by Jill Barnett
Wings shimmying, they leapt from one cloudbank to another, until Lilli found the perfect hiding spot deep inside a plump cumulus cloud, where glittering icicles framed a shining silver lining. She grabbed Florie's hand and dragged her inside.
Florie glanced around with an uncertain look. "Do you think Saint Peter will find us?"
"Of course not. This is the perfect place to hide. I found it when I spent those months silver polishing. No one thinks there's a lining in this cloud."
"You're certain?"
"I hid in here the last time."
"Oh." Florie paused, then gave her a knowing look. "The time you were trying to fly and ran headfirst into Jacob's ladder."
Lilli hung her head. "If only all the archangels hadn't been standing on it at the time."
"Gabriel still has a tweak in his halo."
"I know. I've never been able to look him in the eye again." Lilli looked at her friend, and after a quiet moment admitted, "Well, you know . . . that wasn't exactly the time I was talking about."
Florie stared at Lilli with suspicious eyes. "What else have you done?"
"You promise never to tell?"
Florie nodded solemnly.
"Cross your heart and hope to die?"
"I already am dead."
Lilli squirmed for a second, then said, "So am I, but if they ever find out about those ancient scrolls ..."
"You lost the scrolls? The sacred scrolls?"
She nodded.
"How could you lose the scrolls?"
"Well, I didn't exactly lose them."
Florie just stared at her.
"I dropped them," Lilli admitted.
"Where?"
Lilli's face took on a sick look. "Deep in the Dead Sea."
Florie's mouth hung open.
"I just wanted to move them out of the way. Then I tripped." After a long silent second, Lilli sighed and raised her chin, a hopeful look on her face. "But someone will find them ... someday."
Florie gave her a skeptical glance, then shivered. "I worry about you, Lilli. You really need to stop trying to perform the perfect miracle. She craned her neck around the long frosted icicles that framed the entrance and looked outside. "You're certain no one can see us in here?"
Lilli patted her friend's hand reassuringly. "Trust me. Look. See how our wings blend with the sparkling ice and silver? And our robes are white. My hair is so light blond that it won't show."
She looked at Florie's dark hair and frowned. "Just keep your head down." She shoved Florie's head under her wing.
A moment later Florie sneezed. She sniffed and rubbed her nose.
Lillie looked at her. "Are you that cold?"
"No. It was just one of these." She held up one of Lilli's wing feathers.
Lilli's face fell a little.
Florie gave Lilli's wing feathers a reassuring stroke. Four more feathers fell out. "You can't help it if you're the only angel with a molting season."
Lilli rested a chin in her hand and her wings drooped.
"I believe that's why you have so much trouble flying."
Lilli gave a huge sigh. "But I can't blame molting feathers for the reason I can't sing one heavenly note, or play the trumpet, or perform a miracle."
There was a long lapse of telling quiet, until, from the distance came the lovely lyrical sound of harp music. It grew louder and louder. And closer.
Florie gasped, and both angels ducked down.
"Glo . . . oh-oh-oh . . . oh-oh-oh . . . oh-oh-oh ... ria! In ex-cel-seees dey-ohhh," sang a group of clarion-clear voices.
"Shhhh!" Lilli raised a finger to her lips as they huddled closer together. "It's a chorus of archangels."
There was a loud clunk and the angels stopped singing right in front of Lilli's hiding spot. Both novices were so still they barely breathed…followed by another plunk, then a sharp boing!
A tall regal archangel named Mesopotamia flinched and looked over her shoulder. "Are those your harp strings breaking, Israfel?"
Another shorter angel nodded, frowning at her golden harp. "Four of them have broken just this very moment. Look here."
The archangels stared at the harp. One by one, five more harp strings snapped.
There was a long pause before Mesopotamia glanced around. "If I didn't know better, I'd think Lillian was around here somewhere."
All the archangels scanned the surrounding clouds while Lilli and Florie huddled in frightened silence. A second later there was a huge crash of lightning. Then another.
Everyone froze.
"My gates!" Saint Peter's thunderous roar echoed through Heaven. "My gates!"
There was an eternal moment of silence. Then...
“Lillian!" Saint Peter shouted.
Lilli blanched.
"Lill-lee-UNN! Come here! Immediately!"
"Uh-oh," Florie whispered.
"Shhhhh. He can't possibly find us."
Saint Peter shouted her name again.
And again.
Louder.
An icicle broke, landing with a tinkle at Lilli's feet. For a brief moment there was utter stillness.
A burst of light flashed through Heaven, so strong, so brilliant it made the sun dim. The walls of Jericho didn't hit the ground as quickly as Lilli and Florie tumbled onto the cloud floor, their arms over their heads.
All around them, icicles shattered like broken glass. A moment later, the entire cloud dissipated.
In unison, Lilli and Florida both uncovered their heads and looked up… right into the censorious and knowing eyes of Saint Peter.
Taller than the tree of life, he stood before them, glowering, his arms crossed and one gold-sandaled foot tapping impatiently.
Her lip between her teeth, Lilli raised one hand and waved her fingers. "Hello, sir."
He was rigidly silent.
