No Angel (13 page)
A
gain,” Krystal demanded.
“Krystal, I have already blown up a pencil case, a coat hanger, a doorknob, a hubcap, and a toilet this evening.” That last one had been an accident. I’d still been a bit wound up when I’d taken that bathroom break. I gestured with Faith’s sword at the still-smoking wreckage cluttering up the old shrine. “I’ve mastered channeling heavenly fire, okay?”
I’d spent all of Saturday practicing my smiting technique. Faith had been dragged off by Ms. Wormwood before lunch, to do some unspecified chore for the Headmistress, but Krystal had been tireless in scrounging up targets for me. Maybe a little
too
tireless. I rubbed my aching shoulder. “How long are you going to keep testing me? It’s almost midnight.”
“I’m not testing you. I’m testing materials.” Krystal jerked a thumb at the sword. “We still don’t know why that’s the only metal that doesn’t melt when subjected to your energy. What if you need to give Michaela a long blast to fully shake the demon off her? What if she wrestled the sword away? We need to find you a backup weapon, just in case.” Krystal grinned as she exchanged my sword for a can. “Plus, of course, I just like watching things go boom.”
“I need to stop enabling your pyromaniac tendencies.” I glanced at the label as I stripped it off the can. “Lima beans?”
Krystal shrugged. “If you’re going to smite a foodstuff with angelic wrath, might as well make it an evil one.”
“Can’t argue with that.” I tossed the can into the air. As it arced up, I visualized a now-practiced mental image of demons threatening my friends, rousing my defensive instincts. In Hell-space, white flames crackled over my feathers. I caught the can as it tumbled back down. The instant my skin touched the bare metal, lightning flashed down my wings, through my hand, and into the mortal world.
“Krystal,” I said a moment later when the smoke had cleared. “That was not one of your better ideas.”
“Okay, I should have predicted that.” Krystal combed exploded lima beans out of her hair. “But at least now we know aluminum isn’t what we’re looking for.”
“What
I
am now looking for is a shower, thanks.” I took Faith’s sword back from Krystal, shoving it through my belt. “Let’s call it a night.”
“But I’ve got thirty-six more metallic alloys to try!” Krystal waved a plaque at me. “Look, I stole Ms. Wormwood’s nameplate! You must want to smite that!”
“Good
night
, Krystal.”
I left her gathering up her specimens and muttering darkly to herself about lazy angels with no respect for the scientific method, and headed back toward my dormitory. The sword bumped at my hip. This late in the evening, the main school building was deserted. Nonetheless, I kept several dozen wary eyes out as I crossed the courtyard in front of the chapel, alert for any patrolling teachers. After my promise to the Headmistress to get Michaela’s daggers, it would be beyond ironic to get expelled for carrying weaponry around the school myself.
I blew out my breath as I levered open the trapdoor that led into the old crypts. A flickering line of candles made a path down the worn stones of the ancient spiral staircase. I hadn’t forgotten Michaela’s ominous threat about my “last day on earth” yesterday. At least her unknown countdown had lasted long enough to let me develop my own powers, but I had no idea if my newfound smiting prowess would be enough to counter whatever she was preparing. I shook my head as I ducked to avoid the heavy cobwebs curtaining the low, narrow passageway. I really wished I knew what she was doing.
Hang on.
What was
I
doing?
I stopped, right where the candles did, on the threshold of a pitch-black archway. Not only were the old crypts that ran under the chapel
really
not on my way home, they were out-of-bounds to all students. I had absolutely no reason to be down here.
No reason . . . except for a subliminal, bone-deep instinct that this was where I had to be. Now that I thought about it, I’d felt that sort of subconscious compulsion once before.
When Krystal had summoned me to the school.
The nagging urge grew into a roar as I tried to step back. I might as well have tried to walk through a wall. An irresistible force shoved me onward. As if in a nightmare, unable to control my own body, I felt my traitorous feet take that last, fatal step.
Into a pentagram.
“Fiat Lux!”
White fire flared around me, running down the intricate lines painted on the floor as if they’d been drawn in oil. I flung up my arms to shield my eyes, blinded by the sudden light. It wasn’t just on the mortal plane—a glowing web flared around me in Hell-space as well, completely enclosing me in a prison of fire.
“You arrogant fool!” Michaela’s voice rose in triumph above the roar of the flames. “I was almost convinced it couldn’t be this easy, that you must have planted a fake summoning charm in your little witch’s room in order to fool me.” She crouched at the far side of the room, just outside the pentagram, the tips of her daggers touching the painted lines. Fire poured continuously down the blades. “But you really are using your true name! Your pride will be your undoing, Rafael Angelos.
