Bladed Wings by Jarod Davis Page B

skipped over to them. “Hi boss!”
    “Isis, you found her?”
    “Yup,” Isis said, pointing to the first floor with a manicured finger. “Right down there.”
    “What’s she doing?”
    “Waiting. A couple of her friends went into one of the stores.”
    “She didn’t go inside?”
    “I guess she’s tired of shopping.”
    “Way to break a stereotype,” Cordinox grinned. Timothy stayed against the wall, the weight of his back pressed into the sheetrock as Cordinox looked down. “Definitely our angel.”
    “Why do you want her?” Timothy tried to find his stomach.
    “She’s an angel,” Isis said. “That makes her valuable.”
    “Very,” Cordinox said, though half-distracted.
    “How come no one noticed?” Timothy asked. “We just appeared, right? Shouldn’t  someone have noticed?” He glanced around, waiting to see someone point or shout.
    “No one was paying attention.” Cordinox sounded distracted, a guy tracking something important as he answered unimportant questions. “Same reason they don’t see my scales or Isis’s light.”
    “I’m very bright,” Isis said with a bright laugh. She chortled with a voice that was a little too high for her twenty-something body. Touching a hand to Timothy’s shoulder, she asked, “Are you okay?”
    “Fine.” To distract himself, he asked, “The light. Why? Shouldn’t you be darkness or something? Something bleak?”
    “As as you? Nah, I prefer something brighter and happier, more cheerful! You know?”
    “I guess,” he said, though he really didn’t.
    “Timothy, come over here,” Cordinox instructed, breaking his line of sight on their target. “Time to learn to track an angel. Now it’s just like searching out a demon.”
    “Okay,” Timothy took careful steps to the railing. He looked down and didn’t bother asking which would she would be. Instead he let his sight slip into the distance, unfocused on anything in particular.
    Tracking Isis took a few seconds, yet it took half that to track this angel. This girl was bright too, but her light seemed different. Isis was white, pure, but devoid of texture and detail. Looking at Isis was like looking at a light bulb. The angel’s light felt different. Distinct—but familiar. Timothy couldn’t understand it, not at first. All he saw was the rainbow light, different hues sliding into one another. The light seemed to stream through a quartz crystal and come out blue, yellow, and white. There were swirls of luminescence, beads and beams of color around this corona of a figure. Everything else disappeared as he watched her sitting on a bench. But looking at her soul was like staring into a night sky. It didn’t need to move to be infinite.
    “You got her?” Cordinox asked.
    “Yeah,” Timothy blinked and squinted to focus his vision. He needed to see the rest of the world, the different people around her. Even looking away, he had to concentrate and try to pick out the other little things. Words and t-shirts, people moving and talking to reshape his sight so he just saw people. Even then, he didn’t see the angel’s face.
    “Good. Morgon’s going to follow her, get some background information. But congratulations, you’ve completed your first mission with our merry little band of demons.” Timothy inhaled to say something, but words didn’t come out. She turned around in time, an instant before they disappeared.
    He felt Cordinox’s hand on his shoulder, felt himself pulled through space as the demon translated them away. But in that second of sight, Timothy recognized her. Timothy could see everyone, but everything was about her. Everything was about Jenny because she was the girl, the angel, the girl he loved.

Three
    They jumped, and the same nausea kicked into Timothy’s stomach. They reappeared, surrounded by boxes. Back at the warehouse, he tried to stand straight, but his legs wavered like springs. Everything shifted and shook, not quite spinning, but not quite still