A Terrible Fall of Angels (Zaniel Havelock #1)(97)

“Bast, my boss, has been active in the pagan community for over forty years and she says Levanael is like a glass that just fills up with spirit. She says it’s a really rare gift.”

“Maybe it’s more common among the angel-touched,” I said.

“Maybe,” Emma said, but she didn’t look convinced.

“Or they cherry-pick the ones who can do it and lock them away or break them so that no other spiritual power can use them.” Jamie sounded bitter, like a throwback to some of his saner moments on the street. Saner had not meant happier.

“What do you mean?” Emma asked.

He looked across the table at me. I wanted to look away from the anger in his eyes, but I didn’t. I tried to give him calm energy back to cool his anger. I prayed that this wasn’t the beginning of him falling back into the abyss.

“Don’t you remember when they stripped away all your other guides and totems, everything but the angels?”

I shook my head. “All I had was my Guardian Angel.”

“I bet you had more. You just don’t remember.”

Emma reached out to touch his hand where it was clenched on the table, then hesitated. “May I touch you, Levanael?”

He gave a small nod, so she finished the gesture, laying her hand over his. “I thought you meant something else besides what you told me about your personal guides being stripped from you. I’m sorry, I didn’t think what it might mean for channeling.”

For the first time since I’d seen them together, he didn’t touch her back, just glared at me across the table. His shoulders had hunched forward like he was collapsing on himself. It was the way he’d held himself on the street sometimes, like he had something heavy sitting on his shoulders. Just seeing that made me afraid for him. He said, “I had an imaginary friend when I came to the College of Angels. She was a little girl with long curls and ribbons in her hair. I know now that her clothes meant she was from the 1930s or ’40s. Emma and Bast and others at the shop have helped me get a clearer picture of her, and the others.”

“What others?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about all of it.”

If it had been almost anyone else, I would have reminded him that he brought it up, but I wouldn’t push Jamie today, not if I could help it.

“You’ve regained your totem,” Emma said, squeezing his hand as if she were trying to press some of her positivity into him.

His expression softened and some of the awful tension went out of his shoulders. He let out a long sigh as if he’d been holding his breath. “Yeah, he helps me.”

“Who helps you?” I asked.

“My totem, my animal guide.” He glanced at Emma and turned his hand so he could hold her hand back. He looked at me, but this time he was smiling. “Your totem is like a spirit guide, but it’s an animal guide. We have one from birth or even before, just like a Guardian Angel.”

“I’ve seen totems and animal guides with other spirit workers,” I said.

“There are also animal messengers that come and go in our lives as we need them,” Emma said.

“But we have one main totem that will help us be the best version of ourselves,” Jamie said.

“It sounds like a Guardian Angel,” I said.

“Angels are forced to ask permission to help their human charge; totems can be more active even if the person is unwilling to make the right choice,” Emma said.

“Spirit guides don’t have to wait for permission either,” Jamie said. “But the person has to actually listen to them.”

“I’ve heard some of this before from coworkers and others, but never had them equate it so closely with Guardian Angels.”

“They probably thought you’d be insulted,” she said.

“Insulted how?”

“When people from the College of Angels come to the store they are very insulted when we equate animal totems and spirit guides with angels of any kind. They are even insulted when we try talking about guides that are usually human ancestors or relationships from other reincarnations.”

I laughed. “Oh, don’t talk reincarnation to anyone at the College.”

Jamie laughed, too.

She looked at both of us. “What did I miss?”

“Suriel, our friend, she got memories in meditation from what she thought might be a past life, but when she tried to tell our meditation teacher that, well, he used it as a chance to tell all of us that there was no such thing as reincarnation. We had one lifetime to make our place in Heaven and if we screwed it up, we went to Hell forever.”

“Wow, that’s harsh,” she said.

“It’s the truth,” Jamie said.

“No,” she said, “no, it’s not true, or at least it’s not to my faith. You and I have known each other in past lives, Levanael. You felt the connection from the moment we met.”

He nodded. Then looked at her with eyes as full of sadness as they’d held anger earlier. “I know we’ve known each other before, Emma, but I still believe in Heaven and Hell and all the awful things they terrified me with as a child.”

“Before Dante wrote his fictional Hell, it was just separation from God, that’s it,” she said.

I nodded. “She’s right; I found people who read the original languages that the Bible is written in, and that’s all Hell was: separation from God. It’s like the Fallen can no longer hear the voice of God.”