By your name, I command and abjure thee!
”
I wrenched out my sword, answering fire blazing down the blade. I could see the demon hovering Hellward above Michaela, its many wings arched like some heraldic beast as it channeled power down to her. If I could only reach it—but the heat of my prison drove me back. Its eyes gleamed, bright as my own, as if it was mocking me. Just like Michaela had always mocked me. She was laughing at me right now. All that time I’d spent agonizing over whether I’d have to hurt her, all that time working my butt off to find an alternative way, all that effort and sweat, and she was
laughing
at me.
I was abruptly, coldly, utterly furious.
“Stop. Laughing.”
My rage ran down my sword, freezing the flames. Chill mist steamed from the blade as if I’d dipped it in liquid nitrogen. Heedless of the wall of fire, I thrust straight at the demon’s burning core—
The pentagram shattered like a sheet of ice.
The demon shot up into Hell like a startled pigeon as I crashed through the barrier. Michaela threw herself backward, crossing her daggers to catch my sword between them—but the instant my steel connected with hers, frost ran down her blades. The daggers clattered from her numb, frozen hands. A second later, I was on her, pinning her beneath my weight.
“Back off!” I yelled at the circling demon as I fought to keep Michaela from writhing free. I spread my wings over her, in both normal space and Hellspace. Our breaths steamed in the suddenly freezing air. The demon’s burning tendrils brushed my black, ice-sheeted feathers, and it recoiled as if it too had been frost-burned. “She’s mine now. She’s
mine
. BACK OFF!”
Hot wind buffeted me as the demon spread its wings wide in a blaze of fire. I crouched in my bubble of cold, refusing to so much as flinch, matching it eye for eye, glare for glare.
The demon beat its wings down, once, hard, and soared high into Hell. In the space of a breath, it was gone.
Michaela gasped and went limp, like a puppet with cut strings. “What have you done?” Her voice was as bereft as a lost child.
“What have you done?”
“I’ve won.” It was delicious to see
her
confused and helpless for once. Let
her
be alone and afraid. “I’ve won, and you’ve lost. Your little friend can’t take me. If you try to summon it again, I’ll kill it.”
“If you can defeat her, so easily . . .” Tears ran down Michaela’s face. “What
are
you?”
“More powerful than you could possibly imagine.” I got to my feet, throwing her contemptuously aside, and scooped up her daggers. “I’m taking these as insurance. You give me any trouble, and I’ll show them to the Headmistress. You know she’s just itching for any excuse to throw you out.”
Michaela struggled to her knees. She was trembling with more than just cold. “Please,” she said, turning her beautiful face up to me. “Please. Not Faith. Take me instead.”
“I don’t even like you,” I said, annoyed that she could
still
think I was shallow enough to be bribed by a flash of cleavage. I snapped my wings shut. “It’s over, Michaela. Stay the hell out of my way from now on.”
Whistling jauntily, I left her alone in the dark.
I
deliberately slept late the next morning, for two reasons. Firstly, because I had to de-halo myself—if
halo
was the right word for the weird black aura that clung to my hair after my confrontation with Michaela—and since I couldn’t face yet another binge-eating session and still had no idea what Avarice was, Sloth was my new sin of choice. Secondly, because I reckoned that I deserved to sleep in after smiting down the forces of evil.
Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to have much effect on my weird anti-halo. In the end, I had to give up and jam Lydie’s pink hat on my head once again.
“Hey, Raffi!” Suzanne waved at me as I strolled into the dining hall. Michaela was conspicuously absent from their table. Suzanne glanced at the empty chair, then gave me a knowing smirk. “Sooo . . . where’s Michaela?”
Of course. They still thought we were dating. Aware that I had the full attention of every girl in earshot, I gave a careless shrug. “How should I know?”
“Isn’t she with you?” another girl said. “She didn’t come back to the dormitory last night, so we thought . . . ?”
“What, that she was with me?” I finished for her, when she didn’t. “Nope.” I leaned casually against the wall, examining my fingernails. “Actually,” I said in tones of complete boredom, “we broke up.”
I couldn’t have caused more consternation if I’d jumped on the table and manifested my full angelic glory. Michaela’s gang stared at me with wide eyes and dropped jaws while whispers started to spread through the tables around us.
“Well, I say we broke up,” I continued, appearing oblivious to the way heads were turning all across the hall. “To be more accurate, I dumped her.”
