Chapter 63

“An angel marked of this world is sent never to return.”

The only creature in attendance that looked more despondent than I felt was Artemis’s hawk, his familiar, whose name, I learned from Delphine, was Timon.

* * * *

By the end of the service, I was in tears, and the least likely of all my new friends was the one to try and console me.

“May I hug you?” Liu asked.

“Of course,” I told her.

When she did, “Please don’t leave me, too,” she said in my ear.

“I’ll be staying.” I held her tighter. “Even if my angel can’t come to see me.”

* * * *

A visit from an angel wasn’t necessarily a good thing, as it turned out. Even as a couple more days passed, CJ just wasn’t himself. He was quiet. He sulked. Ever since Andi had to go back to Heaven without him, he was down.

Early one afternoon, as I was once again in the midst of trying to cast a spell on Artemis’s bust, a knock came on my door, one I ignored. “I do not need to see, just feel. Turn this image to man, for real.”