A Terrible Fall of Angels (Zaniel Havelock #1)(91)
“I’m too nervous to pray to God right now, Z. Emma introduced me to the Goddess and she’s, they’re both, it’s like the energy I’ve been missing. I’m not sure what God will think about that.”
“I work with a lot of people that follow the Goddess. They’re good people, and I don’t think God is as jealous a God as the Old Testament makes him out to be.”
“I think you’re right, but I’d still rather wait to test the theory.”
“You had an angel, a seraph, speak through you, Levanael. If that doesn’t speak to your purity of heart and soul, I don’t know what does.”
He smiled then. “I hadn’t thought about it like that. If you’d tried to get me to agree to channel an angel, especially one of the higher orders, then I’d have been too scared, felt unworthy, but it just happened and it worked. It means I’m not damned after all.”
“Why would you be damned, Levanael?”
“God judged me and found me wanting, and then he cast me out. The original idea of Hell is to be cut off from contact with God, and I have been that for ten years.”
“I’m so sorry, Levanael.”
“I’ve been letting you call me that since She spoke through me, but they stripped the name from me when they cast me out of the College.”
“You know how rare the ability to channel the more powerful angels is even among the trained Angel Speakers,” I said.
He nodded. “But they took my name and forced me to be Jamie again. I hadn’t been that name in so long that it didn’t feel like me. I was Levanael and they made me Jamie again. He was a child; I was five when I gave up that name.”
“Sometimes I forget that you were chosen two years earlier than either Suriel or me.”
“Yeah, we were all seven, but I’d been at the College longer than anyone in my year. They brought me inside at five because I was already hearing voices; my parents brought me to get me some miracle from the angels, and as soon as I went inside the walls and all the wards and mystical shielding, it was better. It was a miracle, but it only worked inside the College, and then it stopped working even inside. When they threw me out . . . it was so much worse than before.”
His eyes went haunted again, and I didn’t know what to say, because I’d let him go. I’d protested and appealed to everyone inside the College who would talk to me, but in the end that was all I’d done, talk to people. I’d gone back to my own training, because She had been waiting for me, all gold and light and power and . . . she’d been my whole world, and that she consumed me enough to make me forget about what had happened to Jamie was the beginning of me questioning it, questioning her.
“I’m sorry, Levanael, sorry that I didn’t do more to help you when it happened.”
“It’s okay, Z, you were the only one from the College who ever came to find me. Even Surrie never came looking, I really thought she would.”
I debated again on telling him more about her visit, but wasn’t sure if it would help or hurt. A phone rang and saved me the debate, because it was the smartphone in his pocket, not mine.
“Emma!” The way he said her name was enough for me to know that he had a crush on her, if not more. They talked back and forth for a few minutes. Jamie’s face was more animated than I’d seen it in years. I prayed that Emma was enjoying her end of the conversation as much as Jamie was.
Jamie’s face sobered a little around the edges and then he held the phone out to me. “Emma says she needs to speak to you.”
I might have questioned it, but I wanted to talk to the person who had helped Jamie so much, so I just took the phone and said, “Hello.”
“Hello, Zaniel, if I can call you that. Levi says that you don’t always like people using your full name.”
“Of course you may.”
She gave this laugh that made me smile without meaning to, and said, “Then call me Emma.”
“Okay, Emma, you wanted to speak to me.”
“Yes, my guides said that you and Levi had experienced a major channeling event.”
I was quiet on my end of the phone.
“What’s wrong, Z?” Jamie asked, watching my face.
I repeated what she’d said.
He smiled. “Oh yeah, Emma is way hooked up magically. Her guides are good.”
I was so startled that I said the truth out loud. “I’m not sure anyone on my unit is this good.”
She gave that infectious laugh again, but I managed to fight off the smile this time. “Flattery like that will turn a witch’s head clean around.” I almost asked the mundane question of whether she meant that for real before another peal of laughter made me realize she’d made a joke. She was a witch, not a supernatural; her physicality and physics still worked like normal. I knew that, but for just a second, I wondered, and I knew better. I had to meet this woman. If she was this good, then even as a consultant for the unit she’d be valuable. There was a moment where I got that little psychic slap of That’s not what you’re supposed to be thinking. I took a breath and tried to center myself, quiet myself and hear the voice of God, or the angels, or I guess Emma would say my guides. I tried to be still and listen, instead of rushing ahead and thinking I understood everything.
I was rewarded with a faint warmth, that pulse of yes. I asked, quietly in my head, “What am I supposed to be thinking? What am I supposed to do here and now?”