Dark Angel; The Chosen; Soulmate (5 page)

And, blessedly, there were the sounds of Tanya moving away. Both Tanya and David calling goodbyes. Then silence.

Stiffly, Gillian pulled herself upright, almost falling down when she tried to step out of the bathtub.

She put on her pajamas and walked slowly out of the bathroom, moving like an old woman. She didn't even glance at the broken mirror.

She tried to be quiet going up the stairs. But just as she reached her bedroom, the door at the end of the upstairs hall swung open.

Her mother was standing there, a long coat wrapped around her, fuzzy fleece-lined slippers on her feet. Her hair, a darker blond than Gillian's, was uncombed.

“What's going on? I heard noise. Where's your father?”

Not “Whass goin' on? Whersh your father?” But close.

“It's not even seven yet, Mom. I got wet coming home. I'm going to bed.” The bare minimum of sentences to communicate the necessary information.

Her mother frowned. “Honey—”

“'Night, Mom.”

Gillian hurried into her bedroom before her mother could ask any more questions.

She fell on her bed and gathered an armful of stuffed animals in the bend of her elbow. They were solid and friendly and filled her arm. Gillian curled herself around them and bit down on plush.

And now, at last, she could cry. All the hurts of her mind and body merged and she sobbed out loud, wet cheek on the velveteen head of her best bear.

She wished she'd never come back. She wanted the bright meadow with the impossibly green grass, even if it had been a dream. She wanted everyone to be sorry because she was dead.

All her realizations about life being important were nonsense. Life was a giant hoax. She
couldn't
change herself and live in a completely new direction. There was no new start. No hope.

And I don't care, she thought. I just want to die. Oh, why did I get
made
if it was just for this? There's got to be someplace I belong, something I'm meant to do that's different. Because I don't fit in this world, in this life. And if there
isn't something more, I'd rather be dead. I want to dream something else.

She cried until she was numb and exhausted and fell into a deadly still sleep without knowing it.

When she woke up hours later, there was a strange light in her room.

Actually, it wasn't the light she noticed first. It was an eerie feeling that some… presence was in her room with her.

She'd had the feeling before, waking up to feel that
something
had just left, maybe even in the instant it had taken her to open her eyes. And that while asleep, she'd been on the verge of some great discovery about the world, something that was lost as soon as she woke.

But tonight, the feeling
stayed
. And as she stared around the room, feeling dazed and stupid and leaden, she slowly realized that the light was wrong.

She'd forgotten to close the curtains, and moonlight was streaming into the room. It had the thin blue translucence of new snow. But in one corner of Gillian's room, by the gilded Italian chest of drawers, the light seemed to have pooled. Coalesced. Concentrated. As if reflecting off a mirror.

There wasn't any mirror.

Gillian sat up slowly. Her sinuses were stuffed up and her eyes felt like hard-boiled eggs. She breathed through her mouth and tried to make sense of what was in the corner.

It looked like… a pillar. A misty pillar of light. And instead of fading as she woke up, it seemed to be getting brighter.

An ache had taken hold of Gillian's throat. The light was so beautiful… and almost familiar. It reminded her of the tunnel and the meadow and…

Oh
.

She knew now.

It was different to be seeing this when she wasn't dead. Then, she'd accepted strange things the way you accept them in dreams, without ordinary logic or disbelief interfering.

But now she stared as the light got brighter and brighter, and felt her whole skin tingling and tears pooling in her eyes. She could hardly breathe. She didn't know what to do.

How do you greet an angel in the ordinary world?

The light continued to get brighter, just as it had in the meadow. And now she could see the shape in it, walking toward her and rushing at the same time. Still brighter—dazzling and pulsating—until she had to shut her eyes and saw red and gold after images like shooting stars.

When she squinted her eyes back open, he was there.

Awe caught at Gillian's throat again. He was so beautiful that it was frightening. Face pale, with traces of the light still
lingering in his features. Hair like filaments of gold. Strong shoulders, tall but graceful body, every line pure and proud and
different
from any human. He looked more different now than he had in the meadow. Against the drab and ordinary background of Gillian's room, he burned like a torch.

Gillian slid off her bed to kneel on the floor. It was an automatic reflex.

“Don't do that.” The voice was like silver fire. And then—it changed. Became somehow more ordinary, like a normal human voice. “Here, does this help?”

Gillian, staring at the carpet, saw the light that was glinting off a stray safety pin fade a bit. When she tilted her eyes up, the angel looked more ordinary, too. Not as luminous. More like just an impossibly beautiful teenage guy.

“I don't want to scare you,” he said. He smiled.

“Yeah,” Gillian whispered. It was all she could get out.

“Are you scared?”

“Yeah.”

The angel made a frustrated circling motion with one arm. “I can go through all the gobbledygook: be not afraid, I mean you no harm, all that—but it's such a waste of time, don't you think?” He peered at her. “Aw, come on, kid, you died earlier today. Yesterday. This isn't really all that strange in comparison. You can deal.”

“Yeah.” Gillian blinked. “Yeah,” she said with more conviction, nodding.

“Take a deep breath, get up—”

“Yeah.”

“—say something different….”

Gillian got up. She perched on the edge of her bed. He was right, she
could
deal. So it hadn't been a dream. She had really died, and there really were angels, and now one was in the room with her, looking almost solid except at the edges. And he had come to…

“Why did you come here?” she said.

He made a noise that, if he hadn't been an angel, Gillian would have called a snort. “You don't think I ever really left, do you?” he said chidingly. “I mean, think about it. How did you manage to recover from freezing without even needing to go to the hospital? You were in severe hypothermia, you know. The worst. You were facing pulmonary edema, ventricular fibrillation, the loss of a few of your bits….” He wiggled his fingers and waggled his feet. That was when Gillian realized he was standing several inches off the floor. “You were in bad shape, kid. But you got out of it without even frostbite.”

