Night World - Dark Angel Part 4

"You guys can leave now."

Half a sigh from Tanya, who was undoubtedly thinking Gillian was ungrateful . "All right," she said. "Your clothes and your chocolate are right here. I s there somebody you want me to call-?""No! My parents-my dad will be here any minute. I'm fine." Then she shut h er eyes and counted, breath held.

And, blessedly, there were the sounds of Tanya moving away. Both Tanya a nd David calling goodbyes. Then silence.

Stiffly, Gillian pulled herself upright, almost falling down when she tried to step out of the bathtub.

She put on her pajamas and walked slowly out of the bathroom, moving like an old woman. She didn't even glance at the broken mirror.

She tried to be quiet going up the stairs. But just as she reached her bedroom, the door at the end of the upstairs hall swu ng open.

Her mother was standing there, a long coat wrapped around her, fuzzy fleece -lined slippers on her feet. Her hair, a darker blond than Gillian's, was u ncombed.

"What's going on? I heard noise. Where's your father?"

Not "Wha.s.s goin' on? Whersh your father?" But dose.

"It's not even seven yet, Mom. I got wet coming home. I'm going to bed."

The bare minimum of sentences to communicate the necessary information.

Her mother frowned. "Honey-"

" 'Night, Mom."

Gillian hurried into her bedroom before her mother could ask any more ques tions.

She fell on her bed and gathered an armful of stuffed animals in the bend of her elbow. They were solid and friendly and filled her arm. Gillian curled herself around them and bit down on plush.

And now, at last, she could cry. All the hurts of her mind and body merged and she sobbed out loud, wet cheek on the velveteen head of her best bear.

She wished she'd never come back. She wanted the bright meadow with the i mpossibly green gra.s.s, even if it had been a dream. She wanted everyone t o be sorry because she was dead.

All her realizations about life being important were nonsense. Life was a giant hoax. She couldn't change herself and live in a completely new direction. There was no new start. No hope.

And I don't care, she thought. I just want to die. Oh, why did I get made if i t was just for this? There's got to be someplace I belong, something I'm meant to do that's different. Because I don't fit in this world, in this life. And if there isn't something more, I'd rather be dead. I want to dream something e lse.

She cried until she was numb and exhausted and fell into a deadly still sleep without knowing it.

When she woke up hours later, there was a strange light in her room.

CHAPTER 5.

Actually, it wasn't the light she noticed first. It was an eerie feeling that so me . . . presence was in her room with her.

She'd had the feeling before, waking up to feel that something had just left , maybe even in the instant it had taken her to open her eyes. And that whil e asleep, she'd been on the verge of some great discovery about the world, s omething that was lost as soon as she woke.

But tonight, the feeling stayed. And as she stared around the room, feeling dazed and stupid and leaden, she slowly realized that the light was wrong.

She'd forgotten to close the curtains, and moonlight was streaming into the room. It had the thin blue translucence of new snow. But in one corner of Gillian's room, by the gilded Italian chest of drawers, the light seemed t o have pooled. Coalesced. Concentrated. As if reflecting off a mirror.

There wasn't any mirror.

Gillian sat up slowly. Her sinuses were stuffed up and her eyes felt like ha rd-boiled eggs. She breathed through her mouth and tried to make sense of wh at was in the corner.

It looked like ... a pillar. A misty pillar of light. And instead of fading as s he woke up, it seemed to be getting brighter.

An ache had taken hold of Gillian's throat. The light was so beautiful . . .

and almost familiar. It reminded her of the tunnel and the meadow and ...

Oh.

She knew now.

It was different to be seeing this when she wasn't dead. Then, she'd accepte d strange things the way you accept them in dreams, without ordinary logic o r disbelief interfering.

But now she stared as the light got brighter and brighter, and felt her whole skin tingling and tears pooling in her eyes. She could hardly breathe. She d idn't know what to do.

How do you greet an angel in the ordinary world?

The light continued to get brighter, just as it had in the meadow. And now sh e could see the shape in it, walking toward her and rus.h.i.+ng at the same time.

Still brighter-dazzling and pulsating-until she had to shut her eyes and saw red and gold after images like shooting star s.

When she squinted her eyes back open, he was there.

Awe caught at Gillian's throat again. He was so beautiful that it was fright ening. Face pale, with traces of the light still lingering in his features.

Hair like filaments of gold. Strong shoulders, tall but graceful body, every line pure and proud and different from any human. He looked more different now than he had in the meadow. Against the drab and ordinary background of G illian's room, he burned like a torch.Gillian slid off her bed to kneel on the floor. It was an automatic reflex.

"Don't do that." The voice was like silver fire. And then-it changed. Beca me somehow more ordinary, like a normal human voice. "Here, does this help ?".

Gillian, staring at the carpet, saw the light that was glinting off a stray sa fety pin fade a bit. When she tilted her eyes up, the angel looked more ordina ry, too. Not as luminous. More like just an impossibly beautiful teenage guy.

"I don't want to scare you," he said. He smiled.

"Yeah," Gillian whispered. It was all she could get out.

"Are you scared?"

"Yeah."

The angel made a frustrated circling motion with one arm. "I can go through all the gobbledygook: be not afraid, I mean you no harm, all that-but it's such a waste of time, do n't you think?" He peered at her. "Aw, come on, kid, you died earlier today.

