Misguided Angel: A Parnormal Romance Novella Read online

  Misguided Angel

  Lucy Blue

  Contents

  Content Notice

  1. Kelsey and Asher

  2. The Watcher at the Gate

  3. The Visit

  4. The Morning Star

  5. Detective Lucas Black

  6. Nate and Sylvia, 4B

  7. In the Garden of the Dead

  8. Jake’s Paintings

  9. In the Valley of the Light

  10. The Church

  11. Praying for Help

  12. The Half-Demon

  13. The Imps on the Street

  14. The Nymph in the Hallway

  15. The Angel in the Kitchen

  16. The Devil You Know

  17. The Priest and the Painting

  18. The Hospital

  19. The Waiting Room

  20. Purgatory

  21. The Gate

  22. The Road

  23. The Opening

  Guinevere’s Revenge

  Also by Lucy Blue

  About the Author

  Falstaff Books

  Content Notice

  Suicide and suicidal ideation are themes throughout this book, and readers with a particular sensitivity to such events may find the story disturbing. Misguided Angel is a work of fiction, and the characters do not address their mental health issues the way we have to in the real world. We hope everyone who ever considers suicide has a guardian angel close by to intervene. But based on our own real life experiences, we would strongly advise them to seek help and support from other human beings.

  One good place to start is the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, available 24/7 at 1-800-273-8255 and suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

  Kelsey and Asher

  Kelsey stood beside the open grave, and snow began to fall. Jesus, honey, she could hear Jake’s voice saying inside her head. Don’t you think that’s a little bit much?

  Jake’s best friend, Jason, was standing beside her, holding her hand. “Come on, sweetie,” he said. “Let’s go now. It’s over.”

  She shook her head. When she walked away, the gravediggers would take off the fake grass carpet and take down the burnished brass rails. They would seal up the vault and fire up the earth mover. They were eager to do this.It was snowing on a Saturday; they were ready to be done so they could go home to their families. But they had to understand, her family was down in the hole.

  “We’ll give you another minute,” Jason said. His husband, Aaron, put a hand on Kelsey’s shoulder and squeezed before they walked away.

  Her mother-in-law, Helen, was still standing on her other side. “How could you?” she said. “How could you not have even told us he was sick? He suffered in this city full of strangers with nobody but you for months. Did you not even care? We could have taken care of him. We could have taken him home.”

  Kelsey had no more kindness left. She looked the woman in the face. “That’s why.”

  Fury sparked in Helen’s eyes, and for a moment, Kelsey thought she meant to hit her. She wanted her to. She wanted to have a face-scratching, hair-pulling brawl right here; she felt like that might help. Maybe they would roll into the grave and rip one another to pieces, and the gravediggers could bury them with Jake.

  But her sweet sister-in-law intervened. “Mama, stop it,” Taylor said. “Come on.” She put her arm around her mother, and Helen sobbed against her shoulder. “Kelsey, honey, we’ll see you at the gallery. Don’t stay out here too long.”

  Kelsey nodded, barely hearing her. Jason had agreed to host a wake at his gallery. The apartment was tiny and still full of stuff from hospice. Nobody wanted to see all that, all their friends and fellow artists, young people who didn’t believe in cancer, not for themselves, anyway.

  The snow was falling harder, mixed with freezing rain. In a moment, the undertaker would speak a gentle word to Jason, and he and Aaron would come back up the slope and drag her oh-so-sympathetically away. “I’ll be back, my darling,” she said. “I’ll be back every day.”

  Asher walked fast through the falling snow, his coat flapping in the wind. He could already smell brimstone as he passed out of the mortal cemetery into the crossroads between worlds. He was late.

  Peter’s clerk was opening her big book on a sepulcher. The book was mostly a prop for the benefit of the contested soul; after centuries, they all expected it. “Shaving it a bit close, aren’t you, angel?” Peter said as he took his place.

