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I take a step back, unable to keep the distress from my face. Calliel sees it and looks as if he’s going to reach up and grab me, to stop me from moving back, but he apparently thinks better of it and drops his hands back down to his sides. I stumble and fall back, hitting the wall and then slumping against it, trying to stay standing. He doesn’t move.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says finally, sounding almost hurt. “Why would I?”
“I don’t fucking know what you are,” I snarl. “I don’t care what Nina says or what she sees or what anyone else sees. I don’t know you.”
“But I know you,” he says simply. He takes a step toward me.
“No,” I gasp. “You stay right where you are. I want some goddamn answers. Tell me the fucking truth.”
Calliel cocks his head at me and frowns. “I already told you, Benji. I told you almost right away.”
“Just tell me the truth,” I say weakly.
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. With that breath comes a feeling of heat bursting softly throughout the room, the air growing thicker. When he opens his eyes, he seems taller somehow. Bigger. His eyes are almost completely black, the white peeking out around the edges. For a moment, I think I see an outline of wings again, but I blink and they’re gone.
He speaks, almost as if in recitation: “I am the Throne Angel Calliel of the second Heaven, in service of God, our Father, descended from On High. I am the Guardian of Roseland and its inhabitants. These are my people, my charges, the ones who have been entrusted to me. I protect them. I carry their fears. I lift up their prayers. I hear their calls and I answer if it is within my power. I do not pass judgment for I am not God. God judges sin and the follies of man, not I. I do not intervene with the plans of God. I do not avenge the plans of God. I am an extension of him and his will, for he is my Father and he is divine.” He pauses, almost glowering at me, daring me to refute him.
“Oh,” is all I can think of to say.
The charge gathering in the room dissipates as quickly as it arrived, cold sweeping back in.
He follows me as I move down the hall toward my bedroom. He touches
everything he sees with that same wonder, as if he’s never felt such things and he finds them extraordinary. There are little grunts of pleasure at particular things that seem to tickle him for some reason: the thermostat on the wall that he cranks up to ninety before scowling at the vent that blows down from the ceiling; light switches which he flicks on and off, the light above flashing bright then going dark. I am almost horrified by this, a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach as I mull over asking him if they have light switches and heating ducts where he comes from.
Because, I think as I watch him study himself in a mirror, he obviously doesn’t come from around here. And if he’s so fascinated by something as simple as a light switch, chances are he’s probably not from around anywhere else, either. I wonder if there is still a chance that this is a dream.
“Isn’t that a sin?” I ask him as he stares at his reflection, obviously pleased by his appearance. He runs his hands over his head, touches the auburn scruff on his face.
“What?” he asks as he pulls his ears out and grins at himself in the mirror. “Vanity.”
He rolls his eyes, which seems unbecoming of someone in his position.
“Everything is a sin if you think about it,” he says, looking somewhat surprised at his own words. “Nobody is perfect.”
“So says the man who claims to be an angel.”
He glances over at me. “Perfection is a flaw in itself,” he says. “And I don’t claim to be anything. I am.” He looks almost insulted. “Nina believes me. Why can’t you trust like she does?”
“Nina’s… different,” I sputter. “She’s different from the rest of us.”
“You speak of her triplicated chromosome?”
“Sure,” I say, suddenly forming a plan. “Why not? Let’s speak about that. Why would your God allow that to happen to her? Why would he let her be like that?”
He looks confused. “Like what?”
“Disabled.”
“She looked perfectly able to me.”
I scowl at him. “You know what I mean. She has a mental handicap. Why would
he allow that to happen? Why wou
ld God do that to her?”
“Is she not happy?” he asks, leaning against the wall, my father’s jacket