Suzanne looked like I’d hit her upside the head with my flaming sword. “You . . . what? She—you—” Apparently, my act was so outrageous it had broken her ability to form coherent sentences. Michaela’s closest hangers-on were still looking stunned, but some of the less favored flunkies were starting to eye me with an air of speculative calculation. “Why?”
I pushed myself upright, straightening to my full height so that I loomed over them all. “Because,” I said, speaking very clearly and loudly, “she’s a manipulative, evil bitch who doesn’t care about anyone except herself. No guy in his right mind sticks with
that
sort of girl.” The girls shrank back as I swept them with a disdainful look. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go join my friends.”
I’d expected the buzz of gossip to start up immediately, but the entire hall was dead silent as I strode away from the popular girls. I caught a glimpse of Lydie through the crowd, frozen with her spoon halfway to her mouth, and gave her a little nod of acknowledgment; a mass intake of breath echoed through the hall, then gusted out again as I passed by her table without pausing.
In the hush, the
click
of my tray dropping onto Faith and Krystal’s table sounded as loud as a gunshot.
Then
the gossip started.
I winced as the wall of sound hit me, then grinned at Faith and Krystal. “Well, that was fun,” I said, nonchalantly pouring milk over my cornflakes. “What are we doing today?”
Krystal found her voice first. “Are you
out of your tiny mind
? Michaela is going to go ballistic!”
“No she won’t.” I took a gulp of tea. “Ding-dong, the witch is dead.” Faith dropped her fork, looking aghast, and I hastily added, “Not literally. But we had a showdown last night, and . . .” I tried to look modest over the rim of my mug. “Well, let’s just say that she won’t dare to bother us anymore.”
Faith clapped her hands together in delight. Krystal looked at her spoon as if she really wanted to beat me to death with it. “You stupid idiot, you went to face her alone?” she hissed. “Without any backup? Without even
telling
us? You could have been killed! You could have—”
“Won,” I interrupted. “Which I did. She was no match for me. I was right, Krystal, she
was
the one who broke into your room. She stole your charm in order to discover my true name, and used it to trap me in a pentagram. But I—”
Krystal kicked me under the table, eyes widening in warning as she stared pointedly over my shoulder. I turned to see a girl I didn’t know sidling over to our table. “Oh, hi, Faith,” the girl said, doing an exaggerated double take as if she’d only just noticed us sitting there.
Faith looked startled. “Hi, Julia,” she said somewhat cautiously. “Can I help you with something?”
“Actually, I’ve been meaning to catch you,” Julia said, supremely unconvincingly. She tugged at a beaded bracelet on her wrist, holding it out to Faith. “I accidentally picked this up yesterday in Physics. It isn’t yours, is it?”
“Why, yes it is.” Faith’s tone had turned even milder, which appeared to be the closest she got to withering sarcasm. “I took it off for the experiment. I
thought
I’d put it in the pocket of my bag.”
Julia at least had the decency to go red. “I guess it fell out,” she mumbled at the floor. She shoved the bracelet into Faith’s hand. “Anyway, here.”
Faith fingered the beads for a moment, regarding Julia coolly as the other girl fidgeted and looked anywhere except directly at her. Then Faith smiled. “Thanks, Julia,” she said in her usual sweet voice. “You want to pair up in Latin later?”
From the look of vast relief on Julia’s face, you’d think she’d been expecting Faith to have her hauled off in handcuffs. “Sure!” she chirped. “Catch you later.”
“You do realize she stole that, right?” I said in an undertone as Julia hurried off.
“Of course.” Faith slipped the bracelet over her own hand. “But only because she was trying to impress Michaela by harassing me. Julia’s nice, really.”
“If by ‘nice’ you mean ‘two-faced shameless weasel,’” Krystal muttered into her tea.
Faith frowned at her, opening her mouth, but before she could defend Julia’s character, another girl plopped herself down at our table. “Hi, Faith!” she said brightly. “This seat isn’t taken, is it?”
“No,” Faith said, blinking. “It’s . . . been a while, Kate.”
“Yeah, well, you know how it is. All the schoolwork and stuff, I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to just chill out with friends.” Kate was a much better actress than Julia. I’d seen her hanging hopefully around the edges of Michaela’s outer circle. “Hey, speaking of activities, are you playing in the league this term?”
I coughed loudly. “We were having a private discussion here, you know.”