  “Time is relative, saint,” he answered, throwing off his coat. He spread his golden wings to their fullest span, showing off just a little. The wings were a prop, too, sort of—mortals expected them, too. But like the book, they had a more meaningful symbolic purpose. Only a seraph still untouched by mortal sin had golden wings, and only a seraph with golden wings could stand at the crossroads and guard the gates of Heaven. Peter just smiled and shook his head.

  The ground rumbled beneath them, and a crack appeared. The accuser was making his entrance. The imp who would act as Lucifer’s clerk crawled out of the hole like an insect, dragging his chains and iron chests behind him. But the accuser rose in one smooth motion, his dark red torso bare to the waist, his black wings folded tight against his back. These wings could only be unfurled within his own domain; even at the crossroads, his powers were forbidden. He nodded his horned head to Peter, and Peter nodded back. For Asher, he had a fanged smile. Asher rustled his own wings once more, smiling back before he folded them. They had been brothers once, born the same morning when the universe was new. But Lucifer had fallen. Now he ruled in Hell, and the Light made him fight for every soul he claimed. The accuser would argue for damnation. Peter would argue for mercy. Asher would guard the gate.

  None of them saw the approach of the Judge. One moment the angels and demons and Peter were alone under the mossy oaks; the next the Judge was among them. He smiled and embraced Peter before He took his place behind the sepulcher, and the accuser and his clerk both looked away, unable to look upon His smile. Peter’s clerk’s head was bent respectfully, but her smile was bright. Asher bowed as well, his own heart feeling lighter. The Judge was an inexplicable presence to him, beyond his immortal ken. Dressed like a human, just like Asher with a human’s tender flesh, He was still the most beautiful object in all of Creation, the purest perfection of spirit.

  The contested soul came wandering toward them through the mist, still dressed in the pajamas his body had died in moments before a thousand miles away. “Where am I?” he was saying to no one in particular. He hadn’t seen them yet. “Am I dreaming?” The accuser made a small movement as if to move into the dead mortal’s line of vision first, and Asher frowned, leaning forward, his wings flexing in threat. Then the soul saw the face of the Judge. “My Lord!” He fell to his knees in the grass, and Asher stifled a yawn. Just as he had suspected when he was summoned. The trial was another waste of time.

  “Come,” Peter said as he raised the soul to his feet. “Come and stand by me.”

  The trial was so familiar, Asher barely listened. This man had never been so bad even before his conversion. A miser for most of his life, he had found the Light through a mortal faith days before his death when most of his great wealth had been lost. He had given what was left to a cause he had ignored for years in spite of the gnawing belief he was needed. It was this long-ignored guilt that the accuser, predictably, chose as his best weapon. This soul had barely pondered his conversion, Lucifer insisted. He had acted on instinct in a time of need. So much the better, Peter argued, that his instinct should be for the Light. Yeah, perhaps, the accuser countered, but would not his gift have been more precious if he had given it when he still had so much to l
ose? He had given all he had, Peter pointed out, and the Judge smiled. The amount meant nothing, nor indeed even the gift itself, no more than the words and rituals he had used to pledge his heart. The belief in his salvation was what must save him. This was the promise of the Word.

  “And so he is saved,” the Judge agreed. He stepped down from his high place and opened His arms, and the soul embraced Him just as Peter had. “Come,” the Judge said. “I have a place for you.”

  A wave of hatred like the breath of a furnace swept across the clearing from Lucifer, melting the snow and turning the dry grass to ash. The soul felt nothing as he walked away beside the Judge, but Asher stepped forward anyway, spreading his wings. The accuser took a step backward, but he smiled. “Always good to see you, brother.” He sank back into Hell the way he had come, and his imp-clerk scrambled after him, rattling his chains.

  The Watcher at the Gate

  Asher crossed back into the mortal plane and walked through the cemetery, headed home. He turned up the collar on his overcoat by habit, a detail learned over the millennia to blend in among mortals, pretending to feel the cold.

