Milayna's Angel (29 page)

“They’re great.”

“Ben?” I croaked. My throat felt on fire,
scratchy and sore. I tried to clear it, but that only seemed to
make it worse.

“He’s fine. A cut on his leg and he breathed
in a lot of smoke, but he’s already asking the EMTs a million
questions about the ambulance.” Chay smiled.

Chay stood quietly next to me, his gaze
fixated on the remains of what used to be my house. He reached over
and picked up my hand, threading his fingers through mine. I
flinched when he touched the burned skin. He immediately let go and
gently placed my hand on the gurney next to me, rubbing his thumb
softly over the top.

“When did you get here?”

“Just in time to see the basement windows
explode on you.” He looked down at me and gently threaded a lock of
hair between his fingers before sliding it behind my ear

Xavier walked up and stood next to me on the
opposite side of the gurney from Chay. His hands were in the front
pockets of his jeans, making his shoulders rise. Chay looked over
at him and then back to the fire, his jaw working, his mouth set in
an angry line.

“Thanks,” I said.

“I didn’t do anything. I’m glad you’re all
okay.” Chay quickly kissed the top of my head before he walked away
and disappeared into the crowd. I didn’t see him again that
night.

***

I rode with Benjamin in the ambulance while
my parents followed in the car. The EMTs wanted a doctor to check
the burn on my hand. It was red and blistered from grabbing the
doorknob. They were also afraid I might have suffered a concussion
from hitting my head on the pavement when I passed out. Ben had a
deep cut where glass embedded in his leg from the basement windows
exploding and a burn on his forearm.

“Isn’t this wicked cool, Milayna?” Ben
fiddled with the oxygen tubing running from a tank to his nose.

“Yeah, I’ve never been in an ambulance
before,” I said, smiling at his excitement. “Don’t touch that.” I
moved the tubing delivering oxygen out of his reach. He kept
pulling the nozzles out of his nose, pinching them.

At the hospital, my dad sat next to my gurney
in the small exam room in emergency. The doctor had bandaged my
hand. The burn wasn’t nearly as bad as it looked—or felt. We were
just waiting on the results of my scan to rule out a concussion and
then I’d be released. My oxygen levels had improved enough that
smoke inhalation wasn’t a huge concern.

My mom sat with Ben in a similar room down
the dingy, pea-green hallway. The doctor had cleaned and stitched
his leg and bandaged his burned arm. They were keeping an eye on
his oxygen levels before releasing him.

My stomach clenched and I pulled my knees up
to my chest, trying to protect myself from the vicious pain.

Not now! I can’t have a vision now. Geez,
hasn’t it been enough for one freakin’ night?

I was exhausted from the vision and stress of
the fire. My chest burned and my head pounded from the effects of
breathing in so much smoke. But the images came anyway. They
flashed in front of my eyes, and the surroundings around me slowly
faded.

A white-haired woman. Crying.

I concentrated on the items around the woman.
It looked like she was in the same hospital as we were.

A man clutching his chest. The woman calling
for help. Nurses walking past them.

“Milayna? What’s wrong?”

I shook my head, and the images fell away.
“Nothing, Dad, just a vision.”

White shirt. Blue jeans.

“Dad? Have you seen a white-haired woman with
a white shirt and blue jeans on?”

“No. Why? Is she in your vision?”

I nodded, closing my eyes and breathing
deeply, trying to relax into the vision.

Ambulance. EMTs rolling in a gurney. The
gurney sitting in the hallway. The woman crying.

I could see her clearly in my vision, hear
her sobs and calls for someone to help. The smell of disinfectant
and sickness filled my nose.

“I’ll be right back.” I slide down from the
gurney and walked into the hall.

“Everything okay?” he called after me.

“Yes. I just have to see if I can find the
woman.”

Looking from side to side, I sighed. The
visions never made it easy. The hospital was busy and the hall was
littered with gurneys. I’d have to walk up and down the hall to
find the right one.

Which way? Right… no, left. Wait, the nurse’s
station is to the left. That wasn’t in the vision. Right, then.

I turned right and walked slowly by the
gurneys, looking at the faces of the people as I passed.

Blue blanket falling on the floor. An arm
hanging limply over the side of the gurney. The woman screaming for
help.

