Angel Burn (5 page)

“Here,” I said, motioning for her to go into the dining room. It had two sets of French doors that you could close off, separating it from the rest of the house. I shut them while Beth gingerly took a seat at the dining table, looking as if she expected the chair to collapse under her.

She cleared her throat, running her hands across the tablecloth. “So how does it work? Do you use tarot cards or something?”

“No. I just hold your hand.” I sat down next to her and rubbed my palms over my jeans. I couldn’t believe how nervous I was. It wasn’t like I’d never done this before; I’d been giving readings since I was eleven. For the last year or so, I’d even been charging money for a lot of them, just to shut Aunt Jo up about how draining it was on her finances to have to support three people all by herself.

Beth took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. “OK, well — here,” she said, and held out her hand. It was small and neat, with a tiny gold-and-pearl ring on one finger.

I gazed down at her hand. Somehow I couldn’t quite bring myself to touch it. God, what was wrong with me? I’d given readings for all sorts of people over the years, and I’d seen plenty of weird and disturbing and even frankly illegal things. Beth Hartley’s secrets were hardly likely to rank up there with those. But even as I thought it, I knew that wasn’t the reason for my hesitation. I was still having that strange  . . .  premonition, or intuition, or whatever you wanted to call it.

If I read Beth, it would change everything.

Beth looked anxious. “Is something wrong?” she asked. Her fingers curled under her hand. “Please, Willow, I — I really need help.”

I shook myself. “Sorry,” I muttered. “I’m just  . . .  being stupid.”

Closing my eyes, I took her hand. It felt warm, oddly vulnerable. I leaned back in my chair and let go of everything I thought I knew about Beth, allowing my mind to simply drift. Almost immediately, images started to come, along with things that I just
knew
somehow — facts popping into my head as if whispered by unseen helpers.

“You were walking in the woods last week,” I said slowly. “There’s a patch of them behind your house. You’ve always felt safe there — you know these woods really well, and it’s a good place to get away from it all, to de-stress.”

I heard Beth’s faint gasp, her hand tightening in mine. And in my mind’s eye, I could see the Beth of last week, idly kicking at autumn leaves as she walked down a worn dirt path. This Beth was wearing sneakers, too, and faded jeans. Her forehead was creased; she was thinking about an English exam. She thought she had done all right, but what if she hadn’t? What if it had affected her perfect 4.0?

Suddenly I knew that Beth was only perfect because she was too frightened not to be. The real Beth wasn’t confident at all. She was constantly driving herself, constantly afraid that she wasn’t going to get it right. I could actually
feel
her tension, knotting coldly in her stomach.

“You’re often worried about things,” I said carefully. Half of being a good psychic, I’ve learned, is not to freak people out by letting them know exactly how much you can see about them. “You can get very stressed.”

“That’s true,” whispered Beth. She sounded close to tears. “But, Willow, what I really need to know about is —”

“Don’t tell me,” I interrupted. “Let me find out for myself.” She fell silent. I did, too, waiting to see what images would follow.

It was the last thing in the universe I ever would have expected.

The Beth in my mind’s eye stopped beside a stream; it was a favorite spot. She sank onto her haunches and idly stirred the cool, clear water with one manicured finger.
It doesn’t matter about my GPA,
she tried to tell herself.
In fact, I’ve heard that some colleges like it if you don’t do perfectly, because it shows that you’re better rounded or something —

Her thoughts broke off as the stream caught fire. Only it wasn’t fire at all; it was light: a bright, hot light that blazed suddenly across the water, dancing on the ripples. Beth looked up with a gasp  . . .  and saw an angel.

I could feel my own shock rising, and I pushed it down, just letting the images come as they would. The angel stood on the opposite bank, a beautiful winged being of light.
Radiant.
That was the word that Beth kept thinking.

It was gazing at her with an expression of great tenderness. “Don’t be afraid,” it said, and it came toward her, not even stirring the water with its robes.

I opened my eyes in a daze. “You  . . .  saw an angel,” I said.

