Dancing On the Head of a Pin

CHAPTER THREE

Remy stood before his wife’s grave, as he’d done so many times since she’d left him.

He had managed to make it through all the mail and even returned a few phone calls before deciding not to push his luck. He’d stopped at home to pick up Marlowe, then headed for the cemetery.

A thin, snaking vine clung to the face of the marble grave marker, the delicate purple flowers that grew from the vine embellishing her name.

MADELINE CHANDLER: BELOVED.

It always stunned him how beautiful it was, no matter the season; there were always flowers of various colors and sizes growing on and around the grave, a gift of gratitude from Israfil, the Angel of Death, for Remy’s assistance in keeping the world from ending.

“Hey there, beautiful,” Remy said, kneeling upon the thick green grass. He reached out, letting his fingers brush the engraving of her name.

He knew that she wasn’t there with him, for when she had passed from life, her essence—her soul—had joined with countless others, as had been done since creation, to become part of the very fabric of the universe.

To become part of the Source.

He of all people knew how it worked, but he liked having a place that he could come to—to think, to chat with her as if she were still with him.

From out of the corner of his eye he saw Marlowe zip past, obviously on the hunt.

“Are you going to come over and say hi?” Remy called to the animal that was darting between the headstones, snout pressed to the ground.

“No,” the dog answered. “Finding rabbits.”

Remy turned his attention back to his wife’s grave.

“Things have been kind of crazy,” he said, picking away some of the dead, dry leaves that hung uselessly from the veinwork of vines that covered the front of the marker. “You know, lots of the weird stuff.”

Whenever he was involved in a case outside the walls of normalcy, Madeline had always referred to it as that weird stuff. When your husband was a disenfranchised angel from Heaven, working as a private investigator, the weird stuff just had a tendency to find you. She never liked it, saying that it gave her the creeps, but over time had learned to tolerate it.

“Yeah, yeah, I know; you hate that crap.” He laughed softly, hearing the sound of her complaining as if she were there with him. “But it keeps me busy… keeps me distracted.”

He read her name on the stone over and over again.

“I’m surprised that you didn’t run from me screaming that morning when I showed you,” he said.

When I showed you what I was.

Nahant, Massachusetts, 19??

“What are you doing?” Madeline Dexter asked him, a smile creeping around the corners of her seductive mouth. The warm wind whipped off the water as she picked some stray strands of her tousled hair from her mouth, her beautiful brown eyes riveted to him.

They had been out all night dancing at the Wonderland Ballroom, just one of the hundreds of joyous times they’d shared since she had first come to work as his office manager.

There was something about this woman, something that demanded that she know the truth.

“I have something to show you,” he said to her.

He let her hand go and stepped back. His eyes quickly scanned the beach around them, wanting to be certain that they were indeed alone. The sun had just come up, and there wasn’t another soul to be found. At that moment, as far as he was concerned, they were the only two people upon the planet, like Adam and Eve.

He hoped things worked out for him and Madeline better than they did for those two.

Madeline moved her shoes from one hand to the other. “What is this, Remy?” she asked, with a nervous giggle. “What’re you going to do, some sort of magic trick?”

Remy smiled at her warmly. After what he had left behind in Paradise, he had never believed he could trust something so completely. She made him want to belong. For the first time in more than a millennium, he truly felt a part of humanity, not just some imposter going through the motions.

She made him feel human, and he couldn’t bear to hide the truth about himself any longer.

“A magic trick,” he repeated, and laughed.

He tried to recall the last time he had shed his human guise. It was before he’d come to Massachusetts, and maybe even before Massachusetts had been established, for that matter. It had been a long time, and he did not relish the act.

But it had to be if their relationship was to continue down this path.

“You’ve often talked about how honest I am, how I can’t lie to save my life.”

She stared at him intensely. She was starting to look worried, maybe thinking that he was going to reveal that he already had a girlfriend, or perhaps even worse, that he was married.

If only it was that simple.

“But I have been lying, Maddie,” he told her, “lying about what I am.”

She stepped toward him, concern on her face. “You don’t have to do this,” Madeline said. “Whatever it is you’ve been hiding… it’s all right, Remy; we can work it out.”

Madeline was afraid, and if he were to be perfectly honest, so was he.

Remy didn’t want to lose her, and by revealing the truth, he knew that he very well might. But he couldn’t lie anymore, especially to her.

“Don’t ruin this,” she begged.

Gently he pushed her back, the fear intensifying in her eyes.

“I have to do it,” he said.

