“What’s wrong, Havoc?”
I shook my head. “Nothing, just remembering when you met Reggie at the first holiday party.”
Ravensong grinned at me. “Well, your wife is quite the looker.”
“Zaniel, do you have a wife?” Suriel asked.
“I do,” I said, smiling before I could stop myself.
“How could you do that, Zaniel? You are an Angel Speaker; it is forbidden for us to marry.”
“I stopped being an Angel Speaker when I left the College.”
“You were not cast out, Zaniel. You are an Angel Speaker in the good graces of both the College of Angels and God. You took a vow to serve him above all others. We cannot do that and divide ourselves between him and a spouse.”
“When I left the College, Suriel, I left it in every way.”
“What do you mean by that, Zaniel?”
“I told you I joined the army just after I left the College.”
“The army, as clergy?”
I shook my head. “I joined as a regular soldier.”
“Why would you do that?” She stared at me as if I’d said something obscene.
“Because being raised at the College of Angels didn’t prepare me for any job in the real world. I didn’t know how to fill out a job application, or use a computer, but I was big and strong, and an army recruiter saw me walk past. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You could have come back to us,” she said.
“No, I couldn’t.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Zaniel.”
I glanced at Ravensong.
“How about you send Charleston in here, so he can decide if I need to see a magical healer before I step outside here?”
“You will be fine,” Suriel said.
“That has to be the lieutenant’s call, he’s the boss,” I said.
“Havoc’s right,” Ravensong said.
“Then we will wait until your lieutenant comes, but perhaps we could visit and talk of old times before I have to go back,” Suriel said.
“I’d like that,” I said, and I meant it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I got us both hot teas from the break room and then we sat down across a table in one of the empty interrogation rooms. She took a sip out of one of the few plain mugs I was able to find. She held the mug with her hands curled around it, fingers through the handle as if it wasn’t there.
She lowered the mug and smiled. “You remembered how I liked my tea.”
I smiled back. “Of course I did, I could probably order food for you at almost any restaurant, unless your taste buds have changed completely in the last twelve years.”
“You were always good when it came time for kitchen rotation,” she said.
“You weren’t bad at it either.”
“You were the better cook,” she said.
“I was; do you remember the time that Levanael set the kitchen on fire? They wouldn’t let him cook after that.” I laughed, but she didn’t.
“That is not his name,” she said.
I suddenly didn’t feel like laughing either. “I know they stripped him of his angel name when they cast him out. He goes by his birth name of Jamie now.”
“It is forbidden to speak to anyone who was cast out,” she said.
“I am no longer of the College; I don’t have to abide by their rules.”
“So you see the exiles?”
“Exiles, no, not exiles, just Jamie. How many other exiles are there?” I asked.
She looked down into her mug. “Enough.”
I would have pushed about that one-word answer, but there were other things I wanted to know more, and I knew that her time here was limited. She would have to be back inside the walls before dark unless she had special permission.
“Why are you here, Suriel?”
“To help you and your coworkers,” she said, and she raised her bright blue eyes to me; her delicate face was unreadable, and that let me know she was lying or at least not telling the whole truth.
“You have a silver badge that marks you as third in line of all the Infernalists at the College, Suriel. Someone that senior would not have been sent out alone like this for anything. They would have sent at least one of the College Sentinels to be your bodyguard.”
“I have enough authority to come out alone, and enough power to protect myself, but I am expected back soon.”
“How soon?” I said.
“They do not like us out much after dark,” she said.
“Why did you use your authority to come here alone?”
“I heard that it was a police matter, and then I heard your name, Zaniel, and I had to come and see if . . .” She took another drink of tea, as if the sentence was done.
“If what?” I asked.
“If the angels still spoke to you, if they still answered your call, and they do.”
“I did not fail my training, Suriel.”
“When you left the College, Zaniel, we all thought you would be back. We all believed you would find the outer world corrupt and come back to us. When you did not return, the elder teachers told us that you must have been flawed all along and that the angels no longer spoke to you for fear your flaw would spread to them.”
I stared into my tea mug but didn’t want it anymore. “I was flawed, am flawed, and I didn’t use my magical gifts until other lives would have been lost; only then did I risk reaching out to the angels again.”
“And when you called, they answered just as they always had,” she said, her voice soft.
“Yes,” I said, and looked up to meet her eyes. They were staring at me like two blue diamonds of righteous intensity. Suriel never looked away, never flinched, but there was a tiredness in her eyes now that might have been more. Was that doubt in her clear blue gaze for once? Of course, she doubted me, how could she not, how could I not?
“What happened at the College was not your fault, Zaniel,” she said.
“You thought it was at the time; in fact, you were shocked and disappointed in me, you said so.”
“I didn’t know the full details then,” she said, but she looked down as she said it, which wasn’t like her, or hadn’t been like her years ago. Did I really know her now, or she me? How much had the years changed us? She felt so familiar to me, but in a way we were strangers; just thinking that made my chest ache as if there was more than one way to have a broken heart.
Charleston came into the room looking larger than normal with Suriel in the foreground. “Havoc, there’s an escort here from the College of Angels.”
I had one wild second of thinking they’d come for me, but the next thought was they had no power over me anymore, and I knew why they were here before Suriel said, “They’ve come to escort me home.”
“That’s what they said, but they look a lot more”—and Charleston seemed to search a long time for the right word before saying—“athletic than the normal Angel Speaker.”
“They are Sentinels; they do not travel openly outside the College often,” she said, and then she stood.
“What do you mean, openly?” I asked.
She shook her head as if she didn’t want to have the conversation in front of Charleston. I stood up and asked, “Can you give us a few more minutes alone, please, Lieutenant?”