Gillian looked down at her own ten pink fingers. They were tinglingly oversensitive, but she didn't have even one blood blister. “You saved me.”

He gave a half grin and looked sheepish. “Well, it's my job.”

“To help people.”

“To help
you
.”

A barely acknowledged hope was forming in Gillian's mind. He never really left her; it was his job to help her. That sounded like… Could he be…

Oh, God, no, it was too corny. Not to mention presumptuous.

He was looking sheepish again. “Yeah. I don't know how to put it, either. But it
is
true, actually. Did you know that most people
think
they have one even when they don't? Somebody did a poll, and ‘most people have an inner certainty that there is some particular, individual spirit watching over them.' The New Agers call us spirit guides. The Hawaiians call us
aumakua
….”

“You're a guardian angel,” Gillian whispered.

“Yeah.
Your
guardian angel. And I'm here to help you find your heart's desire.”

“I—” Gillian's throat closed.

It was too much to believe. She wasn't worthy. She should have been a better person so that she would
deserve
some of the happiness that suddenly spread out in front of her.

But then a cold feeling of reality set in. She
wasn't
a better person, and although she was sure enlightenment and whatever else an angel thought your heart's desire was, was terrific, well… in her case…

She swallowed. “Look,” she said grimly. “The things I need help with—well, they're not exactly the kinds of things angels are likely to know about.”

“Heh.” He grinned. He leaned over in a position that would have unbalanced an ordinary person and waved an imaginary something over her head. “You
shall
go to the ball, Cinderella.”

A wand. Gillian looked at him. “Now you're my fairy godmother?”

“Yeah. But watch the sarcasm, kid.” He changed to a floating position, his arms clasping his knees, and looked her dead in the eye. “How about if I say I know your heart's desire is for David Blackburn to fall madly in love with you and for everyone at school to think you're totally hot?”

Heat swept up Gillian's face. Her heart was beating out the slow, hard thumps of embarrassment—and excitement. When he said it out loud like that, it sounded extremely shallow… and extremely, extremely desirable.

“And you could
help
with that?” she choked out.

“Believe it or not, Ripley.”

“But you're an
angel
.”

He templed his fingers. “The paths to enlightenment are many, Grasshopper. Grasshopper? Maybe I should call you Dragonfly. You
are
sort of iridescent. There're lots of other insects, but Dung Beetle sounds sort of insulting….”

I've got a guardian angel who sounds like Robin Williams, Gillian thought. It was wonderful. She started to giggle uncontrollably, on the edge of tears.

“Of course, there's a condition,” the angel said, dropping
his fingers. He looked at her seriously. His eyes were like the violet-blue at the bottom of a flame.

Gillian gulped, took a scared breath. “What?”

“You have to trust me.”

“That's
it
?”

“Sometimes it won't be so easy.”

“Look.” Gillian laughed, gulped again, steadied herself. She looked away from his eyes, focusing on the graceful body that was floating in midair. “Look, after all I've seen… after you saved my life—and my
bits
… how could I not trust you?” She said it again quietly. “How could I ever not trust you?”

He nodded. Winked. “Okay,” he said. “Let's prove it.”

“Huh?” Slowly the feeling of awed incredulity was fading. It was beginning to seem almost normal to talk to this magical being.

“Let's prove it. Get some scissors.”

“Scissors?”

Gillian stared at the angel. He stared back.

“I don't even know where any scissors are.”

“Drawer to the left of the silverware drawer in the kitchen. A big sharp pair.” He grinned like Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother.

Gillian wasn't afraid. She didn't decide not to be, she simply wasn't.

“Okay,” she said and went down to get the scissors. The angel went with her, floating just behind her shoulder. At
the bottom of the stairs were two Abyssinian cats, curled up head to toe like the yin-yang symbol. They were fast asleep. Gillian nudged one gently with one toe, and it opened sleepy crescents of eyes.

And then it was off like a flash—both cats were. Streaking down the side hall, falling over each other, skidding on the hardwood floor. Gillian watched with her mouth open.

“Balaam's ass,” the angel said wisely.

“I
beg
your pardon?” For a moment Gillian thought she was being insulted.

“I mean, animals can see us.”

“But they were
scared
. All their fur—I've never seen them like that before.”

“Well, they may not understand what I am. It happens sometimes. Come on, let's get the scissors.”

Gillian stared down the side hall for a moment, then obeyed.

“Now what?” she said as she brought the scissors back to her room.

“Go in the bathroom.”

Gillian went into the little bathroom that adjoined her bedroom and flicked on the light. She licked dry lips.

“And now?” she said, trying to sound flippant. “Do I cut off a finger?”

“No. Just your hair.”

In the mirror over the sink, Gillian saw her own jaw drop. She couldn't see the angel, though, so she turned around.

“Cut my
hair
?
Off
?”

“Off. You hide behind it too much. You have to show the world that you're not hiding anymore.”

“But—” Gillian raised protective hands, looking back in the mirror. She saw herself, pale, delicate boned, with eyes like wood violets—peering out from a curtain of hair.

So maybe he had a point. But to go into the world
naked
, without anything to duck behind, with her face exposed…

“You said you trusted me,” the angel said quietly.

Gillian chanced a look at
him
. His face was stern and there was something in his eyes that almost scared her. Something unknowable and cold, as if he were withdrawing from her.

“It's the way to prove yourself,” he said. “It's like taking a vow. If you can do this part, you're brave enough to do what it takes to get your heart's desire.” He paused deliberately. “But, of course, if you're not brave enough, if you want me to go away…”

“No,”
Gillian said. Most of what he was saying made sense, and as for what she didn't understand—well, she would have to have faith.