“Mary,” I bite out.
“Ms. Combs,” Gabriel says, and I stand, fixing my pencil skirt, heart in my throat. “Report to my home at nine tonight sharp.”
“Nine?” Ms. Jailbait exclaims. “Surely you mean noon.”
“I meant what I said.” Gabriel locks his sexy eyes with mine, and they flash bright blue faster than I can blink. “Be there on time.” He lifts and catapults into the sky until he’s nothing more than a blur of blue wings.
Ms. Jailbait marches back, clearly displeased. Her yellow heels dig into the grass, and she stops next to me, practically stomping with her foot. She’ll dig up enough ground to plant potatoes for the winter.
“Report to his office at nine,” she says.
That wasn’t what he said. He said his home, and I’m not sure if he’s lost his mind or what happened with him today. I nod and sit back down, feeling her hovering over me. If the class wasn’t staring, I’d roll my eyes or maybe even tell her to bug off, but I have to set a good example for these kids.
I fold my hands in my lap and cross one leg over the other, noting Mike’s gaze following the length of my leg. The things I have to endure with teenage boys. “Today we’ll review the what do I do with my life? question.”
The sound of collective groans lifts my mood. It’s a good day to torture my students with questions they couldn’t possibly answer at their age. When I was sixteen, I lost my mother to cancer, so I had to grow up real fast and take care of my dad. I didn’t take very good care of him. He ended up away from home more often than not, until one day, he never returned.
Mary gets out her notebook and a pencil and starts scribbling. I know Mary, and I know she’s not in any rush to tackle the assignment, but I pretend as if I don’t notice the furious pace of her hand moving over paper. Once she’s done, I look away, but pay attention from the corner of my eye as she passes her notebook to Luna, her partner in crime.
Mary raises her hand. “Can we work in pairs?”
My instinct says yes even though I dislike pairing students on individualized projects such as this one. Since I know Mary and Luna and likely Mike at the other end of the classroom are up to something, and since I want to know exactly what that is, I say, “Of course, and please turn in a page each with the answer and also one action item you can do tomorrow, and that relates to whatever your life’s purpose is.”
The next forty minutes pass in agony for the students as I grill them on their goals and motivations for doing the right things at the right times for the good of us all, concepts even I at twenty-seven can’t master. I wanted to save my dad from himself, so, maybe selfishly for me, I could have at least one parent around.
I dream of returning home to the other side of the Court, our busy town in Hoji Province with him by my side and settling back into what used to be our routine. He worked as a tailor. Even had his own shop at one point. Back then, I studied to become a teacher when I should’ve helped him with the shop. If I’d kept an eye on him, he wouldn’t have started accepting the coin from the Veil, and he’d never have wondered where to spend it or what else he could get from the place the coin came from.
I bet Gabriel has mastered his purpose. His purpose is clear in the way he runs his Court, in the way he protects the weak, in the way he carries his divine presence that graces us with hope for a future in which the Veil will become a prison nobody ever escapes from.
The bells chime and students tear the papers they’d written on from their notebooks and turn them in, then leave for their next class. I search for Mary and Luna’s correspondence by reading the pen’s imprints on the paper stacked above the one with ink.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Xoxoxo. I assume this is Mary.
Thank you! XO, HO. HAHAHA.
You gonna ask HH permission for the party? I assume HH is His Highness, Gabriel.
What’s the point? He’ll say no.
Then it’s plan B.
Yaaas!
I AM SO EXCITED!!! WE GONNA BE HOOKERS ON THE PROWL.
Plan B sounds like a nightmare. Sighing, I gather up the papers and am walking across the grass when a tiny white curl of paper catches my eye. My heels dig into the grass as I walk over to pick it up and unroll it.
Mike’s handwriting, or rather a scribble, reads: Outpost 9. 9. PS. It’s the 9th.
He signs the note with a drawing of a pair of bananas that I’m sure he believes looks like a pair of horns. I flip the paper, and the numbers read 666.
Not good.
Chapter 2
Meeting my soul’s mate this morning has been the most shocking event of my life, and it took all my self-control not to profess my undying devotion to her right after we fornicated at the steps of my prayer room. While breeding my soul’s mate was my duty, such duty should be performed elsewhere, not in the place where I come to cleanse my soul of mortal emotions so I may survive this realm and they can survive me as well.
Emotions leave echoes.
Lust, coupling, and carnal pleasures would leave echoes for weeks to come, and I wouldn’t have been able to use my cleansing room, which was why I took her outside and for a brief flight to enjoy our closeness and her range of emotions. Confusion. Lust. Fear. Surprise. Embarrassment.
I didn’t hit her with my power. I couldn’t. I have to shield my power over mortals or else they will become addicted to the comfort and love I can provide, and therefore, they’d become addicted to me and being around me. They wouldn’t know how to function without me. Comfort withdrawals would cause major depressions and lead to suicides, homicides, and other deadly forms of harm.
The last person I wanted to harm was my soul’s mate, so I elected to let her go on about her day with a set date for later this evening. Nine at night and in my home was a clear invitation to a date. Mortal men courted mortal women in such a way.
Meanwhile, it was ten in the morning on a Friday. I flew over the edges of my Court to provide comfort to the Court of Command military personnel as they endured long deployments away from their families while beating back the Marked insurgencies that have become far more frequent than I’d like.
The Court of Command outposts sit on the edges of my Court, inside dense forests that stretch South to North, indicating the end of my Court and the point where the Restraining Veil, an invisible barrier that holds evil behind it and masks everything that goes on beyond it from both mortals and angels alike. No one can see past the Veil’s barrier of power that is held by all the realm’s archangels.
The land beyond the Veil appears as an endless desert landscape, much like Sahara used to appear in the Before. In essence, the land covered with the Veil is an illusion, and the Veil is an invisible blanket separating us from the evil powers Michael locked in there, with the Marked being the least of my worries. Trapping Lucifer’s power is something I worry about most often. Namely the inevitable point when he’ll break loose of the restraints we placed on him and go on a murderous rampage for no reason other than self-indulgence and entertainment.
I feel Lucifer’s strength growing, which means the Veil weakens. It’s not just me, however. Michael’s soldiers reported sightings of cities beyond the Veil. Flashes of long-forgotten cities that come and go from sight. I didn’t quite understand what the soldier who reported to me had meant, so I came to either clarify what they saw or witness the flashes myself.