“What was that all about?”
Rubbing at the mark on his cheek, he looked confused. “I was just trying to help, you know, do that message thing.”
“And what help is a message telling that woman her husband’s a creep who doesn’t love her anymore?”
“She knows that. Now she needs to move on.”
“And you know that because…?”
He shoved his hands in his front pockets and shrugged. “I have Higher Knowledge.”
“Which gives you personal information on the life of a perfect stranger but neglects to tell you what a stoplight means?”
“Yes.”
She’d never heard such a load of sanctimonious crap. “Just don’t do that again, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Did you know that with the price of those boots you could feed a Third World child for a year?”
Something in the gold-brown eyes compelled an honest answer.
“Yeah, I do.”
“So…?” Samuel prompted, smiling encouragingly.
“So why don’t you mind your own fucking business, dude?”
“That’s the guilt talking.”
“Yeah?” A very large hand wound itself into the front of Samuel’s jacket. “And in a minute you’re gonna feel my fist talking!”
Diana handed the shoebox to the clerk and reached into the possibilities just in time to keep an innocent Bystander from committing mayhem on an angel—as justified as that mayhem may have been. Freeing Samuel’s jacket, she shoved him out of the store and started things up again.
“I was just…”
“Well, stop it.”
“But…”
“No. People like to have their moral failings pointed out about as much as they like to have their personal lives discussed in public by strangers.” She tightened her grip and dragged him quickly past a couple playing what looked like the Stanley Cup finals of tonsil hockey. When she finally slowed and took a look at him, he seemed strangely restrained. “What?”
“Those two people…”
There were thousands of people in the Center, but she had a fairly good idea who he meant. “Yeah? What about them?”
“They had their tongues in each other’s mouths.”
“I didn’t notice.”
He snorted, a very unangelic sound. “They looked like they had gerbils in their cheeks.”
“Okay.” She had to admit she was intrigued by the image. “So?”
“So isn’t that unsanitary?”
“Gerbils?”
“Tongues.”
“Not really. And don’t get any ideas—our relationship is strictly Keeper/Angel.”
“I wasn’t…”
“You were.”
“I couldn’t help it.”
He sounded so miserable, Diana found herself patting his shoulder in sympathy. “Come on, we’ll duck out at the next doors—a little cold air will clear your head.”
“It’s not my head.”
“Whoa. Didn’t I make myself clear? We’re not discussing other body parts.” If the last pat rocked him sideways a little more emphatically than necessary, well, tough.
The sidewalk outside the mall was nearly deserted. There was a small group of people huddled together at the corner of Yonge and Dundas, waiting for the streetcar, and a lone figure hurrying toward them from the other direction in what could only be described as a purposeful manner.
Hair on the back on her neck lifting, Diana stared at the approaching figure, then looked down at two identical snowflakes melting on the back of her hand. “Shit!”
“What’s that smell?” Samuel muttered. He checked the bottom of both shoes.
“Forget the smell. Move it!”
She hustled the angel north, hoping that Nalo hadn’t seen them. The older Keeper had no more authority over Samuel than she did, but something—the identical flakes that continued to fall, the way every car on the road was suddenly a black Buick, the street busker playing “Flight of the Bumblebee” with his lower lip frozen to his harmonica—something was telling her to keep them apart.
At the corner of Yonge and Dundas, Diana felt the possibilities open.
“Hold it right there, young lady!”
Grinding her teeth, she pulled a token out of necessity, shoved Samuel into the line of people climbing onto the eastbound Dundas streetcar, and told him she’d catch up later.
“But…”
“Trust me.” She pried his fingers out of the down depths of her sleeve and, with one hand on an admirably tight tush, boosted him up the steps. “And try not to piss anyone off!” she added as the door closed. Staring back out at her through the filthy glass, he looked lost and pathetic, but she couldn’t shake the feeling he was safer away from the other Keeper.
Wrapping herself in surly teenager, she turned, stepped back up onto the sidewalk, and folded her arms. “Don’t call me ‘young lady’,” she growled, when Nalo closed the last of the distance between them. “I really, really hate it.”
“Really? Tough. Now, you want to tell me why you were hauling ass away from me, or do you want me to make some guesses?”
They were alone on the corner—there’d be no help from curious Bystanders. Diana snorted and rolled her eyes. Not a particularly articulate response but useful when stalling.
“Your parents don’t know you’re here, do they? Don’t bother denying it, girl…” An inarguable finger cut off incipient protest. “…you’ve got guilt rolling off you like smoke.”
Perfect! True, if a tad trite. Diana could have kissed her. She widened her eyes. “You won’t tell?”
“None of my business. I don’t care if you’re here to waste money, I don’t care if you’re here to see that boy you stuffed on the streetcar—oh, I saw him, don’t give me that look—but I do care about what you’ve been up to since you got here.”
“But I haven’t done anything!”
“You stopped time, Diana.”
Oops.
“I was trying to prevent a fight.”
Nalo sighed. “Girl, I don’t care if you were trying to prevent an Abba reunion.…”
“Who?”
“Never mind. The point is, you’ve been messing with the metaphysical background noise since you got here The whole place is buzzing.”
“It wasn’t me!”
“No? Then who?”
A black Buick cruised by, and Diana bit her tongue.
“Look, I spent half an hour on the phone with the 102-year-old Keeper monitoring that site in Scarborough who’s positive we’re heading toward a battle between the dark and the light, and I have better things to do with my time than convince the senile old bird we’re not heading for Armageddon. Either tone it down or take it home, but stop screwing up my…what’s that on your arm?”
Diana brushed away a little snow, taking the angel residue with it, and peered down at her sleeve. “Where?”
The older Keeper shook her head. “Must’ve been ice crystals.” She tucked a cashmere scarf more securely into the collar of her coat. “I think I’d like to keep an eye on you for a while. You can join me for a bit.”
Surrender seemed the only option, but she made a token protest regardless. “I can’t afford the kind of restaurants you like.”
“Honey, we’re Keepers. We should be, if nothing else, adaptable.”
“You buying?”
“I might be.”
“Then I can be adaptable.”
Distress bordering on panic pulled Samuel off the streetcar and across the road into a maze of four-story apartment buildings and identical rows of two-story brick town houses. He found the source of the distress crouched miserably at the bottom of a rusty slide and dropped to his knees beside her.
With gentle fingers, he brushed snow off her head.
She turned toward him, looked up into his eyes, and threw herself against his chest. “Lost, lost, lost, lost…”
“Shhh, it’s all right, Daisy.” He had to physically brace himself against the force of her emotions. “Don’t worry, I’ll help. Do you live in one of these buildings?”