Diane saw the familiar blond man ducking under the counter. She counted slowly to ten, but the man did not come back up. Maybe she hadn’t seen anything. Maybe she had come into existence seconds ago and had made up every moment until this moment to explain how she came to be sitting in this booth in this diner.

Dawn took a sip of her coffee to cover the silence, which went longer than either of them had anticipated, so the sip ended up draining her mug. She set down the empty mug and wiped coffee and egg off her mouth.

“Sometimes the only things we can know for sure are the things we feel. I believe you, Diane. I disagree with you, but I believe you.”

Diane felt a gentle hand touch her own, a sympathetic pat. Dawn had both hands on her coffee cup. Diane looked back down at her own hand, and saw the final quick motion of a gray-gloved hand disappearing under her table.

14

Jackie felt, as the door swung her back out onto the sun-cracked asphalt, that science had taught her little. Carlos had suggested seeing the mayor. It would mean going to City Hall, which would put her in dangerous proximity to the City Council, but the mayor herself was a comforting figure, and probably safe enough.

City Hall was certainly better than where Old Woman Josie wanted her to go. Anywhere was better than the library.

She sauntered to her car, not in any hurry to leave the mild warmth of the evening sunlight. The desert beyond the roads and buildings was going pink at the edges, orange farther in, and then a deep yellow glow where the setting sun met the horizon. It was all very pretty to look at, and so she did. As a result, she did not notice what was in her car until it grabbed her as she opened the door.

“Erika! You scared the shit out of me.” Jackie had to intentionally restart her breathing.

The impossibly tall being, seemingly made of bright black beams of light, shrugged, and there was the flutter of hundreds of tiny wings all beating at once.

“Fear is a reasonable response to life.”

Jackie didn’t have time for general philosophizing from a being it was illegal to acknowledge existed. Or maybe she did have time. She wasn’t about to pretend she understood anything at all about time.

“You’re in my car, so explain why or get out.”

Erika turned to look at her. Where eyes might be on a human being was a shadowy glow that Jackie could taste in the back of her mouth. It tasted like strawberry candy covered in mud.

“I come with a message on behalf of the angels. We are afraid. All of us. I am perhaps the most afraid.”