Praefatio: A Novel (11 page)

Kneeling down sent searing pain shooting from my hips through my shoulders. Still, I opened the pillowcase as if the eyeballs were going to jump into the bag of their own free will. The pain worsened. I wondered how long I could keep up the angel charade.

“Oh, just get in the bag,” I joked in grossed-out frustration. But then something miraculous happened. All the eyes turned toward me. Then they rolled themselves into the pillowcase, one by oily one, and the teeth disintegrated into fine powder on the floor.

Remi took a last look out into the hall, then shut and re-locked the door. I had a feeling whatever was after me wouldn’t be stopped by a deadbolt. Gradually, I realized something else: These beings were after me and me alone. Remi just happened to be around when they came for me. I wondered if that would always be the case.

I knotted the pillowcase, placed it on the chair beside the bed, and took a seat on the mattress. Remi followed and knelt down in front of me. He placed his hands over my ripped-up legs. He looked up at me, shook his head, and said, “You have to be more careful, Grace. You
are
human.”

I felt my wounds healing under Remi’s hands. But who would heal me after Remi was gone? Mom’d said the demons wouldn’t stop until I was on their side, or dead.

Remi and I sat quietly. He blocked me from his thoughts, but I couldn’t imagine he was happy with the way things had turned out. All I was thinking about right then was carrying around a bunch of shaky eyes and what would happen when their owner returned to claim them. I hated the sound of my own thoughts.

Finally, I whined, “Why do you do that? Why do you block me out so I can’t hear what you’re thinking?”

Frustration creased his forehead when he spoke. “I’m not blocking you.” Remi let out a long sigh. “Someone else is. Someone doesn’t want you to know what I’m thinking.” Remi stood, and the look on his face told me everything. He was leaving me, too.

“How can you leave me? ‘Read
Praefatio
,’
he says! Why can’t you teach me everything I need to know? Why can’t you stay with me?” I yelled.

Remi took two steps back—as if I was going to hit him or something. That wasn’t the Remi I knew.

“Sorry. I’m not used to angels speaking with that tone. Even one who is part human,” he said, accentuating the word “human.” It made me want to sock him.

“That’s the second time in minutes you’ve referred to me as human,” I spat, surprised by how offended I felt.

“Grace,” he began again with no change to his tone, like he was losing patience with me. This was a new side to Remi. “You have to finish
Praefatio
. If you don’t, none of this makes any sense. You, Mom, Dad, the Larsons, even
Gavin
.” The way he added Gavin at the end, the way his tone changed, made me sad. His eyes were wet as he took another step back, paused, and then another. Still, he looked like an angel, so childlike, a boy fighting manhood with every fiber of his being.

In that moment, I remembered the words I had read in
Praefatio.
“ …
the more time they spent around humans, the more like humans they became
… ”

Remi smiled. He must have heard my thoughts.

“So what’s going to happen to you, your human body, I mean? I think Jenny would be really hurt if you died or something bad happened to you.” I couldn’t help but be reminded of the pain I felt when I thought my father had died. It made me wonder why Remi had cried so much at the funeral knowing Dad was alive. And where was Jenny anyway?
Why isn’t Remi at the show with her and Sean
?

He stepped back yet again, but I could hear him as clearly as if he were right next to me. “I was conceived on earth, from two angels while they were in human form. That had never happened before. While we are in human form, we are completely vulnerable to human emotions … and tragedy.” He paused. “That’s why Gabe was able to die. His human body
actually
died. He could not appear to you after his death since he did not have a human body to appear to you in. Because you were still human and not in imminent danger, you would not have been able to see him in his celestial form, unless he had been granted a Divine Exception.”

It was strange hearing Remi refer to our father as “Gabe.” I could tell he was struggling, not just with what he was saying, but how he would say whatever it was he was trying hard
not
to say. Remi shifted his weight from his left to his right leg, then back again.

“How did I see him just then?” I wasn’t born yesterday. “I did just see him, didn’t I?” I didn’t think my mind was playing tricks on me. Then again, I had gone from the hospital to the Larsons and back to the hospital, apparently without ever physically leaving.

