Angels and People and What Makes Them Different

Author’s note: this story is part of a series. Here you can read the first, second, and third stories. This story starts seconds after the end of the third story, so I recommend you at least read that one before you start this one.

Amelia hung in the air, her mouth open. Her living sister could see her. Little Melanie had just pointed at her and shouted her name. She was still staring at her. Her parents, who had just helped rescue Melanie from a dangerous lunatic moments ago, were still too shaken to process her words. They just kept on kissing her and hugging her, but all the while little Melanie craned her neck to keep looking at her not-quite-so-living sister.

Only when it was too late did Amelia realize how much time she’d wasted in stunned silence. She wanted to say something — anything — to Melanie, but now her angelic mentor, Oriel, had a firm grip on her arm. She hadn’t even seen him reappear. She had last seen him no more than five minutes ago, when he had agreed to take care of an injured demon for her.

“Amelia, we need you at the Silver Watchtower. Now,” he said.

“But — Melanie — I — ”

“It’ll have to wait. Come on.”

Amelia looked over at him. Broad shoulders, shimmering waves of blond, and those speckled white wings. It wasn’t fair that her mentor made her weak in her hovering knees. It made it that much harder to say no to him, especially when she knew she was in the wrong.

“But…Oriel, please…”

He placed his hands gently on her shoulders.

“I know. You want to stay and talk to her, but something has come up that could put all of humanity in danger and Marmaroth says only you can help.”

Amelia sighed. Their leader was not one to hand out praise or special assignments lightly. Whatever this was, it had to be important, and deep down Amelia relished the thought of proving herself yet again.

“Okay,” she said, “Let’s go.”

Oriel reached into his robe. Amelia grabbed his arm.

“And this time,” she said, “you’re going to show me how you get around so fast.”

“Oh,” said Oriel, “sure. I just use this Gate Latch Ring.”

He pulled out a golden ring about twice the size of a wedding band. He twisted it, and Amelia heard the tiny click of some mechanism locking in place. A miniature Guardian Gate opened right inside the ring, and before she could say anything it sucked them through. Once again, they found themselves flying through a purple sky, not quite day and not quite night, as Oriel sped them to the Silver Watchtower.

As they flew, Amelia was quiet. So much had happened in the last few minutes that her mind was scrambling to put every thought in its place. Swirling images became words, and those words strung together to form questions. When she was so full of questions she could burst, she did.

“Why can my little sister see me now? Is she safe? Are other demons going to come sniffing around now? Did you manage to fix up that demon I stabbed? Is that even allowed? Am I in trouble for that? Is that why Marmaroth is calling for me? You’d tell me if I was in trouble, right? Why I don’t I have a Gate Latch Ring?”

“Not sure, yes, possibly, yes, not really, no you’re not, that’s not why, yes I would, you haven’t earned one yet,” said Oriel. “Does that cover it?”

Amelia smiled despite herself.

“For now. I want more details later.”

When they reached Marmaroth’s office, the wise and ancient angel was circling through the air above his desk. He turned to face them. His golden robe and wings containing every color imaginable all made a halo around the dark skin of his face. Every time she saw him, Amelia felt an even greater awe and respect.

“Amelia,” he said, “I am glad you have come. You are needed here.”

Marmaroth descended to his desk. Harahel, the angel librarian, appeared by his side and added another book to an already substantial spread.

“For many years, we have been tracking a strange new enemy. Your spear, you may recall, was created specifically for them. Though we have met a few in battle, they are quick to retrieve their wounded and retreat. You could even say they are…toying with us. But now, we have uncovered something far more disturbing.”

Harahel waved her hands, and a set of papers lifted off the table and straightened themselves out in the air. Amelia looked them over. They were schematics. One showed a pair of googles. One showed a bag connected to a long tube. One showed a glass chamber about as tall as a man.

“The ecto-lock chamber!” she said. “That’s where I got caught the night I…the night I became an angel. I got out and helped the others escape.”

Marmaroth nodded to Harahel, then turned back to Amelia.

“Do you remember their names?”

“Yes…I think. The only one I ever saw again was Mathias, but it’s been years since we spoke. Last I saw him, he had met up with his old team and was helping them with the project again. They were the ones who designed the ecto-lock chamber, and it turns out those goggles make it pretty easy for the living and the dead to work together.”