"You know," she said, sitting up quickly, "I was just thinking about you ..."
His eyes narrowed.
"In fact, I had just said to Florie, 'Florie?' I said, 'I'll bet Saint Peter is looking for us, and he'll never find us.' Didn't I?" She jabbed Florie with an elbow, and a wide-eyed Florie nodded her head like a woodpecker.
Lilli raised her eyes to meet his. "How did you find us?"
Saint Peter held up a handful of her molting feathers and let them spill from his hand. He watched her from eyes too intelligent for comfort. "Someone has destroyed the gates to Heaven."
"You mean while we were in here, the Pearly Gates—your Pearly Gates, those precious Pearly Gates—were actually broken? How in the name of Heaven could that have happened? Stray lightning? Celestial phenomenon? The Big Bang theory?"
Saint Peter reached out and plucked something from her tangle of blond hair. He held it out in front of her.
It was a piece of pearl. She winced.
Saint Peter clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace. "You have been forbidden to attempt any more miracles." He turned quickly and pinned her with a dark and knowing stare. "I assume that is what you were doing when this latest fiasco happened?"
She nodded.
He paced again. "I thought as much. Angels are supposed to protect, guard, and educate the human race." He paused in front of her. "Not wipe it out of existence."
Lilli stared at her toes and whispered, "I didn't try to make it rain again. Not after all that lightning ..." She shuddered. "...And the fire in Rome." She slowly raised her face and looked him in the eye. "I promised I would never do that again."
He was silent for so long she almost couldn't bear it. She needed him to believe her. He had to believe her. She'd meant no harm. She never meant to do any harm. She stared at her bare toes again, feeling the tension vibrate in the air around them.
After eternal minutes, he took a deep breath.
She waited to hear her punishment.
"I'm afraid there is nothing I can do for you this time."
Lilli's head shot up. "Nothing? But I'm so sorry!"
"Nothing," he said.
/> "No!" Florie gasped.
All the archangels began to whisper and mutter. Lilli stood there, stunned, unable to move, unable to speak.
"Please sir," Florie begged. "She didn't mean to do it. She has a good soul. Please."
Saint Peter shook his head. "There's nothing I can do. The decision has been made."
The light of Heaven dimmed, and with it, her naive and foolish sense of invincibility. The clouds grew suddenly dark and gray. Lilli looked at the surrounding darkness and saw that she had no hope. No second, third, fourth, even an eleventh chance. She had an empty feeling in her heart and the shameful sting of tears filled her eyes.
Saint Peter stood up to his full height. "From this day forward…” He paused and looked at her. "Lillian is no longer welcome in Heaven."
Lilli slowly raised her head, tears dripping down her flushed cheeks. Everything before her was a painful blur.
She heard a clank. Her halo disappeared.
There was a loud and shrill whistle. Her wings were gone.
Saint Peter gave her a serious look, the most serious look she had even seen on his face. "You will return to Earth."
From somewhere, she could hear Florie sobbing.
He raised his right hand and placed it on her head. "To a time and place where angels fall."
MY LUCKY PENNY by Jill Barnett
Coming April 2016
Available for preorder
Book Three
My Lucky Penny
* * *
When famous architect, Edward Lowell suddenly becomes guardian of his orphaned 4 year old niece, the life he has known is turned upside down. His niece is grieving but when she spots a doll in a store window, he sees the first signs of happiness in her eyes. But the doll is sold before Edward can buy it and he sets out to find the dollmaker with the hope she can help him find a way to heal his young niece.
Chapter One
* * *
Late 19th Century New York City
* * *
Edward Abbott Lowell was named man of the year by the four hundred esteemed members of New York City's most exclusive gentlemen's club. As he walked around the grand ballroom of the Union Club, shaking hands after his acceptance speech, Edward was struck by the strangest feeling that something was off. Not with the club or its members, but something else, as if the air around him was vibrating when there was no elevated train nearby.
He rubbed a hand over his neck then noticed the waiter who had quietly appeared with his bourbon. He took advantage of a break in conversation, taking a long draw off his drink and turning away from the busy mayor chatting with his cronies. The man must have taken a bath in Macassar oil. He smelled like a cross between a lift engine and Aunt Martha's Christmas buns.
Edward needed air.
A few minutes later, he closed the door behind him and effectively shut out the din of loud voices, the distant sound of a tinny piano, and the raucous male laughter inside. Before he turned away, he looked at the crowded room through the sleek glass of the terrace doors; it was full of expensively tailored coats and custom-fitted vests, pockets slung with many a gold pocket watch and diamond fob, a veritable sea of mustaches, clipped beards, and hair slicked back so all those top hats lined on shelves in the lobby coat room would sit atop the owner's head at the right jaunty angle.
The Union Club honor...hard to believe. He shook his head and moved to the stone balustrade that rimmed the third floor terrace and overlooked Fifth Avenue.
How many of the city's new business deals would be struck or sealed in that room tonight?
Like most of the city's big business, his largest and last project--and the one that had earned him man-of-year distinction--the Grant Building, had been negotiated and confirmed with a solid handshake in this very gentlemen's club a few years ago. And it had only taken him over a decade of hard work, and the sheer luck of being picked out of Boston Tech to go to Chicago as a protégé to the great architect William LaBaron Jenney, proof that even a blind monkey could find a peanut once in a while.
