Secret Worlds (187 page)

I sat down and went through them all, putting the envelopes in one neat pile and the cards in another with the trinkets and stuffed animals in the middle. Maybe it was a good thing Michael wasn’t around, because I couldn’t seem to stop crying, though I was smiling through my tears. Even in writing, I could feel how much he cared about me—someone he had never even met.

The letters for my sixth through tenth birthdays were all simple and colorful, but the ones after that began to get serious. He didn’t divulge his own whereabouts or the fact that he was a Seer. Most of them said that I need only know that he would look after me one day when I was ready.

“You may be asking yourself who I am or why I’ve been writing you, but just know that I want to make sure you are safe. That is what your mother would have wanted for you, and what I want for you as well. I know that right now things seem at their darkest, but there is an old saying: sometimes it’s darkest just before dawn. There is a dawn for you, and me, and for us all. So hang a night light by your bed and wait for the sunrise, angel.”

A.B.

A fresh wave of tears tumbled down my cheeks, but they weren’t sad tears so I didn’t mind. I wiped my eyes and took the letter to the fridge, clipping it on there with a magnet. I had fought in a war. I had nearly died three times in the past three months. I had been broken and beaten and bloodied. I had lost my mother, my lover, and the man who may have been my father figure if he had lived long enough. I had killed. I had suffered.

But for once in my life, I had love and no one could steal it from me.

During the first month without Michael, I felt like a quarter rolling around in an empty piggy bank. My apartment felt hollow and I rattled around it, lost, aimless, and uncomfortable. I hadn’t realized how much time he occupied in my daily life. During the day, I’d go to work and when I got out, he would wait for me. Ever since Belial abducted me, he never let me leave work to catch the bus by myself. I had tried and failed to convince him not to waste valuable money five days a week on the bus fare, but he never listened. On weekends, we went to movies and plays or walked in the park or perused the bookstores to collect literature I didn’t have yet.

The silence killed me. I had my laptop open constantly to play music to combat the quiet. My weekends were spent sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee and reading. I deleted “Golden Brown” from my playlist and avoided every single sentimental love song I could just to stay sane.

My dinners went back to being simple: tuna salad, spaghetti, fajitas, and lasagna. I just didn’t feel like trying new recipes yet.

Lauren immediately knew something was wrong. After a week of my unresponsive behavior, she dragged me into the bathroom at work and demanded to know what was going and where Michael went. I merely told her that we weren’t seeing each other any more because his job took up too much time and he couldn’t be with me. Part of it was true, after all. She believed me and offered her sympathy, promising to take me out to meet guys. I declined the offer. I wasn’t ready yet.

The second month wasn’t as bad as the first, though the urge to start drinking again got worse, so I started attending local AA meetings. Gabriel checked in on me every other week, sometimes by a phone call, other times in person. I never asked him how Michael was doing because I knew, to some degree. While flipping channels, I’d heard about some of his performances on the local entertainment news. The Throwaway Angels were making their way to the top. I didn’t know how I felt about that.

The other problem was that my nightmares got progressively worse, and it wasn’t just dreams about killing Andrew or Mulciber choking me to death. These dreams involved someone who knew my inner darkness and could bring it to life whenever I fell asleep.

I stood in a pure white field, much like the one Andrew and my mother had brought me to, but something was different. Wrong. In front of me stood a pane of glass that was a thousand feet high and a thousand feet across. On the other side, I could see the silhouette of a man walking towards it. I squinted, stepping closer to see. My breath caught as he came into focus.

Michael stood there, his beautiful silver wings flowing from his back, dressed in all black with the most mournful look on his face. He said nothing, merely lifted one hand and pressed it to the glass. I didn’t understand why, but I did the same. I couldn’t feel the warmth from his hand. The windowpane was too thick. God help us.

Then, slowly, the glass began to darken at the corners, spreading downward until it swallowed Michael’s image in a rush of silver. It had turned into a mirror and behind me there was another man. A man in a suit with black hair on either side of his face and a serpentine smile.

