Chapter Three
VIVIAN HAD BEEN SEARCHING through the things Nora had abandoned, doing all the things Nora hadn’t - reading instead of skimming and re-reading the things she didn’t understand until she actually understood them. Nora actually didn’t feel so bad about not finding the passage herself - the pages had been stuck together with what she guessed was a few drops of what looked and smelled like pine sap, and in her haste, she’d skipped them.
“It doesn’t matter,” she told Nick when he scolded her.
“At least we found the page,” Vivian agreed. Then she frowned as she re-read the page. “Although it doesn’t really say much…”
“Well?” Nick prompted. “Can someone tell me what it says? I, like, functionally illiterate, remember?”
“Functionally illiterate can’t read well enough to function in everyday society,” Nora corrected absentmindedly, sitting at Vivian’s side and reading over her shoulder. “Illiterate can’t read at all. You are neither because while you can read, you just don’t want to.”
“Can you tell me what it says anyway?”
“She doesn’t even have a real name,” Vivian sighed, quickly becoming disenchanted by the lack of information. “This is probably a copy of a copy of the original book, because this part was originally written in 1497. But in 1639, someone specified that she was a girl and then 1962, someone decided to finally name her ‘Jane Doe.’ And it just mentions her in passing, saying that nobody ever found out what her power was, but they suspected that she could manipulate fire. Sorry for getting your hopes up, Nora. I really thought we had a lead.”
“We do have a lead, though,” Nora said. “Before, we didn’t know anything, but now we know that there was a girl who had the same problem that Rune has now.” Nora turned to Nick.
“Go search for strange occurrences in 1497,” she said. “Novices or guardians giving up their souls count.”
It was nearly ten o’clock - almost closing time - before Nora really found anything. Nick had compiled a list of everyone who had given up his or her soul in the late fourteen-hundreds and Nora and Vivian were trying to find everything they could about the people who were on it. Nick had already left - he had a shift early in the morning.
“Vivian,” Nora said, tapping the woman on her shoulder. “I found her.”
“Is she still Jane Doe or does she have a real name?”
“She’s still Jane Doe for now, but we have a place and a year,” Nora said. She showed Vivian three separate entries in the book. It was the diary of some old angel who - before he fell in love and settled down - used to travel the world, trying to gather new information on soul restoration.
December 25th, 1459
London, England
The captured demons Fletcher told me about have arrived today. There are five of them - four males and one female. They all seem to be in good health, although the female has tried to bite anyone who gets too close to her. I have told the guardians working with them to be more careful, but no one has taken my advice. They say that they know what they are doing, which I suppose is true. They also say that most of the demons are like her, and that the males are acting strangely by being so quiet and peaceful. Some of them suspect - quite foolishly, I believe - that the four are part of a conspiracy to attack this group home Fletcher has created, but I find that to be ridiculous. “Demons are unable to think and plan,” I told them, “Surely you remember that from before you had souls?” None of the guardians would talk to me after that. I fear that I may have offended some of them.
December 26th, 1459
London, England
All four of the male demons have their souls back, with no trouble whatsoever. But alas! If only the process of soul restoration was quicker! The guardians had to get up quite early in the morning and worked until well after the evening meal to restore the souls.
The female has been disruptive all day - banging on the bars of her cell and screaming bloody murder. Fletcher thought about just letting his guardians kill her, but I talked him out of it. I view her as an experiment. How old can a demon be before it becomes impossible to restore its soul? One of the males said that she was just over a thousand years old, and I suspect he is right by the size of her horns. They are long and curled tightly, hard but brittle at the ends, possibly because of age. He cannot be lying.
December 29, 1459
London, England
I am very sad to say it, but the female demon is a demon once again. For the first two days, everything was fine. She recovered quickly and started on the tests. But on the third day, she gave up her soul, causing the entire right wing of Fletcher’s house to go up in flames, killing five guardians and two angels. It makes me wonder if she could manipulate fire, or if someone else caused the fire, but I won’t be able to say anything for certain.
I will be off to Berlin later today. Unfortunately I cannot stay for the funerals, but another colleague has notified me of a faster way to restore demons’ souls. He wants me to view the process before announcing it to the rest of the angel world, and cannot be delayed anymore - my stay in London has made his test subjects wait far too long to be comfortable.
“The date’s off,” Vivian noted. Nora almost smiled.
“That book you found was written after the man died. Nobody read any of his journals except him while he was alive. That’s why the date’s off by forty years.”
Vivian began to put the books away. Nora helped her, but kept the diary under her leg. She was going to check it out later. “This changes things, doesn’t it?” Vivian asked. “About Rune… and about other demons.”
“Maybe,” Nora said without any real hope in her voice. It wasn’t like she doubted anyone’s ability - she just doubted that they would think of this as a real problem. It seemed too rare to be a big issue. “But maybe not. Maybe they can fix it.”
