Angel

Page 8

 

  She cleared her throat, running her hands across the tablecloth. “So how does it work? Do you use tarot cards or something?”

  “No. I just hold your hand. ” I sat down next to her and rubbed my palms over my jeans. I couldn’t believe how nervous I was. It wasn’t like I’d never done this before; I’d been giving readings since I was eleven. For the last year or so, I’d even been charging money for a lot of them, just to shut Aunt Jo up about how draining it was on her finances to have to support three people all by herself.

  Beth took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. “OK, well — here,” she said, and held out her hand. It was small and neat, with a tiny gold-and-pearl ring on one finger.

  I gazed down at her hand. Somehow I couldn’t quite bring myself to touch it. God, what was wrong with me? I’d given readings for all sorts of people over the years, and I’d seen plenty of weird and disturbing and even frankly illegal things. Beth Hartley’s secrets were hardly likely to rank up there with those. But even as I thought it, I knew that wasn’t the reason for my hesitation. I was still having that strange . . . premonition, or intuition, or whatever you wanted to call it.

  If I read Beth, it would change everything.

  Beth looked anxious. “Is something wrong?” she asked. Her fingers curled under her hand. “Please, Willow, I — I really need help. ”

  I shook myself. “Sorry,” I muttered. “I’m just . . . being stupid. ”

  Closing my eyes, I took her hand. It felt warm, oddly vulnerable. I leaned back in my chair and let go of everything I thought I knew about Beth, allowing my mind to simply drift. Almost immediately, images started to come, along with things that I just knew somehow — facts popping into my head as if whispered by unseen helpers.

  “You were walking in the woods last week,” I said slowly. “There’s a patch of them behind your house. You’ve always felt safe there — you know these woods really well, and it’s a good place to get away from it all, to de-stress. ”

  I heard Beth’s faint gasp, her hand tightening in mine. And in my mind’s eye, I could see the Beth of last week, idly kicking at autumn leaves as she walked down a worn dirt path. This Beth was wearing sneakers, too, and faded jeans. Her forehead was creased; she was thinking about an English exam. She thought she had done all right, but what if she hadn’t? What if it had affected her perfect 4. 0?

  Suddenly I knew that Beth was only perfect because she was too frightened not to be. The real Beth wasn’t confident at all. She was constantly driving herself, constantly afraid that she wasn’t going to get it right. I could actually feel her tension, knotting coldly in her stomach.

  “You’re often worried about things,” I said carefully. Half of being a good psychic, I’ve learned, is not to freak people out by letting them know exactly how much you can see about them. “You can get very stressed. ”

  “That’s true,” whispered Beth. She sounded close to tears. “But, Willow, what I really need to know about is —”

  “Don’t tell me,” I interrupted. “Let me find out for myself. ” She fell silent. I did, too, waiting to see what images would follow.

  It was the last thing in the universe I ever would have expected.

  The Beth in my mind’s eye stopped beside a stream; it was a favorite spot. She sank onto her haunches and idly stirred the cool, clear water with one manicured finger. It doesn’t matter about my GPA, she tried to tell herself. In fact, I’ve heard that some colleges like it if you don’t do perfectly, because it shows that you’re better rounded or something —

  Her thoughts broke off as the stream caught fire. Only it wasn’t fire at all; it was light: a bright, hot light that blazed suddenly across the water, dancing on the ripples. Beth looked up with a gasp . . . and saw an angel.

  I could feel my own shock rising, and I pushed it down, just letting the images come as they would. The angel stood on the opposite bank, a beautiful winged being of light. Radiant. That was the word that Beth kept thinking.

  It was gazing at her with an expression of great tenderness. “Don’t be afraid,” it said, and it came toward her, not even stirring the water with its robes.

  I opened my eyes in a daze. “You . . . saw an angel,” I said.

  “Yes!” cried Beth, leaning forward. Her fingers clutched mine. “Oh, Willow, I really did. It was real — I know it! It came right up to me, and it put its hands on my head, and I felt such — such peace. I suddenly realized that none of it matters, not my grades or school or anything that I thought was so important before!”

  This all came out in a wild burst. Beth’s eyes were intense, fervent. I started to say something else and then stopped.

  The truth was I didn’t know what to say. Were angels real, then? I had never thought so, but then I’d never been very much into religion — probably because so many of the churches around here were the type that held revivals in giant tents and regarded psychics as spawns of Satan. My mind raced. Had Beth only imagined what she’d seen? Maybe she’d cracked under all the self-imposed strain, so that she needed to believe in an angel to make herself feel better.

  But that didn’t seem right somehow. Even if I was only experiencing all of this secondhand, through Beth, the angel in her memory had felt real.

  I swallowed. “OK, well . . . let me see what else I can get. ” I closed my eyes again. Beth’s fingers were tense now, almost quivering with anticipation.

  The angel had cradled her head for a long time. A feeling of immense peace had come over her. Yet there was something else there, too. I frowned, trying to put my finger on it. A draining. The touch had felt wonderful, but had also left Beth so weak that when the angel finally departed, she could barely make it home again.

  Had her condition been physical or just emotional? I couldn’t really tell; she was trying not to remember that part. She had gone back to the stream every day since, hoping that the angel would return. And frequently, it had. The images became confused in places; sometimes I was seeing an angel and sometimes a man with the angel’s face. Through it all, I could sense Beth’s joy, her wonder . . . a swirling of energies as the angel touched her. Unease shivered through me. What was this thing, anyway?

  “You’ve seen the angel several times now,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. “I’m also seeing a man with the angel’s face. ”

  “Yes, that’s him,” said Beth. Her voice was soft, ardent, like a prayer. “Angels can do that — they walk among us, to help us. Oh, Willow, I couldn’t believe it when he really came back again. He’s promised that he’ll always be there for me. I — I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life. ”

  And she was, but I could sense that she was also the most miserable. But before I could say anything else, Beth leaned forward, gripping my hand as the words burst out of her: “I just feel like school and clubs and all that — they don’t have any meaning anymore, not when all that is out there. ” She waved her free hand in the air. “Angels are real, and that means . . . Well, why am I bothering with anything else?”