“Yes!”
cried Beth, leaning forward. Her fingers clutched mine. “Oh, Willow, I really did. It was real — I know it! It came right up to me, and it put its hands on my head, and I felt such — such
peace
. I suddenly realized that none of it matters, not my grades or school or
anything
that I thought was so important before!”

This all came out in a wild burst. Beth’s eyes were intense, fervent. I started to say something else and then stopped.

The truth was I didn’t know what to say. Were angels real, then? I had never thought so, but then I’d never been very much into religion — probably because so many of the churches around here were the type that held revivals in giant tents and regarded psychics as spawns of Satan. My mind raced. Had Beth only imagined what she’d seen? Maybe she’d cracked under all the self-imposed strain, so that she needed to believe in an angel to make herself feel better.

But that didn’t seem right somehow. Even if I was only experiencing all of this secondhand, through Beth, the angel in her memory had felt real.

I swallowed. “OK, well  . . .  let me see what else I can get.” I closed my eyes again. Beth’s fingers were tense now, almost quivering with anticipation.

The angel had cradled her head for a long time. A feeling of immense peace had come over her. Yet there was something else there, too. I frowned, trying to put my finger on it. A
draining
. The touch had felt wonderful, but had also left Beth so weak that when the angel finally departed, she could barely make it home again.

Had her condition been physical or just emotional? I couldn’t really tell; she was trying not to remember that part. She had gone back to the stream every day since, hoping that the angel would return. And frequently, it had. The images became confused in places; sometimes I was seeing an angel and sometimes a man with the angel’s face. Through it all, I could sense Beth’s joy, her wonder  . . .  a swirling of energies as the angel touched her. Unease shivered through me. What
was
this thing, anyway?

“You’ve seen the angel several times now,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. “I’m also seeing a man with the angel’s face.”

“Yes, that’s him,” said Beth. Her voice was soft, ardent, like a prayer. “Angels can do that — they walk among us, to help us. Oh, Willow, I couldn’t believe it when he really came back again. He’s promised that he’ll always be there for me. I — I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life.”

And she was, but I could sense that she was also the most miserable. But before I could say anything else, Beth leaned forward, gripping my hand as the words burst out of her: “I just feel like school and clubs and all that — they don’t have any meaning anymore, not when all that is out there.” She waved her free hand in the air. “Angels are
real,
and that means  . . .  Well, why am I bothering with anything else?”

I stared at her. “What are you saying?”

There was a pause as Beth gazed down at the dining table, tracing a pattern on the lace tablecloth. Finally she took a deep breath and looked me squarely in the eyes. “I’m thinking of dropping out of school and joining the Church of Angels.”

I opened my mouth and then slowly closed it again, at a loss for words. The Church of Angels was this massive church that had sprung up out of nowhere in the last couple of years. More like a cult, really. I was always seeing their commercials on TV: lots of blissed-out-looking people going on about how the angels were pure love and had helped them with practically every problem known to humankind.

“Yes, and helped them empty their bank accounts to boot,” Aunt Jo always sniffed.

Beth was still talking. “Now that I know angels exist, I want to be with people who know what I know, who’ve seen angels, too, who
understand
. And my angel’s told me that if I join, we can really be together. But then when I think of my parents  . . . ” She trailed off, her eyes bright with tears. She fumbled in her purse for a tissue. “I tried to talk to them about it, you know. Joining the Church, I mean. It was awful. They said I’d be throwing my life away and that if I was that ungrateful for all the advantages I’ve had, then they wouldn’t lift a finger to stop me.” Choking back a sob, she dabbed at her eyes, shaking her head. “I don’t know. When I’m away from the angel, it all feels sort of — unreal. But at the same time, it’s the most real thing in my life. How can I ignore it?”

She looked up at me, her gaze pleading. “Willow, can you tell me what to do?”

At a loss
for words
is an understatement. I’d never felt so taken aback in my life. “Let me see what I can find out,” I said finally.

Closing my eyes, I pushed away my turbulent thoughts and went deep within myself, searching for Beth’s possible futures. They grew before me like a tree, branching and dividing with each choice she might make in her life. Mentally, I blinked. With most people, this map of what might come looked golden and glowing, but Beth’s was dull. Stunted. Even worse, her tree had only two main branches: a pair of twisted, spindly boughs that grew up from the trunk in a wobbly
V
shape.