“They’d have to figure out what the actual problem was, first,” Vivian said. “Why did she give up her soul? What caused the fire? Was it her? This Cleaver guy said it might have been someone else.”
Nora slept on it, and then spent the day finishing up her activation paperwork. Once she had dropped everything off, received her official uniform and picked up a guardian application (even though she wasn’t sure if there was any angel she wanted the guard specifically, she kept the paper anyway), she went back to the library and picked up several more volumes of Cleaver’s multiple diaries.
Nora learned a lot - in a later diary, Cleaver later went back to Fletcher’s and investigated the demon. He interviewed people who had talked to her. He got a few eyewitness accounts of what happened.
He realized that she could manipulate fire (the one person who could manipulate fire at the time of the incident was away from the house). He knew that she was thousands of years old - and very, very powerful with connections in high places around Hell. He guessed that she didn’t completely receive her soul - her recovery was too quick. It took several days to recover, and the older you were, the longer it took. Two days was unheard of, even for the freshly-spawned demons. The only conclusion was that her soul was not totally accepted, and that meant that she couldn’t access her powers.
When Nora reached that part, she put the book down and took a long walk around the edges of the compound. Inevitably, she started making comparisons between the demon - at least, how she imagined her - and Rune.
The only thing that held Nora back from going to the U.S. Director and demanding that Rune be transported far, far away from the compound was the fact that Rune was three months old. That girl couldn’t have lasted two days - Rune had survived for three months. What did that mean?
Maybe it was because Rune was younger - his horns were long enough to curl, but they showed that he was relatively young for a male. Male demons were physically larger than females - horn size, height, tail length, etc.
At the same time, Nora got a new understanding of why SAVIOR was so selective about the demons they took. For a moment, she felt brilliant for figuring it out, but the next, she felt stupid for not seeing it sooner.
As she walked back to the main buildings, a plan formed in Nora’s head. Instead of turning to the angel dorms, Nora kept on walking straight in to the administrative building.
Fifteen minutes later, Nora walked out again, Rune’s file tucked under her jacket.
+ + +
“Yes, you wanted to see me?” the Director asked.
“It’s about Rune,” Nora said. “Of course, I can still do the mentorship thing, but… he has a problem. And he needs help.”
“What is it?” the Director looked surprised, but not alarmed. Yet.
“Sometimes Rune can’t track,” Nora said. “On his best days, he sucks and on his worst, he can’t do a thing.”
Nora continued, ignoring the Director’s attempt to get a word in. “I was doing some research, and I think it has something to do with his soul. I don’t think he’s fully accepted his soul, and that it’s the reason for all of this.”
“What do you think we should do about it, then?” the Director asked, realizing that the only way he would be able to talk would be to just go along with whatever the woman was saying. “Have you even talked to him?”
“No,” Nora admitted. “But I talked Malika into spilling.” It was true enough. “But I think maybe counseling could help. I think he should be able to confide in someone other than his best friend.”
The Director looked hesitant.
“Director, if I didn’t think this was important, I would have come to you after my first session with Rune. But there are - were - others who’ve had this problem and things ended badly for them and others. Now I don’t really know what’s going to happen if he snaps, but I really don’t want to see it.”
“What do you think we should do about it, then?” the Director asked again.
“Monday morning, ten minutes into first period, he should get a memo that says he has an appointment with a counselor after school,” Nora answered, almost immediately. “If he thinks that I saw right through him and knew he had a problem instantly, he might be more open.”
Or it could backfire badly because there was so much time between the beginning of first period and the end of seventh period, but Nora didn’t really want to think about it.
“Fine,” the Director finally said.
“Thank you, sir.”
Like on her first day back at the compound, Nora stood outside the door and stretched once she had finally escaped his office.
This time, what compelled her to move was a tug. This one was different, more persistent and harder to ignore than all of the little whims that plagued Nora whenever she was in a city. This one felt as if she was actively searching for something, although Nora had no clue what was going on. Nevertheless, she followed it, remembering how Damien had once said that he had gotten a tug that sounded similar to this one - it was his subconscious wanting to find something. And then he had found her.
It sounded sort of sweet if you didn’t look too deeply into it. Because then all sorts of bad ideas came to mind.
Nora came to a stop at the south gate. It was the gate she, Damien and several other guardians - all with offensive powers, to even out the search-and-destroy party - had used to leave the compound the night he had died.
All sorts of memories came up to Nora’s conscious train of thought. Some were good, and some shouldn’t have been but were anyway, legality (among other things) be damned. Almost all of the good things were clouded by sadness, though. Nora was sort of getting sick of that - every time she thought of him, she had to get sad. Why couldn’t she think of him and be happy for the time they had? Usually relationships between angels and demons dissolved within a decade, mostly because of how they all viewed time. Why try to form bonds when five years can blip by like only an hour?
