Red Rain

Chapter 1 - Manic Monday

I'm probably the only angel who regularly gets phone calls from Hell. I haven't even put my pants on yet this fine Monday morning - not that I should expect that to make a difference. Rolling my eyes, I swipe my thumb across the screen, cutting off the Muse piano riff that's been my ringtone since I don't know when.

"'Morning, bro," I say with an exaggerated yawn.

"You cheeky bastard," answers my brother, the demon. "How's it hanging?"

My roommate, Luca, perks up briefly as he puts on his own Balthazar Academy uniform shirt. "Hey, Gabe," he says, before turning back to the mirror inside our closet door.

"Luca says hi," I say. "All right, what do you wanna sell me today?"

I can almost hear the stupid grin in Gabe's voice as he answers. "I got another great setup for tonight. You get your ass down to the Bridge by five, and just...let the sparks fly."

I sigh in exasperation. "Dude. Not another blind date. I'm not in the mood."

"What kind of mood would that be?"

"Um...blind-date-y?" I move over to the window and peek out beyond the curtain at the pale blue sunrise, trying as always to picture Gabe's school, Castledown, on the hillside across the water. Too bad it's invisible from this side of Coldfire Creek.

Gabe chuckles. "You gotta work on your comebacks. Trust me, Alex, you'll really like this one."

"That's what you said the last ten times you set me up with a Castledown girl." Out of the corner of my eye, I see Luca raise his eyebrow at me.

"It's gotta work sometime," Gabe says. "Unless...?"

"What?" My mind immediately moves into territory I don't really care to chart. "Oh God, no."

Gabe starts laughing uproariously for some reason. "You don't wanna find a nice girl from Balthazar? Really?"

"Is that what you meant?"

"Wh-what did you think I meant?" Gabe stutters as he tries to catch his breath.

I sigh again, this time in a more relieved way. "You know what."

"Well, do you wanna find a girl from your own school?" Gabe asks. "I dunno what passes for hotness with you guys, though, so I can't help you there."

"Pretty much what passes for hotness with you guys, too," I say. "And while we're at it, why is it that you pretty much concentrate on looks? That's not really enough for me. I want a girl who's not only pretty, but smart and cool as well."

"Great," Gabe says, snapping his fingers. "Would you like a short skirt and a long jacket with that?"

"Funny," I say in the least amused tone of voice I can manage.

Gabe laughs again. "In all honesty, dude, you shouldn't be such a straight arrow all the time. Live a little, you know what I mean?"

"Yeah. Sure. Live a little, die a lot."

"Spoilsport." Gabe sighs, but then his voice perks up. "Three Guys, five tonight, bro. Don't be late. I'm telling you, this girl really is the one for you."

"You know I don't believe you, right?"

Gabe hangs up without another word. "Polite, my dear sainted brother is not," I say.

Luca frowns as he takes a small portable brush, the kind my mom keeps in the glove box in her car, to his thick, curly hair. "Hey, he's only trying to help."

"Well, you try getting blind date after blind date with demon girls and then we'll talk," I say, putting my phone to sleep.

I've always wondered how it is that I'm able to get phone calls from Hell, because I'm pretty sure my wireless service wasn't meant to include interdimensional contact. Gabe once told me that there were a lot of phone numbers that had different owners in different worlds, and that every time someone got a wrong number, it was because some idiot demon wasn't concentrating hard enough and connected to Earth instead of Hell. He says that it's happened to him before, when he tries to call me and accidentally calls the human with the same phone number as me. I wouldn't know, because he's always the one who calls me, not the other way around, so I've never really had a chance to figure it out for myself.