A Terrible Fall of Angels (Zaniel Havelock #1)(79)

I walked toward those familiar gentle eyes and was afraid to speak first, as if it were a dream and words would shatter it, but Doris had seen him, too. I wasn’t hallucinating, or seeing a vision, but still I stood there and didn’t know what to say first. So much I wanted to say while he looked like he could hear me and understand. I wanted to tell him so much before his illness took him away again. Jamie had helped teach me that death wasn’t the only way to lose someone.

“Say something, Havoc.”

I startled and realized I’d half expected him to call me Zaniel. “Something,” I said.

He laughed, and it was a real laugh, his old laugh, which I’d grown to love when we were kids. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed the sound of it.

“You were always the serious one, but then you’d say something like that and be funny as Heaven.” His voice was rougher than of old, but then he’d spent nearly thirteen years screaming his madness at anyone that would listen or couldn’t get away fast enough. He’d been cast out of the College two years before I left voluntarily.

I hit the buzzer on the gate so I could swing it open and step through. I needed to be sure before I let him inside. I could hear Doris talking baby talk to the puppies. We had other families here with kids.

His smile wilted a little around the edges, and his eyes showed the first pain. “I’m so sorry for anything I did before.” His face started to crumple and suddenly lines were in his face that the beard had hidden. The years on the streets had carved their way onto that boyishly handsome face, but now he looked like an older, more tired version of himself and not some bearded stranger. I couldn’t bear to see unhappiness in this new old face.

I took the steps that let me put a hand on either side of his face and leaned down so I could touch my forehead to his. Then we were hugging, and the body was still that stranger’s body, too thin and frail from never enough food, never enough care and attention to it. I held him tight, the old and the new, and thanked God and the angels for this moment of clarity. If it never came again, I’d seen his brown eyes filled up again, his smile on the face I remembered, and for that I was truly thankful, but because I was human, I asked for more. I asked for him to stay sane and whole and be my family again, and I asked forgiveness for wanting more when I’d just been given so much.

I found my voice first, and asked, “Jamie, how?” Because it’s also human to question miracles.

He pulled back enough to look up at me. There were tears on his face, too. “That is not my name and hasn’t been my name since I walked through the gates of the College of Angels and they christened us with our angel names.”

I wiped at my face with the back of my hands as we both stepped back out of the hug. I wanted to take his hand in mine and keep holding on, because only that would make it real.

“Levanael,” I said.

He shook his head. “No, that name is still forbidden.”

“Then what do I call you?”

“Levi, call me Levi.”

“Levi,” I said, trying the new name out; it felt okay. I reached out and took his hand like I was shaking it, but I just needed to keep touching him, as if he’d change back into crazy Jamie if I didn’t hold on to him.

He squeezed my hand and didn’t let go, as if he understood some of what was happening inside me. He’d been my best friend, closer to me than my actual brother, closer to me even than Suriel, or maybe his loss had driven us apart, I couldn’t remember anymore; all I knew was that I didn’t want to let him go, and part of me wanted to call Surrie and say, Look, look, he’s back, our other third, the person who helped make the three of us whole.

“How? How did you . . . get cleaned up?” It sounded like I was asking him about drug rehab instead of recovering his sanity, but I didn’t know how to ask the other.

“I’ll tell you everything I remember.”

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

He grinned at me, and it hurt my heart to see that old expression in his face. “Aren’t I always?”

The truth was that Jamie wasn’t. He never ate enough even when I tried to give him food. Levanael had eaten like the teenage boy he’d been.

“Come on up, I’ll fix you something.”

“I remember you learned to cook for just you, or you and Connery, or you and me. When you first left the College, you could only cook for big groups.”

“That’s right,” I said, squeezing his hand and starting to lead him inside the gate by the hand like he was Connery. “We never cooked for just ourselves in the College, it was always a group activity.”

“We didn’t have to do a lot of things for ourselves,” he said, and sounded sad.

I pulled on his hand so I could get him to look at me. He still looked sane, but sad and tired. “I’ll feed you and then maybe you can catch some sleep.”

He shook his head. “Food, then I tell you what I remember. I’m afraid to sleep. I’ve spent so many years not knowing which is real and which is dream and which is . . . other.”

I wanted to ask what he meant by other, but I didn’t. I’d ask after he’d eaten, or maybe I wouldn’t. I didn’t have to know all the details of the miracle all at once.





CHAPTER FORTY