Hollyweird by Terri Clark Page A

777-777-7777
10:07 PM
    Permission granted. Sagging in relief, I blew out ten pounds of tension and then sent up a silent thank you.
    â€œYou can quit scowling, Des.” I stepped forward with a happy grin. “I just got permission to tell you everything.”
    She looked at the phone I held up in my hand. “ ‘Stairway to Heaven’?” she asked, in reference to my ringtone.
    â€œYeah, that’s what I couldn’t—”
    â€œYou’re an aaaangel,” Aly said, and not with the reverence you’d expect. Her voice sounded somewhere between doubtful and distressed.
    The ringtone sounded again and I absently pressed okay.
    From: God
Maybe Zeppelin was a little obvs?
CB: 777-777-7777
10:09 PM
    Great, just great.
    I huffed out a frustrated breath and decided to get everything out in the open. “Yeah, I’m a fallen angel”—as their jaws dropped at the word “fallen” I rushed to finish my explanation—“but I’m trying to earn my wings back by messing with Dakota’s plans. He’s got something big and bad going down, and I have to find out what it is ASAP and put a stop to it without blowing my cover.”
    â€œHe doesn’t know—” Des halted herself. “Stupid question. If he knew, he wouldn’t have you working for him. Why can’t he tell you’re a feather but that vamp could?”
    Damn smart girl, that Des. “Vamps and weres can pretty much identify any PN because of their heightened sense of smell,” I told her. “Dakota doesn’t have that ability, but he’s got plenty of others.”
    â€œDo you?” Des asked.
    â€œI can hear better than most, but that’s about it.”
    Aly’s face looked whitewashed. “But that means … if you’re an angel … that means you’re dead?”
    Oh, hell , I thought. Her mother’s passing had really hurt her. I didn’t want to add to that. Yeah, technically I was the walking dead. But not like a vampire. When a human is bitten by a vampire, their sire brings them to the edge of darkness, a place where they teeter between the living and the expired. If medical help reaches the victim in time, they can be fully revived, but if they’re left in that netherworld between breath and death, they turn into a vampire. Not quite dead, not quite alive. Angels, on the other hand, are people in good graces who’ve actually died, and now are working at the right hand of God.
    As for me, specifically—well, “I’m in purgatory, until I hopefully earn my way back in,” I finally said. “I did pass away, but I’m not like a ghost. You can see me, hear me, feel me. I’m as real as you are, but … ” I grasped both Aly’s hands in mine so she could feel my warmth, my living flesh. “I have no heartbeat.”
    Her eyes crinkled in sorrow and disbelief. Sliding her hands from mine, she laid them on my chest, over my heart. For just a moment, I could swear on a stack of Bibles that I felt it thunder, heard it ba-boom.
    â€œWhy did you fall?”
    I laid one hand over hers, my other hand still gripping my phone. As I looked into her eyes, the rest of the world dissolved away.
    â€œI used to be a troublemaker—cocky, convincing, cute; just ask me, I would’ve told you—and like a lot of people our age, I thought I was invincible. I wasn’t. When I died so young, I—”
    â€œAre you really nineteen?” she blurted out. “Or more like one hundred nineteen?”
    â€œI’m really nineteen,” I assured her. “I died about nine months ago in a hit-and-run accident. And I was pissed. Really freakin’ pissed. Despite being a handful, I was let into heaven, but I didn’t look at it as the gift it was. Instead, I tried to raise hell in heaven and promptly got my wings clipped, a makeover so no would recognize me, and my butt booted down