Fallen Angel (21 page)

When it was finished, Sarah laid on the couch with Dinah on her lap and Sophie stretched along the back of the sofa, and gazed at the tree. It was beautiful, and if she half-closed her eyes, she could imagine that she was in some magical land where dreams came true, or a fairyland forest, or Heaven . . .

What happened, Zach? Where did you go? I would have liked to have gotten to know you a little better.

She set Dinah down on the couch and got up to go pour a glass of wine. She walked around the tree, admiring it--it really was a beautiful tree. Not too many ornaments, not too few, just right. She wished that she hadn't had to buy them all at once, she wished that they were family heirlooms, but you can't make heirlooms, they have to happen naturally, and it just hadn't happened for her. Maybe the ones she'd bought today would
become
heirlooms. Maybe.

She laid back down on the couch and pulled the old afghan over her. She cried a little. Not much, but thinking about Zach had made her feel sad, and she felt like a little self-pity. She hadn't known him well enough for his absence to depress her unduly, but it was unsettling. She thought maybe she had begun to fall in love with him, not that there was any future in it . . . still, it had been fun. Exciting. Interesting to feel like a schoolgirl with a crush again after so many years. Ah well.

I wanted to find out about you. I wanted to know what books you loved, and which ones made you thoughtful. I wanted to lie on this couch, toe to toe with you, and read poetry and drink wine, and laugh. I wanted to kiss you.

I wanted to know what you carried in your pockets.

I wanted to know what you ate for breakfast, and what you thought about when you gazed out the window at the perfect moon, and what woke you up at night. I wanted to know what you dream about. Do you dream?

Do you sleep?

I didn't want to lose you so soon. I never really knew you at all.

Oh, Zach. Where did you go?

* * *

She dreamed again of the angel council, if that was what it was. The old wooden table and the gruff old men who reminded her so much of the black and white tufted shorebirds that frequented the beach across from her house. They looked like worried old men scuttling back so the surf didn't wet their feet, and their calls sounded like grumbling.

In the dream, the same candles smoked in brass dishes placed in niches in the stone walls, and wax ran down the walls to form in centuries-old pools on the floor. The air was smoky and fragrant with the scent of musk and old perfume, and the murmur of voices was just barely below her ability to understand the words. She strained to hear what they were saying, but it might as well have been a foreign language. Probably
was
a foreign language.

The same bad-tempered angel was there at the table, the one who had been playing with the knife, and she realized with a start that it was Yurkemi. She suddenly felt afraid, and forced herself out of the dream. She still lay on the couch, and was disoriented for a moment, the tree lights twinkling in the dark room.

Sophie and Dinah were curled up together at the end of the sofa, and Sarah was amazed. She never imagined that the two of them would get along at all, much less become friends. She shook her head. Things were happening that she didn't understand, and they were things that she would
never
understand. She might as well try to understand the dreams--and she didn't really want to understand them. It was too hard, too strange. It was an exciting interlude in a quiet life, but she thought she might like to have her quiet life back.

Not that it was up to her. The angel had come, and now he was gone, and there was nothing at all she could do about it. Another Christmas alone. She got up off the couch, unplugged the Christmas tree lights, and went to bed, leaving the cats tangled up on the sofa, sound asleep.

29.

Sarah hung a wreath on the front door of the bookshop, and one on her office door, and hung Christmas stockings along the shelf on the back wall. There was one for Jason and one for Cate, and a tiny catnip one for Sophie, although she had been thinking that maybe it was time for Sophie to retire from the shop. She'd been a "working cat" for a long time, and now she almost never came out into the shop, but spent her days sleeping in the chair in Sarah's office. She and Dinah seemed to be getting along fine, even to the point of sleeping together in a heap on Sarah's bed at night. She didn't much like being put into the carrier for the ride to the shop, and there didn't seem to be much point in it if she didn't enjoy being there.

Maybe in the spring I'll get a kitten for the shop
, Sarah thought.
That would certainly liven things up
.

She came in one morning and found a new stocking, one marked "Sarah" in silver glitter, hanging on the shelf. Both Cate and Jason denied any knowledge of it. She could tell by their grins that one (or both) of them had brought it in--neither of them were very good at fibbing--but neither of them would admit it.

Sarah planned to put their Christmas bonuses in their stockings on Christmas Eve; she wondered if she would find anything in hers.

* * *

Christmas week went by in a blur. They kept the shop open until 6:00 on Christmas Eve for last minute shoppers--and they had more of them than Sarah expected--but once the last customer was out the door bearing his gift-wrapped books, Sarah locked the door and turned over the sign, and they had their brief Christmas party.

Not a party at all, really, but Sarah had brought in spiced wine and she poured each of them a glass, then they exchanged gifts. Sarah had put a $50 bill inside a Christmas card for Jason--he was predictably pleased--and a pair of silver earrings with amethyst beads was in a tiny white box in Cate's.

