Day 4
The Morning After
Harlow woke up spitting sparkles out of her mouth. Her head pounded, and a clump of feathery angel wings was stuck to her cheek. She could not, for the death of her, remember how she’d gotten home. Dang! Eternitian tequila was fierce.
Her pillow, aka Soren's bare arm, moved and she sat up with a jerk, only to swallow down nausea and blink repeatedly to remove sparkles from her lashes.
Soren groaned as he got out of bed and rubbed his face. “I need a couch,” he grumbled. He ran a hand through his bed-head hair.
“I thought you were spending the night with a commune of nymphs,” she said, her voice sounding like she'd smoked a carton of cigarettes. Which–she smelled her hair–she may have. She didn't remember much of the night past the sports book and, if college had taught her anything, it was to never underestimate the powerful sway of drunken revelry.
“They're called a troupe of nymphs, they live in communes, and somebody, and I'm not going to name names, Harlow,” he stressed to which she broadly smiled, “needed rescue from a minotaur.”
“Jim? Aw, he was sweet.”
Soren rolled his eyes and put on a t-shirt. “Yep, he was a real gem.”
“You gave up a troupe of nymphs to protect my honor?”
“Yeah, something like that. I'm a damn hero and I need my own damn bed.”
“Oh, hey,” her voice graveled as she tried working the halo, which had somehow migrated down around her neck, back up over her nose. “Did you talk to Rehan last night?”
“No.” He walked out of the room.
“Her family had her kicked out of the celestial program.”
He back peddled to the doorway. “What?”
“Yeah, she texted me last night after she left the club with the horned half-demon with the linebacker arms. He dried her eyes and bought her doughnuts.” She tossed the halo on the bedside table and began the process of unwinding her arms from the angel wing straps. “All the Celestials were talking about it. Those women can gossip!” she eyed him up and down as if to say the dirt I know on you and then she snorted.
Soren shook his head and left.
Soren Demands Answers
Soren was pissed which was why he ignored protocol and bypassed Lyris to march directly into Cy’s office. If he hadn’t been so mad he would have noticed that Lyris did nothing to stop him, which should have given him pause, because no one, no one!, got in to Cyvarian’s office without consent. But, gods damn it, he didn’t care. He got demoted for sleeping with Rehan and a few days later she got kicked out of the celestial program. Some bullshit was going on and he sure as hell wasn’t go to take it.
Soren pushed open the office door and opened his mouth to unleash his fury. Only, Cyvarian beat him to it. “What did you think you were doing last night?”
Soren stutter stepped to a halt. What the hell! He was the injured party here. Before he could regroup and vent, Cy tossed him the society section of the Eternity Post where, front and center, was a picture of the junior celestials at play. “What is the meaning of this?” His boss demanded.
Was this a joke? What did he know about celestials and their penchants for wild soirees? “The junior celestials were celebrating. So what?”
Cyvarian’s icy gaze didn’t waver. “Who’s featured in the picture, Soren?”
Soren peered at the image. “Hey! That's Harlow not a celestial.” He pointed at the picture like an amped up eleven-year-old tattling on his sister.
“Exactly. Care to tell me why you’re parading her for public consumption?”
“Me? I had nothing to do with that! Rehan invited her.”
The room cooled briefly before righting.
Oh, shit.
Cy was seriously mad.
Mad enough that, for an instant, he lost control of his emotions. Cyvarian’s anger chilled to the core. One did not anger Cyvarian if one wanted to keep one’s job as a handler and not stay stuck in customs for the rest of one’s life.
“Keep your partner out of the public eye,” Cy said slowly and softly, another indication of the man’s tightly leashed fury.
“Ooookay.” Soren, his own anger mellowing in the face of Cyvarian’s, sat and rested his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward. He’d known there was something bigger going on with Harlow, and he was not in the mood to get kicked in the balls for it. “Are you going to keep me in the dark?”
Cyvarian took his time answering, which didn’t bode well. “You are needed in customs, Soren. Your job is simple. Work in customs, keep Snow-Sheridan out of sight.”
Soren blinked. He was needed in customs? Suddenly, one of the many unsettling things about his demotion that had lurked in the back of his mind sprang forward. It had been months since he and Rehan were together, and he was being punished for it now? Why hadn’t the Big Guys called him on it months ago when it happened? Then it hit him.
“You used Rehan to demote me?” he breathed.
“Easiest, fastest method,” Cy said.
Soren gave himself until the count of ten before, “Unbelievable!” he exploded as he jumped from the chair. His angry strides back and forth in front of Cy’s desk doing nothing, at all, to calm him down. Of all the low-down, double-handed, dirty-rotten things! Demoting a man to customs for having sex with a gorgeous woman was the worst kind of evil! He hated politicians!
