Chapter Forty-One #2
They hadn’t noticed the little exchange between me and the blonde because they were smiling at each other, their shoulders touching.
I was betting they were holding hands under the table.
It made me smile just to see Jamie like that with someone.
We hadn’t been allowed to date each other at the College, and when he’d been cast out, he’d been too sick to worry about it.
I realized in all the years I’d seen him on the street I’d never seen him with anyone romantically.
I’d seen other homeless people that managed relationships, but Jamie had never been one of them.
Was this the first relationship for him?
I’d have asked, but I didn’t want to point out anything unhappy as I looked at them together.
The shy happiness of them together, the obvious newness of their attraction, made something tight and sad inside me lighten up.
I wasn’t jealous of it, or afraid for Jamie getting his heart broken anymore, because she was as gone on him as he was on her.
They felt good together, like there was a hum of energy between them that was better for both of them.
I was relieved to feel it, because part of me had been afraid she was like some of the empathic healers I’d met lately that gave their energy away but didn’t seem to know how to keep energy for themselves.
It meant that Emma was already better trained than a lot of the civilian energy workers I’d met.
“I ordered tea for all of us, I hope you don’t mind,” Emma said.
She smiled, her large, gray eyes framed by the even larger dark frames of her glasses dominating her face the same way that Jamie’s brown dominated his; if they had children the babies would look like those big-eyed doll paintings, but cuter.
I had to shake my head and rotate my neck to help clear the thought away, because it wasn’t all mine.
One of them was projecting, and since Jamie had never been projective but just receptive psychically, it was probably Emma.
I answered her while I thought about that. “It depends on what you ordered.” But I ended with a smile to answer hers. It seemed to be her natural facial expression, like the opposite of resting bitch face—resting happy face, maybe?
“Earl Grey latte, extra sweet, it’s Levi’s favorite and he said you both like your tea the same.”
I kept myself from making a face at the idea of an Earl Grey latte, but I managed to ask, “Just tell me it’s not got coffee mixed in with it and we’re fine.”
“No coffee in it, I promise. That sounds awful.” She laughed, and it was almost a giggle, which usually wasn’t my favorite from a grown-up woman, but it worked for her somehow. It was like she couldn’t do anything that irritated me, which made me instantly suspicious. Was she using magic on me?
“My guides say to look with something besides your eyes, Zaniel,” Emma said, staring at me with those big gray eyes that were somewhere between the color of rain clouds and gray kitten fur.
Everything about her was . . . cute, from the curly shoulder-length hair, the light sprinkling of freckles, the big glasses, the small, upturned nose, the oval face, the lips that gleamed with the barest touch of lip gloss.
She screamed harmless to a point that made me want to doubt it.
But now she’d given me permission to use my own gifts on her, or at her.
It was considered rude to peek at people with active power unless they hit your radar so hard you couldn’t not see them.
I didn’t have to lower my psychic shields, I just needed to focus to try to see more than just the physical.
She was surrounded by white light; angels fluttered around her like a white, glowing outline.
Most people had one, two at most Guardian Angels that hovered near them, around them, but the sense of wings and light around Emma was like a flock, a sense of energy and light that I hadn’t seen around anyone since I left the College of Angels.
I tried to concentrate just on Emma, just on the human in front of me, but the white light spilled out so bright and full of the movement of angels that Jamie was lost in the shine of it, as if his light merged with hers.
I tried not to see anyone else, but it was like the power once opened couldn’t stop with one; it showed me the white flares around the room of other angels, usually just one, but sometimes two, all around the rooms. There were a few people who didn’t glow with angelic possibilities, and I almost broadened my power to see why, or what else was near them spiritually, but I stopped myself in time.
It wasn’t my job, and if they were gifted enough to sense me, they’d see it as an intrusion.
Some of the angels “asked” for help. Give me permission to help my person , because you have to give your angel permission to help you.