  The rusted iron gates were in sight when he saw a figure moving toward him, swathed in black. For a moment, he tensed, the figure’s size and swaddling making him think Lucifer had sent an imp to torment him. But she didn’t scuttle; she walked with purpose, fighting the icy wind. He faded back into the shadows to watch her pass, catching a glimpse of white skin and green eyes under the brim of the black hat and over the black folds of her scarf. She didn’t see him.

  He had already turned to walk away when he changed his mind.

  She knelt on the cold, bare earth of a fresh grave. He took a position out of sight, his footfalls silent. She unwrapped the scarf from her face; it trailed on the ground, too long for her. She reached into the pocket of her baggy black coat and took out a black candle in a glass holder painted with an icon of the Judge. Asher suppressed a smile. If the ritual would comfort her, who was he to mock her?

  She set the candle in front of the headstone and lit it with a wooden match. Asher bowed his head, expecting her to pray.

  But she didn’t. When he opened his eyes, she was taking something else from her pocket—a bottle of whiskey. She uncapped it, drank deeply, then set it down next to the candle, wiping her mouth with the back of her gloved hand. She took a folded letter from her other pocket and kissed it, holding it against her lips for a long time. Then she soaked it with whiskey, spilling some on her coat in the process. She was shaking, he realized, shaking and silently crying.

  She lit the letter on the candle’s flame and dropped it on the ground. Watching it burn, she did pray, her hands clasped like a child’s under her chin. Asher was touched; he whispered his own prayer on her behalf. Grant her comfort, he prayed. Show her the way. As Your seraph, I ask it.

  When the letter was consumed, she blew out the candle and stood up. She stamped out the last glowing ember of her little burnt offering and wrapped the scarf around her face again—it was snowing harder now. She tucked the candle and the bottle back into her pockets and started back down the path toward the gate.

  Asher turned away, sad for her but satisfied he had seen and done enough. He did feel for her, poor creature. Her grief and her faith had touched him deeply. Then a snippet of song came back to him on the wind. She was singing under her breath, her voice too soft for any other mortal to have heard her, almost tuneless, but ragged and sweet.

  “…can my baby be? The Lord took him away from me…”

  He turned back toward the path, but she was gone.

  He stretched out his hand toward the headstone, summoning the scattered ashes of the letter. They rushed back to him, their nature changing as if time were running backward, drawing back together and turning from black to white, every stroke of the closely-written text intact.

  “That’s a good trick, brother.” A bearded man in paint-spattered clothes was standing on the other side of the gate, smoking a cigarette. “But I think that letter is mine.”

  “You shouldn’t be here.” The man could see him because they were on the same plane—the crossroads between worlds. Asher looked down at the headstone. “I’m guessing this must be you.”

  “The late, great Jacob Marlowe,” he said. “Jake to my friends.” He reached through the gate. “Now how about you hand me my letter, Gabriel?”

  “It’s Asher.” Most souls of the mortal dead passed on to their afterlife or next mortal life without ever stopping at the crossroads. Very few souls were contested, and most were ready to move on. If Jake was lingering here, he must believe he had unfinished business. “Trust me, whatever it says, you don’t want this,” he said. “You’re headed to a good place, or you wouldn’t see me now. Whoever she is, she’ll be fine.”

  “You don’t know that.” He grabbed the bars of the gate and flinched with pain as the hands of his spirit form smoked. “Angel—Asher. Give me my goddamned letter.”

  Thunder rumbled from the snowy sky. “Bad choice of words,” Asher said, going to the gate. “This won’t help. It will only make things harder.”

  “Things can’t be any harder.”

  “Promise me you’ll move on after you read it.”

  “I’m not promising you shit.” He held out his hand again, the palm now branded from the gate. Asher handed him the letter.

  Watching him read it was surprisingly hard. Asher had made a two-hundred-thousand-year-old habit of staying out of human business. He watched, but he didn’t let himself care. He wasn’t a guardian. He protected souls in transit from one world to the next; he didn’t need to help their bodies cross the street. But the woman’s grief had touched him, and seeing the pain of the man she had lost was worse. What am I doing here, Boss? he silently prayed. This is not my area.

