db1bd484fe8700408f51338793ca8c56

“Que sera. She still wants to talk to you.”

The pigeons reluctantly gave way before him and fell in behind.

Samuel picked up the phone—patented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, and he had no idea why he knew that but didn’t know which end he was supposed to speak into. Finally, he figured it out. “Hello?”

“Samuel? My name is Diana, and I’m a Keeper. Do you know what a Keeper is?”

“The people who maintain the metaphysical balance of good on this world.”

“Ta dah.”

He thought about everything he’d seen and heard over the last two days, especially about the things he’d heard last night in the shelter. “You’re not doing a very good job.”

“Give me a break, I’m still in high school. I want to meet you, so I need you to do me a favor. Find a closet door, open it enough to get your arm through, and wave it around.”

“Wave it?”

“Your arm. When I grab your hand, pull me through to your side.”

“You’ll fit through a space I can get my arm through?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said…”

“Yeah, I know what I said. You can open the door a little wider when you pull me through.”

“Oh.” He wondered if she was pretty. Then he wondered why it mattered. Then he found himself wondering about her breasts. He had a feeling he shouldn’t be, but he couldn’t seem to stop.

“Samuel?”

He pushed a pigeon out of the phone booth.“How do you know my name?”

“Father Harris told me. Are you all right?”

“My genitalia hurts.”

“What have you been…never mind. I don’t want to know.Can you find a closet door?”

Samuel sighed and shrugged even though he knew the Keeper couldn’t see him. “Sure.”

“Brillig. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

St. Patrick was right. Therewas something funny about that boy. Lacing up her boots, Diana went over their conversation but couldn’t put her finger on it. For an angel, he’d sounded pretty much like any of the guys she went to school with, right down to that last, irritating“Sure.”

Minus the comment about the genitalia.

Or given a different choice of words at the very least.

She shoved her arms into her jacket, stuffed her hat and mittens into the outside pockets, checked her inside pocket for her wallet, and stepped into the closet, pulling the door closed but not latching it behind her. She’d have preferred to be traveling with her backpack, her computer, and her cell phone, but the possibilities reacted badly to electronics. Last time she tried to take her computer in with her, every window in the Otherworld had to be closed and reopened before things stabilized.

Tripping over a pile of shoes propelled her half a dozen staggering steps into the darkness. Arms flailing, she finally regained her balance after careening off a number of hard objects she couldn’t identify through the bulk of her jacket.

“Stupid goose down…makes me look like the Michelin Man.”

Stupid winter.

Stupid cold.

“Like it would’ve killed my parents to have settled outside of Disney World?” she asked the darkness. The darkness answered with the distant strains of a familiar theme song. Wincing, she redirected her concentration toward the angel, wondering just what made subconscious control of the Otherworld so different from conscious control.

Worse luck that Samuel wasn’t in Florida. She could use a break from late December in Canada.

It grew lighter.

The ground compacted under her boots.

A jack pine dropped a load of snow down the back of her neck.

“Oh, man!”

By the time she finished dancing around, flapping the snow away, it was fully light. Or as light as it was going to get at any rate. Snow-covered hills rolled away into the distance. To her right, a jagged rock outcrop rose up only a little grayer than the sky. To her left, and pretty much directly above her, evergreens bowed under their burden of snow.

Blowing out a disgusted plume of air, Diana dug for hat and mitts thinking that Mrs. Green, her CanLit teacher,’d be creaming herself at so much landscape and isolation. “Yeah, right,” she muttered, dragging her hat over her ears. “Like Canada in late December doesn’t include coffee shops and Boxing Day sales. Couldn’t have landed in an Otherworld Starbucks or HMV, oh, no.That would be too easy.”

What made subconscious control of the Otherworld so different from conscious control? Well, that was obvious: conscious control created a place where people actually wanted to be.

She couldn’t see the angel’s arm.

Which wasn’t surprising since there weren’t any doors.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“You can’t go back in there, kid.”

Samuel paused, one hand on the small door leading into St. Mike’s. “Why not? It’s a House of Light, and I’m an angel.”

“Well, yeah, but the priests get all bent out of shape if you hang out inside during the day. They got stuff to do, you know.”

“I won’t get in the way. I have to stick my arm into a closet.”

“Why?”

“It’s for a girl.”

“Hey.” Both Doug’s hands went up. “Say no more re amore. You go put your arm in a closet, and I’ll be waiting right here when they toss your ass back into the cold.”