“No, you don’t,” Madeline commanded as she stamped her bare foot in the sand. “Don’t do this to me… Don’t take away what we have… Please.”

He couldn’t torture her anymore. Remy reached down within himself, deep into the bottomless darkness where he had hidden his true self, and called to the power of Heaven.

He wished he could say that it was happy to see him, that this was about to be a pleasurable experience, but then he really would have been lying. It hated his human guise and eagerly attacked it, burning away his clothes and the tender flesh to reveal the truth beneath.

Tears streamed down Madeline’s face as her pale, delicate flesh was illuminated in the glow of his divinity.

But she did not run; she did not scream in terror.

The essence of the Seraphim exerted its full power, exploding from his body in a flash of brilliance. Remy tossed his head back and yelled to the Heavens as two great feathered wings emerged from his back, their gentle beating tossing sparks of fire to smolder in the sand.

Exhausted, Remy—now in the guise of Remiel of the Heavenly host Seraphim—dropped to his knees on the beach.

“I couldn’t hide this from you any longer,” he said, his odd-sounding voice making her flinch. “I had to tell you—show you the truth.”

Slowly, Madeline dropped to her knees. “I always knew there was something different about you,” she whispered. There was no fear in her tone, no disbelief, just a breathless wonder. “Something special.”

She reached out, touching his bare, luminescent flesh. “You’re real,” she said with a laugh, the tips of her fingers causing his skin to tingle pleasurably.

“I am,” Remy answered, taking her hand in his. “More real now, since you’ve come into my life, than I’ve been in… in a very long time.”

“So you’re an angel?” she asked, a smile beaming from ear to ear, tears filling her eyes.

“Of the host Seraphim.” Remy nodded, softly rubbing his thumb across the top of the hand he held.

“Why are you here?”

“I’ve been searching for something,” he began to explain. “Searching for something that was lost to me in Heaven—something I wasn’t sure I would ever find again.”

“This something,” Madeline asked, “have you found it?”

Remiel looked deeply into the woman’s teary eyes, the object of his quest glimmering there, just within reach.

“I believe I have,” he told her.

Madeline moved in closer and threw her arms about his neck. He responded in kind, pulling her tightly against him as his wings of Heavenly fire enfolded them both in a loving embrace.

A cold nose nuzzling his ear returned him to the present.

“Hey,” the dog spoke.

“Thanks,” Remy said, throwing his arm around the animal’s thick neck. “Catch any rabbits?”

“Smell them,” Marlowe stated. “No find.”

“Maybe next time,” Remy consoled the Labrador, planting a kiss on the top of his blocky head. “What do you say? Want to go home?”

“Eat?” the dog asked, looking up at him as he stood.

Remy pulled the sleeve up on his jacket to look at his watch. “Yeah, soon. By the time we drive home it’ll be time.”

Marlowe darted toward the path, excited by the prospect of food.

“Don’t go too far ahead,” Remy called after the running dog, just as his cell phone started to ring.

The angel reached into his pocket and removed the slim phone, flipping it open to see who was calling. He didn’t recognize the number but decided to take the call anyway.

“Yes,” Remy said, the phone placed to his ear. Marlowe was sniffing the base of a tree alongside the path; then he lifted his leg, but to little effect. His tank was empty.

“Mr. Chandler?” asked a dry, raspy voice.

“Speaking. How can I help you?”

“Mr. Chandler, my name is Alfred Karnighan, and I’m very interested in retaining your services.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Karnighan, but my caseload is currently pretty full and—”

“People have spoken very highly of your skills,” the older-sounding man interrupted. “I’d be willing to pay your fees and expenses with an additional twenty-five percent added on if you would consider my situation.”

A part of Remy still wanted to refuse, but he then remembered the stack of bills sitting in the middle of his desk, and his conversation with Mulvehill about the old Remy coming back sometime soon.

“Can you give me an idea of what you’d like me to do for you, Mr. Karnighan?”

“Of course, Mr. Chandler,” the man answered. “Some belongings of mine have been stolen—very valuable and important belongings. And I would like you to find the person or persons responsible and have my property returned to me.”

Remy reached his car, parked outside the cemetery, where Marlowe was waiting patiently to be let into the backseat.

“Have you talked to the police about this matter?” Remy asked, opening the door to allow the dog inside.

“I have, but their performance… has been less than satisfactory.”

Remy climbed into the driver’s seat and closed the door.

“Mr. Chandler?”