  Jake looked up from the letter with tears on his face. “I’ve got to go back.”

  “It’s not possible.”

  “Just for one day—one night—an hour!”

  “Jake, I’m sorry. It can’t be done.” A possibility he had never once in all his endless life considered sneaked into his head, but he pushed it out. “Once a mortal is on that side of the gate with no connection to a living body, it’s over. There’s no going back.”

  “You don’t understand,” Jake said. “She needs me.”

  “Every bone in this field was important to somebody once,” Asher said. “All their hearts were broken. But they healed.”

  “She won’t,” Jake said. “Not if I don’t talk to her. Not if I never have a chance to explain.” He held out the letter. “Read this.”

  “No.”

  “You put it back together for a reason,” he said. “So read it.”

  Dear Jake,

  Your sister is worried about me. That’s really sweet of her, considering. That was the thing we didn’t think about when we were deciding not to tell anybody you were sick until we absolutely had no choice. We never thought about how all the people who love you would feel about me after it was over. After you were gone. Dead. After you, Jake, my husband, were dead and gone and buried, and I, your wife, the one who helped you keep your secret, would be by myself with everybody hating me.

  So much to say to you…so many times I wanted to tell you things, stupid, sentimental things. I love you. No one understood me ever the way you did from the first night we met. The line of hair on your stomach drove me crazy. Your mouth tasted like home. I would want to say this stuff in those last months when we were still pretending. I would come into the apartment from the rain and find you painting or wake up in the middle of the night and hear the TV in the living room and know you were awake, waiting for the pain pill to kick in. And this stuff would come bubbling up, and I would almost say it. But I knew you would know why I was saying it, that I would never come right out and say such things to you unless I knew you were dying. And you weren’t ready for us to know, ready to admit that it was true. At least that’s what you said, what we agreed. Maybe I
shouldn’t have believed you. Maybe you really did do it for me.

  Jake, my darling, that would really suck.

  Jason came to the apartment this morning, and I let him photograph the paintings that were finished. Someone from the gallery is supposed to come back and crate them up and take them to the gallery at some point after I get them all varnished. Jason offered to do it, of course, but I wouldn’t let him. I don’t think he realized how massive they would be. You really never said a word to him about them, did you? Thanks, baby. I love you for that. I love that no one else got to look at them standing beside you but me.

  He loved them, of course. He cried from the moment he walked into the studio. He told me that he loved you and hugged me, and I think I smiled. I know I hugged him back.

  He was most excited about the last one, the one you haven’t finished…that you didn’t finish. He really wanted to photograph it, too, and include it in the show. I told him no. He really fought me for it. He pointed out how good it is, that it deserves to be seen. He said the gallery would be able to charge more for it than any of the others. I said, “Because Jake dropped dead painting it?” I showed him the streak on the canvas where you fell. He looked at me like I was insane, the way people always used to look at Mama. He said I should let him take it with him right that moment just to get it out of the apartment, that it wasn’t healthy for me to hang on to it. I told him to fuck off.

  After he was gone, I took all the hospital stuff and piled it on the bed—the drugs and the linens and the bedpans and all of those stupid fucking books and videos they gave us to teach us how to cope and the little green New Testament the nun gave me that last night in the hospital and all the pudding cups and gelatin and saltine crackers—all the stuff that never should have been brought into our apartment in the first place. I piled it on that ugly-ass hospital bed and shoved it out the door. When I got it out of the apartment, I rolled it down the hallway, all the way down to the stairs at the end. I slammed the metal door to the stairwell open and shoved the metal bed through it, tipped it, sent it careening down the concrete steps. It had to have sounded like an earthquake all over the building. And I was crying, sobbing, pitching a fit as I did it. I pushed it all the way to the bottom, running down and shoving it every time it stopped, four floors and eight flights, all that racket at ten o’clock at night.