Kat’s eyes fired. “No. You. Did. Not.” She emphasized each word. “I went into it—we all,” she gestured to include her friends, “went into it knowing there was danger. You never forced me to do anything I didn’t choose to do.”
“Besides, you’re looking at it all wrong. We battled the forces of evil. Kat and Amethyst leveled up with their abilities. Jules saved her house, and I got to meet an honest-to-God angel. We kicked Earthwalker butt. We were kind of hoping we could do it again sometime.” Gustavia, as usual, cut right to the heart of the matter with precision.
Adriel’s mouth dropped open, but nothing came out. She’d been rendered speechless.
“You can’t…but I…I thought you’d hate me for what happened.”
Amethyst’s deep voice enhanced the dry dust of her tone, “You underestimated us. Again.”
Adriel couldn’t think of anything to say.
Julie, quiet until now, changed the subject. Adriel looked like she needed a few moments to recover her composure. Besides, sheer curiosity forced her to ask, “Cute cabin. What’s with the storage unit decor?”
It was a whole other story to tell, and by the time Adriel was finished, Gustavia had a manic gleam in her eye. “You have to let us help. I bet if the five of us worked together, we could clear a bunch of this in a day.”
Half of Adriel wanted to say no, it would be too big an imposition—the other half wanted to leap with joy over the prospect of navigating more freely through the small space.
In the end, nothing she said would have mattered anyway; Gustavia would not be contained, they had decided to help, and that was all there was to it.
“It’s like Christmas,” Gustavia popped the top on an appropriately red plastic bin with a green lid.
Adriel shot her a raised eyebrow and a wry comment, “Twisted Christmas. One man’s trash is—well—this mess actually. Knock yourself out.”
Amethyst gave Adriel a look somewhere on the spectrum between amused and surprised, “You’ve loosened up since we saw you last.”
“I’m embracing my inner mortal.” The grin wouldn’t stay off Adriel’s face.
“You know you could have just stayed at Hayward House. For as long as you needed.” Julie wasn’t smiling. “There was no reason you should end up here.” She waved a hand to indicate the piles of boxes.
Meeting her eyes tested Adriel’s will. “When I woke up and saw the aftermath, I felt so…” words failed her so she flipped a hand in circles, “And then I realized I was human, and I needed time to adjust to my new status. There’s work I’m meant to do here. Or so I’ve been told.” Estelle, Adriel’s guardian angel, had been Julie’s grandmother in life. Mentioning her name right now felt wrong for some reason, so Adriel didn’t.
“Ooh, look.” Gustavia pulled out a purple metal box decorated with five floating faces on the side. “It’s an Osmond Brother’s lunch box. From the 1970s.”
“Osmond brothers? Weren’t they…”
“A singing family. This is a collector’s item. I bet it’s worth at least fifty dollars.”
“That thing? With the disembodied heads? Someone would pay money for that?”
“Yeah, if it has the thermos. Does it have the thermos?” Amethyst arched her back to get a better look.
Gustavia flipped two metal clasps near the handle and the box lid popped open to reveal a tube-like container. She held it aloft, “Yes it does.”
“What else is in there?” Amethyst had bin fever now as well. She made Kat budge over so she could sit next to Gustavia, who now wore a dusty old cloche hat. Spoils from the bin.
“Kat, toss me your keys, I’ll go down to the village and grab some pizza or something. We might as well make a party out of it,” Julie said. “There’s a pizza place, right?” Adriel nodded.
“You did hear me say I’d found boxes of dirty socks, right?” she said to no one, because that’s who listened.
Laughter and the smell of pizza soon filled the small space. Kat took the prize for weirdest find of the day—a shoe box full of used coffee filters pressed flat and labeled with images supposedly found in the patterns made by the grounds. No one, not even Gustavia, could make out either Jesus or Elvis in their respective filters.
They filled four totes with items for Hamlin to take to the shelter, topped off the small dumpster for the third or fourth time—Adriel had lost track—and cleared all but half a dozen of the remaining boxes in less time than it would have taken Adriel to move a single stack by herself.
Gustavia went home with the cloche hat and, because it was purple, Amethyst took the floating head lunch box. More important than what they took home, though, was what they left behind: phone numbers on the refrigerator and an Adriel with a much lighter heart.
***
“That went well, don’t you think?” Gustavia chirped as Kat reversed out of the drive. “I was afraid she might be all depressed over not being an angel anymore.”
“About that,” Amethyst said, “I assume she knows, but she’s no human. Or not entirely anyway. Her aura is a mess. I mean, I sorted out what I could, but it’s still the strangest blend I’ve ever seen. There are angel winding around the human, and the block I told you about is just crazy big. I’m not even sure the angel side of her is strong enough to move it alone. What did you think, Kat?”
“Oh, I agree with you. I sensed both angel and human. But what really had me worried was seeing she’s touched something dark lately as well. Zack was right to send us. There’s trouble coming, and she’s going to need help.”
The grin slid off Gustavia’s face to be replaced with a look of determination. “Whether she wants it or not, right?”
“Did you notice she never mentioned Grams or Julius?” As much concern as she had for Adriel, Julie wanted to know the fate of her family
