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“Cal?” she says, and the noise in the room stops. I can hear Mary and Christie chattering in the kitchen while they start the dishes, but the rest of us are quiet, waiting. “May I speak with you? Alone?”
I narrow my eyes and before I know what I’m doing, I take a step to stand in front of him, as if to protect him. It must look ridiculous, given how much bigger he is than me, but at the moment, I don’t know what she wants and I’m not going to take the chance.
“Why?” I ask before Cal can speak.
She glances at me before looking back at Cal. When she speaks, it’s to him. “There’s something I need to say to you. Something that I need you to hear.”
“Lola,” Abe says. “Maybe we could just—”
“It’s okay, Abe,” Cal says lightly. “She has the right.”
“The rest can go,” I say with a scowl. “That’s fine. But if you think I’m going to go too, you better try again.”
“Alone,” my mother repeats.
A knock at the door, light but strong.
We all turn to look.
“Now who could that be?” my mother says to herself, starting for the door.
Something is off. I didn’t hear a car come up the driveway, much less see headlights. Cal has begun to growl, his hands turning to fists at his sides. Thoughts of the Strange Men start running through my head. Thoughts of Traynor standing at the door, a cigarette dangling from his lips. Something is wrong.
I brush past him and put my hand on my mother’s shoulder. “I’ll see who it is,” I say. “Why don’t you just hang back?”
She starts to object, but Cal’s growling grows louder as he sidesteps us and heads for the door. I rush after him. “Who is it? A thread?” I mutter once I catch up to him.
He shakes his head. “No thread. It’s him.” For the first time since I’ve known him, I hear fear in his voice, underneath the growling, buried in the bravado.
This can’t be good.
I reach the door first, much to Cal’s dismay. Already I can hear the others following us down the hallway. “You don’t open that door, Benji,” he snarls at me. “You get behind me and you let me deal with this. I am a guardian and I will guard. Do it now and don’t make me ask you again.”
I obey, instantly. I can’t ignore the fury on his face, the way his eyes look like they have turned to oil, liquid and black. Had this occurred only a few short days ago, I’m sure blue lights would have been flashing all around him, forming the outline of his wings. But as it is, there is only a charge in the air, like static, palpable and thick. I don’t want him to open the door.
The knock comes again.
“Don’t open the door,” I whisper. “Please.”
“Benji,” my mother asks from behind me. “Who is it?”
Cal kisses my forehead and opens the door.
A man stands there, a man unlike any man I’ve ever seen before. The sun has set long before, the sky behind him like a deep bruise. The light from inside the house bleeds out onto the porch. The shadows from the darkening night seem to crawl over his shoulders.
He is an imposing figure, all sharp angles and planes. His black hair is short, nary a strand out of place. The goatee around his thick lips is perfectly trimmed. His throat is exposed, showing olive skin that disappears into an opened button-down white shirt that looks crisp. He wears a black dress coat that appears tailored to fit his strong body, buttoned once in the front. He’s not bigger than Cal, more lithe and long, but he radiates authority. He is devastatingly handsome, but in a cold, manufactured way.
“Calliel,” he says, his voice whiskey smooth. “How lovely to see you again, brother.”
“Michael,” Cal says quietly in greeting.
Michael.
Cal’s voice, a memory: I can’t tell the future. I can’t speak to God’s plan. I don’t think anyone can, even the higher-ups, the archangels, though sometimes I wonder what exactly Michael knows….
The Strange Men: This will end now as we were instructed. We cannot go back to Michael empty-handed.
Cal: Minions that do nothing more than Michael’s bidding. They are abominations, and I do not know why Father permits them.