“I guess because you’re less human now. Already ascending … You saw your sister Emeria, and she doesn’t have a body. But humans can only see us if we want them to, especially if we don’t have a body to inhabit or haven’t taken on a form. Most humans never see us, even when they are in danger. There are a lot of rules. You need to read the book. As for you, no one knows what you are capable of. It’s why some people are scared out of their minds about your existence.” Remi lowered his head.

“So what about you? Why didn’t you tell me about you? Were you always an angel, or did you become one … like me?”

Remi leaned against the wall, as if he was using all his self-control not to run screaming from my hospital room. I was tempted to unleash my bag of eyeballs on him. Then he ran one hand through his ringlets, knowing I loved the way they bounced around his face. He took a long, deep breath. “Despite your existence, it’s forbidden for angels in human form to conceive a child on earth. As such, my parents were punished. Their castigation was to become human after I was born. Your parents, Vivienne and Gabriel, were already posted here. It was decided that I would be given to
them
to raise, since there was no way for a human to parent an angel. Michael preferred for us to grow up together since we were the only ones of our respective kinds on Earth. With no precedent for someone like me or you, it was thought that we would come into our ascensions as late as our eighteenth birthdays or as early as normal human puberty. Mine came sooner than anyone expected, when I was seven.” Remi sounded so official when he used his “angel voice.” Lots of big words.

My thoughts turned to the weekend Remi and I went camping with the Larsons and Remi got sick. Mr. Larson had to call Mom and Dad because Remi was hospitalized. Dad said Remi needed to get his appendix out, and despite my protest, I was not allowed to visit him. We ended our camping trip early, the Larsons took me home, and Remi returned two days later, as if nothing had happened. That was the last time we ever went anywhere with anyone other than Mom or Dad. I remember thinking the first time I saw him after he had been released, that the bones in his back—his scapula bones—stuck way out. Still do.

That was same the week I started hearing
His
voice.

Wings,
Remi thought as he listened to me put everything together in my head. “They told me everything that weekend. How could they not? They gave me
Praefatio
, the angels’ version of the Bible,”
he added.

“Remi?” I started to get up to hug him, wrap my arms around him, but couldn’t. I felt weighed down, heavy. I lowered my left leg slowly at first, and as I crossed my right leg over to stand up, I felt wobbly and unable to hold the weight of my body, which seemed to have doubled. It was a chore to raise my head, but when I did, Remi had moved all the way to the door, preparing to leave.

His genuine smile gave me courage. I leaned slightly forward to try again, slower this time, and a shadow cast on the oily, slick floor nearly scared me to death. The shape of angel wings, much wider than I would have expected, surrounded me from behind.

Get outta town! Sofriggingheavy!

I turned to inspect my new appendages, and my body rose about three inches off the bed, forward, feet dangling. I tried to find the floor; I found it, and the oil slick where the eyeball demon left his slime, and fell flat on my face. I hit the cold tile with a hard thump.

Just prior to falling, in the bathroom mirror across from my bed, I saw my wings—silvery-white and fluffy with brick-red feathers underneath.

Eenie Meenie Miney Mo

The floor smelled of hospital-grade cleaner, bleach infused with laboratory-made pine scent, the fibers of a mop that had been used too many times to be effective in actual disinfection, rare sickness, incurable disease, and opaque bodily fluids. Disgusting.

The roar of Remi’s laugh shook the room. Nothing new, as he always enjoyed a hearty chuckle at my expense. He cleared the distance between us with little effort, extended his hand and pulled me up into his arms, steadied me, then sat me on the bed. I barely avoided an instant replay.

I flapped my new wings proudly—a sound I will always equate with shaking the wrinkles out of freshly laundered clothes. A few feathers fell to the floor as I sat. I grabbed Remi and pulled him down to sit with me. I was excited and terrified. I hugged him as hard as I could. Our wings intertwined and covered us so only our heads could be seen.

“Dork,” he whispered as he hugged me back.

“I love you too,” I whispered with a huge grin on my face. It was the only thing I knew for sure at that moment.

“Wait till you go through a molt!” Remi teased, extending his wings for me to see. For a moment, I became frightened.

