The other hand rested softly upon his head, and he heard the woman’s voice as she bowed her head over him.
“Heavenly Father, show mercy to this young man,” she prayed, the words agony and light in the wizard’s mind. “In seeking healing for his pain, let him find you. In Christ Jesus, may he find that peace that passes all understanding.”
Milo’s soul was torn between wanting to curse her for a fool and collapse before her. As a compromise, he stayed where he was, his head still hanging.
“May he find that peace in You, for he has so much more to do.”
The fingers, twisted and stiff with age, squeezed with surprising yet sure strength.
“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
Her hands rose from him, but he still felt her presence. Tears rolled freely down his cheeks, landing upon the stone floor with the faintest patter. He still kept from sobbing, forcing his breath in and out in measured intervals, but by then, it was to anchor his reeling mind rather than any attempt at dignity.
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out...
Slowly, but growing with each inhalation and exhalation, Milo came back together. There was still a wound in his soul, and he would most certainly lose sleep over it in the days to come, but the overwhelming, crippling horror was gone. The trauma joined a host of others scarring his psyche, though it cut a bit deeper than most.
Your momma was a witch, Volkohne.
Your momma danced naked with the Devil, and out you came.
As his mind and body steadied, his tear-blurred eyes opened to a world lit by scarlet light.
Milo blinked and dragged a hand across his eyes as he looked around in utter confusion. Hadn’t the sun gone down already?
As he cast his gaze to the windows, he found Ambrose ambling toward him, a sheepish look stamped on his features.
“Sorry about that,” he mumbled softly, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Took a bit longer than I expected. A lot to pray for with the world we live in, eh?”
Milo lowered his gaze from the befuddling windows and suddenly realized the old woman was gone. He swept the sanctuary and even squinted into the foyer they had first entered through, but there was no sign of her.
“Everything all right, Magus?” Ambrose asked, his muscles rippling with tension as he began to probe the area with his peripheral vision.
“I…” Milo began as he continued to stare around him, but he stopped suddenly. He’d seen how the old woman had moved when she sat next to him and knew she didn’t possess the nimbleness to vanish as suddenly as she seemed to have.
He swung his gaze back to his bodyguard, still frowning.
“Did you see me talk to anyone?” Milo asked and instantly regretted it as he saw the concern sharpen on Ambrose’s face.
“What happened?”
Milo ran a hand over his mouth, unsure of what to say. He’d been so sure he hadn’t felt magic, but how could all this have happened without it?
“I’m not sure?” he confessed, staring up at Ambrose.
The bodyguard’s gaze swept the church, then he cocked his head to one side. A few heartbeats later, he shrugged his massive shoulders and cracked a smile beneath his auburn mustache.
“Entertaining angels without me, eh?”
3
These Signs
“It was a joke,” Ambrose grumbled as they made their way back to the general staff office under a bruise-colored sky.
The sense of déjà vu Milo felt at walking under his second dusk of the day was disorienting, to say the least. Despite this, though, he hadn’t let up on interrogating and theorizing at Ambrose since they’d left the church.
“I’m asking you to consider if maybe it was,” Milo pressed, his gaze darting between watching where he was walking and staring intently at Ambrose. “I mean, it's not like we are uncertain angels exist.”
Ambrose shook his head as his mustache twitched.
“Fine,” he muttered as he bristled. “It is a possibility, I suppose, but I don’t think it was.”
Milo was frowning so hard he nearly walked off a curb and into the path of a rumbling trolley. Ambrose’s meaty hand snatched him back from certain mangling, but the magus only managed a nod as his mind raced behind his squinting gaze.
“What makes you think that?”
“You almost died, Magus,” Ambrose snapped. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
The wizard flapped his hand dismissively at the trolley as though shooing away a retreating insect.
“Yes, yes, thank you,” Milo muttered before leaning toward Ambrose’s face. “Why don’t you think she was an angel? Really?”
Ambrose frowned and gnawed his lip before heaving a sigh. His breath formed an anemic plume in the chill air.
“Two words: ‘fear not.’”
Milo scowled, sure he was supposed to make a connection, but if it was a matter of religious esoterica, he was lost. The silence stretched between them as the sounds of the city began their shuffle between the daytime bustle and the nightly susurration.
“Whenever you’re ready, maestro,” Milo grumbled as he came to a dead stop at a street corner. The lamp overhead was broken, leaving the spot in deep gloom, which somehow seemed appropriate.
Ambrose shrugged and looked around. Milo found the little display comical since, given the number of supernatural subjects they could have been discussing, the matter of the angelic was one of the few that wouldn’t raise eyebrows.
Satisfied that no one was close enough to overhear them, Ambrose leaned forward and began in an almost conspiratorial whisper.
“In almost every story about angels, they have to tell people not to be afraid,” Ambrose began. “Almost every time the angelic gets involved, people are scared, and I think we know why. Remember that moment I was unveiled in the tunnel?”
Milo did.
In the past year of violence, horror,