“Yes, Mr. Karnighan. Why don’t we meet Wednesday morning, around ten? How does that sound?”

“Like the answer to my prayers, Mr. Chandler.”

Remy had heard that the Nomads had taken up residence somewhere on Tremont Street. They seemed to be drawn to high places, and he figured a recently completed, and so far unoccupied, office building might be the kind of place that they would take a liking to.

The closer he got to the glass and steel skyscraper, the better he knew that his assumptions had been correct. He didn’t have to focus all that hard to sense them; a gathering of angels this large caused a weird kind of ringing in his ears, his inhuman nature roused to attentiveness.

He’d gotten up early and had treated Marlowe to a walk in the Common, generally wasting as much time as he could. But he had to get this over with, and the quicker he got it done, the better off he’d be.

There had been rumors that he’d been the one to inspire the Nomads, that his actions in leaving Heaven after the war had motivated those of like mind to band together. He didn’t like to think of his actions as inspirational to anyone. They were his decisions, and his alone.

Willing himself unseen, he entered the lobby. A real estate agent was showing the building to a group of potential renters, his voice droning on about how the building was state-of-the-art and so on and so forth, as he ushered them toward the elevators. Remy joined the group. They went as far as the twelth floor, the doors opening onto a spacious area just ripe for some sort of commerce, and cubicles of happy worker bees.

Remy hit the button for the top floor, the closing doors cutting off the sales pitch of the real estate agent, and leaving him with the hum of the elevator’s ascent. He liked the sound the elevator made much more than the eager voice of the agent. They must have been sort of desperate, for as far as Remy knew, this building had been empty since its completion more than a year ago.

He wondered if the building’s rather unusual squatters had anything to do with that. It was possible; though invisible to most, their presense could often still be sensed. Not a comfortable feeling, he imagined, often blamed on bad energy flow, or feng shui, if you like.

The doors opened and Remy stepped out onto the twenty-fifth floor. It was a nice space, huge floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto a gorgeous view of the city.

Strolling across the open space, he found the door that accessed the stairwell to the roof. The strange sensation in his ears had intensified, the sound now something more akin to a song—a chant—and the Seraphim that he kept locked up inside him grew frantic with excitement at the idea of mingling with others of its kind.

At the top of the stairs Remy reached for the handle, but the door swung open on its own. They must have known he was coming—certainly if he could sense them, they could him.

Remy stepped out onto the roof. At first he saw nothing more than the building’s heating and cooling units, and the stunning city view beyond the roof, but squinting through his sight, altering the composition of his eyes, allowed him to see so much more.

And there they were, the Nomads standing upon the rooftop, gazing out beyond the city below, the eerie song they sang wafting about them. Their dark robes seemed to be crafted from a night sky, a dusky bluish black that twinkled with pinpricks of starlight. They wore hoods that hid their features. There were eleven of them, and Remy wondered where the others might be. In his mind, he pictured skyscrapers around the world, Nomad angels standing atop them, frozen in eerie contemplation, singing their strange song.

“There is genocide in Darfur,” one of them stated suddenly, his voice like the rumble of thunder at a distance. The angel turned its hooded head to stare at Remy, and he recognized Suroth.

Suroth’s eyes were distant, still seeing the atrocites perpetrated by supposedly civilized cultures in the western Sudan. Tears of sorrow streamed down his face, the manifestation of the sadness he witnessed.

Remy remained silent, allowing the angel’s eyes to focus upon him.

“Hello, brother,” Suroth stated, a hint of a smile teasing the corners of his mouth. “I sensed that someone of an angelic persuasion was visiting us, and I’m pleasantly surprised to see that it is you.”

“Hello, Suroth.” Remy bowed his head slightly.

“It has been too long,” the Nomad leader stated, moving toward Remy, away from the others, who continued to stand in quiet observation.

Suroth was huge. Even covered in robes, the Nomad leader couldn’t hide what he had once been, an Archangel commander in service to God. But he had abandoned his weapons of war, shed his armor, and replaced them with the robes of the wandering Nomadic order.

An order in search of answers to the questions birthed by the savagery of war.

“It’s horrible,” Remy said, looking out over the world. “Horrible what they do to one another.”

Suroth’s large hands disappeared within the sleeves of his robe. “It has gone on since the beginning, and will continue until they are no more.”

“I like to think that eventually they’ll learn.”

“As we learned?” Suroth asked. “Beings that once stood within the radiance of our Lord and Creator?”

Remy remained silent. There was truth to the angel’s words. The Great War had shown how far from perfection they actually were.

