Divine Temptation (7 page)

She couldn’t hide that it was more than a desire to serve the Lord that made her wish to see the angel again. She wanted to feel the tranquility he’d filled her with. She wanted the intimacy she’d felt with him on his last two visits. With her heart now opened so widely, she couldn’t deny that she’d felt stirrings of a carnal, human nature. They were only slight, but they’d been there.

Her hand involuntarily pulled back from the stone, and she stood. The temperatures gave her no reason to be cold, but she wrapped her arms around herself and clung to her biceps for warmth. Forcing her eyes shut, she beseeched the Holy Spirit to strengthen her will…and to send the angel back.

His lips twisted into a nefarious smirk as he watched her through the budding branches. This one was interesting, a true child of God struggling to do right. But he sensed her transformation had only been recent, which meant her sinful desires lurked close to the surface. Entirely exploitable. She would, perhaps, suit his purposes, after all.

Chapter 5

A S
TEADY
R
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HUMPED
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T
HE
R
OOF
and pinged at the window panes. Maggie sat propped against her headboard, saturated in shadow. For a while she’d stared at the pages of her paperback, but she hadn’t been able to absorb so much as a sentence. Her afternoon at work had been similarly unproductive. When her digital alarm had ticked past midnight, she’d recalled that on all the other nights he’d come when the lights were out and she was sleeping—turning off her lamp had been easy, but falling asleep wasn’t going to happen. Not until she saw him again. So she waited in the dark.

The moment his self-illuminated form appeared, she threw off the blankets and shot up to her knees, shuffling to the end of the bed to get closer to him. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I believe you. I believe in you. I—” She stopped when his sudden and brilliant smile surprised her.

“Don’t worry,” he said, walking over. “I know this doesn’t happen every day. Your skepticism in this case was rational, even admirable. But you listened to me, you followed my instructions, and now you believe.”

She relaxed her position down to sitting and nodded. “I do.”

It only took a few quiet moments of silently watching each other before the questions started. “Have you figured out why I can see you?” Maggie asked.

“No. Have you?”

“Me? I…no, I only just started believing you were real. Wait! Did you know the whole time that
I
was real? Did you never question it?”

“Angels only know reality.”

“Yet you don’t know why you’re here.”

His eyes narrowed slightly as he studied her. “Has anything unusual been going on in your life?”

“Well, two years ago—”

“Not the divorce. Your immediate present.”

“Oh.” She scanned her mind. “I assume you mean other than a wingless angel showing up in my bedroom?”

He answered by tilting his head and casting an admonishing look at her even while a smirk played at one corner of his mouth.

Maggie wrinkled her nose and almost laughed, but was stopped short by a sudden thought. “Hold on—you know about the divorce?”

“Of course.”

“Of course? Does this mean…are you my guardian angel?”

“Yes and no. The human understanding of a guardian angel isn’t completely accurate, but I’m the closest thing to your definition.”

“So you’ve been watching me my whole life?”

“I’ve seen your whole life.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“It’s a no.”

“What’s the difference between watching and seeing my whole life?”

“Watching would imply that I’ve been lurking in the background at every moment—I think stalker is the word you’d use for it. Seeing means I’m given the knowledge of your life when I need it.”

“Need it for what?”

“For various reasons.”

“Including…?”

“Including times when I’m needed to intervene for protection or comfort.”

“Intervene how?”

“Different ways. Most often it’s through a gentle transfer of…energy is the best way for you to understand it. We don’t have the power to change a person’s heart, but we can plant the tiniest seeds of an idea or temper, anger, and distress.”

“And sometimes you appear in front of them.”

“Rarely.”

“Have you done it before—with others?”

“I think so.”

“You think so? Can you not remember?”

“It’s…” He scowled and lifted an arm, bending it to rub the back of his neck. “It’s difficult to explain.”

Maggie sighed and readjusted to sit cross-legged. Patting the mattress in front of her, she said, “I have a feeling we’re going to be here for a while and you might as well get comfortable.”

The angel considered her gesture for a moment and then moved onto the bed, mirroring her position so that they sat nearly knee to knee. “Angels don’t remember,” he continued. “That is to say, we have no need of remembering because we don’t forget. We know what we’re meant to know, nothing more, nothing less.” He lifted his fingers to brush them over the deep creases in Maggie’s brow. “I’m sorry; it’s not an easy concept, and it doesn’t matter anyhow. You wouldn’t understand. Not completely. At any rate, the moments I referred to were quick flashes of danger. I stepped in to intercede and lead the people to safety. They seemed to be able to see me and followed, but they may have been obeying an inner voice and not my physical form.”

“So you didn’t speak to them.”

He shook his head. “You’re the first I’ve ever spoken to.”

“Really?” She liked the idea of that. “Well, besides talking to other angels, of course.”

He shook his head again, and his pale eyes sparked. “First ever to anyone. We don’t need to speak in the other realm.”

Maggie took a moment to absorb this before asking, “You read each other’s minds? All the time? Are you reading mine?”

