Airs & Graces (19 page)

He looked at Adelaide after a moment. “Do what you need to do. Take whatever help he’ll give you, for whatever trouble you’re in. Then you get clear, understand?”

She tilted her head again, looking at the old man with an expression of confusion. “You two seem friendly enough. I understand not getting involved in the war and all, but…”

“We’re friends,” John agreed. “But him showing up alone like this, after so long, and with another mortal in tow? It’s always bad news when Tabbris travels with mortals. I don’t want to know the news, and I’m happy to help out. When it’s all done and settled, I’ll be happy enough if he shows back up to chat and talk old war stories. But when he’s working, I’ll be happy just to clear my debts and see you both go. And if it costs me a car, that’s an awful small price to pay.” Adelaide didn’t look entirely content with the answer, but she accepted it.

***

We returned to the hotel. The drive between Medicine Bow and Boulder wasn’t going to be a long one. Even if we got the car late in the afternoon, we should be able to get to the city in time for dinner. I didn’t want to stay in the city, or any densely populated area for long, but my one stop would be a quick one, and we could probably spare a little bit of time there for Adelaide’s benefit. After the Temple and then Wyoming, I thought that a return to a more urban center might do her some good, perhaps help her in deciding what our next step was going to be. I spent a short time perusing more recent maps, and noting how much more Boulder and Denver had grown together since last time I was there. Adelaide cleaned herself up, and got ready for bed, though she didn’t seem inclined to try to sleep right away.

The room was mostly silent until Adelaide spoke rather abruptly.

“How about a game of Twenty Questions or whatever? I ask you a question, and you can choose not to answer, but if you do, you have to answer honestly. Then you ask me a question. You’re starting to level with me, which is good…”

“All right. Begin.”

She blinked. “Okay, just like that?”

I smiled. “Is that your first question?”

“Hey, not fair. No. Okay, okay, first question,” she dug right in, “Who was Iaoel to you? I mean, it’s okay if you don’t want to answer that one, but it seems like it might be kind of important, and – ”

This time, I cut her off. “We were lovers.”

“Wait, you’re Angels. You do that sort of thing?”

Another small smile. “You can ask that one next.”

Adelaide mock-pouted. “For someone who I don’t suspect plays that many games, you’re good at this.”

“Your favorite place to go as a child?”

“What?” She looked confused at the question.

“Your favorite place to go as a child. As far as I know, humans have one.”

“All right, fair enough. I guess I was just expecting something different for a first question.”

“I’m trying to learn more about you. That seemed like a good place to start.”

“How does that really tell you about me, now?”

“Knowing where you were comfortable then might tell me a lot about what might help you to relax.”

“So, your questions are going to be all about unfolding the Grace and things that will help me relax so I can work on that, then?”

“Of course. What else would they be about?”

“You don’t get off-mission much, do you, Soldier?”

“I think we’ve established that, yes. What were you expecting?”

She sighed. “I thought, maybe, after the temple, and you leveling with me there, finally, that maybe we were getting closer. Not, you know, what you were saying before, but maybe we could be friends, or something.”

“We understand each other better, but if you really knew me, you’d understand why that’s a bad idea.”

“So tell me. Why is it a bad idea? Why are you so cold so much of the time?”

“Giving up on the game?” I asked. Not because I especially wanted to play, but it might give her a little more time to think about what she really wanted to ask. Besides, I still wanted some clues on where to begin looking for the next steps in unfolding the Grace.

“Fine, all right. I used to go out to these trees, and climb. My mother never thought to look up when she went looking for me, so if I was quiet, I could just stay up there a while. And from as high as the branches would support me, I could see for blocks. I’d come home with scratches on my hands and sometimes a skinned knee or torn jeans from climbing around up there. I always got in trouble, but she never figured it out. That was my favorite place.”

I nodded my understanding and gestured for her to go ahead with her next question.