I stared at them in dread. How could this be? Beth’s future held only
two
likely possibilities  . . .  and neither of them looked great. I explored the first branch and felt my heart clench. Oh, my God, poor Beth. Praying that the second branch would be more hopeful, I turned to it — and felt a strange chill settle over me. Images flashed past, but they were jumbled; any details just slithered away into a cloud of gray as I tried to focus on them. Even so, I caught my breath at the sheer, bone-wrenching coldness of this future. Whatever the gray cloud meant, it felt utterly final, like a gravestone with mist curling over it.

My eyes flew open. “Beth, you’ve got to listen to me; the angel isn’t good for you,” I said urgently, my words tumbling over each other. “It’s hurting you. The best thing you could do is to never go back to that stream again. It might still find you, but there’s a chance it’ll let you go, and then you could —”

Beth gasped, yanking her hand away from mine. “No!” she cried. “You’ve got it all wrong!”

“Listen to me! In one path, I see you taking my advice. You try to forget about the angel and choose school and college. You  . . .  well, it’s not a bad life,” I faltered. “You major in politics, and —”
And suffer on and off from depression for the rest of your life, always wondering whether you made the right choice.
I couldn’t say the words. “And make a real difference,” I finished weakly.

Beth’s face was stone-cold. She stuffed the tissue back into her purse, not looking at me. “What about the other path?” she asked. “Do I join the Church of Angels?”

“Yes, but it’s not good for you. You seem to get sort of sick.”

“Sick?” She glanced up.

“Like, tired all the time. Exhausted.”

“Does it make me happy, though? Being there?” She leaned forward, her expression very still, very intent.

“I think so,” I admitted reluctantly. “It was all sort of mixed up, but — yeah, you seem to encounter your angel again, and then later there are other angels, too. You’re accepted by the people in the Church. For the first time, you feel like your life has meaning.”

Beth’s eyes were shining. “Willow, that’s wonderful!” she said, breathless. “That’s exactly what I needed to know! It
wouldn’t
be a mistake, then.”

“It would!” I snapped. My voice was like a harsh whip, and Beth’s eyebrows flew up in surprise. “Trust me: it’s
not
a good path. Everything just  . . .  felt cold.” My heart beat faster as I remembered the slithery gray clouds. Words suddenly seemed so totally, stupidly inadequate.

Beth sat motionless, staring at me. I could hear the TV going faintly in the other room and the low murmur of the caregiver’s voice, saying something to Mom. Finally Beth cleared her throat. “What do you mean,
cold
? You mean, like  . . .  death?”

I scraped my hair back in frustration. “I don’t know! I’ve seen death before, and it wasn’t like that. I don’t know
what
it was, just that it wasn’t good.”

Beth seemed deep in thought, her eyes troubled. She shook her head. “I — I don’t know what to think. What you’re saying  . . .  it goes completely against my own gut feelings. I
know
that the angel is good for me. I can feel it, in here!” She thumped her hand on her chest. “I don’t know what you saw, but —”

“There’s a part of you that’s
not
sure, though, or else you wouldn’t be here,” I broke in desperately. “What about the tiredness, Beth? It all started with the angel, didn’t it? You’re still feeling it even now! Your muscles ache, and you feel draggy and worn out and —”

Beth flushed. Without meeting my gaze, she pushed her chair back and stood up, swinging her purse over her shoulder. “Thanks for the reading, Willow,” she said flatly. “What do I owe you?”

I leaped up. “Wait! Just ask yourself,
please
— if something is really good for you, then it wouldn’t make you feel like that, would it?” I gripped the back of the chair with both hands, my voice pleading.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Beth, keeping her eyes down. “I feel fine. Here, is this enough?” She took a leather wallet out of her purse and thrust a twenty toward me. When I didn’t take it, she put it on the table, tucking it under the sugar bowl. “OK, I’d better be going now.”

“
No!
” I clutched her arm. “Beth, please, please listen to me. That thing is killing you!”