A Terrible Fall of Angels (Zaniel Havelock #1)(95)

I tried to concentrate just on Emma, just on the human in front of me, but the white light spilled out so bright and full of the movement of angels that Jamie was lost in the shine of it, as if his light merged with hers. I tried not to see anyone else, but it was like the power once opened couldn’t stop with one; it showed me the white flares around the room of other angels, usually just one, but sometimes two, all around the rooms. There were a few people who didn’t glow with angelic possibilities, and I almost broadened my power to see why, or what else was near them spiritually, but I stopped myself in time. It wasn’t my job, and if they were gifted enough to sense me, they’d see it as an intrusion.

Some of the angels “asked” for help. Give me permission to help my person, because you have to give your angel permission to help you. Free will protects us from many things, but it can also keep out energies that would help us. If you go to church, or temple, or mosque, or a coven, and are a true believer, then the angels have a conduit to you; they can help and protect you daily, but with so many people not having a regular spiritual practice the angels are trapped to watch the horrible choices people make without being able to help or stop it.

I was trained to give permission and free the angels to help their charges. I gave it without thinking, and the spurt of joy from the angelic as they were free to help was like flashes of relief throughout the room.

“The angels like you,” Emma said.

“Sometimes a little too much,” I said, and the moment I thought something that negative, the energy conduit to the angels began to close. Flesh can impact spirit, and the angels didn’t need my negativity on top of what they were getting from the people they were attached to; the angels had enough mortal interference without me being gloomy at them.

“I could almost hear the angels singing and then something shut the energy down,” Emma said.

I looked at her and now that I’d seen it once, I had trouble not seeing the shining outline of angels around her. If she had guides that weren’t angelic like Ravensong did, I hadn’t noticed them, but then we weren’t in sacred or warded space; maybe that mattered?

“Do you hear the angels singing?” I asked.

She smiled a little more, because the smile was almost always there. “Sometimes, like the edge of music in a room you can’t find, or birdsong seems to have more to it.”

I nodded. “Some Angel Speakers talk to the birds a lot, or through them. It’s not one of my gifts so I don’t understand all of it. How did you not get recruited to the College of Angels as a child?”

She shook her head hard enough for her curls to bounce around her shoulders. The smile went away. Her eyes stopped looking kind. “Recruited, you make it sound like high school kids being scouted for sports teams, or college for professional sports, but it’s little kids between five and seven years old. They can’t give consent to go anywhere for anything.”

“Our parents give the consent just like for boarding school for other children,” I said.

She did that curl-bouncing head shake again. “You can get your kid out of a boarding school. Once a child is inside the College of Angels the families can’t get them out, you knew that, right?”

I blinked at her because I hadn’t thought about it that way.

“You didn’t know either,” Jamie said.

I looked at him and shook my head.

“There have been three cases of divorced parents losing a child to the College, because the main custodial parent gave permission. One father fought for ten years before he could even have a visit with his son.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“The boy was a teenager by then and happy where he was, or brainwashed into staying,” she said, and her face was all unhappy suspicion. It didn’t look right on her face, as if she wasn’t meant for doubts and cynicism.

“I didn’t know about any of this,” I said.

“Well, my parents knew and a lot of others in the pagan community know, so when the College came to get me my parents refused.” She said it with such pride and respect in her parents. It was rare for a person in their twenties to still sound that certain about them.

“The angels found you anyway,” I said.

She smiled then and it was like clouds parting and letting the sunshine spill around me. I had to smile back; it was a type of magic, or glamor, almost like some of the fey and other supernatural beings could do.

“If the angels want to find someone they can; time and place mean nothing to them, because they are not trapped in time as we are, and that means they can be many places all at the same time. How can anyone ever be hidden from beings that can do all that?”

“They can’t.” And then I realized what I’d said, and spoke without thinking. “Then how did she not find me sooner?”

“You said she was in prison, a place between,” Jamie said.

Emma said, “Who is she?”

I looked across the table at Jamie and he just shook his head. He hadn’t told her.

“I’ve never told anyone, unless I raved about it when I was out of my head,” he said.

I reached across the table and squeezed his arm. “Thanks.”

He gave a gentle smile that left his eyes sad. “I would never betray your trust, not on purpose, Z.”

“Same,” I said.