“Oh . . . just a minute, Raffi?” Faith said. “Because actually, I was getting kind of worried about the league. The first game’s only a week away, and I was starting to think I wasn’t going to be able to play at all.” She smiled hesitantly at Kate. “I was trying to get on a team, but everyone I asked said they didn’t have any spaces left—”
“You can join us!” Kate interrupted. “Oh, please say you will. You’re so good at the game. Remember in second year?”
“Yes, when we won the league,” Faith said, brightening. “I’d forgotten we were on the same team. You remember all that mud in the final match?”
“Heya, all.” I grabbed at my bowl as Debbie slid her tray onto our increasingly crowded table. “Faith, can I sit here? I can’t find a free place.”
“Something wrong with the
one you came from
?” Krystal said pointedly, jerking her thumb at Debbie’s recently vacated spot near Michaela’s table.
“Yeah, the company,” Debbie said without a hint of shame. She put her elbow on the table, leaning over to smile at me in a way that made it clear she knew perfectly well that her pose gave me a great view straight down her shirt. “Hiiiiii, Raffi. I always thought you could do much better than that cow.”
“Debbie,” Faith said, breaking off from her reminiscing long enough to give the newcomer a reproving glance. “It’s not nice to be mean about people behind their backs.”
“Sorry, Faith. I’ll try to be a good girl,” Debbie said, still leering at me. “Even if I find it . . .
very
difficult.”
I hoped Faith noticed how nobly I was ignoring Debbie’s assets. “It’s getting crowded in here,” I said to Faith. I could already see several other girls abandoning their places to make a beeline for our table. I lowered my voice, aware of all the curious ears surrounding us. “And I haven’t had a chance to tell you about last night yet.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Faith murmured. “Right now, I need to catch up with my friends.” Her foot nudged mine under the table. “You know why.”
Oh. Faith
still
thought she needed her stupid Peer Assessment votes, of course. I looked around to share an eye roll with Krystal and discovered that she was no longer sitting next to me. “Hey, where’d Krystal go?” With my angelic eyes, I caught sight of her slipping out the door. “Faith? I think she’s upset.”
“I haven’t got time to worry about that now, Raffi,” Faith said, distracted. She turned back to her newfound best buddies. “I’m sure she’s fine.”
Leaving Faith to it, I wriggled my way through the converging crowds until I reached the exit. I caught up with Krystal slouching along the path outside the dining hall, kicking at stones. “Hey,” I said as I jogged up to her. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” Krystal muttered, hunching her shoulders. “Won’t you be missed at court?”
“What do you mean?”
Krystal shrugged. “You just crowned a new queen. And now everyone’s hurrying to suck up to her so they can get a shot at you.” She thrust her hands deeper in her coat pockets. “I thought you’d be in there lapping up the adulation.”
My spluttered protest was cut short by a tap on my elbow. “Raffi?” said a hesitant voice. “You okay?”
“Oh, hey, Lydie.” I nodded to the couple of girls with her, recognizing them as her roommates and fellow sandwich conspirators. “How’s it going?”
“Same as always.” Lydie glanced around, then tugged me down closer to their level. “Did you really defeat Michaela?” The other girls huddled around us, gazing up at me in wide-eyed worship.
Typical. The only girls I could inspire awestruck devotion in were prepubescent.
“Yeah,” I said dispiritedly. Somehow my big moment of glory wasn’t turning out quite the way I’d imagined. I pulled my hat off to run my fingers through my sweaty hair, then remembered—too late—the reason why I was wearing it in the first place. None of the girls so much as batted an eyelid. I guessed my black halo had finally gone away, though I was stumped as to how I’d managed to sin in the past five minutes. “Something like that.”
“Does that mean you’re going to fly back to heaven?” one of the girls asked, apparently in total seriousness.
Krystal made a strangled noise that sounded a lot like a stifled guffaw. I shot her a dirty look. “I come from Milton Keynes,” I said. “Believe me, it’s not heaven.”
“But are you going back there now that your task is done?” Lydie asked. She and all the other girls looked up at me with anxious faces, hanging on my next words.
“My task isn’t done,” I said firmly. “I’m just . . . between jobs at the moment.”
It was true. Faith still needed me. She just didn’t know it yet. It was obviously me who had to help her seal the Hellgate, not Billy-probably-got-hooks-for-hands-Bob. Why else would I turn into such an idiot around her? We were meant to be together.
Now I had to think of some way to convince
her
of that fact.
A mass sigh of relief broke my train of thought. I glanced around to find that all the girls were now eyeing me speculatively. “What?”
“So, Raffi,” Lydie said slowly, “if you’re a guardian angel without anyone to guard at the moment . . . are you taking applications?”