It was like trying to see her through gauze, or misty glass. I found my voice, but it was thicker, so resonant with power that it sounded strange to my ears, like it was my mouth but someone else’s voice. I knew I could have simply thought what I wanted to know and planted it in the woman’s mind, but that was an intrusion, rude at best, and potentially illegal, though I knew that Ravensong wouldn’t worry about it; but it isn’t about whether you will be blamed for something, it’s about is it right, or is it wrong, will it cause harm? I hadn’t used this much power in this many layers in so long; if there was even a small chance that my control was less perfect than it had been, I couldn’t risk telepathy with anyone right now, especially someone who wasn’t initiated into the same mysteries. Ravensong wouldn’t want me helping her conjure at full moon, because I didn’t know how her magic worked; the same worked in reverse here.
“I can’t understand, Havoc,” she said.
“He’s speaking in the language of the spheres,” Suriel said.
I tried to remember how to speak in a language that she would understand, embarrassed that I’d lost so much so quickly to the power. I threw my willpower into speaking English to Ravensong and still holding on to all the power I needed to finish this. It was like holding on to a string that was being pulled out of my hands while I was looking in the wrong direction.
“You okay with claws—little ones?” I managed to say out loud.
“Can you make them human fingernails?” she asked.
Which meant she wasn’t okay with it, but I’d taken my attention away from it too long, the power was unraveling. The small paw touched my hands this time and I could feel every texture of the raccoon’s hand, rough and smooth, the tiny prick of the claws at the end of the dexterous fingers, and that was my answer. This was her totem, a piece of her spirit; there was nothing wrong with delicate claws at the end of clever fingers.
I had a moment of cradling the small hand between my larger ones. It was a pretty hand, a feminine hand, but it was still covered in red scales like a snake and had black fingernails that ended in points that made her raccoon chitter excitedly.
The power flowed away from me, all the many pieces of spirit sliding back to where they normally existed. I had a moment of wanting to see spirit all the time, all the totems and guardians and Deities that surrounded us until the world was made glorious and haunted by it. I knew there was even a chance I might keep that double and triple vision, but I also knew that it would drive me mad, because that was part of what happened to Jamie. It hadn’t even been a choice for him; the angels had awakened his deeper vision and then he hadn’t been able to shut it off. The College had seen his inability to control his psychic gifts as a failure. He wasn’t strong enough to be an Angel Speaker, so they’d expelled him as if he’d flunked a final or failed to turn in his last research paper. Jamie had excelled at any paper test or essay, but you could fail all of those in the College of Angels if you were gifted enough in other areas. If you could survive the power, stay sane and functional, they would find a place for you, but madness that failed to be useful? That was unforgivable. Angels are about order, and any angel that preferred chaos was cast out. If Heaven would cast out the angels themselves, how could they do less to a human being who had proven too frail a vessel?
Thinking about Jamie shut down the flow of power. I clanged my shields into place as fast as I could. I wanted out of the room, away from Ravensong’s thanks and Suriel’s questions of “Zaniel, what is wrong?”
I could still see the glow of her cage and the swirl of darkness trapped inside. The cage floated by her shoulder like a well-trained dog. The flare of angel wings glittered around us all, filling the room with white-yellow light and I could not bear it.
I went to the door, pounded on it. “I need out!” I knew they were watching on the cameras. I knew they heard me, saw me. A small hand touched my leg and I looked down to see the raccoon with too much knowledge in its dark eyes. I needed out, not because I wanted to see it, all of it. I wanted to wrap myself in the glow of angelic power like a blanket that I’d missed, like I was a child and needed my comfort object, but it wasn’t that. It wasn’t a comfort; it was an addiction. The brush of one angel’s wing is much like another’s and there was one set of wings that I had loved, been in love with their owner, and been loved in turn, but though an angel may love humanity, they are not allowed to be in love with one person. They are not allowed to put the well-being of one human being above all others. Angels are meant to serve God and humanity and creation, not necessarily in that order. Once, I had had the sole attention of an angel of one of the highest orders aimed at just me. She had loved me above all others, and I had felt the same, and that had been when everything went to hell.
I pounded on the door again, but the white-yellow light of all the angels was filling the room until I couldn’t breathe; no, that was a lie, until I wanted to breathe them in, wrap them around me like I had with the energy at the hospital, but this was more, so much more, and it was offered, it was there. They wanted me back. I was an Angel Speaker and there were so few of us.
I pressed my palms against the door and yelled to be let out, to be away from the temptation. The raccoon chattered at me and I realized as I looked into its eyes that it helped ground me, helped chase back some of the glowing energy.
I whispered, “Thank you.”
Then Suriel touched my bare arm and her angel echoed her so that the power whispered over my skin like a sea of kisses that I could swim in, or sink in, or . . . I screamed and slammed my hands against the door. I had to get out!
The white-yellow light filled my vision and there was nothing but the light, and in the light were strands of gold and silver and copper and colors that humans have no words for; symbols and angelic script and scripts that humans are not meant to read trailed around the threads of the universe like music made visible. For one shining moment I heard the music of the spheres and I knew if I reached out far enough I could travel those shining lines on a river of words and sound that had driven Jamie out of his mind, but that I had loved.
I let myself relax into the beauty of it, and then I heard a voice down those shining strings. A female voice said, “Zaniel, is that you?”
I pushed myself out of that glorious view, arms flailing wildly as if I could touch music and sound, as if there was anything solid enough to push against in that place. I fell backward, landing on my ass on the floor, hard enough to jar up my spine and into my head so that I felt stunned as if I’d fallen much farther than just from my feet to the floor.
A woman’s voice said, “Zaniel, are you all right?”
For a moment that voice merged with the one in the vision and I cried out. If I hadn’t been too manly for it, I’d have said I screamed.
Suriel’s voice came again, because of course it was Suriel and not that other voice at all. “Zaniel, are you well? Please answer me.”
“You okay there, Havoc?” Ravensong asked. Her voice sounded hoarse, almost like the croak of her namesake. Human voices would sound rough for a few minutes until my hearing adjusted. The singing of angels could spoil you if you listened too long.
Suriel knelt beside me but did not try to touch me. She knew better. Ravensong didn’t. Her hand rested on my bare arm. If she had been just human it would have been okay, but she was a witch and magic calls to magic.