever she came from.

  He pressed forward anyway. “Okay, you’re assigned to me. Loud and clear. But you’re obviously not the only guardian angel, right? If I’ve got one of my own, that means there’s gotta be lots of you guys floating around. Right?”

  She hesitated, then inclined her head. “There’s a guild. But I’m a peon, not a powerhouse. I don’t make the rules. I follow them.”

  “A guild! Right! Well, there you go. A heavenly guild of guardian angels. I hoped there was some sort of infrastructure to handle these things. I’m assuming you’re here because I’m here, right? I mean here-here, not existentially. Bolivia. This village. That clipboard itinerary wasn’t a coincidence. You were following me.”

  “Y-yes. I go where you go. But you’re not supposed to see me.”