His eyes held sorrow like rain to drown all the sunshine in the world. His eyes had always been like that; expressive didn’t quite cover Jamie’s eyes. How could I help him? Then the thought came, and I thought, Oh, yeah, and felt slow for not thinking of it sooner.
“Let’s pray,” I said.
His eyes focused on me instead of on the dark thoughts in his head. “I remember you used to ask me that when you found me on the streets. We even tried it a few times and it didn’t help.”
“ ‘Prayer isn’t a grocery list for miracles, it’s a tool for talking to God.’ ”
Jamie smiled and his eyes filled with it. “Master Sarphiel said that all the time in every class we had with him.”
“ ‘Prayer is just one way to bring yourself into alignment with the divine,’ ” I said, repeating another common refrain from Master Sarphiel.
“ ‘Any person on the planet can pray, Levanael, you must do better than that.’ ” He even got the inflection of the voice right.
It made me laugh. “Inside the College with all the wards and magical shielding, yes, but outside in the world let’s just pray, okay?”
Jamie’s smile wilted around the edges. His serious eyes studied my face. “You’re afraid she’ll come back through me again, aren’t you?”
I took a breath trying to think how to word it, then finally nodded.
“It felt good to channel her. It felt good to be an Angel Speaker again,” Jamie said.
“Angels speak to me, but they speak through you.”
“Only because I’m not strong enough to meet them in person like you are, like Suriel was.”
“Neither of us was a clear enough channel for God’s grace and light to shine through us.”
“Master Bachiel said I was too empty, and the two of you were too full of yourselves, to be a clear channel for the divine.”
“You mean we were too arrogant in our power to let anyone speak through us, even God.”
“No, you both had strong enough personalities that there wasn’t room for anyone else. I was always less sure of myself than either of you. Master Bachiel said I didn’t fill up all the room inside myself, that’s why I channeled so easily and why I could hear prayers. I was closer to the angels that sat nearer to God, reflecting his glory and praise.”
“I don’t remember him saying that to you.”
“It was in one of our private sessions. He was training me to be his successor at one point, remember?”
I nodded. “I remember.” I had thought it was a bad idea at the time. Surrie and I had both thought that Jamie was too gentle and felt too deeply to match the sternness of Bachiel. I’d been amazed when the College said that Jamie was the first student in decades that rivaled Master Bachiel’s abilities, and that he should train him. Their gifts from God might have matched, but nothing else did.
“What are you thinking, Zaniel?”
I was startled too far into my own memories, so I told him the truth. “I always thought that Bachiel wasn’t a good mentor for you; just because your gifts matched didn’t mean that he was the right teacher for you.”
“You and Surrie said so at the time, but the College and Bachiel insisted, and everyone else told me it was an honor to be groomed to take Bachiel’s duties on. Why didn’t he help me shut out the pain of all the unanswered prayers, Z?”
“I don’t know, but I’d like to contact the College and find out.”
He grabbed my arm and I startled, half expecting her to take him over again, but it was just his hand on my skin, just him and me. Something tight and scared in my gut eased.
“Don’t go back, Z, if you do she’ll find you.”
I nodded. “After I told the College what had happened between us, She was put in a place between.”
“You mean they imprisoned her?”
“No, She agreed to enter because there’s really no way to lock up one of the seraphim, not really. She agreed to meditate on her transgression to decide if she saw it as an actual sin. She thought I would stay at the College and finish my training if she exiled herself, and she was half right.”
“You finished your training. I remember you coming and finding me to tell me you’d become an Angel Speaker. I was proud and happy for you, but I was ashamed that I had failed so utterly.”
“I’m sorry, Levanael, I just wanted to share it with you, but I was selfish and didn’t think how you’d take it.”
“That was the first time you took me to a hospital and got me locked up.”
“You were trying to hurt yourself.”
“I don’t remember everything, but I know it was bad. You were trying to keep me alive; some of the voices told me that you’d help me stay alive. It’s probably why I kept coming to find you sometimes.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t let you stay with me all the time.”
“I scared your little boy the last time. I remember that much. I’m so sorry, Z. I hope he won’t be scared of me forever. I hope he’ll forgive me.”
“I think he will,” I said, but thought that I wouldn’t put the two of them in the same room until Jamie had proven the recovery was permanent. Connery would get over one scare, but multiple ones . . . I didn’t want to push it. If I got my best friend back, I wanted my son to love him like I did.
“I’m too nervous to pray to God right now, Z. Emma introduced me to the Goddess and she’s, they’re both, it’s like the energy I’ve been missing. I’m not sure what God will think about that.”
“I work with a lot of people that follow the Goddess. They’re good people, and I don’t think God is as jealous a God as the Old Testament makes him out to be.”
“I think you’re right, but I’d still rather wait to test the theory.”
“You had an angel, a seraph, speak through you, Levanael. If that doesn’t speak to your purity of heart and soul, I don’t know what does.”
He smiled then. “I hadn’t thought about it like that. If you’d tried to get me to agree to channel an angel, especially one of the higher orders, then I’d have been too scared, felt unworthy, but it just happened and it worked. It means I’m not damned after all.”
“Why would you be damned, Levanael?”
“God judged me and found me wanting, and then he cast me out. The original idea of Hell is to be cut off from contact with God, and I have been that for ten years.”
“I’m so sorry, Levanael.”
“I’ve been letting you call me that since She spoke through me, but they stripped the name from me when they cast me out of the College.”
“You know how rare the ability to channel the more powerful angels is even among the trained Angel Speakers,” I said.
He nodded. “But they took my name and forced me to be Jamie again. I hadn’t been that name in so long that it didn’t feel like me. I was Levanael and they made me Jamie again. He was a child; I was five when I gave up that name.”
“Sometimes I forget that you were chosen two years earlier than either Suriel or me.”
“Yeah, we were all seven, but I’d been at the College longer than anyone in my year. They brought me inside at five because I was already hearing voices; my parents brought me to get me some miracle from the angels, and as soon as I went inside the walls and all the wards and mystical shielding, it was better. It was a miracle, but it only worked inside the College, and then it stopped working even inside. When they threw me out . . . it was so much worse than before.”