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7

Angel Lessons

The new classroom had been renovated for the purpose of educating Legion initiates. Purgatory would start getting them soon, once all of our facilities were ready. And assuming there were still people who wanted to join the Legion.

After a recent string of rather spectacular disasters on Earth, it was safe to say the people’s confidence in the Legion—and in the gods themselves—had been shaken. What stood out most in everyone’s mind seemed to be the night the goddess Meda had stood on a rooftop in Purgatory and publicly declared that she was going to punish the Earth by purging it of most of its people.

Never mind that Meda had been controlled by one of the Guardians’ magic collars. People didn’t know that. And those who did know it were right now asking themselves how powerful the gods really were if they could be controlled like that. The truth was no one was truly all-powerful, much as the gods and demons hated to hear it.

I weaved through the rows of plain desks. The room’s decor was sparse, utilitarian. The furnishings consisted of a perfect grid of twenty-five desks, all facing a whiteboard on the wall, and a metal trashcan by the door. That was all. It reminded me of my old high school’s unimaginative, uninspired classrooms.

I was going to have a chat with the folks handling our renovation. Classrooms needed a little more spunk, a little more fun, to keep people’s spirits up. And keeping people’s spirits up would make them work harder, which would increase their chances of surviving the Nectar.

That’s how I preferred things. I wanted to help my initiates survive. Unlike most angels, I didn’t see the Nectar as a way to weed out the weak. No, that was more like Colonel Fireswift’s philosophy.

Speaking of Colonel Fireswift, he was watching me right now like I was a target he had in his sights.

“Take a seat, Colonel Pandora,” Colonel Fireswift ordered me.

“You haven’t been promoted yet, Colonel,” I told him. “You aren’t a general, an archangel. Which makes us the same rank. So you can’t order me around like I’m one of your subordinates.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he replied smoothly. “You don’t understand your situation perfectly. You don’t understand the subtlety of the Legion’s hierarchy, or of the angels themselves. Not that I’m surprised. You never were very good at subtlety.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “Do you have a point?”

“The point is, Colonel, that I can give you orders because I am in charge of your current training. Which makes you very much my lessor.”

Oh, he liked that. He liked it very much. I could see it in the sinister sparkle in his eyes.

A comeback was burning on my lips, but I had promised Nero that I’d behave. So I kept my mouth shut and sat down.

“Good,” Colonel Fireswift said, but his sharp tone indicated he considered me anything other than good.

He set a tall stack of books on my desk. The tower cast a foreboding shadow over me.

I looked away from them. “So, Colonel, how have you been?”

His eyes narrowed to slits. “What are you doing?”

“Making smalltalk,” I replied pleasantly.

“Then let this be your first lesson in angel etiquette: we don’t make smalltalk.”

“Why not?”

“Because angels do not talk about nothing. We speak only if we have something important to say.”

“Ok, let’s say you encounter another angel and you don’t have anything to say to them.” I did my best to look confused. “So you say nothing at all?”

“If you can’t think of anything to say, there are books full of appropriate angel greetings. I will provide them to you.”

“Oh, I don’t need any books to fill awkward silences, Colonel,” I said with an easy smile. “I always have something to say.”

“I have noticed.” He scowled at me. “In fact, it seems quite impossible to shut you up.”

“You enjoyed our time together in the gods’ trials.” I allowed a smirk to shine through. “Admit it.”

Colonel Fireswift rolled back his shoulders in indignation. “I will do no such thing.”