And now he had a lot of peanuts...more than his father had lost in the big crash, more than his wealthy grandfather had earned in his entire lifetime, and his great grandfather before that, and Ed was twenty-nine.
But tonight, before he'd stepped out to that podium, he'd felt as if he were that young kid again, nerves raw, feeling as if he didn't fit into his feet, and taking him back to that first day of college, a mere two days after his sixteenth birthday, when--green buck that he was--he had tentatively walked into that Back Bay building--one that embodied the sheer possibilities of everything he had ever wanted. That was what tonight was all about to him--the culmination of all those fantastical possibilities.
He heard the doors open and turned to see Harold Green closing the door with his foot while balancing cocktail glass in each hand. "Look who the cat dragged in," Ed said. "And here I was just thinking about green."
Hal grinned and handed him one of the drinks. "Somehow I doubt it was about me, my friend. More than likely about the scandalously low-cut green gown the delectable Miss Marrianne Fitzgerald wore to Fleming House last evening. Arthur, Rand, and I were taking bets on how long before she busted out of it. And you, lucky fellow, seated to her right all through that nine course dinner. So tell me if you set her free a few hours later," he said far too cheery to hide the truth. "I have a few hundred riding on the fact that you got lucky since it was you who took the lady home."
"She's a friend of Josie's."
"Just because she went to school with your sister doesn't mean you didn't get lucky."
"I'll leave the details to your dreams...and overly-vivid, overly-randy imagination," Ed said to irritate him for being such an ass and took a drink.
"Ah, yes. A true gentlemen never kisses and tells. So what else happened?" Hal laughed wickedly but Ed was no fool.
"Nothing. I took Marrianne home--her father's home--to keep her safe from your roving hands and critical tongue. She's a sweet young woman. You well know that, so cut the crap. There's a reason she won't have anything to do with you."
"That happened a long time ago," Hal muttered into his glass.
"Apparently not long enough for you to forget and move on."
"Marianne Titsgerald means nothing to me," he said with clear contempt.
"If you would stop calling her Titsgerald and apologize, perhaps she might forgive you."
"I can't apologize even if I wanted to. She won't come near me," he paused and frowned into his drink. "Half the men in the room last night were ogling her. I'd swear Macaffey was drooling. Damned idiot. Someone ought to talk to her dressmaker...or lock her in a room."
"Marrianne's twenty-four. She and Josie went to cotillion in the same year. She's hardly a young miss to be dressed as pure as the driven snow."
"The girl's mother is dead. She's too wild. Far too wild. And we both know her father indulges her terribly." He paused. "Do you really think she's not--? I mean, has she--"
"Stop Hal. You're head over heels for her and she won't have anything to do with you."
"I know," Hal said miserably.
"Apologize, then marry the girl, and find out how pure she is for yourself."
"She's turned down ten proposals."
"All of them not as insulting as yours. Enough about Marrianne Fitzgerald. Look, there've been some changes to the ground floor supports for the Forsythe Building. I need you to go over the plans with me tomorrow."
"I'll be there at seven," Hal said, his spirits less lively as he turned and rested his elbows and cocktail glass on the balustrade, then stared down at the shadowed street, the clopping sound of a horse trolley echoing up from below. Ed watched him for a minute. His friend was a sad mess of heartbreak.
He'd met Hal Green that first week at Boston Tech and they had almost instantly became fast friends. Both had eventually left the institution with enhanced architectural engineering degrees and promising apprenticeships, Ed's with Jenny in Chicago and Hal's with
Frank Furness in Philadelphia. As fate would have it, they were also both ready to branch out on their own when Harrington Wilson approached Ed with the offer of a lucrative contract to construct three large, multi-story, steel-constructed commercial buildings in New York City. The projects were big and Ed knew Hal was the partner he needed beside him, so they came to New York to work together and the innovative commercial architectural firm of Lowell and Green was born.
The air outside the club grew colder and Ed and Hal left the terrace and were back inside amidst the rest of the club, soon smoking imported cigars, talking and downing as much whiskey as the waiters could bring.
But Ed was still bothered by something, the prickle of warning he couldn't exactly pinpoint. An itch of trouble. So he went to the adjacent card room and sat down to play cards with his friends, tossed a few gold pieces on the table and tried to forget about premonitions. One thing he was certain of, trouble often found you just when life felt foolishly at its best.
Also by Jill Barnett
FOOL ME ONCE SERIES
A Knight in Tarnished Armor
Fall From Grace
* * *
CHRISTMAS IN THE CITY SERIES
Daniel and the Angel
Eleanor’s Hero’s
My Lucky Penny
* * *
MORE HISTORICAL ROMANCE
Bewitching
Dreaming
Imagine
Carried Away
Just A Kiss Away
Wonderful
Wild
Wicked
The The Heart’s Haven’s Haven
* * *
WWII
Sentimental Journey
* * *
CONTEMPORARY
The Days of Summer
Bridge To Happiness