He let out a laugh. “No. It’s not mind reading. We know what we’re meant to know.”

“Ah, that stuff I won’t understand.”

“Exactly. But in this case I obviously need to speak for you to get the information you seek. You’ve given me my voice.” As he said this, he reached his hands over to grab Maggie’s where they rested on her knees.

She felt again as if their flesh was melding together, and a calming reassurance seeped into her. “It’s a very nice voice,” she quietly told him.

“Thank you,” he replied softly.

The angel was perfectly visible to Maggie’s eyes and gave no indication that he had any trouble seeing through the darkness, so she hadn’t thought to turn on a light. But now the intimacy of the darkened scene occurred to her, and she slipped her hands from his touch while shifting her mind to a different direction. “Earlier today at work I was thinking, the accounts in the Bible are only summaries, really, so for all we know, it took Mary and Gabriel weeks to figure out what was being asked of her. We can do this. Maybe we should start with what we do know.”

His slight nod indicated he was game.

“Okay,” Maggie continued, “I’ve seen you twice outside of my drea—out in public. At the coffee shop and at Somme Park. That was you, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what could’ve drawn you out both times? At the coffee shop…” Her mind drifted back as she put the scene together, and she snapped her fingers. “I’d just told my friend about seeing you in my dream! Was that it? Were you coming to warn me not to tell people about you? Is this supposed to be a secret?”

He pulled his eyebrows together and shook his head. “I didn’t know you’d told her about me. I felt…it was an overwhelming need to protect. There is evil in this world, all the time, and part of what we do on Earth is ward off those spirits with our presence. The evil that day was intense, apparently concentrated enough to draw me out far enough to be visible to human eyes.”

A chill prickled up Maggie’s arm. “Are you protecting me now? Is it, is it lurking closely right now?”

The angel tilted his face to point upward as he turned his palms out and held them slightly away from his body, staying silent for a moment before answering. “No. There’s always a presence, but I don’t feel anything particularly strong right now. Not strong enough to warrant my appearance. I haven’t felt it the other nights I’ve been here either.” He lowered his chin and leveled a steady gaze straight into her eyes, as if to embed the truth of what he said. “Neither have I come with a warning to not speak of me, but I do think it would be wise to keep it between us for now, at least until we’ve figured it out. Curiosity from others will likely only prove to be a distraction.”

Maggie nodded. “I agree. I pretty much regretted saying anything to Sharon the second I opened up my mouth. Now, what about the garden? Why did you run away?”

“I wasn’t running away. I was leading.”

“To what?”

“Not to, from.”

“
From
what?”

“The wicked forces again.”

This time the hairs on Maggie’s arms practically jumped out of their follicles. Something in the urn had been reaching for her. “Is something after me?”

“Difficult to say. There are concentrated pockets of supernatural malice here and there under normal circumstances. You may have just stumbled upon them. I’d say that’s the most likely scenario since the two episodes occurred months apart and haven’t progressed. Have you had any other sensations—instances of a strong feeling of foreboding that you can’t explain?”

Maggie shook her head. “I don’t think so. But I hadn’t felt anything like that at the coffee shop either.”

She hadn’t realized that the angel had been tensed, but she now noticed the hardened muscles at his jaw relax as his shoulders sloped downward. “That’s good,” he said. “Either it was just coincidence, or your prayers and spiritual life are strong enough to have discouraged it. It would be best for you to remove yourself from any influences that don’t feel right. But don’t be overly concerned—fear will only lead you to a dark path. There’s no need for worry as long as you have faith.” His mouth spread into a smile. “Besides, it seems I’ll come running to your rescue should it happen again.”

Maggie returned his smile and gestured toward his internally-lit form. “My angel in shining…whatever that is.” Her fear of the lurking evil subsided, but her curiosity hadn’t. “So this brings us back to our dilemma—why are you here?”

He pressed his lips together and shrugged but didn’t seem as agitated by the situation as he’d been the previous night. He touched his fingertips to the back of her hands and slid his hands around hers, folding them together. Bending his face downward, he closed his eyes and said, “Father, we ask you to grant us patience as we try to determine the path you wish us to follow. Help us trust that all will be revealed in your time. Meanwhile, may our words and actions be pleasing to you. Amen.”

“Amen,” Maggie repeated.

“It’s late. You should sleep.”

“You’ll be back?”

“It’s for him to decide, but I have a strong sense that I will.”

“Well then, I think it’s only right that I should know your name.”

“Are you going to give that to me too?”

“What?”

“As with my voice, we have no need of names in heaven. They’re a human thing.”

“But…Gabriel, Michael…do they have names because they’re archangels?”

“No. They were given their names because humans needed them. If you need me to have a name, you must give me one.”

She chuckled, thinking back to all the baby name books she’d poured over when it had been time to choose names for her children. “No pressure, right?”

“None whatsoever. You’ll come up with something.”

“Any requests?”

“No.” He pushed back from her and stood, walking toward his traditional corner of the room, but before he reached the spot, he was gone.