I whirled around, a scream building in my throat, as Belial reached out and placed his gloved hands against the mirror, trapping me between them. He was so close that I could smell the metallic scent of blood on his breath.

“Poor, sweet Jordan,” he whispered, his reptilian eyes swallowing my vision. “Without your angel, who will protect your heart?”

He let his gloved fingertips trail down the left side of my neck, resting the palm over the scar just above my breast. The demon leaned in, his lips brushing my ear and making me shiver.

“Will you give it to me or shall I take it?”

“You can chase me for a thousand years. You can hunt me wherever I go, threaten everyone I love, and take away everything I care about…but I will never…ever…give myself to you.” My voice came out clear and harsh, almost brash, but it was the truth.

Belial inhaled sharply, dragging his hot tongue over my pulse. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

His fangs pierced my skin and I screamed until I woke up.

As if the nightmares weren’t stressful enough, Terrell’s family had engaged in a legal battle about where and when to inter his body. Apparently, he hadn’t specified in his will and his mother’s side wanted to bury him with her grandparents, while his father’s side wanted to bury him in their grandparents’ graveyard. The only reason I knew about any of it was because of his sweet younger sister, Grace. Even after we broke up years ago, she never hated me like his mother did and so she called to tell me it would be a while before they got the issue settled. I tried to refuse the invitation, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer, bless her heart.

When the third month rolled around, the depression slackened. I threw myself into work and put more energy towards solving cases. Ghosts poured in at a steady rate. I took extra care to carry my gun, rosary, and a couple vials of holy water with me in case one of the demons resurfaced, but there was no sign of them. Though I did develop an intense fear of cats. Every time I saw one, I hurried off in the opposite direction. Sad, but true.

I also started watching Food Network on a regular basis. I started simple with dinner entrees and then worked my way up to baking. By the end of the month, I could make cornbread, chocolate chip cookies, and banana bread from scratch. I let Gabriel and Raphael try some of them. After that, all of Gabriel’s visits were in person just so he could try whatever new sweets I’d made that week.

By the fourth month, I still didn’t feel busy enough, so I started looking into enrolling in Excelsior College for their Bachelor of Science program for restaurant management. After all, I couldn’t be a waitress forever. Spending time at the restaurant made me realize how much I enjoyed cooking food and being around people while they ate. It would be a while before I’d be able to afford it, though. I made a folder for the pamphlets I found and wrote “Promises to Keep” on it.

It was the end of March before anything related to Michael cropped up. I sat in my kitchen, sharing half of a loaf of banana bread with Lauren after our shift at work. Lily was at the babysitter’s, because Lauren needed to vent about her divorce over sweets. Our conversation had fallen silent for a few comfortable moments before she spoke.

“I need to tell you something, but first you have to promise not to get mad at me,” she said after downing half her glass of milk.

I eyed her. “Go ahead.”

“I bumped into Michael the other night.”

The sudden mention of his name made my heart rate spike. “Oh.”

She dropped her gaze to the table top, folding one corner of her napkin. “We went out for a drink.”

The look on my face must have scared her, because she held up her hands in supplication. “No, no, not like
that
. He wanted to catch up, not go on a date.”

I relaxed a little. Before he left, Lauren and Michael did get along pretty well so it made sense he’d want to talk to her.

She continued. “I asked him how things were going and he said he pretty much just writes songs, works at Guitar Center, and sleeps. Nothing in between. He’s not seeing anybody, in case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t,” I said, and she rolled her eyes at me.

“He asked me how you were.”

“What did you tell him?”

Lauren shrugged. “That you were good. Busy.”

The silence mounted. She folded the napkin into a limp little goose. After a while, she sighed. “Jor, he looked awful. Like he hasn’t been sleeping or taking good care of himself. Around other people, he can hold it together, but I could tell he was miserable.”

She met my gaze, her voice soft. “He misses you.”

