“Savoring it, enjoying the moment.”
“I told you, Emma, Master Sarphiel taught us mindfulness.”
“He taught us to take pleasure in small things, which I guess is what they call mindfulness these days,” I added.
“Do you always drink tea so reverently?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No, but if something smells this good, or tastes amazing, then we were taught to honor it with our attention. It’s like a compliment to the Creator for all the wonderful ingredients that came together to make something.”
“And the barista who made it?” she asked.
“Of course, it’s a compliment to the cook, or barista.”
“But if it’s just okay food and drink, you don’t do it?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t do it at work because people would remark on it just like you did. I learned in the army that looking like you were praying over things made the other people give you a hard time.”
“I want to know how you went from the College of Angels to the military, I can’t imagine the culture shock, but first tell me why Levanael’s psychic experience is your story more than his.” Her eyes didn’t look like soft kitten fur now, more steel gray. There was strength and determination underneath all the smiles and angelic energy.
I tried to think how to explain it, and how much I wanted to share. “Levanael channeled one of the higher orders of angels.”
“How high?” she asked.
“Do you channel? Is it one of your gifts?” I asked.
“I can hear them sometimes, like I can hear people, like I heard Levi, I mean Levanael.”
“She doesn’t hear everyone like I do,” Jamie said, “just certain people for specific reasons.”
“I dreamed of Levanael and my guides told me to be on the lookout for him, but I don’t channel like he does. In fact, my boss says she’s only met one other person who has the ability to channel so easily and so completely as Levanael.”
I nodded. “Even at the College he was one of the purest channels they’d seen in years.”
“You make it sound like it was more common at the College of Angels.”
“Not common, but there are always a few in any new group of students,” I said.
“Really,” she said, and looked at Jamie as if for confirmation. He nodded, and she turned back to me. “As clear a channel as Levi, Levanael?”
“Almost.” I didn’t tell her about the room where the gifted lay fed through tubes while they spoke from the highest angels and the students with the gift to interpret it wrote it down. It was recorded now, but the gift of interpretation worked best in person. Speaking in tongues was only half a gift; you needed someone with the talent to interpret it, or it was just gibberish. You had people who spouted in tongues, and those like me who could deal directly with the higher order of angels, and those like Jamie who could let other people’s prayers come out of their mouths—all of them were given a chance to be in the room where once you went in, you never left. I’d refused my chance, and so had Jamie.
“Bast, my boss, has been active in the pagan community for over forty years and she says Levanael is like a glass that just fills up with spirit. She says it’s a really rare gift.”
“Maybe it’s more common among the angel-touched,” I said.
“Maybe,” Emma said, but she didn’t look convinced.
“Or they cherry-pick the ones who can do it and lock them away or break them so that no other spiritual power can use them.” Jamie sounded bitter, like a throwback to some of his saner moments on the street. Saner had not meant happier.
“What do you mean?” Emma asked.
He looked across the table at me. I wanted to look away from the anger in his eyes, but I didn’t. I tried to give him calm energy back to cool his anger. I prayed that this wasn’t the beginning of him falling back into the abyss.
“Don’t you remember when they stripped away all your other guides and totems, everything but the angels?”
I shook my head. “All I had was my Guardian Angel.”
“I bet you had more. You just don’t remember.”
Emma reached out to touch his hand where it was clenched on the table, then hesitated. “May I touch you, Levanael?”
He gave a small nod, so she finished the gesture, laying her hand over his. “I thought you meant something else besides what you told me about your personal guides being stripped from you. I’m sorry, I didn’t think what it might mean for channeling.”
For the first time since I’d seen them together, he didn’t touch her back, just glared at me across the table. His shoulders had hunched forward like he was collapsing on himself. It was the way he’d held himself on the street sometimes, like he had something heavy sitting on his shoulders. Just seeing that made me afraid for him. He said, “I had an imaginary friend when I came to the College of Angels. She was a little girl with long curls and ribbons in her hair. I know now that her clothes meant she was from the 1930s or ’40s. Emma and Bast and others at the shop have helped me get a clearer picture of her, and the others.”
“What others?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about all of it.”
If it had been almost anyone else, I would have reminded him that he brought it up, but I wouldn’t push Jamie today, not if I could help it.
“You’ve regained your totem,” Emma said, squeezing his hand as if she were trying to press some of her positivity into him.
His expression softened and some of the awful tension went out of his shoulders. He let out a long sigh as if he’d been holding his breath. “Yeah, he helps me.”
“Who helps you?” I asked.
“My totem, my animal guide.” He glanced at Emma and turned his hand so he could hold her hand back. He looked at me, but this time he was smiling. “Your totem is like a spirit guide, but it’s an animal guide. We have one from birth or even before, just like a Guardian Angel.”
“I’ve seen totems and animal guides with other spirit workers,” I said.
“There are also animal messengers that come and go in our lives as we need them,” Emma said.
“But we have one main totem that will help us be the best version of ourselves,” Jamie said.
“It sounds like a Guardian Angel,” I said.
“Angels are forced to ask permission to help their human charge; totems can be more active even if the person is unwilling to make the right choice,” Emma said.
“Spirit guides don’t have to wait for permission either,” Jamie said. “But the person has to actually listen to them.”
“I’ve heard some of this before from coworkers and others, but never had them equate it so closely with Guardian Angels.”
“They probably thought you’d be insulted,” she said.
“Insulted how?”
“When people from the College of Angels come to the store they are very insulted when we equate animal totems and spirit guides with angels of any kind. They are even insulted when we try talking about guides that are usually human ancestors or relationships from other reincarnations.”
I laughed. “Oh, don’t talk reincarnation to anyone at the College.”