“To what do I owe this visit?” Suroth then asked. “Have you come at last to join us, brother Remiel?” the Nomad leader continued, using Remy’s formal name. “Adding your mysteries to our own, awaiting a day when we will have our solution, and a new beginning will dawn.”

“It would be nice,” Remy said, returning his focus to the rooftop and the powerful angelic being towering before him. “No, I’m afraid I’ve come with some bad news.”

Suroth tilted his head inquisitively. “Bad news, brother?”

Remy nodded. “One of your own has died,” he said. “We found him in a Denizen hiding place. He’d given himself to them.”

The Nomad leader said nothing, his eyes again going frosty as he searched the world.

“He was called Amael,” Suroth stated. “I feared something like this.”

“I spoke with him before he ended his life,” Remy explained. “He said that he deserved what was happening to him.”

“Amael never truly adjusted to our Nomadic ways,” the leader of the order said. “The pull of Heaven was great upon him, but the guilt over what he had done in God’s name… he felt that it robbed him of his place there, that there was no way he could ever return.”

Remy recalled the look of torment on the angel’s face. “He said that he bore a secret sin; that was why he had to suffer.”

Suroth leaned his head back, his features lost within the shadow of his hood. “We all have our secrets, Remiel.”

Remy glanced toward the building’s edge, and found that the others had all turned and were staring. He could feel the intensity of their eyes upon him.

“For some, the weight becomes too much to bear.”

It was silent on the rooftop, and Remy began to wonder if they had gone back to observing the world again, when Suroth spoke.

“His material form?”

“Destroyed,” Remy said. “I couldn’t leave it for the scavengers.”

“We owe you a great thanks, Remiel,” the leader said, and all bowed in unison.

“No problem,” Remy told them. “I thought you should know.”

He glanced at his watch. He’d had pretty much all he could take of the mysterious Nomads, and besides, he was supposed to meet Francis for lunch.

“Your time with us is at an end?” Suroth asked.

Remy put his hands into his coat pockets. “Other responsibilities,” he stated. He backed up toward the door. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, immediately feeling like an idiot.

“Are you certain that you must leave?” Suroth asked. The other hooded Nomads had come to stand around him. “Our number is deficient by one,” he stated, holding up a long finger. “Do you not seek the same answers as we?” the Nomad asked. “Join with us, brother, and we shall find the solutions together.”

“Join with us, brother,” the other Nomads repeated in unison, their hands reaching out, beckoning to him.

“I’m sorry,” he told them. “The answers I need I’ll find on my own.”

Suroth’s hands disappeared inside his robes again.

“Know that there will always be a place for you,” the leader said.

The others had already left him, returning to the building’s edge, looking out beyond the city, singing their strange song, searching for the answers to the questions of their existence.

Francis was sitting outside at a table in the far corner of the little Piazza café on Newbury Street.

Remy was about to call out to his friend when he realized that the former Guardian angel had hidden himself from the lunch crowd that was taking full advantage of the first springlike day. Remy did the same, anyone who had taken notice thinking that he had been nothing more than a trick of sunlight and shadow on their eyes.

“Why are you sitting here invisible?” he asked, joining his friend.

Francis craned his neck to see around him. “I don’t want to be obvious.”

“Obvious about what?” Remy asked, turning to follow Francis’ gaze.

He could see a waitress taking an order from a table of two women, multiple shopping bags at their feet. “The two women?” he asked.

Francis shook his head. “The waitress.”

“The waitress?” Remy turned in his seat again.

She was cute—tiny—no taller than five-two, shoulder-length dark hair, athletic build. She danced on the line of beautiful but clearly didn’t take herself too seriously, a nice quality to have.

“Very nice,” Remy said as he turned back to Francis. “Now, why are you sitting here, invisible, watching a waitress?”

Francis shrugged, his eyes behind dark-framed glasses following the woman as she walked across the patio and into the restaurant.

“Y’know, that’s a good question,” he said. “One that I’ve been trying to put my finger on for the last few weeks.”

“You’ve been watching her for a few weeks?”

Francis nodded. “Think it has something to do with the whole Guardian angel thing. In the old days she would’ve had a legion of us fighting over the right, but now she’s got nothing.”

The waitress returned with a tray of drinks for the ladies: a Corona for one and some kind of fancy cocktail for the other.

“Her name’s Linda Somerset: age thirty-five, was married, but now divorced, takes night classes in childhood development at Northeastern, lives in Brighton.”

