Chapter Thirty-Two
Ravensong had propped the hand on the table because it was too heavy to hang at her side.
I’d thought the hand would be sized to her, but it wasn’t.
It was sized for the nearly ten-foot-tall demon from the hospital hallway, which made it almost cartoonishly large for her.
Even my wrist wouldn’t have been thick enough for it, but hers .
. . She wasn’t a small woman, but she was still a woman, with everything done a little more delicately.
It was like her wrist had swollen to match the hand, but even then, the dark, scaled skin had to be pinched down to set on the pale wrist.
I expected to be traumatized seeing the claws in person, but the pain and fear on Ravensong’s face that she tried so hard to hide from me overrode my own issues.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
“Everyone keeps asking me that, and the answer is no.”
“Can you move it?” I asked.
She wiggled the fingers for me. “And before you ask, I can lift it, but it’s just heavier than my hand should be, it’s like having to carry one of those stupid kettlebells from the gym forever on the end of your wrist.”
I had to smile at the description, it was so her. The wrist was half hers, but the rest was not. It just didn’t belong. I could see it, everyone could see it, but . . . I turned to Suriel.
“You see it, where they don’t match,” I said.
“We all see it,” Charleston said.
“Not like Zaniel sees it,” she said.
“May I have your permission to do energy work on you, Athena?” I asked.
For once she didn’t tell me to use her last name at work; she just looked up at me, frowned a little, then studied my face, eyes narrowing. “Zaniel, if you can really help fix this, then you have my permission to do anything you need to do.”
I smiled at her, and I felt the first pulse of peace. Sometimes I didn’t know why I denied myself so many of my gifts, and then other times I knew it was guilt, survivor’s guilt, sinner’s guilt, but I wanted to help Ravensong more than I wanted to beat myself up for past sins.
There are always angels around us; they wait to help, to heal, to share God’s grace with us, but they can’t help us unless we ask them to, give them permission to—so do it with me now, say, “Angels around me, I give you permission to help me and help those around me.” There are more formal words, but simple ones will do.
Angels only need to be freed to help us; Guardian Angels hover near everyone, and some people have more than one, but they are trapped watching us screw our lives up, unless we allow them to help us.
When Suriel, Jamie, and I were about ten we came up with our own shorthand to help the angels to help us.
“Angels up,” I whispered, and just like that I could feel the warmth of them around me.
I could see the shine of them front and back because I’d been born with two Guardian Angels.
If I’d looked behind me, I would have seen the two that Suriel had with her, but I looked at Ravensong and saw her angel, but I also saw other spirits around her.
The raccoon was at her right side, one minute almost solid like everyone in the room should see it, the next ghostly.
It chittered at me, washing its hands in the air the way they did when they dipped them in water.
It wanted me to help her, to give them back their hands.
There was a tall blond woman at her back.
Her hair was in thick braids, and she wore armor, one hand resting on the pommel of her sword.
She had a helmet, and the moment I thought Valkyrie , she had wings on the sides of her helmet, and then they vanished to leave it unadorned and ready for battle.
I had a moment of hearing/feeling in my mind that she didn’t need feathers on her helmet to have wings.
There was a moment when I could have known a name, a Goddess, but it wasn’t my magic, my secret, my power.
I was blessed with the ability to see Ravensong’s guardian spirits and I thanked them all for showing themselves to me, for there were other figures standing shadowlike around her.
But I didn’t need to see them all; the ones that were most important for this moment would be clearest. I was given the gift of seeing her magic, her guides and guardians; I had learned not to abuse the privilege by pushing for more information than needed, and to trust that I would be shown what I needed to see.
Her angel was formed of light, not fire like the one at the first crime scene, but light, soft and pale yellow and white, with a brush of white feathered wings around the edges.
I could have focused on that trailing edge of wings and the angel would have become more solid, but it wasn’t necessary.
When I’d first started working with the angels, I had needed them to look “human” or at least solid, but I’d learned to accept them as they were and rejoice in not needing the surety of fixed form.
The shining figure bowed a glowing “head” in acknowledgment of the thought. That let me know that I was getting lost in the power; it could be intoxicating, and new angel workers had to be watched for signs of addiction.
I had to reach through the edge of the angel’s “wing” to touch her arm.
The brush of those invisible wings, less solid than the ones at the hospital that had shielded me, pushed a warm, homelike energy through me, as if it was all hearth and home, tea and fresh-baked cookies.
It wasn’t what I’d expected from Ravensong’s angel, but I did not judge that breath of power, but just kept reaching toward her arm and let the deeper sense of her Guardian Angel drift to the back of my senses.
My own angel was present, but did not let their power hamper my vision or tamper with the things I was sensing from everything else.
One of the hardest things for an energy worker of any kind to learn was not allowing their own energy to interfere with the interpretation and insight from and of their patients and their patients’ spiritual guides.
As I moved closer to Ravensong, the large shining figure on her left side turned into a ghostly bear that reached across the front of her body and sniffed her arm as I looked at it.
The bear looked at me, as if to say Well, go ahead .
The raccoon chittered near her arm where it had started and still “stood” on its hind legs, its hands clutched together like a person wringing their hands with anxiety.
“It’s all right,” I said to the figure. It looked up at me and made a different sound, more a chirp.
“I’m not all right yet,” Ravensong said.
Suriel said, “He wasn’t talking to you.”
“You see them, too?” I said to her.
“Yes.”
Ravensong looked at us and then she looked around her. “Oh,” she said, “do what you need to do, Havoc.”
“Zaniel,” Suriel said.
Ravensong nodded. “Zaniel; names have power, and magical names have more.”
“Precisely,” Suriel said.
This time I didn’t argue, because they were right; I’d been Corey and then at seven I’d been chosen by the angels and I became Zaniel.
I left the angels and went straight into the army, where I was Havoc, and now I was Detective Havelock.
Corey, Zaniel, Havoc—different people, different me s.
I could see the point in her arm where the corrupting magic started.
I didn’t just see the demon’s hand on her arm, but I saw the dark smoke—no, thicker than that, black water swirling not over her skin but under it.
The heavier wards in this room were acting with her own magic to stop the corruption from spreading, because that was what it wanted to do.
It was like water, meant to flow, to fill the vessel of the body it touched.
I knew what I had to do. I heard my voice almost from a distance; the magic had almost taken me too far into the vision to be attached that much to the physical world.
“Everyone out but Suriel and Ravensong, now.” I didn’t look around to see if Charleston and the other officers obeyed me, not because I assumed they’d just do it, but because I couldn’t divide my attention.
The world narrowed down to the black “water” under her skin.
I reached toward it, my angels pulsed, and I had a moment of seeing an army of angels connected to my guardian in a shining endless line of holy fire and power.
I blinked and I was back in the room seeing the corruption in her skin.
Her raccoon laid its paw on my arm and there was another flare of power; the bear laid its great head against my shoulder, the Valkyrie at her back touched me with a shining hand against my forehead, and the power built.
Suriel was at my back and her power joined mine, feeding into all of us so that we were a circuit of power and magic.
It was a group effort when I let my fingers finally touch her skin.