Roger gulped.
Flower turned onto Highway 10, going east. “We don’t know if Venus was there or not. I didn’t see her.”
“She might have been there in disguise,” Jimmy said. “She’s a tricky one. Remember all those stories about how she would disguise herself as animals?”
I scowled and wondered how Jimmy knew the stories about Venus. He must have been paying more attention to our world history teacher, Mr. Bertarelli, than I thought he did. Ancient Greece was old man Berti’s favorite subject to get sidetracked on.
“I think you have her confused with Zeus.” Flower replied.
“Was Zeus an angel too?” Roger scratched his head as he asked.
“These aren’t mere angels, but fallen angels,” Flower added. “There are two kinds.” She sighed and pressed her forehead with her thumb and index finger. “The tribe of Malach are the fallen angels and the tribe of Engel are the ones who still honor God.”
“Yeah, they’re mentioned in the prophecy you wrote down,” Roger said.
“How do you know all this about angels?” I wanted to know.
“Phoenix, of course, there is nothing a fallen angel likes better than to talk about themselves and their kind. Before the carnival went under the curse, we had many talks.” Flower turned the wheel and merged with traffic heading south.
I explained to the others how Flower’s father owned the carnival. I went over the reason Phoenix fell from grace and how he cursed himself by accident. Everyone listened, wide-eyed.
“Please don’t tell the residents of the commune any of this. It’s a past I would have never brought up except… How can I say it?” she stammered. “The coming of the prophet made it necessary.”
I corrected her. “No. It was the possession of the Sheriff that made it necessary. That guy needs a good exorcist.”
“So, he is possessed. I knew it,” Roger said.
“The Sheriff is dead. This thing wearing a sheriff-suit is pretending to be him.” I thought about what I said and wished I’d not said it so direct and scary, but how else could I have explained it? Jimmy had freaked out before over smaller things.
To my surprise, Dugan replied, “So, if I slugged the sheriff-suit, I wouldn’t actually be hitting the sheriff but a monster?”
“Right, but everyone would think you hit the sheriff and they’d file charges on you,” Flower said. “He’s not human, but we still have to give him the respect we’d show any Sheriff—for now.”
Jimmy shrugged and took out his pack of cigarettes, tapped one out, lit it, took a deep drag, made a grimace, and stubbed it out in the van’s ashtray. As if he’d never seen it before, he examined the half-full package, wadded it up, and threw it under the seat.
I chuckled to myself. Maybe Jimmy decided to give up smoking as a resolution after his near-death experience. Coming face to face with my own mortality sure shook me up.
I yawned. Tired, I stared out the right side window of the van. On the horizon, the sunset glowed with scarlet, purple, and gold. Strangely, it reminded me of Phoenix. He had called me a child. Maybe he was right. What the angel said made sense, and it sounded like the truth—still, I didn’t trust him. Maybe he wanted to taunt me by making things up. Maybe the scripture he quoted wasn’t meant for me at all, and he had already allied with Venus. What if there was no Book of Uriel? There were a lot of maybes running through my mind, and some of them included questions about Phoenix’s loyalties. I had a few suspicions about Flower too.
I tapped her on the shoulder, and asked, “Just wondering…I mean, at the carnival, I noticed the people there wore styles from a lot of different decades, and… you were there when Phoenix first called his curse down on it. I’m wondering…just how old are you?”
Flower stared at me in her rearview mirror, her gaze heated and incredulous. “That is something you may never figure out. You know, it’s rude to ask a woman her age.”
Everyone but Jimmy gave her an awe-inspired expression and simply nodded. Jimmy, on the other hand, thought it was the funniest thing he had ever heard and cackled.
“I will tell you this. A gifted person doesn’t age like others,” Flower explained, speaking loudly to be heard over Jimmy’s laughter. “We are here to fulfill a purpose, and it may take many decades or centuries to do what the Creator intends for us to do. Therefore, when we become adults, we age much slower than other people.” She pulled onto Highway 69 south, heading toward Baxter Springs. “Haven’t you ever wondered why some people in the Bible lived hundreds of years?”
Her explanation cleared up a lot. It also added questions about myself. Would I age slowly too? I felt sure she didn’t have all the answers. As for her age, I had a good idea she had to be somewhere around a hundred to hundred-and-fifty-years-old, or so, but she obviously didn’t want it known. She didn’t look a day older than thirty, but if anyone had asked me yesterday what I thought of a thirty-year-old, I would have called thirty ancient. After meeting Phoenix, I had different feelings about it; ancient was definitely older than a hundred years. So, I kept my suspicions to myself and returned to looking at the awesome sunset. Staring into the beautiful pink and violet clouds, my eyelids felt so heavy. I couldn’t keep them open—I couldn’t stay awake.
Watching a beautiful sunset didn’t make my butt more comfortable. Not only did my posterior ache, but riding in the van made me hurt all over. The seat had become uncomfortable; my new clothes were uncomfortable too. I