“Good,” said Marmaroth, “this confirms everything he told us. Take heart, Mathias. You are earning our trust.”

Amelia turned around. Behind her, two angels had just brought in Mathias.

“Amelia!” he said. “Thank goodness you’re here. I was hoping you could talk some sense into your fellow angels. They think I’m involved with some sort of demonic plot, which I think comes from a certain reluctance to admit that humans are clever enough to invent this sort of technology on our own.”

He sneered at Marmaroth, then flinched and turned back to Amelia.

“You have to understand, I’m the victim here. See, I found out how I died and — ”

“Silence,” said Marmaroth. “You have made your case to us already. We will inform Amelia of her mission and then she can question you.”

Harahel waved her hands again. The schematics returned to the table, only to be replaced by three photographs. One showed Mathias in life. The next showed a man with dark skin, curly hair slicked back, and an easy smile. The third showed a pale man with a ragged grey beard and a distracted gaze.

“Three human partners,” said Harahel, “who found a way to capture spirits, each for a different reason. The path of human knowledge is quite predictable, I find. Their project does not fit.”

Marmaroth nodded with a heavy sigh.

“Yes, there are questions they could not have answered on their own, and for those answers we credit our new enemy. If they have received any demonic help, then we must find out why.”

Mathias whimpered.

“I’ve never even seen a demon! If anyone was talking to a demon, it was that shambling, creepy, unkempt, opportunistic, little drudge Ralph Khomiakov!”

He pointed to the photograph of the bearded man.

“He poisoned me, and if I hadn’t come floating back I’m certain he would’ve done the same to Eugene. Instead he had the moderate good sense to put his tail between his legs and run, taking our whole damn lab with him.”

“Where’s Eugene right now?” asked Amelia.

“Most likely at the lab still, looking for some way to track down Ralph. That’s where I was before your friends came and grabbed me.”

“Then I say we go back to the lab. Oriel and I can help you search.”

“Excellent,” said Marmaroth. “Amelia, we will arrange for another angel to watch over Melanie, as always. Make your way to the lab. We will keep Mathias here.”

“But — ”

Marmaroth floated over and put a hand on Mathias’s shoulder.

“Even if you are innocent, you will only put yourself in greater danger by confronting this Ralph Khomiakov. He has the power to capture you, and if his demon is there you will be doubly outmatched. Here, at the Silver Watchtower, the innocent have nothing to fear.”

Mathias looked into Marmaroth’s eyes. His normally pinched, prim, and goateed face went soft. He nodded, then looked away. Amelia knew what that was like. She too had seen the overwhelming, overpowering love in the angel’s eyes. He could be harsh, blunt, even outright maddening at times, but every fiber of his being existed to protect the souls of the innocent. Mathias turned back to Amelia.

“Eugene is a good man. Keep him safe.”

Amelia nodded.

“I promise.”

With that, Oriel and Amelia flew out from the Silver Watchtower.

###

Mathias’s lab, located in the basement of an office building downtown, had been stripped bare. Eugene finished dragging a heavy closet away from the wall as Amelia and Oriel flew in. In person, he was even more handsome than his photograph, even as he brushed the sweat from his brow and huffed. He wore a driver’s cap and had his sleeves rolled up past his elbows. His skin was the deep brown of walnut wood, and his smile came back when he looked over at a boy who looked just like him. The boy had on a pair of glowing green goggles, just like the pair Amelia had seen so long ago, and he was staring at her and her mentor.

“Byron, you see Mathias anywhere? He’s been awfully quiet.”

“No, daddy,” said the boy, “but I see another ghost and somebody else. Looks like a angel.”

“An angel, son. Anyway, let me see.”

Byron handed the goggles back to his father, who slipped them on himself. When he saw Oriel, his mouth fell open.

“Well I’ll be,” he said. “If you’re not an angel, I don’t know what is. Allow me to introduce myself.”

He pulled off his cap and swung it downward in a grand bow.

“Eugene Henderson, metaphysical engineer, proud father, and all-around innovator. This here’s my son, Bryon. Say hello, Byron.”

Byron bowed with not quite as much panache as his father, but the effort was there. Amelia, in turn, curtseyed to both.

“My name’s Amelia Patenaude, and this is Oriel. And actually, we’re both angels. Guardian angels, in fact.”