“What? You mean like a bird?” He had to be freaking kidding. I passed a hand along the top of his right wing. Soft, but definitely solid underneath.

“Well, you do have wings. And wings are made out of what?” Reaching behind me, I tried to feel my own wings, but it felt more like soft pins than wings, and they were small. Miniscule compared to Remi’s.

“Feathers?” I guessed out loud, hoping I was wrong. The thought of losing my feathers and having them replaced with new ones grossed me out.

“And you’ll have to preen them too—only you’ll need to use a special comb. You’ll need to get someone to do the ones you can’t reach. It’s gonna be hard for you, I imagine.” Remi seemed pretty sincere as he snaked his neck around to inspect my wings. I felt weird and covered myself up in them. I didn’t like to be stared at like that.

“I can’t believe your wings! Remi! You have wings!”

“Uh, yeah. So do you, dork.”

“Who can I get to help me preen my wings? I mean, it’s not like they have people who do that sort of thing,” I snapped at Remi.

“Actually, there are wing shops all over the place. You simply need to know where to look. They can do dye jobs, trims, clipping, fluffing, preening, curling, piercing, wash and blow—whatever you need. Some even offer feather replacement and conditioning.” Remi smiled when he noticed how wide-open my mouth was. Then he placed a protective arm and wing around my shoulder, and I settled in.

We sat like that for what seemed like hours. I could have drilled Remi about the angel lifestyle, wing shops, everything he knew that I wanted to, but didn’t. I preferred to spend my last minutes with him in silence, observing him, memorizing him as he was. But I knew it wouldn’t last. And almost as quickly as I thought it, he jumped, stood, and retracted his wings almost at the same time. I jumped too, but my change in position and wing retraction was not nearly as graceful. Horror hijacked his face, and it scared me, big time.

“Grace, forgive me,” was all he said before he vanished into thin air, no warning, no puff of smoke, no Remi.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and listened for him, trying to hear where he had gone. I don’t know what made me think I could follow, since I couldn’t see him, but I tried; after all, I had wings. I heard him, like before, his thoughts and his breathing. I could also smell him: sweet but a little metallic too.
Weird
.

I locked in on his voice and scent, primal like an animal. When I opened my eyes, I saw him, heading straight in the direction of whatever he was after. I was getting the hang of thinking about where I wanted to be and getting there.

Flying a little like a fledgling bird on crack, I followed Remi, determined to see what had torn him away from me. I managed to catch up to him as he was circling, like a vulture, high above its prey.

He stopped abruptly and hovered in the air like Superman, with one leg slightly bent. Behind him, his wings looked like simmering hot coals. He had obviously done this before.

We were over by the parking lot of the arena where the Venus Unearthed concert had been earlier. I could smell Gavin. It was strange to smell a person from high in the air. It was hard to believe Remi had lived like this for so long and kept it from me.

Remi turned his head sideways then pointed his right ear up toward the sky before starting off again. He headed into the woods behind the lot. And then I became aware of something I wished I hadn’t. The vision I’d had, about Jenny and Gavin in the dark place, was happening
right then
!

I tried to catch up to Remi, but it was like one of those dreams where someone’s chasing you and you’re trying to outrun them, but your legs won’t carry you fast enough. Only this time, I was the one doing the chasing, and it was my wings that wouldn’t carry me fast enough.

It was dark—really dark, almost pitch black except for a light coming from Jenny’s cell phone. “Remi, pick up, please be there. Shoot. Voicemail.” She was pacing an area no more than two feet by four feet in a small clearing surrounded by very tall trees. “Remi, it’s me. Sean hooked up with some girl at the show. I got tired of waiting for him to come back for me and decided I’d try to find the car. And now, I’m … I’m lost.” Her voice trailed off as she saw something out of the corner of her eye.

I saw it too. Two eyes, piercing out from the blackness. It was low to the ground, like an animal. There was something oddly familiar about it.

With shaky hands, and tears running down her face, Jenny tried dialing another number. Then she dropped the cell phone, stomped her foot, and kneeled down to find it. Its light went out.