Sentinel of Heaven (13 page)

“It's just not
enough
, Moira.  It's just not big enough,” Erica was saying now across
the conference table from her, rolling her eyes dramatically and spreading her
hands.

“I'm not sure
I understand,” Moira answered slowly, attempting to keep her expression and
voice neutral.  “These are all my projects since May.”

“Yes, but it
doesn't look like much, does it?  I mean, does it
really
look like six
months of work that we paid someone to do?”

You paid ME
to do it,
Moira thought, feeling her ire beginning to rise.

“It may not
seem like much in the telling,” Moira said evenly, “but it's all there.  Much
of it included under 'other duties' where I worked for other teams on their
projects because you volunteered me.  And I can't claim their projects as my
own.  Additionally on several of these cases I had to proactively contact the
authorities involved and continue to request full information and evidence in
order to complete my analyses in a timely fashion.”

“Sure, we can
tell Daniel and Gene that, Moira, but it sounds like an excuse.  What kept you
from being a superstar?”

The
endless meetings, mostly
– she thought but didn't say.  Thank God the
filter between brain and mouth hadn't completely eroded under this onslaught.

“I'm just
simply not seeing anything impressive here, Moira.”

Well, I
haven’t started screaming in mindless rage; I'm certainly impressing myself. 
Whoops, there we go again.

“All I can
show you is the truth.  I've displayed it here as best as I know how – I've
never been required to do a half year self-assessment or presentation before,
much less both.  How do you want me to structure it?”

“You'll just
have to figure that out for yourself,” replied Erica, shutting her leather
folio with a snap and fleeing from the conference room like her ass-parts were
on fire, rent-money heels clicking angrily.

Moira waited a
long moment to be sure of her self-control before she struggled to her feet to
go back to her desk. 
What a big fucking help that was: just figure it
out!  Just like the last four drafts!

This woman
is single-handedly going to end my career in this company.  Either she'll get
me fired on some trumped-up reason or I'll quit out of desperation with the
last shreds of my sanity in my hands.  I'm being prepped for failure.

Every day
I go home torn between grimly polishing my resume, buying a gun, or just OD'ing
so I don't have to cope anymore.

Moira limped
past her desk to the break room, her laptop bag already in hand.  She rescued
her lunch bag from the crowded fridge there, avoiding her chatting, laughing
coworkers.  The elevator was a steel coffin down twenty floors, running ahead
of the noon-day rush.  She clocked out and pushed through the door, reaching
the parking deck with growing relief.

She sat down
in her car and scrubbed at her face.  Her thoughts turned towards Leo, towards
home.

She pulled out
her wallet without thinking about it.  Of course she had no pictures but in the
little never-used coin pouch was the moonstone he'd given her yesterday, tucked
away safe.  Moira picked it out and held it up, turning it in the faint
afternoon light that penetrated the concrete parking deck. 

It flashed
that blue-green fire, like the reflection of the sun on a rolling sea.

She put it
back with a sigh, then pulled her driver's license forward with the tip of her
thumb... there was the feather.

Moira lifted
it out with reverence.  He'd been so dreadfully serious when he handed it to
her, wanting to be sure she kept it safe.  She brushed it thoughtfully over her
face, over the bridge of her nose and across the bow of her lips.  It smelled
of him:  cinnamon and salt and spices not named by mortals, some strange
incense or perfume, some natural holy musk exuded by his flesh.

Leo was above
and beyond the Ericas of the world, as a star is beyond a garden slug.

I'd give
almost anything to know what he's doing right now...

The feather in
her hand wavered and billowed, like a silk scarf in a high wind.  Suddenly
Moira could see Leo as clearly as if she stood beside him.  The image lay over
her vision, disorienting until she gave in and closed her eyes.

The big silly
creature had taken her longest towel and spread it on the porch to lay on, and
was sunning himself with almost fully spread wings resting on the rotting grey
boards.

She felt a
start of surprise, distinctly alien – and then a welcoming warmth and
affection.  He turned his head towards where “she” was and smiled lazily.

“Leo?  Am I
really seeing you?”

Affirmative. 
He blinked and yawned, sending her a picture of his feather and the feel of a
query.

“Yes, I've got
your feather.  How is this happening?”

Picture of the
feather plus picture of a genie's lamp.

“Your feathers
grant wishes?”

Yes-kinda
feeling.  She got the idea that she didn't fully grasp the significance of the
magic, but it wasn't important enough at the moment for him to attempt to
describe in detail.

Still, no
wonder he'd taken their disposal so seriously, and no wonder the gift of one
was so princely!

“I was sitting
here holding it and wishing I could know what you were doing.”

Affirmative. 
Picture of a double-A battery, copper-topped.

“Recharging,
yes, you wonderful thing.  I hope no planes fly over.”

