Chapter 29
Calise’s mother’s sitting room
Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Calise answered the doorbell of her childhood home to admit Ellen. Stogey, freshly released from quarantine, trotted after her and sniffed Ellen before retreating back to the comfort of the couch. Mom had called a mandatory meeting.
Ellen looked ravishing, as usual, in a lime green skirt and fitted white blouse. Short stacked brown heels completed her tailored look. She leaned in to give Calise a quick squeeze hello and her body went rigid. She whispered, “Your mother is just coming back to us, thanks to you, but all my senses are sharp. I heard both the heartbeats inside of you at the club. When were you going to tell us you’re pregnant?”
“Coffee, Ellen?” Calise’s mother interrupted.
Calise jumped, shaking her head vehemently at Ellen. I need more time—I just got him back in my life, I’m not about to scare him away just yet.
Ellen pursed her lips and answered, “Of course, Mrs. Rowe. That would be lovely. It’s good to see you again.” She winked.
Mom’s aura was returning little-by-little, and she smiled warmly. Calise cozied up with Lucas and Stogey on the couch. Ellen sat opposite them on the matching loveseat, and her mom brought out a tray with coffee, cups, cream, and sugar and her famous lemon bars. She set everything out on the coffee table. Calise needed to teach Mom how to make a better cup of coffee because here she was again, sipping it in her living room. At least she was using the coffee she’d brought her back from San Jose. Her mother set down a plate for herself beside Ellen.
Seers versus angels.
“Mom, is it okay if Stogey sits on the couch with us?” Calise grinned as Stogey laid his head down on her lap.
“A little late to ask now, isn’t it?” Her mom fidgeted, cutting perfect squares of her bars and placing one in front of each of them. Her hands were shaking as she poured them each a cup of coffee. “Please tell me exactly how my daughter became a seer,” she blurted out when she finally sat down.
Ellen’s glow overshadowed her mother’s, but as Lucas and Calise sat across from the two angels, she still couldn’t believe her eyes—her mother and her best friend. She fingered the necklace from Lucas.
“Mrs. Rowe, I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am,” he started. “I tried to stay away from your daughter, but…We were trying to be safe,” he mumbled.
A-fricking-dorable.
Calise piped up. “I went to Costa Rica to find answers and got them. End of story. Lucas can teach me how to use this gift—it’s not a curse—that lets me finally see my mother and best friend in a beautiful new light. You even knocked off that demon in the alley the other night. That was amazing.”
Now it was Lucas’s and Ellen’s turn to face her mom, who was beat red.
“What?” Ellen asked.
“Yeah, I saw this demon in a dark alley, and I told him I knew what he was and then poof, Mom showed up,” Calise related.
Lucas turned her cheek toward him with his hand. His touch melted her. “I’ve been trying to avoid demons, and you just marched up to one and announced that you knew what it was?” he asked incredulously. “I’m so in love with you right now,” he said. “Pissed, but in love.”
She smirked. “It worked out fine; I’m fine. This necklace was your mother’s, right? When I grab it, angels show up—how?” She looked between the three of them.
The angels stared hard at Lucas. He went to the front window and looked outside. “The two necklaces have been in my family for almost two thousand years. They encase and protect pieces of wood from the cross that Jesus was crucified on. My family descends from Nicodemus, and the angel Alejandro has been with us since the night Jesus was buried, keeping our family and its artifacts, safe. I am a seer like my father and his father before him.
“Nicodemus passed on the sight through his descendants. The necklace can summon an angel when a demon is about to engage in a true act of evil. The artifact seeks to restore balance. The piece of the cross represents the earth itself that is alive in the trees, the water, and the rocks. The earth stores all acts of good and evil that occur. The cross touched the absolute purity of the living God, but that wood itself was used to commit an act of utter atrocity. The wood holds the essence of evil and seeks to summon purity to rebalance the universe. When the demon went for you, and you held the necklace, you summoned the nearest angel, who came to avenge the act of vengeance that was about to be committed.
“I’ve heard that an angel cannot resist a summons and will always fight, but we never know how it will turn out. Calise, I killed Nara’s mother. Her family has long sought to eradicate seers, artifacts, and angels. Now that she knows my family protects other artifacts, she will hunt me and kill anyone close to me. I came to protect you.”
