Kissed by an Angel

'Maybe.'

They had come around to a full view of the back of the house. Tristan gazed up at the dormer window that looked out from Ivy's music room.

'So this is where the chick lives,' Lacey said. 'I suppose I should think it refreshing that a guy would let himself be such a fool over a girl' He saw Lacey's lips curl back in distaste.

'I don't see why you should think anything. It's got nothing to do with you,' Tristan replied. 'Are you going to teach me?'

'Oh, why not? I have time to kill.'

They searched out a hidden nook in the trees and sat down, Ella following slowly behind them.

Lacey began to pet the cat, and Ella rewarded her with a small, polite purr. When Tristan looked closely, he could see that the tips of her fingers did not glow. They were quite solid.

'All it requires is concentration,' said Lacey. 'Intense concentration. Look at your fingertips, stare at them as a way of maintaining your focus. You almost will them into being.'

Tristan extended his hand toward Ella. He forced everything else out of his mind, focusing on his fingertips. He felt a slight tingling sensation, the kind of pins-and-needles feeling he used to get when his arm fell asleep. The sensation grew stronger and stronger in his fingers. Then another kind of tingling began in his head, a feeling he did not like. He started to grow faint. His whole self, except for his fingers, felt like it was melting away. He pulled back.

Lacey clucked at him. 'Lost your nerve.'

'I'll try again.'

'Better rest for a sec.'

'I don't need rest!'

It was humiliating, after being strong and smart all his life-the swimming teacher, the math tutor-to accept lessons from this know-it-all girl on something as simple as petting a cat.

'Looks like I'm not the only one around here with a big ego,' Lacey observed with satisfaction.

Tristan ignored the comment. 'What was happening to me?' he asked.

'All your energy was being rerouted to your fingertips,' she said, 'which made the rest of you feel faint, or like you were dissolving or something.'

He nodded.

'As you build up your strength that won't be a problem,' she added. 'If you ever get to the point of materializing your whole self and projecting your voice-though, frankly, I doubt you will-you'll have to learn to draw energy from your surroundings. I just suck it right out of there.'

'You sound like an alien in a sci-fi horror movie.'

She nodded. 'Lips of Planet Indigo. You know, I came this close to winning an Oscar for that.'

Funny, Tristan remembered it as a box-office bomb.

'Want to try again now?'

Tristan extended his hand. In a way, it was like finding his pulse, like lying on a bed and hearing his own heart: he suddenly became aware of the way energy traveled through him, and he directed it, this time coolly and calmly, to his fingertips. They lost their shimmer.

Then he felt her. Soft, silky, deep fur. Ella began to purr loudly as he traced out all her favorite places to be petted. She rolled on her back. Tristan laughed. When he scratched her belly, her 'motor' seemed as loud as a small prop plane's.

Then he lost the touch. The sunlit day went gray. Ella stopped purring. All he could do was hold still and wait, sucking on the air around him like someone trying to catch his breath, though he had none.

'Excellent!' said Lacey. 'I had no idea I was such a good teacher.'

Color returned to the grass and trees. The sky burned blue again. Only Ella, scrambling to her feet and sniffing the air, showed signs that something wasn't quite right.

Tristan turned to Lacey, exhausted. 'I won't be able to reach her. If that is as much as I can do, I won't be able to reach her.'

'Are we talking about the chick again?'

'You know her name.'

'Ivy. Symbol of faithfulness and remembering. Is there some message you're trying to send her?'

'I have to convince her that I love her.'

'That's it?' Lacey made a face. 'That's it?'

'I think it's probably my mission,' Tristan said.

'Oh, puh-lease.'

'You know, I'm getting pretty tired of your sarcasm,' Tristan told her.

'I don't much enjoy your silliness,' she replied. 'Tristan, you are naive if you think the Number One Director would go to all the trouble of making you an angel so you could convince some chick that you love her. Missions are never that simple, never that easy.'

He wanted to fight with her, but her melodramatic hand-waving had ceased. She was serious.

'I still don't get it,' he said. 'How am I supposed to discover my mission?'

'You watch. You listen. You stay close to the people you know or the people you feel yourself drawn to- they're probably the people you've been sent back to help.'

Tristan began to wonder who in his life might need special help.

'It's sort of like being a detective,' Lacey said, 'The hitch is, it's not just a whodunit. It's a who-done-what. Often you don't know what the problem is that you've been sent to solve.

Sometimes the problem hasn't happened yet- you have to save the person from some disaster that is going to occur in the future.'

'You're right,' said Tristan. 'It's not simple.'

They had walked their way past the tennis court and around to the front of the house. Ella, who had been following them, scurried ahead and up the front steps.

'Even if it is something that will happen in the future,' Lacey went on, 'the key is often hidden in your own past. Fortunately, time travel is not that hard.'

Tristan raised his eyebrows. 'Time travel?'

Lacey hopped up on Gregory's car, which had been left in the driveway in front of the house.

'Traveling backward in your mind, I mean. There are a lot of things we forget if we remember only in the present. There may be clues that we didn't pick up in the past, but they're still there and can be found again by traveling backward in our minds.'

As Lacey spoke she stretched out on the hood of the BMW. She looked to Tristan like Morticia Addams doing a car ad.

'Maybe,' she baited him, 'I'll teach you how to travel through time, too. Of course, traveling backward in someone else's mind, that's not something for an amateur like you to fool around with. There is some danger in all of this,' she added. 'Oh, cheer up, Dumps.'

'I'm not down. I'm thinking.'

'Then look up,' she said.

Tristan glanced toward the front door. Ivy stood there, looking out toward the driveway, as if waiting for someone.

''It is my lady, O, it is my love! O, that she knew she were!'' said Lacey.

Tristan kept his eyes on Ivy. 'What?'

'Romeo and Juliet. Act two, scene two. I auditioned for it, you know, for Shakespeare in the Park. The casting director wanted me.'

'Good,' Tristan said vaguely. He wished she'd leave him alone now. All he wanted was to be alone, to revel in