“All right, so why are you so hard to be friends with? I get that you’re the Angel of Free Will, and that’s important, but even Yin called you grumpy.”

“Yin is old enough to remember when I came there with people I called friends. Iaoel and I were friends and more than friends. Gabriel and I were friends. Very good ones, despite his lack of appreciation for mortals as more than spectator sport. Piorre and I were friends, after a fashion. And now Piorre has been murdered for volunteering to hide Iaoel away. Iaoel betrayed me, Gabriel still sees humans the same way he sees the figures in his video games – there for his entertainment, and if a few get shot or plague-ridden, well, there’s always more – which doesn’t help much in times like this.”

“And Yin? He seemed like a nice man.”

“Yin wanted to know why I didn’t kill you. Suggested it to be the easier route to just take the Grace and hide it again.”

Adelaide paled. As soon as she recovered from that first impression, she searched my expression for any hint of deception. She found none. While she looked, I continued. “What I do is dangerous. Lucifer and others will be after those I’m closest to. The stakes are literally the end of the world. And the best friend I had betrayed me, which led to my being sent to Hell, where I spent a very long time before anyone felt it was worthwhile to get me out. While I have a job to do, making
new
friends is not my highest priority.”

Adelaide sighed. “All right, but one follow-up question, because it’s part of the same question and you have to answer honestly, how much of the bad attitude is because I’ve got Iaoel’s Grace inside me?”

I’d said I’d answer honestly, or, at least, by accepting the game, implied I would. “All and none. Her presence, and how quickly she’s bonded with you complicates everything, I won’t deny it. But no matter what the situation was, I wouldn’t be looking for more friends right now. I’ve already gotten one of them killed. If it were an option, I’d have already freed you, and let you return to your old life, or as close to it as was possible by now.”

Adelaide looked at me long and hard, but finally just nodded her acceptance. “All right. Your question.”

“Your mother has come up. Tell me about her.”

Adelaide looked at me evenly. “That’s not a question and I’d rather not.”

Rather than argue, I rephrased, ignoring her preference all together. “What happened last time you talked to your mother?”

“She told me that I wasn’t going to amount to anything, that working as an assistant at an old antique shop wasn’t any kind of life, I was wasting my time, and if I wanted to rethink it and do the paperwork for college financial aid, she was still willing to pay for half of law school, if I could save up the other half, get loans, or convince someone to give a poor charity case a scholarship.”

“Law school?”

“Yep. Law school. I wasn’t even done with high school when she was talking law school. For my 18th birthday, she got me one of those LSAT preparation books, ‘so you won’t screw it up when the time comes.’”

“Why didn’t you want to go to law school?”

“Lot of reasons,” she said, evading my eyes. “It’s a profession, you know? Those people’ve got to know as much stuff as librarians and talk as good as politicians. Even the ones who’re just in it for the money have to half-kill themselves studying in law school and some of them, some of them have lives at stake every time they go to work. It’s not … it’s not something you throw someone at just because you want them to surprise you by finally being respectable.”

“Some of them. There’s plenty of different types of lawyers.”

“You don’t really want to know about law school. That wasn’t the question. I didn’t really want to be a lawyer, even if I thought I could hack it. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, except have a little bit of time to find myself. But it was all she’d focus on.” Adelaide’s face was flatly affected, at least relative to her usual sudden shifts of expression, as she continued. “‘I don’t know why you don’t want to go to law school,’ she’d say. ‘You like to argue so much!’ It was always that I just wanted to argue, every time we disagreed. It could never be that we just had a difference of opinion, or – God forbid! – that she made a mistake. I was always out to cause trouble, just there to drive her nuts…”

The answer led to more questions. Would it be better to try to help her resolve things with her mother, or leave that alone, as likely to cause more complications? I let it drop for now, and, as was proper, let her guide the conversation, as she would the journey. “Your question.”

