“Then why do you sound sad?”
At length, Rachel sighed. “I think I’m gonna get fired, Hannah.”
Hannah fell silent, watching the house with Rachel as other guests arrived. “You are falling in love with him?”
“Sure seems like,” Rachel nodded. “More and more every day. I don’t want to just watch over him. I want to be with him.” She added as a confession, “Them.”
“That would be a scandal,” Hannah mused dryly.
“I hated her at first, but she’s not what she was. Now I look at her and I see how much she’s changed. I can see why he loves her so much, and it’s not just because he’s young and dazzled. She may be a trashy demon slut,” Rachel said with a wry grin, “but she’s also becoming something wonderful.”
“You believe they would both accept you?”
“I know they would. And whatever the Hosts think or say about it…” Rachel shrugged.
Hannah laughed ruefully. “You’ve never been one to care what others say. Now more than ever. But you are also not unaffected by the mortal magic that struck you at the start of all this. Everyone knows that. Your situation is unique. I don’t think that your censure would be as bad as precedent suggests.”
She reached out to put her arm around the other angel. Rachel allowed it, leaning in to let her head fall on her mentor’s shoulder. “Whatever you choose, I will be here for you.”
“I need to know what you know, Hannah,” Rachel said in a soft voice. “Tell me what you meant in the church yesterday.”
Hannah sighed. “That Alex has been here before? That’s not unusual. So many souls come back again and again. He’s no more or less special than others in that regard. It’s just what he does with his lives is…painful.”
“How do you know?”
The older angel’s face darkened with a bit of sadness. “I watched him once, long ago.”
Rachel’s head came up. “You did? But you’re not a guardian.”
“Oh, maybe not as a full dedication of my time, but I’ve always kept my hand in,” Hannah shrugged. She looked up at the moon.
“He wasn’t anyone terribly special. Just another young Greek farmer. He loved a girl who married an older, wealthier man who in turn treated her awfully. These days, in this nation, her husband would be imprisoned. Alex…my Alex helped her from afar as best he could, but he had no claim on her. Not until the young woman’s husband died of…well. He had a mysterious fall down a hillside,” she smirked.
“Just enough of a stigma followed her after all she’d suffered to ward off any other serious suitor. Only Alex remained. They were very much in love,” Hannah mused. She laughed a bit. “He foreswore the pleasures of all other women and men for her. It was a different place and time, and another life.”
“What happened?”
“A scant few days later, he stood with men of his city on a hilltop at a place called Marathon. He argued, along with others, to attack the much larger invading Persian force right away, while it was still assembling on the beach, without waiting for Spartan reinforcements.
“He wasn’t as eloquent as Miltiades and the other leaders, but he spoke well. They valued that in those days, you know. Public speaking. Men valued generosity and honor, self-control and respect for women and elders, but above all they cared about persuasiveness and skill in battle. By the grace of Heaven, he had all of that.”
Rachel just watched and listened in silence as Hannah stared at the moon. “The next morning,” Hannah said, “the Athenians and their Plataean allies charged and routed the Persian army. I protected him as much as I could, but in battles, men die. He was brave and effective, and so good with that spear, but…before it was all over, he put himself in front of a mortal blow meant for the man at his side. History remembers the man he saved by the name of Aeschylus.
“He and his new wife never had a chance to make love even once,” Hannah added quietly. “There just wasn’t time.” Rachel looked on in silence.
Eventually, Hannah spoke again. “I have made some…inquiries. Things one is not supposed to ask about. Your influence at work, I’m sure.” Hannah smiled a bit, but the smile soon faded. “He has gotten right back into the queue, so to speak, every time. No time spent in Heaven to rest or reflect. He just gets right back in line for his next chance. He hasn’t had as many lives as some others, but…his lifetimes have never been long. And despite his virtues, he has somehow always been terribly unlucky in love. He has always been on the side of the angels, as they say. But he has always died young. Sometimes in war, sometimes not…but always by the sword.”
“Not this time,” Rachel said with an equally quiet but determined voice.
“Perhaps not,” Hannah conceded. “He has protectors, and he isn’t helpless. Lorelei’s hold over him precludes so many possible deaths. She will keep him youthful and virile to a truly unfair age for a mortal. Your influence may even be a multiplier. But he has always died young,” she said again, “and always by the sword.”
She turned to look Rachel in the eye. “The Archangel Michael asked me why this situation should be allowed to continue. I told him that at this point, I feel we owe it to Alex. I only hope, for his sake-and yours-that he finally has the long life full of love that he has always deserved. But I do not know how to break such a pattern as I have seen.”
Hannah extended her hand out to cover Rachel’s. “I don’t want to see you left with a broken heart because you have fallen in love with a mortal doomed to a tragically short life. I hoped to protect you from such a thing.”
A tear formed in Rachel’s eye. “I think it’s too late for that.”
* * *
A week ago, Jocelyn would have given Alex the time of day, but not much more than that. She had little interest in him through high school and middle school before it. He was a good enough classmate; she could always borrow his notes, or sometimes copy his homework, and he was always witty enough…but she’d never have considered going out with him.
Now, however, he held her full attention. She didn’t quite notice her own flirtatious posture, or how she subtly licked her lips, or the way she turned her smooth, shapely mocha brown legs toward his. She did, however, notice the sex appeal that Alex had never shown before. She felt all too aware of his fit body, his scent, his confidence and the ease with which he handled her attention. The guy beside her was a far cry from the boy she knew from school.
She was also aware of the three other pretty girls in the living room who paid close attention to him for all the same reasons.
Others took part in the conversation, though not all showed such interested in Alex’s personal attention. There were a couple other girls, a couple of guys. That odd Emo boy-band-looking guy loomed intently in one corner while his date practically ignored him in favor of Alex.
Jocelyn, at least, was unattached. She had one other advantage over her competition, too: she had known Alex for, like, forever. Most everyone else in the living room was a stranger.
“I always knew you were brave,” Jocelyn smiled. “You stood up to that crazy sub we had in Spanish when she started giving people detention for sneezing.”
“Oh, whatever. I was freaked out. I just didn’t want to get hauled away someplace to get shot in the head. So I got shot in the chest right there in the parking garage instead, ‘cause I’m brilliant like that,” Alex smirked.
“I heard you jumped in front of the gun to protect your friend,” said Brittany.
“That’s what I heard, too,” nodded Britney.
“Wow, did you really do that?” asked Brittnee.
Behind her tight-lipped smile, Jocelyn gritted her teeth. Three blondes with the same goddamn name but different spellings, she thought, and not a whole brain between them. I feel like I’m on a reality show.
“No, she was out of the way from it,” Alex said. “She fought, too. It’s not like Taylor just cowered behind me.”