“And what about Rehan?” Soren demanded. “She got her fondest wish and then you yanked it away? Rehan deserved to be a celestial. What is wrong with you people?”
The room temperature dipped again. “What do you mean?”
“You guys kicked her out of the program!"
Cyvarian’s eyes narrowed and he picked up his phone. A few seconds later he spoke into it. “Madam Celestial, Senator Lotus. I’m calling about one of your junior celestial candidates. Rehan Bristlecone. Am I to understand she’s been removed from the program?”
Wait. Soren slowed and then stopped his pacing. Cy didn’t know about Rehan?
Cy’s hand clenched around the phone. “That is disappointing. Thank you for your time, madam.” He ended the call and rubbed his jaw. “To be clear: Rehan gain admittance into the program on her own we merely used that to our advantage. It seems, however, that her family forced the program to remove her from the program.”
Shit. Soren dropped into the chair. Poor Re. Gods her family sucked.
“Rehan’s brother Marseck made the call. He threatened the celestial charter.”
“The good news is that Rehan had already quit. Last month. They let her finish the semester with her class.”
Soren suddenly felt defeated. Everything in his life was turned upside down and sideways and he still had no idea why. “What am I doing in customs, Cy?”
“You are investigating the disappearance of human souls.”
Soren leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms. “From customs? Bullshit. That’s impossible.”
“Nathaniel Pine reported discrepancies between the number of souls entering customs and the number moving on to the waiting room. We needed an agent there without causing suspicion. We capitalized on Rehan’s celestial status as a convenient loophole to get you in.”
“What about Harlow? Is she investigating souls, too?”
“Ms. Snow-Sheridan is to report any irregular activities to Pine.”
Soren waited for more when none was forthcoming he snorted. “Let me guess, the nature of Ms. Snow-Sheridan’s work with ESF is none of my concern?”
“Exactly. Now, get your ass to customs and keep your partner out of Earth and the press.”
Sneaking Around
Harlow headed for Soren’s kiosk. She knew he wasn’t around and figured with him gone she could get some needed work done in peace; so long as she disappeared before he got back. Sneaking around was proving a skosh more difficult than she’d first thought, but it was doable. Fortunately, her partner was too self-absorbed to notice, which worked out well for her.
His new kiosk was pretty cushy. Not cushy enough for her to want the job back, but still nice. She hated closed in work spaces, but it would do the job today because, at the moment, she didn’t have too much choice. She pushed a video game console to the side and settled in, using the tiny sideboard as a desk. According to her sources she only had an hour before Soren returned. About thirty minutes later the computer screen flashed on, startling Harlow. She glared at the device until she noticed a name, in English, blinking at her from the list of souls awaiting arrival.
She stared at the name. Evangeline Bay. What were the odds that the computery thingy would randomly turn on and Evangeline’s name just happened to be legible to her? Slim to none, was Harlow’s guess. Someone wanted Evangeline admitted into Eternity. And that someone wanted Harlow to do it. Especially as there was no dispatch officer sticking his ID into the machine. Feeling a bit used, Harlow grumbled as she pressed the appropriate button.
The soul retrieval form printed out. Harlow grabbed it, gathered her work, and exited the kiosk.
Mistaken for a Celestial
Later that evening as Soren and Harlow walked home from customs, Soren vented his frustrations with Cyvarian and the Big Guys to his partner. Hoping for a bit of comfort or even an inch of understanding.
“Can you believe it?” He demanded with a huff as he finished relating that morning’s meeting with Cy.
For a moment Harlow looked confused as she obviously pulled herself from whatever she’d been thinking about back to “their” conversation. “Uh, what?”
Sadly, he’d forgotten that she couldn’t care less about his problems. Soren glared at her. “Today? Your picture in the paper and me getting blamed for allowing it?”
“Why would my being with Newman today be in the news?” Harlow asked.
“Newman? It was a picture from last night. You were with the celestials.” Soren said.
“The Big Guys mistook me for a celestial? Really? That's great!” she crowed.
“I think you're missing the point, partner.”
“No, I'm not. Have you seen those women? Wow! Oh wait, you have.”
“Ha. Ha.” God, she really was such a pain in his ass and she’d completely ignored the point of the discussion.
He changed the subject. “So who is Newman and why were you with him today?”
“Who said I was with Newman today?”
Soren gnashed his teeth. He didn’t have the patience to deal with her right now. He’d had a shitty morning and a partially hung-over day. “I don’t know why I bother.”
“Oh, hey! Speaking of today, guess who I admitted?”
“No one since you’re not a dispatch operator.”
“That is true, but I stopped by your kiosk, it’s nice, by the way—”
“Right!”
“Yeah. And on the screen was Evangeline Bay waiting for admittance.”
“That is weird.”
“And it was written in English so I could read it.”
“That is very weird.”
“That’s what I thought, so I admitted her anyway.”