It has been good to see Freya’s energy returning. She went to visit her mother this weekend—I think mostly to reassure Esther that she is well again—and spent the time helping around the house, cleaning and tidying and fetching flowers to put in the windows. It was a happy, peaceful time for her, and it helped that her sense of taste has finally returned, which gave her an opportunity to tease her mother (“I can honestly say, Ma, for the first time in my life, that this is the best thing I’ve eaten all week”).
Now that she is fully back on her feet, I have had some time to get back to the hunt, and I am getting closer. I had a near miss just yesterday, and though it went more to Asoharith’s plan than anything else, I was more frustrated at the missed opportunity than hurt or troubled.
Freya did not feel that way when I joined her this afternoon. She stopped in the midst of touching up her makeup. “What’s wrong?” she asked, looking up at me in the mirror. “Are you okay? Something feels off.”
“I’m perfectly fine, Freya.”
She scowled as she finished flicking long black onto her lashes. “You promised me that you’d tell me if anything happened,” she reminded me. “How am I supposed to know what’s up if you don’t, when I can’t see you? Yet.” Her eyes flicked to where I stood, but she saw only a faint wavering in the air.
“I am perfectly fine,” I repeated, then sighed. “But something did happen last night.”
Setting the mascara down, she turned to face me, folding her arms across her chest. “While you were hunting?”
“Yes. I thought that I had Asoharith’s trail, but it was a Perjury, carrying a bit of her essence to lure me after it.”
“A trap?” she asked, tensing.
“I’m fine,” I reminded her. “And I wasn’t so far off, either—the thing left Asoharith only a few moments before. It was sent with a message from her. I’d have gotten more from it, but a pack of Confusions and Transients attacked us, and by the time I’d fought free the thing was gone.” I was still upset about its escape—another few moments and I might have had a current location for Asoharith.
Freya was frowning with narrowed eyes, as if straining them would give her a clear look at me. “Did you go to Brid?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And she said that you’re ‘perfectly fine’?”
“She said that there is no lasting damage.”
She shook her head and turned back to check her own appearance one more time before slipping out the door past me. “You know, it would be really nice to be able to talk to Brid myself sometimes.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“With everything but your own safety.” She gathered up her things, then paused to look at her phone in response to a text. “Oh, come on!” she groaned.
“What is it?”
She collapsed onto the bed. “Only that Candy has to cancel—and I just finished getting ready!” She kicked off her shoes in a fit of pique.
“You look lovely,” I offered.
Despite herself, she laughed. “Thanks. But now I have to get un-lovely.”
“You could go somewhere else instead. Aren’t Kara and George back in town?”
“Yes, but I figure they’re still coming down from the honeymoon, and I don’t want to intrude on that.”
“Then what about Anna?”
“We’re meeting up this weekend. No,” she said, sitting up with the air of someone who just remembered something. “Actually, the one I want to talk to is you, Ace.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Yes. I have something to ask you.”
But she didn’t ask, not right away, and I could see that it was something that has been on her mind for a while. I settled next to her and waited.
Eventually she said, “Can you tell about who I was when I was an angel?”
I was surprised. I have been expecting this question, but in an eventual sense, not believing that it would come any time soon. I wasn’t sure that Freya was ready to know this.
“What brings this on?” I asked, to buy a bit of time.
Freya shrugged. “Just—you told me about what you had learned about Shannon’s past, which made me start to think you must have learned about mine, too. And then when I was sick I had all those angels around me, and I wondered what they knew about me, and what they thought of me. I went back and forth on whether I wanted to know, too, but now I think I’ve made up my mind.” She looked at me. “Will you tell me?”
I studied her aura. She was nervous, of course, but resolved. She truly did want to know.
“Your name was Hestel,” I told her, “and you were a Persuasion.”
She blinked. “Persuasion—remind me?”
“They encourage kindness and goodness in humans. Many of them will work to ease prejudice or to quiet jealousy. You were one of the very best—you were a Seraph.”
“But didn’t you say that Seraphs—”
“Seraphim.”
“—yeah, seraphim—that they were the ones who are allowed to see God?”
“Yes, and so you were,” I answered. “The Regal Eye is typically given to those angels who work directly with our Father—the Orders, naturally, and some others. But it is also sometimes presented to those whose work is so exemplary that the Father wishes to recognize them directly.” The pride in my voice was clear, even if she couldn’t feel it as well.
Freya looked a little flushed. “Just what did I do to earn that?” she asked.
“Many things. I had the honor of speaking once to an angel who had known you, and he said that you were remarkable for your curiosity and your warmth. You always wanted to know the joys and sorrows of others and to share in them. And it wasn’t just humans who benefited from your love—although I could have told him that myself.”
Now she looked very flushed. “Big shoes to fill,” she muttered. She took a breath, and I realized that the question she really wanted to ask was still to come. “Am I—am I living up to what heaven expected of me?”
“You are doing well, Freya,” I said firmly.
But she heard my evasion, and her shoulders slumped. “So I am a disappointment.”
I came up next to her and put arm and wing around her shoulder. “There is no deadline for a successful life,” I told her. “You have many long years ahead of you to accomplish the good that you will do in this world—”
“But what if I don’t?” she asked, looking up at me. “Shannon didn’t. What if I die early? What if Asoharith gets me?”
My heart squeezed with fear and anger. “I will not let that happen.”
“You can’t guarantee that. You can’t watch every hour of every day.”
“I certainly can—”
“Shut up and listen to me, Ace.” Her eyes were filling with tears, but her mouth was firm. “If I were to die tomorrow, would I fall?”
“No,” I answered, simply and absolutely.
She narrowed her eyes again, but there was no doubt in me for her to find. Her eyes slid shut, and she sighed. Then she said, “But I won’t have lived up to my potential, would I?”
“Never mind what angels or humans might expect of you,” I said. “You know what you can do, and so does your Father. And rest assured, you have already done so much good. You have helped your loved ones, and you have helped my charges, and not least, you have helped me.” I rested my face against hers. “Trust me, not many humans have had that chance.”
She smiled a little, despite herself. “Does it really count, though, when I only did it because I love you?”
“Well, where do you think all the rest of the goodness in the world comes from?”
We sat together quietly for a while, and then Freya sighed and nodded and drew away to get into more comfortable clothing. I went out to check the perimeter to give her time to change and to gather her thoughts.
“Any more questions?” I asked her when I came back.
Now she was in her pajamas, curled up on the bed with both Jolly and Merry sprawled up against her. “Yeah, actually,” she said, looking up over her laptop. “You said that Asoharith sent the Perjury with a message. What was the message?”
I did not want to answer that one, but I had promised full honesty. “ ‘You have been hunting me,’” I recited, “ ‘and I have been running. Soon that will change. Soon you will be the hunted.’”
Freya stared at me. “What? She’s been hunting us this whole time!”
“It’s just bravado,” I told her. “Please don’t let it worry you.”
She frowned. “Just trash-talking, huh?”
“Exactly.”
She didn’t believe me, but she didn’t ask any more. I don’t believe it either. I think something will be changing in the next few days, something that will give Asoharith a more equal standing with me, make her strong enough to attack directly. What that might be, I am not sure, but it worries me.