“God, I’m turning into such a bitter harpy,” Nora sighed, wiping her eyes and deciding stubbornly that they were angry tears.
“It doesn’t matter,” she told Nick when he scolded her.
“At least we found the page,” Vivian agreed. Then she frowned as she re-read the page. “Although it doesn’t really say much…”
“Well?” Nick prompted. “Can someone tell me what it says? I, like, functionally illiterate, remember?”
“Functionally illiterate can’t read well enough to function in everyday society,” Nora corrected absentmindedly, sitting at Vivian’s side and reading over her shoulder. “Illiterate can’t read at all. You are neither because while you can read, you just don’t want to.”
“Can you tell me what it says anyway?”
“She doesn’t even have a real name,” Vivian sighed, quickly becoming disenchanted by the lack of information. “This is probably a copy of a copy of the original book, because this part was originally written in 1497. But in 1639, someone specified that she was a girl and then 1962, someone decided to finally name her ‘Jane Doe.’ And it just mentions her in passing, saying that nobody ever found out what her power was, but they suspected that she could manipulate fire. Sorry for getting your hopes up, Nora. I really thought we had a lead.”
“We do have a lead, though,” Nora said. “Before, we didn’t know anything, but now we know that there was a girl who had the same problem that Rune has now.” Nora turned to Nick.
“Go search for strange occurrences in 1497,” she said. “Novices or guardians giving up their souls count.”
It was nearly ten o’clock - almost closing time - before Nora really found anything. Nick had compiled a list of everyone who had given up his or her soul in the late fourteen-hundreds and Nora and Vivian were trying to find everything they could about the people who were on it. Nick had already left - he had a shift early in the morning.
“Vivian,” Nora said, tapping the woman on her shoulder. “I found her.”
“Is she still Jane Doe or does she have a real name?”
“She’s still Jane Doe for now, but we have a place and a year,” Nora said. She showed Vivian three separate entries in the book. It was the diary of some old angel who - before he fell in love and settled down - used to travel the world, trying to gather new information on soul restoration.
December 25th, 1459
London, England
The captured demons Fletcher told me about have arrived today. There are five of them - four males and one female. They all seem to be in good health, although the female has tried to bite anyone who gets too close to her. I have told the guardians working with them to be more careful, but no one has taken my advice. They say that they know what they are doing, which I suppose is true. They also say that most of the demons are like her, and that the males are acting strangely by being so quiet and peaceful. Some of them suspect - quite foolishly, I believe - that the four are part of a conspiracy to attack this group home Fletcher has created, but I find that to be ridiculous. “Demons are unable to think and plan,” I told them, “Surely you remember that from before you had souls?” None of the guardians would talk to me after that. I fear that I may have offended some of them.
December 26th, 1459
London, England
All four of the male demons have their souls back, with no trouble whatsoever. But alas! If only the process of soul restoration was quicker! The guardians had to get up quite early in the morning and worked until well after the evening meal to restore the souls.
The female has been disruptive all day - banging on the bars of her cell and screaming bloody murder. Fletcher thought about just letting his guardians kill her, but I talked him out of it. I view her as an experiment. How old can a demon be before it becomes impossible to restore its soul? One of the males said that she was just over a thousand years old, and I suspect he is right by the size of her horns. They are long and curled tightly, hard but brittle at the ends, possibly because of age. He cannot be lying.
December 29, 1459
London, England
I am very sad to say it, but the female demon is a demon once again. For the first two days, everything was fine. She recovered quickly and started on the tests. But on the third day, she gave up her soul, causing the entire right wing of Fletcher’s house to go up in flames, killing five guardians and two angels. It makes me wonder if she could manipulate fire, or if someone else caused the fire, but I won’t be able to say anything for certain.
I will be off to Berlin later today. Unfortunately I cannot stay for the funerals, but another colleague has notified me of a faster way to restore demons’ souls. He wants me to view the process before announcing it to the rest of the angel world, and cannot be delayed anymore - my stay in London has made his test subjects wait far too long to be comfortable.
“The date’s off,” Vivian noted. Nora almost smiled.
“That book you found was written after the man died. Nobody read any of his journals except him while he was alive. That’s why the date’s off by forty years.”
Vivian began to put the books away. Nora helped her, but kept the diary under her leg. She was going to check it out later. “This changes things, doesn’t it?” Vivian asked. “About Rune… and about other demons.”
“Maybe,” Nora said without any real hope in her voice. It wasn’t like she doubted anyone’s ability - she just doubted that they would think of this as a real problem. It seemed too rare to be a big issue. “But maybe not. Maybe they can fix it.”
“They’d have to figure out what the actual problem was, first,” Vivian said. “Why did she give up her soul? What caused the fire? Was it her? This Cleaver guy said it might have been someone else.”