Ellen’s jaw dropped open.
Mom approached the necklace for a closer look. “You’re right, Lucas. I couldn’t resist the call, even though it’s been many long years since I’ve felt the need to be an angel at all,” she said, turning the artifact over in her hand. “Demons commit daily acts of violence. Their violence propagates more violence so it ripples out in huge circles around them. Angels try to commit smaller acts of good which are much slower to reveal themselves and harder to propagate. Ask Ellen. She’s a wonderful angel.”
She modestly shook her head.
Calise took Lucas’s hands in hers. “Let me get this straight. Angels and demons ignore each other unless summoned to fight at the exact moment violence is about to occur?” Her heart was in her throat.
Ellen spoke. “We can be born to any combination of parents. At eighteen, we remember who we are—angel or demon. Angels see demons and they see us, but unless a human is being harmed, we avoid each other, even though we can see each other. We don’t have to be summoned to fight. If a demon engages me, I fight. Or if I’m in the right place at the right time, like at the frat house when we were in college…” Ellen let her words hang in the air.
The memory, freshly recalled from Shane’s visit, washed over her again. She needed to tell them about that.
Lucas squeezed her hands. “I’m sorry I’ve dragged you into all this.”
“How many seers and other artifacts exist?” Ellen asked.
“My family is pure, undiluted, as are the descendants of Joseph of Arimathema. But anyone, we are…with,” he coughed uncomfortably, “can get the sight if we connect emotionally and…physically. There are dilute seers all over the world; most people think they’re crazy. I only know the whereabouts of my family’s artifacts, but I’m certain others are in existence. Cali, I told you to avoid demons, not charge up to them and announce you know what they are. You could have been killed.”
“I should’ve been afraid of that demon in the alley, but I was angry. Forget about that, you three need to hear about someone who scared me a lot more than that demon in the alley. Shane paid me a visit. He broke into my apartment and told me to stay far away from Lucas.”
He was on his feet instantly. “Did that transitor hurt you? What else did he say?”
“He said his ex-girlfriend, Nara, is after you, and I won’t be safe if you’re around me.” She hesitated. It was so hard to risk saying anything to him that might make him leave her, but she knew Shane was going to be a problem.
Ellen was panting. “Shane fell?” She stared at Lucas as if he would have all the answers.
“Yes,” Lucas said. “Shane’s with Nara and her family now. They hunt my kind, especially what we have kept safe for all these years.”
“The necklace?” Mom asked.
“Yes,” he admitted, “and my family’s other artifacts.”
Ellen set down her cup. “Well, that’s it. This is huge. The demons that know you and Lucas exist won’t give up. You both have my vow that I will assist you in any way I can to keep you and the artifacts, safe.”
Mom chimed in. “I agree with Ellen. I’ll convince Uncle Don to hire some angels to be with you at work, and you need to be ready to go into hiding. I’ve been doing that long enough. Lucas, I swear to protect you and my daughter no matter what.”
“There’s one more thing,” Ellen rested her chin in her hand. “I’ve been keeping track of angel and demon births for some time now. There is an underground network of angels that has been watching everything. Angel births are on the rise, and there are an alarming number of missing and abducted angel babies. Something strange is going on. Calise, keeping you safe needs to be our first priority, just in case.”
“In case of what?” Lucas looked at her, puzzled.
Here goes nothing.
“What Ellen is saying is… She’s worried about the chance that… Lucas, Mom, I’m pregnant.”
Lucas showed panic in his eyes while Mom’s face lit up.
Please, Lucas, say it will be okay… Everything depends on how you react to this news; I should have told him alone.
The space between Lucas and Calise seemed like the distance between the earth and the moon. Silence hung in the air like that moment at the end of a symphony before the audience claps. She waited, stroking Stogey’s head.
He knelt in front of her and tenderly touched her stomach. “Mi canción, this child is a benedictión, a blessing. I feel in my heart, this was meant to be. Te quiero, mi amor.”
After the details of Calise’s safety were hammered out, Lucas hugged her from behind and pointed at her mom’s “brag” wall on the way out the front door. “I especially love that picture, Mrs. Rowe.” Nine-year-old Calise, with her bowl haircut, refused to smile for the camera.
“I’m going to be a grandma.” Mom’s aura grew a little bit brighter.