Earth Angel (26 page)

Interesting.

“It might not,” Elle admitted. “I can’t be positive.”

“Lovely,” Abby said.

It
was
lovely. It was more than lovely—it was great.

“Here’s the thing,” Gwynne said. “Abby is not going to kill herself, so this is your only other option.”

“What?” Abby turned on Gwynne. “What happened to not trusting her?”

“You don’t have enough power,” Elle told Gwynne.

“I don’t have
any
power,” Gwynne said. “That’s not how it works.” And Elle knew it. There was no way that members of the Angelic Realm had followed her around her whole life, and helped her heal her clients, and they didn’t know this.

Elle looked heavenward. “Semantics. You pull your power from the earth’s vital web.”

Was that what she thought? This was not good. The idea that she pulled power from the earth was a common misperception, but Elle should know better. Pulling power was exhausting. And not that effective. And rude to the rocks and life-forms you might be pulling from.

“I don’t
pull
power,” she explained. “I access it. I locate the energy and throw myself into the current. It’s not the same thing.” By diving into the flow, she became part of the flow, and huge amounts of energy became available to her, much more than she’d ever get from “pulling.” All she had to do was focus.

And she was about to develop a hell of a lot more focus.

But maybe to Elle, whose entire explanation of how the bridge worked was,
No one understands it, it’s alien technology
, it really was semantics.

“It doesn’t matter how much energy you can harness,” Elle said, “because earth energy is not what we need. We need angel energy.”

“That can’t be true,” Gwynne said, taking heart from the shift in Elle’s explanation. Because if the
amount
of energy wasn’t the issue, but instead it was the
type
…“Energy is energy, right?”

“Not in this case,” Elle said.

“No, listen. Maybe I can’t help on my own, but Abby’s got both a human energy system and an angelic energy system. Her field already knows how to integrate them. She’ll be able to link to me while she’s linked to you, and I’ll read the flow and I’ll push her into alignment with you. I’ll shift her into phase.”

Abby leaned into her. “It’s too dangerous.”

Gwynne tightened her grip. “I’m not losing you. Do you hear me? I am not losing you.” She might not have been able to save her mother or her sister, but she could save Abby. And the angels. She’d save them all.

“Your killing yourself on that bridge is not going to help,” Abby said. “Elle, don’t let her do this.”

Elle shrugged. “If Gwynne wants to die, she can be my guest.”

“What?” Abby shrieked.

“Actually,” Elle said, “there’s a slight chance it might work.”

Gwynne perked up. “What does that slight chance depend on?”

“It depends on whether your energy field can handle the energy that flows through the bridge.”

“I can handle it. It will work.” It was going to have to.

“A minute ago you said it wouldn’t work,” Abby reminded Elle accusingly.

“The others have their doubts,” Elle said. “I do too. But you never know.”

“You never know?” Abby’s voice rose with barely contained hysteria.

“Whatever gets our bridge fixed.”

“I’ll be fine,” Gwynne said with more conviction than she felt.

“Possibly.” Elle drifted toward the ceiling. “Your channels are clear enough, and your vibrational frequency is higher than most people’s.”

“No.” Abby gripped Gwynne’s arm.

“If not, I have a backup plan,” Elle said breezily.

Yes, they all knew about Elle’s charming little backup plan. Gwynne gritted her teeth. “We’re going with my plan.”

“She’s not going to kill me,” Abby said.

“That’s optimistic of you,” Gwynne said.

“Unless she thinks killing you off is going to make me suicidal.”

Gwynne’s stomach churned. What a thought, that they might be playing into some twisted angelic plan. “Would it?”

Abby bit her lip. “Of course not.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Elle breathed. Her voice cracked a little, as if she was hurt that they were both angry at her. “I wouldn’t do anything to break your heart.”

“Thanks,” Abby said gently, sounding like she didn’t want to hurt Elle, either.

“Which doesn’t mean Gwynne won’t die,” Elle reminded her.

Not helping.
Gwynne almost said it aloud, but caught herself in time. She rubbed Abby’s side and glared at Elle. She needed Abby to not think about what she risked. Thinking would lead to dwelling, and dwelling on the danger to Gwynne’s life would lead to her doing something rash like running off to save the world without her.