Leo sent a tide
of merry disregard, then an image of himself from above; his body shimmered
like a heat-wave and disappeared, leaving only the boards of the deck visible.

“Well, if
you're sure...”

He was.

“Been sunning
all morning?”

Emphatic but
happy negation!

“What, then?”

Rapid-fire
pictures: Leo sitting on the kitchen floor surrounded by what seemed like
dozens of Tupperware boxes, gingerly sniff-testing each one.  Emptying most
into the trash.  Trash bag in the large locking trashcan by the back porch
until they could put it in the trunk of the car and drive it down to the dump. 
Plastic boxes soaking in very hot water and dish-soap.  Water drained.  More
hot water, lots more dish-soap.  Scrubbing.  Rinsing.  Heaping pile of hot
plastic boxes and bowls and lids in the dish rack.  Sink drained and scrubbed.

“Oh my God,
you darling!”

A wave of
anticipatory excitement: but wait, there's more!  New sponge and appropriate
cleaning solution applied to the insides of the fridge, all the surfaces.  Old
condiments thrown away.  All remaining food reorganized, with the
still-good-but-may-go-bad-soon moved to the front of the fridge to be used as
soon as possible.

The
refrigerator was practically bare.  Moira gaped at all the newly available
space.

“You are the
best house guest in the history of houses.  Or guests.”

Also, the
freezer and its contents shuffled as well as the cabinets scanned and laid out
so that he was aware of everything available and could plan new meals
accordingly.

He showed her
a final montage of him refilling the sink halfway and using just a dash of
laundry detergent to wash his black sweatpants, then wringing them out and
laying them across her patio rail to dry.  He shuffled a calendar in his mind,
showing his plan to wash a pair/dry a pair/wear a pair each day so that his
wardrobe could accommodate until the next Laundry Day.

“Very smart! 
I was wondering about that.”

And at last,
yes, he had started sunning himself.

“Well-deserved,
indeed...”

Leo smiled
again, feeling very content.  He sent little ripples along the connection of
pride in her ability to understand, of delight in being able to speak with her
in this way, of affection and affirmation.

“You lovely
creature,” she breathed, momentarily overcome.

He heard her
rush of emotion and sent her a picture of his small smile, shaking his head to
hide his brilliant blue eyes and his blush behind his mane.

Oooh, be
careful – be good!
  She locked down more thought before it had a chance to
express itself to him through the feather and perhaps embarrass them both.

“Plans for the
afternoon?” she asked instead.

He flipped
through his options languidly: rake the leaves from around  the yard where the
few deciduous trees had shed.  Sweep the front porch.  Prune back the
badly-overgrown shrubs and hedges around the little house; especially (he sent
with overtones of both shyness and irritation) the damn rose-bush.

“You feel
free,” Moira responded dubiously, “but I don't know where you'll find the
tools; I couldn't locate anything like that in the house when I moved in.  I
think Grandmother always had some town boys do it.”

The smug and
self-assured feeling he sent back she translated as 'I have my ways...'

“I'm sure you
do,” she replied.

He sent a
cartoon drawing of himself pulling in his wings, then putting on a black shirt
that pinched his caricature tightly around the neck and upper arms, and a
question-mark.

“Yeah, I'm
going to buy you a shirt today, although I'm hoping it works out better than
that.  Anything else I should get while I'm at the store?”

He flipped
several pictures rapidly, appearing to deliberate.

“Shit, let me
get a pen.  Hold on...”  Moira opened her eyes enough to get into her laptop
bag and pull out her legal pad, flipping to a clean sheet.  “Okay, go.”

She wrote as
he showed her, the double-vision not as onerous when facing the blank page. 
Carrots, cream of mushroom soup (strange to see the familiar red and white can
as being shown to her by someone that may never have eaten its contents),
broccoli, chicken breasts, egg noodles.  He wavered a bit more, then gave her a
conditional affirmative – okay for now, maybe more later.

“I think I can
do that,” she answered, determined to not think about her bank account.  The
man wanted to cook for her; who was she to deny fresh-made meals?  Better than
the packaged crap she resorted to when the pain and fatigue were too much.

She set aside
the legal pad.  “Do I have to be holding the feather for it to work?  I'm on my
lunch break; I need to go ahead and eat.”

Negative, with
an indicator of proximity.  She set the feather down on her knee and picked up
her sandwich to unwrap it.  The image of Leo rested his head on his folded arms
and shut his eyes again.

“It's weird
eating without you watching.  I just finally got used to it.”

A sleepy
snicker that faded away gently was the only reply.  Moira shut her eyes and ate
her sandwich, watching the far away wind smooth his silver mane.  The pulse of
his unconscious mind was calming... it was like hearing the seashore while not
near enough to see it, the waves that crashed over and over blurred into one
eternal susurration.  The peculiar intimacy of watching and feeling him rest
did more for Moira's calm than a Valium would have.  Focusing more on him than
on her immediate surroundings, she was surprised to see that she had managed to
eat most of what he had sent including one of the cookies.