“Well hey, that’s mighty reassuring. We could use a little good fortune right now. Did you happen to pass another ghost on your way in here? Fellow with a goatee?”

“Your friend is in safekeeping with the other angels,” said Oriel.

“And I’m the one who helped him escape one of your chambers a few years back,” added Amelia. “Now we’re here to help you track down Ralph.”

“Good luck,” said Eugene. “He wiped this place clean before he left. As you can see, I’ve resorted to moving all the furniture around just to find the tiniest scrap of anything.”

“Why don’t you take a rest and let us have a look?” asked Amelia.

Eugene agreed and had a seat at his desk, turning the chair so he could watch the angels as they searched. Byron sat on the floor next to him playing with some homemade contraption full of tiny light bulbs in different colors. Amelia and Oriel went darting around everywhere, poking their heads directly through the furniture so they could peek into every nook and cranny. After searching like this for a while and turning up nothing, Amelia floated back to Eugene.

“I’ve been wondering,” she said, “it’s been years since I’ve heard anything about your work. Why the secrecy?”

Eugene shook his head.

“No secrecy ma’am, we just haven’t found our place in the market. We tried pitching this any which way you can imagine. Mathias, bless his soul, kept pushing for that whole ‘rehabilitation of troubled spirits’ thing but that’s a hard pitch when most folks don’t really believe in spirits to begin with. And it really didn’t help when people started getting high off ectoplasm and the government stepped in. They were convinced we’d just invented some new drug and cooked our own brains on the stuff. My goodness…”

He laughed and put his face in his hands.

“Never a dull moment on the fringes of science. If I’d born looking like your, well, typical academic, I’d probably be cooped up in library studying some boring old thing. Life’s full of blessings if you just know which angle to look at, right Byron?”

“That’s right, Daddy!”

Amelia smiled. She could listen to Eugene all day. He spoke with so much energy that you couldn’t help but care about whatever he cared about.

“So you came to this project to make a name for yourself,” she asked, “is that right?”

“Absolutely. Make a name for myself, put my talents to good use, show my son what’s possible if you use your head and don’t shy away from hard work. That’s the dream, right?”

“And Mathias wanted to help out troubled spirits…”

Amelia wondered then if Mathias had ghosts in his family. Well, other ghosts. That would explain a lot. Eugene picked up where she’d left off.

“Yep, that’s Mathias. Now Ralph…he’s always been the quiet one. I would say he’s in it for the money, but…I don’t know. I mean, I’m hoping for a handsome payout too, don’t get me wrong. With Ralph, it’s just…he does things and says things that other people just don’t. Call it eccentric genius, if you like. He was the one who came to us with the plans for our first prototype.”

Amelia’s ears perked up. She waved over to Oriel, who was just coming up from the floorboards.

“Oriel, did you hear that? Ralph was the first one to come up with the ecto-lock chamber. That means that demon could’ve given him the idea.”

Eugene leaned back.

“Hold on now, a demon?”

“Yes, that’s why we need to find him. We really should hurry too, he could be…”

Amelia stopped to listen to the words she’d just said.

“…hurry…”

She glowed with excitement as the thought clicked into place.

“Eugene, when did Ralph clear out the lab?”

“Just last night,” said Eugene. “like some sort of magic trick. Mathias and I left around, oh, six or seven? Then we get here in the morning and everything’s gone.”

“So he left in a rush. Perfect! Go check the mail.”

Eugene leaped to his feet, fished out his keys, and ran up to the mailbox. Just a few minutes later he was back, panting and clutching a stack of envelopes. He and Bryon sorted through them until they found one labeled “Ralph Khomiakov” and tore it open. Eugene skimmed it, reading the most relevant details out loud. As he read, Oriel looked over his shoulder and copied the letter onto a scroll of his own.

“Dear Mr. Khomiakov…sent my previous letter to your home, sending this to your lab for the sake of urgency…secured you a meeting with the president of Dietrichson Pharmaceuticals…to present your new solution for anaesthesia…”

Eugene set down the letter.

“There it is: he’s nearly got himself an investor and he wants to cut us out of the deal. That little rat…”

Eugene bit his tongue.

“Well, I for one am smart enough not to barge into that meeting and give them a piece of my mind. Once Mathias is back here, we’ll just have to pick up where we left off with our own notes. A shame…Please, if there’s anything you can do to stop him, please do.”