Nora slept on it, and then spent the day finishing up her activation paperwork. Once she had dropped everything off, received her official uniform and picked up a guardian application (even though she wasn’t sure if there was any angel she wanted the guard specifically, she kept the paper anyway), she went back to the library and picked up several more volumes of Cleaver’s multiple diaries.
Nora learned a lot - in a later diary, Cleaver later went back to Fletcher’s and investigated the demon. He interviewed people who had talked to her. He got a few eyewitness accounts of what happened.
He realized that she could manipulate fire (the one person who could manipulate fire at the time of the incident was away from the house). He knew that she was thousands of years old - and very, very powerful with connections in high places around Hell. He guessed that she didn’t completely receive her soul - her recovery was too quick. It took several days to recover, and the older you were, the longer it took. Two days was unheard of, even for the freshly-spawned demons. The only conclusion was that her soul was not totally accepted, and that meant that she couldn’t access her powers.
When Nora reached that part, she put the book down and took a long walk around the edges of the compound. Inevitably, she started making comparisons between the demon - at least, how she imagined her - and Rune.
The only thing that held Nora back from going to the U.S. Director and demanding that Rune be transported far, far away from the compound was the fact that Rune was three months old. That girl couldn’t have lasted two days - Rune had survived for three months. What did that mean?
Maybe it was because Rune was younger - his horns were long enough to curl, but they showed that he was relatively young for a male. Male demons were physically larger than females - horn size, height, tail length, etc.
At the same time, Nora got a new understanding of why SAVIOR was so selective about the demons they took. For a moment, she felt brilliant for figuring it out, but the next, she felt stupid for not seeing it sooner.
As she walked back to the main buildings, a plan formed in Nora’s head. Instead of turning to the angel dorms, Nora kept on walking straight in to the administrative building.
Fifteen minutes later, Nora walked out again, Rune’s file tucked under her jacket.
+ + +
“Yes, you wanted to see me?” the Director asked.
“It’s about Rune,” Nora said. “Of course, I can still do the mentorship thing, but… he has a problem. And he needs help.”
“What is it?” the Director looked surprised, but not alarmed. Yet.
“Sometimes Rune can’t track,” Nora said. “On his best days, he sucks and on his worst, he can’t do a thing.”
Nora continued, ignoring the Director’s attempt to get a word in. “I was doing some research, and I think it has something to do with his soul. I don’t think he’s fully accepted his soul, and that it’s the reason for all of this.”
“What do you think we should do about it, then?” the Director asked, realizing that the only way he would be able to talk would be to just go along with whatever the woman was saying. “Have you even talked to him?”
“No,” Nora admitted. “But I talked Malika into spilling.” It was true enough. “But I think maybe counseling could help. I think he should be able to confide in someone other than his best friend.”
The Director looked hesitant.
“Director, if I didn’t think this was important, I would have come to you after my first session with Rune. But there are - were - others who’ve had this problem and things ended badly for them and others. Now I don’t really know what’s going to happen if he snaps, but I really don’t want to see it.”
“What do you think we should do about it, then?” the Director asked again.
“Monday morning, ten minutes into first period, he should get a memo that says he has an appointment with a counselor after school,” Nora answered, almost immediately. “If he thinks that I saw right through him and knew he had a problem instantly, he might be more open.”
Or it could backfire badly because there was so much time between the beginning of first period and the end of seventh period, but Nora didn’t really want to think about it.
“Fine,” the Director finally said.
“Thank you, sir.”
Like on her first day back at the compound, Nora stood outside the door and stretched once she had finally escaped his office.
This time, what compelled her to move was a tug. This one was different, more persistent and harder to ignore than all of the little whims that plagued Nora whenever she was in a city. This one felt as if she was actively searching for something, although Nora had no clue what was going on. Nevertheless, she followed it, remembering how Damien had once said that he had gotten a tug that sounded similar to this one - it was his subconscious wanting to find something. And then he had found her.
It sounded sort of sweet if you didn’t look too deeply into it. Because then all sorts of bad ideas came to mind.
Nora came to a stop at the south gate. It was the gate she, Damien and several other guardians - all with offensive powers, to even out the search-and-destroy party - had used to leave the compound the night he had died.
All sorts of memories came up to Nora’s conscious train of thought. Some were good, and some shouldn’t have been but were anyway, legality (among other things) be damned. Almost all of the good things were clouded by sadness, though. Nora was sort of getting sick of that - every time she thought of him, she had to get sad. Why couldn’t she think of him and be happy for the time they had? Usually relationships between angels and demons dissolved within a decade, mostly because of how they all viewed time. Why try to form bonds when five years can blip by like only an hour?
“God, I’m turning into such a bitter harpy,” Nora sighed, wiping her eyes and deciding stubbornly that they were angry tears.