Something caught my eye a few feet in front
of me. A blue blanket fluttering to the dirty, tiled floor. I
looked up and saw the woman sitting on the foot of the gurney. She
stood and bent to pick up the blanket.

I turned and ran to the nurses’ desk. “Excuse
me. There’s a man down the hall that needs help.” No one answered
me. They didn’t even look in my direction. I looked down the hall
and saw the man’s arm fall over the side of the gurney. Nurses
passed by him, focused on other patients, other
responsibilities.

“Hey!” I yelled, smacking my hand against the
countertop. A nurse looked up and scowled at me. “There’s a man
down there. I think he’s having a heart attack.”

“Where?” She sighed.

The woman’s scream pierced through the noisy
hallway.

I raised an eyebrow. “There.”

The nurse walked quickly to the man. Picking
up his wrist, she checked for a pulse before yelling, “I need a
crash cart.”

The violent twisting in my stomach eased, and
the vision faded away. I smiled. If anything good came of that
night, it was helping that man.

I walked back to my room and sat down next to
my dad. “It all work out?” he asked.

I laid down, bunching the pillow under my
head. “Yeah. Right as rain as Grams would say.”

My dad pulled the sheet over me and patted my
cheek. “Good job.”

“Thanks. Dad?”

“Hmm?”

“What do you think happened to start the
fire?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe electrical.
Maybe something flammable got too close to the pilot light on the
water heater.”

“Or maybe a demon with fiery fingers.”

“We won’t know anything until after the fire
department looks at the evidence.”

I know who did it. I’d been warned. It might
look like an electrical fire, but that isn’t the real cause. The
real cause is something otherworldly, something evil. Abaddon.

“You know, you don’t have to sit with me.
I’ll be fine. You should go be with Benjamin.”

“That’s okay. Your mom has it under
control.”

“Ben might want you there,” I told him.

My dad looked at me and chuckled. “It’s Ben,
Milayna. He wants your mom, trust me. He has her wrapped so tightly
around his little finger that he’s probably already weaseled a new
video game out of her.”

As soon as we were discharged three hours
later, Ben announced that Mom was going to buy him a video game.
“I’ve been wanting it for-ev-er,” he said with a smile.

I looked at my dad over Ben’s head and
laughed.

With our burns bandaged and Ben stitched up,
we drove home. Only there wasn’t a home to drive to. Firefighters
were still there, clearing out the last remaining embers. We would
have asked to go in and see if anything was salvageable, but there
wasn’t a house to go into. It was leveled. Destroyed. Gone.

“Where are we gonna sleep?” Ben asked my mom,
his voice small and quivering.

“I don’t know. Grams’ apartment maybe. Don’t
worry, we’ll find somewhere cozy.”

“You’ll stay with us,” Muriel’s dad, my Uncle
Rory, said. “Grams doesn’t need this around her. Besides, the
people in the apartment complex couldn’t deal with anything like
this.”

“We don’t want to impose—”

“Who better to impose on than family?” he
said with a chuckle. “You’ll stay with us. ‘Nuff said.”

“Thanks,” my dad said, slapping my uncle on
the back.

“No problem at all, brother.”

We got settled at Muriel’s house. I shared a
bedroom with her, and my parents took the spare room. Benjamin,
still scared from the fire, slept on the floor next to their bed.
It wasn’t too bad of an arrangement. I liked being with so many
people—angels—it made me feel safer, even if it was just an
illusion. Abaddon and his demons could get to us at Muriel’s just
as easily as he could at my house. If it wasn’t for the protective
barriers surrounding our houses, we wouldn’t be safe from the
demons anywhere. As it was, we weren’t safe from the lackeys that
worked for them on earth. They proved that with my house fire.

“How are you doing?”

“Fine,” I answered Muriel.

“Really? You’re pale, your eyes are
bloodshot, and your hands are shaking. You don’t look so great in
my opinion,” she said.

“Okay, I’m not so great, but I think that’s
normal, don’t you?”

“Yeah. So don’t go around saying your fine.
You don’t always have to be the strong one, Milayna. It’s okay to
tell people you’re scared.”