“You signed up for suffering when you volunteered to live as a human,” Elle added.

Still not helping.

“And I’d have eternity to get over it?” Abby suggested.

“Don’t think like that,” Gwynne said.

Abby leaned her head against Gwynne’s shoulder. “You’re going to do this even if I say no, aren’t you? You’ll find a way to do it without me.”

“Yeah.” Gwynne buried her fingers in Abby’s hair and held her close. She’d do anything for her.

“Then let’s do it together.”

* * *

“We can’t let her do it. It’s too dangerous,” Artemisia said. She stretched her wings and banked right, circling Elle as they flew over the glittering lakes and hidden caves that dotted the landscape of the Angelic Realm.

They hit a cross breeze and Elle took an exhilarating breath of crisp, unpolluted air. She tacked into the wind, Artemisia at her side. “I know she’s special to you, Artemisia, but she volunteered. Of her own free will.”

She’d known Artemisia was going to be upset. They all were. Gwynne had a lot of friends among the angels. A lot of fans. When you spent most of eternity being invisible, it was fun to hang out with someone who could see you.

“You must have manipulated her.”

“I didn’t.” Elle flew harder into the wind. “I tried to talk her out of it.”

Artemisia sighed. Dropped back. Flapped her wings to catch up. “I believe you,” she said. “Gwynne has a mind of her own. There’s no talking to her.”

Elle couldn’t agree more. “I told Abigail not to date her because I knew Gwynne was going to end up being a problem. I knew she was going to interfere.” Of course, if Elle hadn’t made the bad decision to talk to her in a last-ditch effort to convince Abigail, they wouldn’t be in this awkward situation. It really was not Gwynne’s fault.

“Maybe I can stop her,” Artemisia said.

“No,” Elle said quickly. “We’re going to have to use her. We need to fix the bridge before it kills anyone else.”

“She doesn’t understand what she’s getting into. The bridge will kill her!”

Elle fell in beside her. “We don’t know that for sure.”

Artemisia crumpled. “My brave girl. I should be proud that she wants to help.”

“It’ll be dangerous for her, but it might work.”

“And if it doesn’t, she’s dead.” Artemisia shuddered and the wind swept her away.

Chapter Nineteen

Gwynne stowed her suitcase in the trunk of their rental car at the Albuquerque airport and reached for Abby’s carry-on.

“Did Elle tell you how far it is?” Abby asked.

“Would have been nice.” All she knew was they were supposed to drive north to Santa Fe and then on toward Taos until someone bright and shiny showed up to navigate.

She’d assumed they would access the bridge from Piper Beach as Abby had, but Elle said Angel Rock was just a jumping-off spot, something that was safe to tether in populated areas because it didn’t harm humans who accidentally came in contact with it. They couldn’t use it in this case. For Gwynne to be involved, they had to travel to one of the four places on earth where the bridge was anchored so that Gwynne, who could not safely touch the bridge, could stand on the ground yet be within arm’s length of it. That meant they were headed for New Mexico, which was far, far easier to reach than the Sahara or the singing sand dunes of China or the virtually impossible to get to anchor in Antarctica.

Leaning into the backseat, Abby strapped a seat belt around her harp, a small squat one that fit in the airplane’s overhead luggage compartment. She’d insisted on bringing it, saying she’d feel naked without it.

“I’ll drive,” Abby said, her head inside the car and her backside wiggling flirtatiously.

“I don’t think so.” There was no way Abby had already forgotten her name was not on the rental agreement, or why it wasn’t there. She liked the wiggle, though.

Abby emerged from the back and shut the door. “I only speed when it’s safe. And I never go as fast as I really want to.”

Gwynne was sure that was true, but what happened when a strung-out kid like her sister ran into the street without looking, or a woman broke a high heel and stood hopping on one leg in the middle of the road, or a deer leaped across the highway? Were angels going to pluck those pedestrians and randy deer out of the path of an oncoming car, just because Abby was driving? No, they were not.

“I’m driving,” Gwynne said.

“I’ve never been in an accident,” Abby protested. “I have excellent reflexes.”

“Nice try, but no.”

Abby gave up and climbed into the front passenger seat while Gwynne figured out the controls and started the car. She adjusted the rearview mirror and caught Elle’s reflection. Ugh. Back to work. Wiggle appreciation time was over.