“All right, so… backing off a little, what’s the deal with Yin and all of them? I wouldn’t expect a Temple in Tibet to be quite so aware of, I don’t know, Catholic stuff. Shouldn’t they be Buddhist or something? And, uhm, so Yin really wanted to kill me?”

“Who says they’re not Buddhist? Or weren’t? They know Angels and Demons exist, and they’re still focused on finding the answers within human nature and improving themselves. What they know as a certainty has altered how they reflect their faith, but it hasn’t changed the search for enlightenment entirely.”

“That seems like a really weird kind of Buddhism. I mean, I don’t know a lot about it, but some of the things, like, well, killing people, seem a bit off.”

“If you can still call it anything like what they were, then it is a weird offshoot. But their ancestors felt that they couldn’t find the answers within themselves if they were, intentionally or not, aligned with either Heaven or Hell,” I explained as best I could. “So they focused on finding a way to withdraw from the war and focus on the human.” I hoped this would explain some of why the Temple remained an occasional ally of mine, even if they wanted little part in the war. In some ways, we had remarkably similar goals.

“And Yin? He really wanted to kill me? He seemed so nice.”

“Yin can be a very nice person, but he’s terrified of the next world. He walks a difficult line. There was no malice. He wasn’t ever trying to
have
you killed. But he wanted to know if it was a solution I’d considered.” I left out that he had tried to get me to consider it more… Adelaide looked almost hurt by my revelation.

She pondered that for a little while, then said, “I know my next question. But okay, your turn.”

“If not a lawyer, what did you want to be?”

“I don’t know. And that’s just it. What I really wanted was some time to figure it out. Maybe start college, just undeclared. I never had a lot of time, or space, to figure out what
I
wanted. A lot of kids, they talk about figuring out their major a year or two in. I kind of wanted to do that.”

“So why didn’t you?” It was progress, of a sort.

“Because she made a little too much money for me to get most financial aid, and right out of school, I couldn’t afford to go. But if I accepted her help with the money, then it meant she’d still be looking over my shoulder and trying to make everything about the next step. I guess I was still thinking about going, if I saved up enough with working for Piorre, and then it just got comfortable. I had a quiet place, and someone who didn’t want me to be anything but a good worker.”

It was making a lot of sense. It didn’t inspire me with a lot of confidence that she’d settled in so readily, and it didn’t spark any ideas for where to suggest going next, but it made sense. On the other hand, it made all the more sense for why Iaoel might feel comfortable with Adelaide – if finding a host she could direct was part of the goal. “All right, your question.”

“You mentioned how Yin wanted to know if killing me was a solution you’d considered. You didn’t technically deny it when Michael said you’d thought about killing me. You’re good with that sword. So, is it something you’ve considered? Or something you’re considering?” She didn’t look afraid, in that moment, more somewhere between curious and possibly resigned.

“It was an idea that came to mind and, in your case, left just as quickly as not an option.”

“But you’ve killed people before?”

“People, Demons, Fallen, Angels, yes.”

“So what’s the difference?”

“Their choices. Iaoel betrayed me and forced my hand. The humans I’ve killed made their choices, knowing the risks. You didn’t have any control over this situation, or any chance to even make a choice. This was all brought on you.”

“But if I did choose to let Iaoel take control of me, or was going to go to Lucifer, or whatever, you’d kill me?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t expect her to get up at that point, and definitely didn’t expect her to move over and hug me, or to say what came next. “Thank you, Tab. I’m really scared right now. I don’t know what’s going to happen, or if any of this will work. I’m scared I might make the wrong choices. But this is all me talking when I say I don’t want anyone else controlling me. God knows I’ve fucked up my life and not gone anywhere, or done any of the things I wanted to. But I didn’t go to law school, I didn’t let my mother decide that for me, and I don’t want Iaoel deciding things for me, or Lucifer, or anyone else. And if I’m not strong enough, in the end, to make that not happen, then I expect you to kill me. Just, please, make it quick.”