Free will protects us from many things, but it can also keep out energies that would help us.
If you go to church, or temple, or mosque, or a coven, and are a true believer, then the angels have a conduit to you; they can help and protect you daily, but with so many people not having a regular spiritual practice the angels are trapped to watch the horrible choices people make without being able to help or stop it.
I was trained to give permission and free the angels to help their charges. I gave it without thinking, and the spurt of joy from the angelic as they were free to help was like flashes of relief throughout the room.
“The angels like you,” Emma said.
“Sometimes a little too much,” I said, and the moment I thought something that negative, the energy conduit to the angels began to close.
Flesh can impact spirit, and the angels didn’t need my negativity on top of what they were getting from the people they were attached to; the angels had enough mortal interference without me being gloomy at them.
“I could almost hear the angels singing and then something shut the energy down,” Emma said.
I looked at her and now that I’d seen it once, I had trouble not seeing the shining outline of angels around her. If she had guides that weren’t angelic like Ravensong did, I hadn’t noticed them, but then we weren’t in sacred or warded space; maybe that mattered?
“Do you hear the angels singing?” I asked.
She smiled a little more, because the smile was almost always there. “Sometimes, like the edge of music in a room you can’t find, or birdsong seems to have more to it.”
I nodded. “Some Angel Speakers talk to the birds a lot, or through them. It’s not one of my gifts so I don’t understand all of it. How did you not get recruited to the College of Angels as a child?”
She shook her head hard enough for her curls to bounce around her shoulders.
The smile went away. Her eyes stopped looking kind.
“Recruited, you make it sound like high school kids being scouted for sports teams, or college for professional sports, but it’s little kids between five and seven years old.
They can’t give consent to go anywhere for anything. ”
“Our parents give the consent just like for boarding school for other children,” I said.
She did that curl-bouncing head shake again. “You can get your kid out of a boarding school. Once a child is inside the College of Angels the families can’t get them out, you knew that, right?”
I blinked at her because I hadn’t thought about it that way.
“You didn’t know either,” Jamie said.
I looked at him and shook my head.
“There have been three cases of divorced parents losing a child to the College, because the main custodial parent gave permission. One father fought for ten years before he could even have a visit with his son.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“The boy was a teenager by then and happy where he was, or brainwashed into staying,” she said, and her face was all unhappy suspicion. It didn’t look right on her face, as if she wasn’t meant for doubts and cynicism.
“I didn’t know about any of this,” I said.
“Well, my parents knew and a lot of others in the pagan community know, so when the College came to get me my parents refused.” She said it with such pride and respect in her parents. It was rare for a person in their twenties to still sound that certain about them.
“The angels found you anyway,” I said.
She smiled then and it was like clouds parting and letting the sunshine spill around me. I had to smile back; it was a type of magic, or glamor, almost like some of the fey and other supernatural beings could do.
“If the angels want to find someone they can; time and place mean nothing to them, because they are not trapped in time as we are, and that means they can be many places all at the same time. How can anyone ever be hidden from beings that can do all that?”
“They can’t.” And then I realized what I’d said, and spoke without thinking. “Then how did she not find me sooner?”
“You said she was in prison, a place between,” Jamie said.
Emma said, “Who is she?”
I looked across the table at Jamie and he just shook his head. He hadn’t told her.
“I’ve never told anyone, unless I raved about it when I was out of my head,” he said.
I reached across the table and squeezed his arm. “Thanks.”
He gave a gentle smile that left his eyes sad. “I would never betray your trust, not on purpose, Z.”
“Same,” I said.
“If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to,” Emma said; her eyes were still soft, but more serious, and the smile was barely there, as if her lips just naturally fell that way, no matter what she was actually feeling.
Jamie patted my hand where it still lay on his arm. “She’s good people, Z.”
I took my hand back, nodding. “I can feel that, Levanael.”
“Have you taken your angel name back?” Emma asked.