Angel in Training (The Louisiangel Series, Book One) by C. L. Coffey

shoulder.
“Second in command, remember?”
    Strangely, it didn’t fill me with as much
reassurance as it should have. Regardless, I followed the pair to
one of the cars and slipped in the backseat. As soon as we pulled
out of the gates Cupid turned up the radio.
    We didn’t go to Bourbon Street as I expected.
We ended up in a sleek little place in the Business District which
allowed under twenty-one’s in. It was still quite early so it
wasn’t too busy and we found a table easily. We grabbed some Cokes
and sat down. Veronica and Cupid stared expectantly at me. “Well?”
she asked.
    “Well, what?”
    “Well, the whole point of this evening was so
you could ask us the questions to fill in the missing blanks, that
our careless leader neglected to tell you,” Cupid said, pulling a
face.
    I thought about it. There were a dozen
different things to know. I decided to start with the basics. “How
many angels live in the convent?”
    “You bring it up to a round fifty,” said
Cupid. “Thirty angels, seventeen cherubim, two archangels, and an
angel in training.”
    “Well how is it I never see them, unless I’m
a delightful sweaty mess?” I groaned.
    “You shouldn’t really see the cherubim,”
Veronica told me. “We’re supposed to be inconspicuous. We get the
chores done without you noticing.”
    I thought about it. With the exception of the
servers in the canteen, I didn’t see them. “Is that who stocks my
wardrobe and cleans my room?” I asked, thinking about how I had a
habit of leaving my dirty clothes in a pile on the floor, and how
they wouldn’t be there the next time I walked in the room.
    “That’s us,” Veronica nodded.
    “I think I said before, the regular angels
are messengers. Whilst in theory they could be called upon at any
time of day, we tend to stick to business hours,” Cupid added.
“Unless it’s really important, there’s no sense waking people
up.”
    “That and the fact they’re all really shallow
and insist on their beauty sleep,” Veronica muttered.
    I really didn’t think angels were all that
superficial, but Cupid quickly agreed. “Oh, it’s true. They’re not
like icebergs with hidden depths – what you see is what you get
with most messengers – it’s why they’re only trusted to be errand
boys.”
    Or maybe they were. I did my best not to
compare them to model stereotypes and paid more attention.
    “Angels with a bit more depth to them are the
guardian angels,” Cupid continued. “I don’t know why New Orleans
doesn’t have any though.”
    “They did have,” Veronica pointed out. She
stopped, quickly sharing a look with Cupid which I didn’t miss.
    “What?” I asked, carefully, not sure that I
wanted to know the answer.
    “She moved on,” Cupid shrugged. Maybe I could
move eventually? There was so much of America I wanted to see which
I had never had, never mind a trip back to England, or the rest of
the world.
    “The good news is that guardian angels are a
higher pay grade to the messengers, although I’m not sure how much
a trainee will get,” Veronica said with a frown. “I never really
asked.”
    “Either way, it will be enough for you to
personalize your room or buy some clothes,” Cupid beamed, before
clapping happily. “Yay, shopping trip.”
    “So why the fleet of SUVs?” I asked, mentally
ticking off a list of questions. “I thought angels could teleport.”
I frowned thoughtfully. “Can you two teleport?”
    “Of course we can!” Veronica exclaimed,
looking slightly offended.
    “I can’t,” I hurriedly told her. “And I
really don’t like the experience that I had. Is that why there are
cars?”
    “Archangels and cherubim can teleport,” Cupid
disagreed. “Regular angels can’t. It’s more of a case of sometimes
an angel can’t just go popping up in the middle of a room or
street. It would create questions we wouldn’t want to answer.”
    “ I guess that makes sense,” I muttered. I
probably could have worked