Lipgloss on your Wings - Branded Angel Novels book 1

Chapter 7

I’d never met anyone with mental health problems before, and I have to admit I was more than a little frightened being alone in the middle of some purple rinsed part of the woods with Jarryd thinking he was my Guardian… whatever, so I had no idea how to handle the situation I was in.  A few errant scenarios entered my mind and made me think Jarryd wasn’t the only crazy one. I could have ran, shouted for help or tried to send a discreet text with my phone in my pocket, I knew Boiye was the fifth contact on my list but to write a coherent message and send it to Boiye without looking and without getting caught was a little out of my ability. Not to mention the fact he probably wouldn’t believe me seeing as I told him I was nearly home an hour or so previous.

   Assessing the situation I was in as Moderate; an attack is possible, but not likely (for some reason I was using the terrorist threat level system to measure my safety, of course my judgement wasn’t reputable) I decided to ask the exact questions I was thinking.

   “Are you ill? Is there anything I can do to help? Do you need to go to hospital?” I was all but acting out my sentences, trying to make my words clear like you would to a child, of course I felt completely stupid, he wasn’t acting confused/lost/scary/murderous. He actually stood, obviously waiting for me to calm down, completely normal (in a hot way), his expression was completely placid and slightly sad, the vibes I got from him didn’t indicate in any way at all that he was a few éclairs short of a bakery, which had me wondering where the hell that left me.

   I breathed in deeply to centre myself, or some thing along those lines, but ended up chickening out and waving my hand in front of me, it was a gesture saying ‘you talk instead’ and kudos to him, he got the hint.

   “Do you remember when you were at my house and you saw the mark on my chest?”  He spoke the sentence clearly pronouncing every word, I merely nodded, but what did that have to do with anything? He slowly unbuttoned the top three buttons of his shirt to reveal the strange burn I saw that day. “I haven’t always had this and I don’t know what it means, but I know what it is.” I looked from the scorched lines, curving at the hollow of his throat, into his eyes, trying to get what he was trying to tell me. “It’s you. Well, it ties me to you.”

   “Why? How do you know its definitely me?”

   “Look at what it is.”

   I took a tentative step forward, the eerie glow from the trees illuminated his skin as a stray moonbeam shone through transparent leaves, my eyes traced the precise lines repeatedly, my mind recognised that the patterns, the shapes and curves and lines, were letters. Three letters, entwined together…

   “H.A.B.” I whispered, detached.

   “Hillary Anna Brookes.” Jarryd clarified.

   My first name, that no one used, ever. Not my parents, even though they’re the ones who named me, not my best friend, not even my teachers although it was on every school register and file, I’d always been Anna since I was old enough to decide my first name wasn’t what I wanted to be called, which was around eight years old. Jarryd had only been in Fetherham a few months.

   “Why would you do that?”

   “I didn’t do it to myself, or choose to have it. It just appeared.”

   I shrugged, annoyed, scared, more than a little weirded out.

   “I’ll explain…”

   “Yeah, good idea.” I cut him off.

   “You need to believe the part about me being an Angel, it will make the rest easier to understand.” Jarryd, an Angel. Right OK, how the hell is any one supposed to even consider that possibility. I nodded to encourage him to continue, even though I wasn’t completely sold. “I was assigned as your Guardian Angel a little before the accident.” He had captured my attention, I listened a little more intently, now more confused, my mind spinning with how surreal all this was. “Annalise, is what we call the White Angel, she came to me with you as my Calling. She foresaw your mother’s accident and it was to be my duty to stay with you during your grief. I was there Anna, every day, if you think back, how you felt, you will know I was there with you.”

   Wow, this isn’t what I was expecting.

   There with me? Where? In my mind or something? After realising I was stood there with my mouth wide open, excess saliva threatening to dribble out the side, I shook my head to try and rattle my thoughts into order.

   “We have to go, the illusion won’t keep much longer.” He gestured to a wavering part of the air in front of us, where every other ripple was starting to show the true colours of our surroundings. He grabbed my hand, obviously not expecting a response from me any time soon, so he didn’t expect what I was about to say, “Are we going to fly?”

   The burst of laughter that he shot out at that point was refreshing if not a little insulting, at least he didn’t say yes!

   He led me towards the edge of the wobbly thing, I could see now that we were in some sort of bubble, although everything on the outside looked tinted purple too it was only because of the tint of the ‘barrier’ making it look that way, the outside held none of the majestic qualities that were present inside this enclosed section of the woods. We stepped through the barrier and I braced myself for some sort of sensation but nothing changed, there wasn’t any whooshing or change of temperature, what a disappointment, although one thing had changed, I could now see Jarryd’s house.

   “Er- I could have sworn your house wasn’t next to the park before.”

   “It’s not.”

   “More angel stuff?”

   He gave a small smile, “Yeah, not me though.” I frowned in confusion at him. “Ori.”

   I yanked on his hand to get him to stop. “Well, hold up just one second, how many goddamn angels are there in Fetherham?”