“I thought you were going to meet us later,” Gwynne told Elle.

“Careful with the harp,” Abby warned over her shoulder.

More angels popped in and crammed into the back and Elle scooted closer to the door to make room for them. One enthusiastic angel arrived out of nowhere and landed in Elle’s lap shouting “Road trip!”

Gwynne exchanged a look with Abby. “I guess this means we’re all riding together.”

Abby leaned back in her seat. “You must be psychic.”

Over the next few miles, more and more angels arrived until hundreds of them swarmed alongside the car—as well as behind the car, in front of the car, and presumably above the car.

“Could you please not crowd in front of the windshield?” Gwynne asked. She glanced at the speedometer and noted she was going ninety miles an hour. North of Santa Fe, they’d lost what little traffic there was, and with few landmarks and the vastness of the desert, it was easy to ignore how fast she was driving. Abby certainly wasn’t going to ask her to slow down. “It’s hard to see where I’m going with all that light shining in my eyes.”

The swarms of happy angels continued to turn somersaults and narrowly avoid midair collisions, but the ones who had stationed themselves in front of the car did move off to the sides, which helped considerably with her vision problem.

Gwynne kept her foot on the pedal and did not slow down. She didn’t want to be a hypocrite about the speeding thing, but the sooner they got where they were going, the sooner they could get this over with, and the sooner that damn angel would stop threatening her girlfriend.

“Never drive faster than your angel can fly,” Elle said piously from the backseat.

Gwynne glanced again at the speedometer and then at the angel’s reflection in the rearview mirror. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“I never kid.”

“Are we going to have to listen to cheesy bumper sticker quotations the whole way there?” As if pissing her off with the whole bridge thing wasn’t bad enough, now Elle had to carpool.

“It’s not cheesy. I like it,” Elle said.

“Oh, for the love of God.”

Elle began to sing, and one by one the others joined in. The Sanctus again.

Abby clicked off the radio and rested her head against the seatback. “It’s so beautiful.”

Gwynne started to make a negative comment about the angels’ song choice but swallowed it when she saw Abby was completely enthralled, a blissful smile on her face. Besides, Abby was right. It
was
beautiful, in its own crazy, angelic way.

Abby added her voice to the others, following their ascent up the scale and hitting every note with her unexpectedly beautiful, sweet tone—didn’t she say she couldn’t sing?—until she breached the end of her range and her voice cracked. She filled her lungs with air, rejoined the flurry of voices as they chased an even higher note, and missed again. Instead of backing down, she cheerfully launched herself way beyond her range and hit a God-awful screech of an off-key note. She threw her head back and laughed with joy.

“You have a nice voice,” Gwynne said. It was true, too, up until that last part.

She took one hand off the steering wheel and took Abby’s hand in hers, pulling it into her lap and to heck with all the uninvited chaperones, who continued down the scale and back up again with an unceasing chorus of
holy, holy, holy
. Normally holding hands might have been enough to make them disappear, but not today. Either they were taking their road guide duties seriously or they were too caught up in timing their musical entrances just right to notice.

“This is why I don’t hire myself out as a singer,” Abby said. “My range sucks, and I have way too much fun. At least when I have fun on my harp I don’t damage anyone’s hearing.”

Gwynne rubbed her thumb over the palm of Abby’s hand. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“You don’t have to lie.”

Abby twisted in her seat like she wanted to check on her harp, and as she did, Gwynne loosened her grip on her, worried that Abby was moving because she was uncomfortable with the public hand-holding. Abby freed herself and even though Gwynne was expecting it, it still made her slump. But then Abby positioned her body so she blocked Gwynne’s hand from returning to the steering wheel and proceeded to press against her thigh, her fingers digging into the fabric of her jeans in a private caress that would be barely perceptible to anyone watching, like oh, say, from the backseat. Which meant all of Abby’s shifting in her seat
wasn’t
because she was uncomfortable.

Gwynne’s mood perked up. She reached up to smooth Abby’s hair. Abby made a happy sound and then pretended to be jostled by the moving car and fell practically in her lap. And still the angels did not skedaddle. Abby moved her hand higher, sending licks of heat up her inner thigh.