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“Help me do what?” Blake’s gaze swept the area around him and settled back on Chiel. “Wait a minute. Say that again. Who are you?”
“An angel. In training to be a guardian angel.”
“An angel? Oh my God, does that mean that I-I’m dead?”
The little blond angel shook his head. “No, no, nothing like that. You’re just in a kind of—let’s call it a time out.”
“A what?”
“A time out, so you can think about your life and reflect on what you truly want. My grandfather heard you cry out that you wished your life was different. That you wished you’d never stayed in Tygeria for the past twenty years and never been King Davos’s spouse. Isn’t that right?”
Blake felt a blind panic sweep over him. Had he really said such a stupid thing? “I-I may have said that, yes. But I-I didn’t mean it. I love my husband. I love my family. I need to go back to them.”
“My grandfather thought you probably would. But first he’s arranged a little demonstration. He wanted to give you a peek at what your life might have been like if you had never stayed in Tygeria. He said it might give you perspective. And if not, and if you still wish you’d gone back to Earth, then he’s willing to send you back.”
“What? N-no, I don’t want that.”
“Don’t decide so quickly. First have a little peek into what you might have been doing in the twenty years since you were captured on Tygeria.” He pointed behind Blake at one of the puffy clouds that began to glow with a strange light that hurt Blake’s eyes. Gradually, his eyes adjusted and a kind of video appeared on the cloud. Like one of the ones he watched with his boys when they were small. Pictures of Blake began to flash across the cloud. Or no, not quite Blake. But someone who looked just like him.
“This is a picture of who you’d be today, if you’d gone back home,” Chiel said, this time from right next to him. The little angel only came up to Blake’s chest, and he was even blonder and more beautiful up close.
“How did you move so fast?” Blake asked him in surprise. “You were standing over there.”
“Huh? Oh, we guardian angels can do a lot of things.” A little bell rang somewhere close by and Chiel sighed. “Okay, okay.” He looked back up at Blake. “Guardian angel in training, that is. I’m not quite there yet. But look at the cloud again. Really concentrate and you’ll be able to see.”
Blake looked back at it and saw a picture of himself—only not quite. The man he was looking at was almost the same, except he had a shorter haircut, and he was dressed in what businessmen wore back on Earth, a dark blue suit, with no lapels, with a plain, white shirt underneath. He had an earring in one ear. He looked neat and trim, and he was sitting at a long desk with some other people.
“What am I doing?”
“You’re doing a news cast,” Chiel said. “You’re a news announcer on a popular online broadcast. Very successful and influential.”
“I-I am?”
“Oh yes, and also controversial. Today, you and the others talked about how restrictive the Tygerian laws are and how to change them. You haven’t been very flattering to the king. Probably not the smartest thing to do.”
“I did that? I’ll bet the Tygerians didn’t like it very much.”
“No, as a matter of fact, they didn’t. That’s why they’ve asked you to come to Atrillia to attend a press conference.”
“Atrillia? What’s that?”
“That’s the Tygerian name for old New York City. You’re be on your way there in just a second. Oh, look. There you are now.” Another moving picture came up and this time, it was of Blake in a shuttlecraft, with a strange background behind him.
“But where is this? What am I doing?”
“It’s Atrillia. You’re on your way there from the airport. To see King Davos.” Chiel snapped his fingers and suddenly everything changed again, and the little angel in training was gone. Poof, like he’d never been there at all. The air began to swirl around Blake’s feet, and he got a little dizzy. He closed his eyes for just a second—and woke up in a public shuttle craft, flying through the air with traffic all around him.
***
Blake Cameron arrived at the press conference in Atrillia, formerly known as New York City, almost an hour early. He’d come straight from the city port but missed the public shuttle and had to take a private transfer that got stuck in traffic. It had snowed the night before, which was nice to look at and would no doubt mean a white Christmas, seeing as how the holiday was just around the corner. But the extra traffic in the city was a serious pain in the ass.
Naturally, everyone knew where the Tygerian king was staying in the city—every aspect of his visit had been on the news almost constantly. He was in the most expensive and luxurious hotel in the downtown area, an independent hotel named The Imperial. The news conference Blake was required to attend by royal decree was being held in the hotel ballroom and was scheduled to be heavily attended.
He figured he could while away the extra time looking in the decorated shop windows nearby. Since it was almost Christmas, the department store windows were decked out with red and green and silver and gold—all the colors Blake associated with this time of year. There were scenes in shop windows of elves and reindeer and Santa Claus, of course, and even an ice queen or two. Tons of lavishly wrapped gifts enticed shoppers to come in for last minute gifts. In the end, however, he’d had to duck inside a diner on the corner and buy a way too pricey cup of coffee, because the entrance to the hotel was bristling with Tygerian guards that he was making nervous.
They wouldn’t let him in yet, and they didn’t like the idea of Blake loitering on the sidewalk. They yelled at him to move along after making him show them his ID documents and generally harassing him. But even showing them his press credentials and telling them he was there for the news conference with the king at the king’s request didn’t make much difference.
At exactly ten minutes until the thing started, he went through the front entrance, and found the elevator to the ballroom on the second level. The huge hall, which covered half of the entire second floor, required a small key chip to access the elevator for security purposes, so he had to go back down to a desk clerk, who ignored him for the first five minutes. Afraid he’d be late and having only minutes to spare before it started, he finally shouted at the clerk and a got a haughty, scandalized look for his trouble.