Sarah had actually forgotten all about the black and white pot at Sarah's, so it wasn't any trouble to act surprised when she opened the box. She thought she'd leave the pot at the office, on her desk, maybe with her pens in it, so she would see it every day. It was so special to have someone make something especially for you, to make something with their hands. It had been a long time since Sarah had actually
made
anything. Maybe she'd do that, too, in the spring. Along with a kitten. Yeah, right. Probably neither of those things would happen, but you never knew. A kitten might come along out of the blue, and Sarah might discover a new interest in, oh, ceramics or needlepoint or something.

Cate gave Jason a record store gift certificate, and he gave her a certificate to the art supply store, and he gave Sarah a Christmas mug with snowmen on it to replace the elephant one he'd broken months before. She'd forgotten about that, too, and had been using one of the mugs she'd bought as a set when she started offering coffee at the store. They were heavy, plain white mugs that were hard to break, because she knew they'd get dropped a lot--just fine for customers' coffee in the store, but she was glad to have a mug of her own again. Snowmen, though--well, okay, snowmen it was. They would probably make her smile in August just as much as they did now.

Cate and Jason gathered up their things and took off in a hurry, Cate to meet her parents at the airport--they were flying down to a spend a few days with her--and Jason to pick up his girlfriend and go to a party at someone's house. Sarah took her time cleaning up. She didn't have anywhere in particular to go.

She cleaned the coffee pot and washed the mugs, and straightened up the little kitchen, even polishing the sink fixtures. Both her parents and James' parents had asked her to come north for Christmas, but with the store, it was really impossible. Even if she had wanted to go, which she didn't. Not this year. Not yet. She'd call them tomorrow and wish them a Merry Christmas, and then she'd take herself out to lunch at one of the restaurants that were open, and maybe go to a movie or something. A solitary Christmas wouldn't be so bad.

After she'd cleaned the kitchen, she straightened up her office, putting books back on the shelves and tidying up the piles of paper. She took the pens out of the pencil holder they were in and arranged them in the new pot that Cate had made, and then she went back into the kitchen and washed her new mug. When she could think of nothing more to do to put off going home, she picked up her bag and turned the light out in the office, then started toward the front door.

Something made her stop and look at the stockings hung across the shelf in the back and, feeling silly, the felt the toe of the one marked "Sarah." To her surprise, there was something in it! She set her bag on the floor and stood on her tiptoes to look inside the cheap felt stocking. She couldn't get high enough to look, so she reached up and slipped it off its nail. She peered down inside, but still couldn't see, so she reached inside and, way down at the bottom, felt something smooth and hard.

She pulled it out and held--a feather. A beautiful, perfect feather carved from a piece of pinkish quartz. She held it up to the light and it glowed like a living thing. She smiled, slowly, and cradled the crystal feather in her palm, then looked up toward the ceiling. "Hey," she said. "Thank you."

* * *

She walked out the front door, her step lighter, finding it hard to keep the smile from her lips. She nearly ran into the Grahams, who were just coming down the stairs from their apartment. "Where are you two heading?" she asked. "Oh, we're going to church," Elizabeth said. "Holiday tradition, you know," Donald added. "Want to join us?"

Sarah hesitated. "Oh, no, really I--"

"Oh, come on! It's Christmas Eve!"

* **

The church was beautiful, an older one made of stone. Sarah had never been inside, although she'd been past it many times. She sat in a pew next to the Grahams and looked up at the stained glass angels that ringed the sanctuary, and smelled the same kind of smoky, waxy smell she remembered from her dreams. Which vision of angels was real, the stern, regal, stained glass ones, or quiet Zachriel, dressed all in black, reaching out to take her hand? Or Yurkemi--where did he fit in? Were there bad angels as well as good, just like human beings?

She bent her head and prayed for Zach, prayed that he was all right, wherever he was, and thanked him for being in her life, even for short a time.
Everyone's always leaving me
, she thought.
I can't even keep an angel around
. A tear slipped down her cheek and she swiped at it with her hand, hoping that the Grahams hadn't noticed. But Elizabeth reached over and took her hand, squeezing it, and Sarah squeezed back. She leaned her head back and looked up at the angels in the windows, so beautiful, and so far away, and she tried to think of nothing at all.

* * *

She thought he might come at Christmas.

She woke up early, and it took her a few minutes to remember.
It's Christmas
, she thought.
Merry Christmas to me
. She got up and, on her way into the kitchen to put the water on for tea, plugged in the Christmas tree lights. She heard a rustling, and saw Sophie curled up on the tree skirt, her blond fur lit up by the white lights. "Merry Christmas, Sophie," she said, and "Merry Christmas, Dinah," as the black cat stretched and yawned and came to wind around her feet as she stood at the stove.

There were gifts under the tree that her parents had sent, and after she had made tea and cut herself a piece of pound cake that she'd bought for the occasion, she brought them over and piled them next to her on the couch. She unwrapped them slowly, making the ceremony last. A beautiful white sweater, a string of artificial pearls, and a book of Rilke poems, one she didn't own. How did they know? She assumed her father had picked it out; they shared a love of poetry and had often discussed the German poet.

She opened the book to a familiar poem, one of her favorites.