He opened one
eye.  Picture of the cookie, question mark?

“Yes, it's
still good, actually!  A bit of a treat.  I'll save the other for my afternoon
break.”

He smiled.

“But I've got
to go back in now... don't worry, I'll put the feather right back where it was.”

Affirmation,
plus a picture of the feather slowly turning grey and falling into ash.

“Doesn't last
forever, huh?  Could be used up or worn out?”

Bingo.

“I'll be very
careful with it, then.  Good bye for now, dearheart.”

A final caress
of feeling, and he let the link drop.  She dusted off her hands and her lap,
zipped up her bags, and carefully put the little tuft of down back in her
wallet and her wallet back in her pocket.

In the
afternoons Erica generally left her alone to try to get things done; with any
luck she'd make some big headway with the time left today and her present sense
of balance and relaxation.

Moira would
later be surprised by how right she actually was.

She took a
pain pill with the last bit of water from her thermos and swallowed it down as
she returned to the building, badging through and clocking back in.

Best lunch
I've had in the last year, bar none.  Only way it would have been better was if
I’d been home with him.  We could have gotten snuggly on the patio if it wasn't
too cold for humans.

That, and
if I didn't worry about the damn thing collapsing under our combined weight. 
It was elderly when Mother and I moved back in with Grandmother.

Still, not
even the thought of her house's state of disrepair could worry or concern her
at the moment.

Into the
elevator, up twenty floors.  Moira gazed up at the ceiling instead of the
strangers around her.  Would this little metal cube be tall enough for him? 
Would he have to slouch in the corner next to her to be able to fit?

What a sight
he'd be, in these halls and mazes – a beautiful barefoot and winged savage,
strolling through a world three sizes too small for him, a civilized and
sterilized place completely unprepared for his reality.

Oh, he would
hate it, and rightfully so... she wouldn't ever ask him to stay in a place as
painfully drab and restrictive as this building.  Even the house has windows,
and the little touches of personality that are lent by the presence of an
active life.

People only
existed
here, under a high-watt green-tinted fluorescent light that'd be like
empty calories to his wings, a type of “junk food” compared to the good clean
light of the sun.  They were all thrown together to share a bit of mutual
misery for a few hours in this concrete warren and then leave again.

Of course
if we could all live on sunlight we probably wouldn't have to work here...

She was still
smiling warmly when she got to her desk. Another thirty minutes of effort and a
few short outbound calls tidied up the residual detritus of her email inbox;
now for her physical mail.

The agencies
her company worked for would often send her packages – hard-drives that were
complete-image copies of the originals currently under lock and key in evidence
rooms, some spattered with blood.  Oftentimes there'd be long manila envelopes
crammed full of glossy full-size photos and scans of documents; scraps of paper
and receipts next to right-angle rulers in black and white.  Evidence
technicians couldn't know what was important at first glance, so they  treated
everything as if it was.

And more than
once, one of the little things was the key.  So many people practiced “security
through obscurity”; it was inherent laziness in the human character to think
that only one person (being the subject in question, sitting in their chair)
would have all the information around them to be able to see the pattern, to
know the password, to remember the combination.

But when I
have high-res photos of everything on your desk and office walls, you fool, I
sit there too!  And any scrap could matter.

She shuffled through
her new envelopes until she found an address that interested her.  Ahhh... was
Ray in Fraud Prevention as good as his word?  Yes, he was!  Before her in the
envelope was a full-sized glossy picture of a blank sheet of legal-ruled paper,
obviously the bottom-most piece of a pad in use that had lain just below the
sheets being written upon.  She had asked him to digitize the copy and enhance
it as much as he could and he had; previous tantalizingly faint scratches now
glared in white and dark blue, revealing the first half of handwritten letters.

But only the
top right hand corner of the page tugged at her mind now, and she let it.

Ever since she
was a young woman, Moira had something she’d called her “little voice”.  The
little voice commented on things at the edge of her conscious thought, giving
quiet instructions or insights that she was free to follow or ignore as she
liked.  Trouble was, painful experience had taught Moira it was far better to
obey than defy the little voice.  Whenever it spoke up, it was usually right.

“He's trouble,”
the voice had whispered the first time she'd clapped eyes on Taylor Madison. 
Being the naive young thing that she was at the time she had replied back to it
saucily, saying maybe she could use a little trouble in her life.  Maybe she'd
like it.

And on the
night of the accident, as her coworker had whispered excited details and
salacious expectations of her friend's house party, the voice had been speaking
stridently – “don't go! don't go! don't go!”