Remy looked back at his friend. “What, no astrological sign? No dress size?”

“She’s a Leo, and her dress size is—”

“Enough,” Remy said, holding up his hand. “It’s very nice that you’ve found a hobby in stalking this poor woman.”

“Not stalking,” Francis said indignantly. “I’m looking out for her well-being.”

Linda left the waiter’s station to check on one of her other tables.

“Why don’t you just introduce yourself?” Remy asked. “Talk to her.”

“I couldn’t do that,” Francis said bluntly. “That’s not how it works.”

“How what works? You’re not a Guardian anymore, so why are you acting like one?”

“Old habits die hard, I guess,” Francis said.

“I guess,” Remy agreed. He crossed his legs, watching the crowds pass on the busy Boston street.

“I went and saw the Nomads this morning,” he told his friend.

“You found them?” the Guardian asked, surprised.

“Yeah, I’d picked up some information a while back that they were on Tremont Street.”

“Let me guess,” Francis said. “Someplace high?”

“Yeah, office building.”

“They give me the creeps,” Francis commented, pushing his glasses farther up onto his nose.

“Why’s that?” Remy asked, curious.

“I just don’t understand them,” he started to explain. “They were Heaven’s elite, but they gave it all up, and now they wander between the earthly plain and Hell. They say they’re looking for answers, but I can’t even figure out the fucking questions.”

A woman with a yellow Labrador puppy jogged by, and Remy remembered when Marlowe was that small. It seemed like only yesterday.

“It all happened so fast,” Remy said. “One moment we couldn’t imagine being more happy, one with the Creator and all, and the next thing, we’re killing one another.” He paused, the weight of it all bearing down on him. “I think they just want to understand how something so amazing could turn so horribly wrong.”

A hostess tried to seat an older couple where Remy and Francis were sitting, but the woman insisted on another table. Big surprise.

“What was the name of that guy you asked me about?” Francis asked, changing the topic.

“Alfred Karnighan,” Remy said, happy to oblige.

“Karnighan,” Francis repeated. “I think I had some dealings with him a few years back at a private auction. He’s a collector. Both of us had our eyes on an especially sweet medieval battle-axe, if I’m not mistaken. What’s up with him?”

“Got a phone call from him yesterday,” Remy explained. “Says he wants to hire me. I don’t know the specifics yet, but it involves stolen property. I’m meeting with him tomorrow morning.”

Francis nodded his approval.

“So that’s it? He’s a collector. Anything more you can tell me?”

“Nothing more to say, really,” Francis said with a shrug. “The guy deals in rare antiquities, with a special appreciation for weapons. You can see how we would’ve crossed paths.”

Remy could, ancient weaponry one of the only things the former Guardian angel actually seemed to take enjoyment from. That and Jeopardy; the fallen angel loved Jeopardy.

“The guy’s got bucks,” Francis stated. “If I were you, I’d charge him double.” And then he was out of his seat.

“What’s up?” Remy asked.

“Looking after my charge.”

Francis moved past him to a table where a less-than-pleasant man was giving Linda a hard time. Evidently the bartender had decided to cut him off and he was taking it out on his waitress.

Bad idea.

It was when the guy, his face flushed from too much alcohol and anger, picked up his empty glass and shattered it on the tabletop that the invisible Francis made his move, sinking his fingers into the soft, fleshy area around the man’s thick neck.

Remy winced in sympathetic pain as the drunken man suddenly leaned violently forward with a scream, his face bouncing off the table. The shrieking continued as he lurched to his feet, tipping over his chair as he tried to pick bloody pieces of glass from his face. Linda, along with some of the other Piazza waitstaff, had retreated to the safety of the restaurant doorway. The manager and what appeared to be the bartender were now dealing with the injured man. In the distance, a police siren wailed.

Realizing that he was likely in trouble, the big man grabbed a cloth napkin from a nearby table and wiped at his mess of a face. Tossing the stained white cloth to the ground, he tried to force his way past the café employees.

Francis stuck out his foot, and the fleeing man tripped, his drunken bulk plowing into a recently vacated table, still covered with dirty lunch dishes. The crash was tremendous, the man falling to the ground, the table and all its contents landing atop him.

At least he had the good sense not to get up again.

Francis returned to their table as the police pulled up. Remy shook his head, trying to hide his smile of amusement.

“It’s an absolute sin when a man can’t hold his liquor,” Francis said, watching as two officers picked the bleeding man up from the patio floor, and escorted him to the waiting cruiser.

“Good thing he wasn’t driving.”