Oriel frowned.

“I’d love to, but we’ll need to speak with the other angels first. Amelia, I can take this back to Marmaroth if you’d like to go see your sister now.”

“Thank you Oriel, I would.”

“Shoot,” said Eugene, “if that demon you mentioned is getting into pharmaceuticals…well, my guess is he’ll have to join the club.”

He laughed and slapped his knee.

“Anyway, don’t be strangers you two! I’m happy to help however I can.”

They said their goodbyes, then Amelia and Oriel floated out into the street to talk privately.

“I don’t like this,” said Oriel. “If that demon is using Ralph to get more people to use the ecto-lock technology, my guess is that they have some plan to turn it against us. Can’t imagine how, though. Angels can break out of those things pretty easily.”

“I’ll keep thinking about it, but right now I just need to see Melanie. Tell Marmaroth we can trust Eugene, Mathias can go home, and I want one of those Gate Latch Rings.”

Oriel chuckled.

“No guarantees, but I will.”

Oriel disappeared, and Amelia flew home.

###

Amelia found her mother, brother, and sister out in the park across the street from their house. Her father was inside, finishing up his report to the police. Likewise, her brother stood in the center of a gaggle of children his age, telling the story of that morning with dramatic effect. Her mother sat on a bench, watching Melanie like a hawk.

Melanie only sat under a tree, whispering to an angel that stood over her smiling. This was odd. Other angels had stepped in for Amelia before, but they’d always kept their distance from Melanie. Most guardian angels tried to interfere as little as possible in the lives of their guarded souls. Amelia, ever unorthodox, was one of the only ones who made the effort to speak with hers. There was something else odd about this angel: he didn’t shine. In fact, he seemed almost overtaken by the shade of the tree, rendering him dark and grey. Aside from that, though, he looked like a normal angel. Still, Amelia didn’t have much time to inspect him, because the second he noticed her, he vanished. She rushed over to her sister.

“Amelia!” she squealed, before remembering to whisper again.

“Why are you whispering?” Amelia asked.

“Because it makes mama sad when I talk to angels.”

“Oh.”

Amelia had so many things to say, so many questions. Some of them were extremely important for her sister’s safety. Some of them had nothing to do with anything, and yet somehow those felt just as urgent as the others. She got herself into a seated position, which felt awkward, because she never sat anymore, and floated down to Melanie’s level.

“Melanie…do you know how much I love you?”

She nodded her little head as hard as she could.

“Yes! I know!”

“How do you know?”

“Because…because you’re my sister…”

Amelia smiled and nodded. Was it okay to cry in front of her guarded soul? She didn’t know. She didn’t really have a choice.

“How else do you know?”

“I know…because…because…you came back! Papa said you went to heaven, but now you, you…you’re here. You protect me.”

“That’s right.”

Amelia wanted to hug her. She wanted to kiss her head and smell her hair. She wanted to squeeze her tiny little fingers use them to count off all the old nursery rhymes. But she couldn’t. And she knew why she couldn’t. And she knew whose fault it was.

“Melanie…I’m not like other angels. One day, when you grow up, our parents will tell you more about me, and you’ll learn more about angels and people and what makes them different.”

She could’ve cried herself into a useless pile of ectoplasmic goo. Instead, she scrunched up her face, cupped her hand around her ear, and leaned forward.

“I need you to listen really closely now, just like this, all right?”

Melanie somehow made this show of listening even more adorable than Amelia had rendered it. Amelia took a deep breath, then spoke.

“I’m not perfect. People aren’t perfect. Even though you’re perfect to me, you’re still a person. I want you to know that you don’t have to be perfect to do important things. That’s why even though I’m not perfect, I will always love you and I will always keep you safe no matter what. That’s my important thing.”

Melanie nodded.

“I know!”

Amelia smiled.

“Good.”

She took another deep breath. Warmth filled her chest as the storm in her heart abated. For all the dangers that still lurked around them, it felt so good to talk with her sister. All of her doubts and fears and questions could wait.

Except, there was one very insistent question that wormed its way down from her mind to her tongue.

“Melanie, who were you talking to before I got here?”

“An angel,” she said.

“And what did he say to you?”

“He said he’s my friend…and…he said I should trust my dreams.”