I closed my eyes. “Lauren…”

“I don’t run your life. I won’t tell you what to do with it because it’s not like I know anything, I mean, I’m getting a divorce. But he’s not the same without you.”

She dug into her purse and withdrew a CD in a plastic sleeve, placing it on the table. “He did a cover of Eels’ ‘Beautiful Freak’ that I think you need to hear. I cried for a week after I heard it.”

“Look, I appreciate that you’re concerned about fixing things between us. I really do. But some things just aren’t going to happen no matter how much we want them to.” My throat started to tighten. Emotions were welling up beneath the surface of my mind, threatening to spill out if we kept talking about him.

“Okay. I just thought you should know.” She stood up, brushing crumbs off the front of her skirt. “I’ve gotta get going. Call me tomorrow.”

“I will. G’night.” She waved and left the apartment. I sat in silence, staring at the CD at my fingertips for a long moment. My mind told me not to listen. It would only open old wounds and smear salt into them. But my hand reached out and placed the disc in the laptop.

It whirred for a few seconds, and then I heard the polite sound of applause. He had recorded this at the Devil’s Paradise, probably, during a live performance. I folded my hands over my mouth and listened to the first few lines.

His voice was heavy and had a rough texture that made shivers roll down my spine. There were some artists that had a polished, pop sound to them. Michael wasn’t one of them. When he sang, he meant every single word.

I couldn’t get through the entire thing. I stopped the recording and pressed my hands over my face, inhaling deeply. No. I wouldn’t backslide when I had come so far. He had his life and I had mine. We would be fine without each other.

No more, no less.

The next day after work, I walked into my apartment, shut the door, and turned around, only to freeze in place.

Michael was standing in my kitchen.

My throat closed up and my entire body seemed to go cold from head to toe as it tried to absorb the shock of seeing him after six months of no contact. No phone calls, no visits, nothing. Part of me wanted to race across the room and catapult into his arms, to bury my nose in his shirt and smell that familiar scent, to have him smile at me and erase any negative thoughts my mind could conjure. But that was just part of me. The rest was hollow.

“Hey, Jordan.” His voice came out soft, meaningful, and hesitant. The words seemed to jolt me out of my paralysis. I realized I’d been standing there staring at him for nearly half a minute. Lauren hadn’t been lying. There were dark smudges under his eyes and his skin had an unhealthy pallor.

I let my face go blank and slid out of the duster, walking towards the kitchen table and draping it over the back of a chair. “What are you doing here, Michael?”

It was hard to concentrate on anything in the room other than him, but I managed as I went to the refrigerator and searched for the food to get my dinner. Chicken salad. Nothing special.

I heard him take a deep breath. “I have something to tell you.”

I sat the Tupperware container of food on the counter. “And you couldn’t tell me over the phone because…?”

He sighed. “Jordan, don’t do this.”

I slammed the door shut, whirling on him. “
Don’t
. Don’t you tell me what to do. You can’t just waltz in here and expect me not to be upset.”

Michael shook his head. “No, that’s not what I’m talking about. You know I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t have something important to say.”

“What makes you think I even want to hear it?”

His green eyes narrowed just barely. “Because if you didn’t, you would have thrown me out already.”

The truth of his words slapped me in the face, rendering me silent. I crossed my arms, leaning against the counter with a cold expression. “Two minutes.”

The angel set his jaw, but nodded. He turned his back on me and ran a hand through his hair—a painfully familiar gesture—then rested his large hands on the counter opposite of me as he spoke.

“Yesterday, Father called me to His side for council.”

Shock crackled through me. From what I’d heard, direct conversation with God was an extremely rare occurrence. His orders were often sent out through the Son, not the Man himself.

Michael paused to let this information absorb before continuing. “When I knelt before Him, He only asked me one thing.”

I couldn’t help myself. “What?”

“Do you love her?”

My heart rate tripled. I dug my fingers into my arms, trying to keep myself from having a panic attack. It was stupid, really. Of course He knew. He was God. But I had never in my life thought that the thing hanging between Michael and me would receive acknowledgment from on high.