I hugged Jamie a little harder, because he and Suriel were the first people that I thought would always be there for me. They’d been my family until I found Reggie and we had Connery.
Jamie pulled back from the hug to study my face. “What did you just think about, Z?”
I shook my head and stepped back, but he grabbed my arm. “Talk to me, Z, please. I’ve been missing for years, let me be here, really be here for you and for me again.”
My eyes felt hot, damn it I was not going to let him see me cry, but my throat was too tight with grief to speak. God help me, God help us both.
“Z, please, talk to me.”
The first hard tear trailed down my face. I pulled away and went to the kitchen with my back to him. “Let’s do more tea and then you can call Emma or let me drive you.” My voice was neutral, but the first tear had been joined by more. I’d learned to cry without letting it show in my voice or face years ago. Men didn’t cry, especially in the military, or on the force. Hell, soldiers and cops of either sex weren’t supposed to cry. We were supposed to be strong, and tears weren’t strong, but more than that I didn’t want to explain the tears to Jamie. I was afraid that it would trigger something in him that would undo all the progress that he’d made. It was a miracle that he was standing here with me. I didn’t want to spoil it by being weak and human.
I knew he was behind me before he wrapped his arms around my waist and hugged me from behind. I startled, stiffening in the embrace, because I’d been too long in the outside world where men didn’t do this. I’d almost forgotten that there had been a time in my life when I hadn’t thought anything about it. The College of Angels taught that male and female didn’t matter, that we were all one, and affection was innocent like small children. I’d believed that until I was about fifteen. Suriel had already started to pull away from casual physical affection, but Jamie never had. He’d come to us for cuddling like we were all still seven years old huddling in little homesick puppy piles.
“I’m here, Z, just like when we were kids. You can tell me anything.”
I patted his hands where they held me and told him part of the truth. “I was thinking about Reggie and Connery, and you and Suriel. Everyone I’ve ever loved.” I almost choked on that last part because it was too much truth.
Jamie held me tighter and only the height difference kept it from being more intimate than it could be. “Is that all you have ever loved, truly, Zaniel?” The cadence of the words wasn’t Jamie.
My skin ran cold with terror because I knew that voice. The tears were gone, dried up along with the inside of my mouth.
Jamie’s arms were less tight, but he leaned against me in a way that wasn’t just friends and was . . . softer, something, as if it wasn’t just the cadence of Her speech that he was channeling, but Her body movements, too.
“Zaniel, why did you leave the College?”
“Jamie, let go of me.”
“Why did you leave, Zaniel?”
“Let go of me, now.”
“I felt your touch for the first time in so long when you came into the light.”
I finally used his angel name. “Levanael, let me go, please.” If Jamie could hear me, then I had a choice of using violence to stop him from touching me or let her get a stronger hold on me. Clothes helped; bare skin was always . . . harder with her.
Jamie let go of my waist with one arm, as if he’d finally heard me, and then his hand touched the skin of my arm, as if she’d heard my thoughts about bare skin.
I saw her in my head like a daydream, hair spun of light so that you could never call it blond, but yellow, or even gold didn’t describe the color of her hair, not really. Her skin was a shade of paler light as if I needed other words that meant white and energy, and fire, and ice, and elemental things that did not exist for humans. Her body was perfect, because she’d created it for me, the fantasies of a teenage boy and her own preferences from human media, thoughts and wishes. She would always be my fantasy made almost flesh, except she could never get it quite right, because short of incarnating she couldn’t be human, but then human was overrated, I thought as I stared into her eyes like blue sky, but a sky that never ended and never touched the Earth. It was like looking into eternity, beautiful eternity.
She reached one shining hand out toward me, and I knew that all I had to do was reach back and I could travel the music of the spheres and the light of God to find her.
I tore myself away from Jamie, screaming, “NO!”
Jamie stumbled back against the table as if I’d shoved him. He had to grab the edge of it to steady himself or I would have knocked him to the ground. “I didn’t know she was still there waiting for you.”
“She’s eternal, she can wait forever,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Z, I didn’t mean to channel her.”
“You were the clearest, purest channeler in our year at the College. It’s not your fault; when the higher angelic orders want to speak through you, it’s not like you can say no.”
“You said no.”
“She isn’t trying to use me as a channel to speak through, Levanael.”
“No, she wants you the way a woman wants a man. I didn’t know that she had fallen, I’m so sorry, Zaniel.”
“Is she completely fallen now? Did I damn us both?”
“You’re not damned, Z, and neither is she.”
The tears were back, why was I crying? “Are you sure?”
“She hasn’t joined the enemy, so she’s not damned, and not completely fallen, just sort of . . . crisped around the edges.”
“She didn’t look burned to me.”
“I don’t mean literal fire, Zaniel, you should know that.”
I nodded and wiped at the stupid, traitorous tears.
“I’d forgotten how good it felt to channel the higher levels of the angelic.” He raised his hand up in front of his face. “I feel like my skin should glow with all the power.”
I didn’t know what to say, because I was so scared, I could taste iron on my tongue. I’d felt her twice today. The first time was my fault, getting too caught up in my old abilities, but this time, I hadn’t done anything to call her to me this time, which meant she’d sought me out.
“I can’t imagine what it was like to touch her for real like you did, Z. If it felt better than this, I couldn’t have told her no.”
“One of us had to be strong enough to stop, or she would have fallen. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t be responsible for that, for her being . . . lost.”
“You were what nineteen, twenty?”
“Yeah, somewhere in there.”
“How did you have the strength to question it at only twenty?”
“I prayed for guidance and strength and God gave it to me.”
“When I prayed for God to help quiet my mind, nothing came.” The happiness in his face began to fade. The confidence and power that he’d gained from channeling an angel began to seep away like a cup with a crack in it. It hurt my heart to see it happening in front of me.
I wanted to hug him again, but I was afraid to touch him too much, afraid that She would come back through the clear channel of Jamie’s talent. I put my hand on his shoulder where the shirt protected us both from skin-to-skin contact. I prayed that it would be enough to protect us from her attention. The touch on his shoulder made him look at me. “Some prayers take longer to answer than others, Levanael.”