“You’re serious?” he said. “You’re going to go?”
“I’m sorry, but I have to. I started this by sending Hunter pictures from my mom’s book. I’ve got to go finish it.”
Gavin sat sullenly in the overstuffed chair while I finished getting my things together. Short of locking me in a closet, which I was pretty sure was against his “angel rules,” he knew he couldn’t stop me. And I guessed that since I was going and he was going, he would just go with me. But he wasn’t going to be happy about it.
I peppered him with questions, hoping he would forget to be in a bad mood. “Who’s going to watch over Aviemore while you’re gone? Are they going to send another angel?”
“Aye,” he mumbled.
“Just one?”
“One’s not enough?” he asked, arching one eyebrow in an incredibly sexy way.
“I’m sure it is, I mean, you are . . .” I stammered, trying to regain my composure. “But why does each town only get one angel? It seems like there should be more.”
“For bigger towns, there is,” he said with a shrug. “But there are a lot of areas to cover all at once. We’re spread pretty thin.”
“Are you going straight to Magnificat, or to St. Paul’s first?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
“I suppose I’m following you to St. Paul’s,” he sighed.
I stopped packing and perched on the arm of the chair. “I know you’re this huge Warrior and I’m upsetting your mission, but there’s no reason we can’t work together.” I flashed my sweetest smile. “Isn’t that what they do at the Abbey? Angels and humans work together?”
“We don’t work for the Abbey,” he reminded me. “I’m not supposed to be interacting with humans at all, let alone sitting in their bedrooms watching them pack.”
For balance, I rested my right hand on my knee. With his forefinger, he began tracing the outline of it. It tingled so deliciously, my entire being focused on his one finger lightly brushing against my skin. Every nerve ending tickled, and I could feel laughter all the way down to my toes. It was an unexplained but glorious electricity. I could hardly bear it.
Suddenly, he stopped, as if he only just noticed what he was doing; as if he’d lost control of himself and didn’t mean to. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, changing his mind. He yanked his hand away from mine, and stood up quickly, almost knocking me off the chair’s arm as he did.
“All right, let’s go,” he said, abruptly.
So much for this love story.
There was no way I could tell my grandparents I was taking off on an emergency trip to London in order to help a teenage orphan they’d never met battle demons. But I couldn’t just disappear, either. I needed a good cover story.
By the time the sun rose and they woke up, I had it ready. I was headed to London with the after-school choir, I told them. That with all the worry of Jo being in the hospital, I’d completely forgotten to tell them about the London competition. I had my phone, I assured them, Gavin the trustworthy tutor was waiting to drive me to the train station, and I had to run.
I don’t think they bought it, but they didn’t stop me from going. They exchanged a few glances I thought might qualify as worried, but my grandmother set her lips into a thin line, nodded her permission, and I was out the door.
I felt terrible about being so dishonest with them, but what else could I do? I knew lying was a sin, a commandment even. But it wasn’t going to hell after I died that worried me. It was going there beforehand.
CHAPTER 22
My first breaths in England’s capital were heavy with anticipation. The platform at London’s Victoria Station where we disembarked was outdoors, but covered by an arch of twisted steel and glass windows that whispered of a thousand good-byes.
My awe was short-lived, though, as we needed to catch the quickest subway to St. Paul’s. Following the round, red “Underground” signs that promised to deliver us to the “Tube” meant traversing through endless, dingy passages that reeked of an unhappy mixture of urine and ash. The tunnels were ancient, but not in a charming, historical way—more a depressing, bomb shelter way. The dismal off-white walls lacked any luster at all; in fact, they seemed to absorb what little florescent light there was.
Just when I thought our dank, claustrophobic wandering couldn’t get any worse, we turned a corner and discovered a filthy bum with matted hair on his head and his face hunched on the ground next to an empty coffee cup.
Gavin must not have liked the look of him either, because he stopped, told me to wait where I was, and walked over to the guy. After crouching down and talking for a few moments, Gavin dropped a couple of what he called “quid”—the funniest word for dollars I’d ever heard—into the battered container, grabbed my hand, and ushered me back out of the tunnel, back the way we’d come.
“The Tube isn’t safe,” Gavin said. “We need to catch a taxi.”
“What did that man tell you?” I asked, as I hurried to keep up with Gavin’s long strides.
“That demons regularly ride the rails looking for innocent young girls heading into London,” he answered.
“What does a homeless man know about demons? And how did you know he wasn’t a demon?”
“I can see demons and angels as clearly as if they were wearing signs on their foreheads,” he stated with a shrug.
“They don’t just blend in with the rest of us?”
“Happily, not to me, or I’d have a heck of a time protecting you. They look like humans, but with breath. I can see their breath.”
“Like it’s a cold day?”
“Precisely.”
“And that guy wasn’t a demon?” I persisted.
“No; actually, he was an angel.”
I jerked to a stop, yanking his fingers as I did. “That disgusting homeless man was an angel?”
“Aye. Lots of the homeless are angels. Since most people walk right past and ignore them, it’s the perfect way for us to protect the public while hidden in plain sight.”
Gavin held the battered metal-and-glass door that led to the street open for me. Once we were through, he tightened his grip on my hand. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s queue up for a taxi.”
The line was long, and full of strange people jostling for room. I was bumped more than once. Every push made me nervous, since I had my mother’s secret journal in my backpack—the journal she possibly was killed for. It wasn’t heavy, but it weighed me down with a thousand pounds of guilt. I had to get to Hunter and then to Jo before it was too late.