I looked down, wrapping my finger around the
hem of the T-shirt I was wearing. It wasn’t even mine. I had to
borrow one from Muriel. Everything we had was destroyed in the
fire. If Abaddon got his way, we’d suffer the same fate as our
house.

“You’re right. I’m scared. For Benjamin, my
parents, and me. For you and your family since we’re staying here.
For Chay, Drew, Xavier, Jen… I’m scared.”

She nodded once. “Good. Facing it is the
first step.”

“To what?”

“Fighting him. This isn’t just gonna go away,
and just like Azazel, we’re gonna have to end it ourselves.” She
kissed me on the cheek and crawled into bed.

***

Sunday morning, the fire investigator stopped
by the wreckage of our house to meet with my parents. I tagged
along to see if there was anything salvageable in the burnt mess.
It was no surprise that there wasn’t. I was wandering across what
used to be our family room, not paying attention to what the
investigator was saying until I heard one word:

Arson.

I froze and strained my ears to hear the
conversation.

“Mr. Jackson, is there anyone who would want
to do this? Anyone who would want to hurt you or your family?”

“No, no one,” my dad answered.

I suppose that was partly true. It wasn’t a
person that wanted to hurt us. I thought about telling the fire
investigator that a bunch of demons wanted to kill us and had
probably set the fire, but I decided he probably wouldn’t find it
funny. So I bit my lip to hold in my giggles and kept my thoughts
to myself.

My mom bit her thumbnail. “You think someone
did this on purpose?”

“No. I think it was an electrical
malfunction. But I have to ask.” The man smiled and shrugged a
shoulder. “It’s on the checklist.”

Sunday afternoon, my parents, Ben, and I went
to my grams’ house for dinner.

“You may as well come over for dinner, John.
I won’t stop pestering until I get a look at each of you and know
you’re okay,” she told my dad.

We were supposed to spend the day shopping.
We needed to replace our clothes before work and school the next
day. I needed makeup to cover the road map of bruises still
coloring my eye and Benjamin needed some boy toys. He said his
reputation was at stake; he couldn’t be seen playing with Muriel’s
old dolls.

We went shopping that afternoon and stopped
at Grams’ afterward. Ben carted every single one of his toys into
her apartment and laid them out on the floor. Like any good grandma
would, she made the appropriate oohs and ahs when he held up each
one.

My grandmother toed me with her house
slippers. “Hey!”

I jumped and looked up. “Hmm?

“I asked what toys you got,” my grams
said.

“Oh, I got a MP3 player.” I held up the music
player and headphones I’d been listening to. “Mine was on my
dresser along with my computer. Mom and Dad replaced the laptop,
but for some reason, it didn’t come preloaded with all my school
assignments, so I’ll have to redo those, which means I got a bunch
of crap to replace my other school crap, but that’s about as close
to toys as it comes.” I smiled when she laughed.

“Well, at least it wasn’t your phone,” Grams
exclaimed in mock horror. “Imagine losing all your texting
contacts.”

“I know, right?” I agreed with a shudder. My
pocket beeped and vibrated. Grams laughed.

“Sounds like someone is texting right now. Go
on, child, you can answer it.”

I smiled at her and fished the phone out of
the front pocket of my jeans. After I pushed the button to look at
the text, my heart twirled. I couldn’t help the smile that curved
my lips.

Chay:
Whatcha doing?

Me:
Visiting Grams.

Chay:
How ya doing?

Me:
Okay
.
The fire was one way to
get a bunch of new stuff.

Chay:
Tough way.

Me:
Yeah.

Chay:
Okay, I gotta go. Just wanted to
check on ya.

Me:
Bye.

“Judging by that grin, I’d say that was your
boy?” Grams winked at me.

Ben rammed his trucks together in the middle
of the room. “Which one?” he asked. “She has two.”

“Do not!” I threw a purple throw pillow at
him.

“I hope it was Chay,” Ben said, knocking the
pillow out of the way. “I like him better.”

“Benjamin,” my mom scolded.

That’s the second time he’s told me that. I
wonder if kids can sense good character like some people claim dogs
can.

“So what’s the official word on what caused
the fire?” I heard Grams ask my dad. I didn’t listen to them talk.
I texted Muriel instead. Besides, I already knew what caused the
fire… and it wasn’t any electrical malfunction.