Yesterday. This isn't really all that strange in comparison. You can deal."

"Yeah." Gillian blinked. "Yeah," she said with more conviction, nodding.

"Take a deep breath, get up-"

"Yeah."

"-say something different. . . ."

Gillian got up. She perched on the edge of her bed. He was right, she could deal. So it hadn't been a dream. She had really died, and there really were angels, and now one was in the room with her, looking almost solid except at the edges. And he had come to ...

"Why did you come here?" she said.

He made a noise that, if he hadn't been an angel, Gillian would have called a snort. "You don't think I ever really left, do you?" he said chidingly. "I mean, think about it. How did you manage to recover from freezing without e ven needing to go to the hospital? You were in severe hypothermia, you know.

The worst. You were facing pulmonary edema, ventricular fibrillation, the l oss of a few of your bits. . . ." He wiggled his fingers and waggled his fee t. That was when Gillian realized he was standing several inches off the flo or. "You were in bad shape, kid. But you got out of it without even frostbit e."

Gillian looked down at her own ten pink fingers.

They were tinglingly over-sensitive, but she didn't have even one blood bli ster. "You saved me."

He gave a half grin and looked sheepish. "Well, it's my job."

"To help people."

"To help you."

A barely acknowledged hope was forming in Gillian's mind. He never really lef t her; it was his job to help her. That sounded like . . . Could he be ...Oh, G.o.d, no, it was too corny. Not to mention presumptuous.

He was looking sheepish again. "Yeah. I don't know how to put it, either. Bu t it is true, actually. Did you know that most people think they have one ev en when they don't? Somebody did a poll, and 'most people have an inner cert ainty that there is some particular, individual spirit watching over them.'

The New Agers call us spirit guides. The Hawaiians call us aumakua. . . ."

"You're a guardian angel," Gillian whispered.

"Yeah. Your guardian angel. And I'm here to help you find your heart's desir e."

"I-" Gillian's throat dosed.

It was too much to believe. She wasn't worthy. She should have been a bette r person so that she would deserve some of the happiness that suddenly spre ad out in front of her.

But then a cold feeling of reality set in. She wasn't a better person, and alt hough she was sure enlightenment and whatever else an angel thought your heart's desire was, was terrific, well ... in her case . . .

She swallowed. "Look," she said grimly. "The things I need help with-well, t hey're not exactly the kinds of things angels are likely to know about."

"Heh." He grinned. He leaned over in a position that would have unbalanced an ordinary person and waved an imaginary something over her head. "You s hall go to the ball, Cinderella."

A wand. Gillian looked at him. "Now you're my fairy G.o.dmother?"

"Yeah. But watch the sarcasm, kid." He changed to a floating position, his a rms clasping his knees, and looked her dead in the eye. "How about if I say I know your heart's desire is for David Blackburn to fall madly in love with you and for everyone at school to think you're totally hot?"

Heat swept up Gillian's face. Her heart was beating out the slow, hard thum ps of embarra.s.sment- and excitement. When he said it out loud like that, it sounded extremely shallow . . . and extremely, extremely desirable.

"And you could help with that?" she choked out.

"Believe it or not, Ripley."

"But you're an angel."

He templed his fingers. "The paths to enlightenment are many. Gra.s.shopper . Gra.s.shopper? Maybe I should call you Dragonfly. You are sort of iridescent. There're lots of other insects, but Dung-Beetle sounds sort of insul ting. ..."

I've got a guardian angel who sounds like Robin Williams, Gillian thought. I t was wonderful. She started to giggle uncontrollably, on the edge of tears.

"Of course, there's a condition," the angel said, dropping his fingers. He loo ked at her seriously. His eyes were like the violet-blue at the bottom of a fl ame.

Gillian gulped, took a scared breath. "What?""You have to trust me."

"That's it?"

"Sometimes it won't be so easy."

"Look." Gillian laughed, gulped again, steadied herself. She looked away from his eyes, focusing on the graceful body that was floating in midair. "Look, after all I've seen . . . after you saved my life-and my bits . . . how could I not trust you?" She said it again quietly. "How could I ever not trust you ?".

He nodded. Winked. "Okay," he said. "Let's prove it."

"Huh?" Slowly the feeling of awed incredulity was fading. It was beginning to seem almost normal to talk to this magical being.

"Let's prove it. Get some scissors."

"Scissors?"

Gillian stared at the angel. He stared back.

"I don't even know where any scissors are."

"Drawer to the left of the silverware drawer in the kitchen. A big sharp pair." He grinned like Little Red Riding Hood's gr andmother.

Gillian wasn't afraid. She didn't decide not to be, she simply wasn't.

"Okay," she said and went down to get the scissors. The angel went with her , floating just behind her shoulder. At the bottom of the stairs were two A byssinian cats, curled up head to toe like the Yin-Yang symbol. They were f ast asleep. Gillian nudged one gently with one toe, and it opened sleepy cr escents of eyes.

And then it was off like a flash-both cats were. Streaking down the side hal l, falling over each other, skidding on the hardwood floor. Gillian watched with her mouth open.

"Balaam's a.s.s," the angel said wisely.

"I beg your pardon?" For a moment Gillian thought she was being insulted.