Chapter 4
Feather
The day only got worse. “Three hours of scrubbing, yet I still look like a professional pig wrestler. And smell like one.” Every other angel in the communal purifying chamber had fled the instant I’d entered, the last one spraying a bunch of whatever they used for air freshener up here before she shut the door.
“Pig wrestling. That’s a job on Earth now?” Sunny wondered.
“No.” I hesitated. “I mean, maybe. But the thing is, look at me!” I hadn’t cared about my appearance before.
With as many lives as I’d led, I’d worn dozens of shades of skin tone, from a shining blue-black in Ethiopia, to a pale Nordic wintry pink.
Different almost every time, although for some reason, I’d always been reborn into female bodies.
But now I was gray. And not a shimmery hematite gray.
No, I was the gray of a thousand pounds of sour ash, the gray of smoke stains and meat going bad at the edges.
The gray of a dead alien, rotting in the desert.
And to make it worse—I sniffed at my arm to check and frowned again—I smelled faintly of rotting meat, even after gallons of shower gel.
“I hate gray.”
Sunny chewed at her lip. “You could scrub some more, but High Angelus Mikhail was expecting you in his Maker Hall a while ago…”
“Let’s just go,” I sighed, wrapping my ruined toga back around myself and following Sunny out of the room.
Every time the fabric touched me, it got dirtier, though none of the greasy clay on my skin seemed to lessen.
“Who knows? Mikhail—that’s Growly, right?
He seems like a big shot. He has a maker space.
Maybe he’ll have some glowing paint. And I could slap a couple of coats on, like a heavenly makeover.
I can do a lot with a hot glue gun and feathers.
Sequins! Potpourri… Ooh, maybe he’ll have something I can use to cover up the stink. ”
We scurried across the wide hallway and down a series of narrowing ones, passing no other souls—which I thought was curious until Sunny explained they were either listening to lectures, or in an Assembly Hall sharing energies or something.
It sounded suspiciously like church, so I was glad to skip.
I had known way too many hypocritical religious folks in my lifetimes.
Finally, we reached a door—a wide one, easily large enough to roll a wagon through, and at least fifteen feet tall.
It was gold, like the Great Gate, but a thick layer of dust on it kept it from shining.
Next to it was a more normal-sized door, a rough wooden one, standing slightly open. “What’s with the big door?”
Sunny swallowed nervously. “It hasn’t been used in over four hundred years.
Not since…” She lowered her voice. “The Maker used to create the High Angeli mates in here, and they were formed with their wings outstretched, or at least that’s what I’ve heard.
So the doorway had to be large enough for two High Angeli to come through together.
But he doesn’t do that anymore. He’s only created basic Protectors, like us, for four hundred—"
“Years,” I finished. “Yeah, I’m getting the feeling that whatever happened here back then really messed stuff up.” I was not going to think about the coincidence that four hundred years was almost exactly the number of years I’d been on Earth. Not for one tiny second.
“It did.” Sunny leaned in closer. “On Earth and up here. I mean, I’m only two hundred—not nearly old enough to know if it’s true. But there’s a rumor that something back then left a permanent imbalance in our realm. Sanctuary has been getting less bright.”
“What do you mean?” I glanced around. I hadn’t really thought about the lack of lamps and bulbs, but now that she mentioned it, the walls and floors did emanate a sort of natural light.
“The Great Gate you almost touched? When I came back from my first mission, it was much brighter. Some say it’s failing, and Sanctuary is as well.”
“Yeah, the gate did have those weird patchy parts,” I mused. “Whose job is it to maintain stuff? Someone’s spending a lot of time bleaching sheets. Maybe instead they could polish up the gold—”
A small chime sounded down the hall, and Sunny jumped back. “Oh, Feather! That’s for me. I have to go; it’s time for Assembly. Can you go in on your own? High Angelus Mikhail should be in there.”
I gave a thumbs up, even though my heart pounded at the thought of being left alone. “Take off! I’ve got this. And next time I see you, I’ll tell you what my real name is.”
Sunny darted in for a quick hug. “Good luck!” She ran off, a few downy feathers falling behind her. As they landed, they poofed into tiny curls of golden light and vanished.
“Cool,” I murmured, hoping disintegrating feathers wasn’t some sort of omen for what was about to happen to me. Pushing open the wooden door, I stepped into the darkest room I’d seen since arriving in Sanctuary. “Hello?”
This enormous room didn’t have the floor and wall lights—it had sconces, old-fashioned ones with burning flames. I sniffed, but there was no smoke. The room was atmospheric, in a twelfth-century castle sort of way.
The Maker Hall was at least three hundred feet long, filled with tables, benches, and strange anvil-shaped things, most of them covered with dusty golden sheets.
At the far end of the Hall was a smaller door on a curved wall.
It reminded me of an old-fashioned kiln, or one of the bread ovens I’d built during my years living in the American Southwest. And those six miserable years on the Mongolian Plains.
I still got cold remembering that short, frostbitten life.
“Anybody home?” I called, stepping between two tables littered with hammers, saws, and tools I’d never seen before, from incredibly tiny blades to paintbrushes with bristles made of something like fern fronds.
My voice echoed from the high, wood-beamed ceiling, making it sound like I was in a cave. “I’m here for my mani-pedi?”
In the center of the room, a raised dais took up a large space.
I wandered over, impressed at how clean the floor was with so much stuff lying around.
There was a place for someone to stand on the low stage, with two short braces that would hold feet, like a life-sized doll stand.
Along the base, a sheet of gold cloth was marked with words in some weird language. I wished I could read it.
And maybe it heard my thoughts, because as I watched, the strange lettering shifted on the fabric, spiraling out in a glittery cursive script: The Beautiful One.
Something in my chest tugged me closer. I stared at the three words that were now changing shape, becoming one that I instinctively knew had the same meaning. A name? “Arabella. Wonder who that is.”
A familiar growl interrupted my musing. “She was my greatest creation. My last Construct.” Mikhail stood at the doorway. His long shadow made my skin appear even more gray as he walked past, not even glancing at me.
“Was she a Protector like me?”
“Like you?” Mikhail made a strange sound, a half-laugh, half-growl. “She was to you like the sun is to a birthday candle.”
This guy. Did his bed only come with two wrong sides? “I like birthday candles. And cake. And people who look at me when they talk to me.”
He did glance at me then. “You were to be purified. I’ll have to make sure the Protector Sunny is replaced as your escort.”
Sunny? My best birch? I was not going to allow that sweetheart to be blamed for my smut.
“Hold on, Mr. Maker Space. She did take me to the baths. We wore out like ten loofahs, and four bottles of that fancy energy shower gel. This is as good as it gets.” I waved a hand at my body, glad the goop hid my blush, at least.
Mikhail stepped closer, looming over me.
His eyes flashed black and turquoise again, like a storm over some uncharted island.
“What did you do?” His gaze raked me, taking in the chunks of glopping clay that still hung from my limbs.
“I’ve seen smut on Protectors who were ten times your age, but never this excessive.
How could you allow yourself to become so tainted? And why are you so short?”
What the heckle kind of question was that? “I’m special, I guess?” I did not like the way Mikhail’s features went cold.
“You just arrived, and so possibly don’t know this, but if you are not purified, you cannot be sent back to Earth to protect the balance. And if you are not sent back to Earth—”
“Yeah, yeah. I get unmade.” I cocked one hip out. “I heard. So let’s finish here and figure out my name so I can get back to the tubs, Growly Bear.”
Suddenly, my feet lifted off the floor, and I windmilled my arms to get my balance. Was I flying? Nope. Mikhail had pinched the back of my toga with two fingers, wrapped the cloth around his hand, and was holding me right in front of him.
I. Was. Naked.
Freaking bare as a baby’s butt, booty hanging out, starkers, birthday-suit-only, buck naked. I looked down to double check no one had magicked an angel bra and undies, or a feather bikini, onto me.
Nope. Honestly, the smut attached to me was as thick as a coat of wet cement in most places.
I could make out some general curves, but I had on more than enough oily muck to hide the real goods.
So maybe I was only technically naked. And Growly sure as heck wasn’t looking at me to see anything. But still.
“W-what are you doing? I get that you angel types aren’t really body-conscious up here, but this is a little out of my comfort—”
“Silence,” he commanded, and my lips zipped together, the breath I had ready to yell expelling in one long, squeaky exhalation through my nostrils.
It wasn’t a suggestion, apparently. I literally could not speak. Except with my eyes, so I used those to express my extreme displeasure. Extremely silently.