Praefatio: A Novel by Georgia McBride Page A

me. He placed his hands over my ripped-up legs. He looked up at me, shook his head, and said, “You have to be more careful, Grace. You are human.”
    I felt my wounds healing under Remi’s hands. But who would heal me after Remi was gone? Mom’d said the demons wouldn’t stop until I was on their side, or dead.
    Remi and I sat quietly. He blocked me from his thoughts, but I couldn’t imagine he was happy with the way things had turned out. All I was thinking about right then was carrying around a bunch of shaky eyes and what would happen when their owner returned to claim them. I hated the sound of my own thoughts.
    Finally, I whined, “Why do you do that? Why do you block me out so I can’t hear what you’re thinking?”
    Frustration creased his forehead when he spoke. “I’m not blocking you.” Remi let out a long sigh. “Someone else is. Someone doesn’t want you to know what I’m thinking.” Remi stood, and the look on his face told me everything. He was leaving me, too.
    “How can you leave me? ‘Read Praefatio ,’he says! Why can’t you teach me everything I need to know? Why can’t you stay with me?” I yelled.
    Remi took two steps back—as if I was going to hit him or something. That wasn’t the Remi I knew.
    “Sorry. I’m not used to angels speaking with that tone. Even one who is part human,” he said, accentuating the word “human.” It made me want to sock him.
    “That’s the second time in minutes you’ve referred to me as human,” I spat, surprised by how offended I felt.
    “Grace,” he began again with no change to his tone, like he was losing patience with me. This was a new side to Remi. “You have to finish Praefatio . If you don’t, none of this makes any sense. You, Mom, Dad, the Larsons, even Gavin .” The way he added Gavin at the end, the way his tone changed, made me sad. His eyes were wet as he took another step back, paused, and then another. Still, he looked like an angel, so childlike, a boy fighting manhood with every fiber of his being.
    In that moment, I remembered the words I had read in Praefatio. “ … the more time they spent around humans, the more like humans they became … ”
    Remi smiled. He must have heard my thoughts.
    “So what’s going to happen to you, your human body, I mean? I think Jenny would be really hurt if you died or something bad happened to you.” I couldn’t help but be reminded of the pain I felt when I thought my father had died. It made me wonder why Remi had cried so much at the funeral knowing Dad was alive. And where was Jenny anyway? Why isn’t Remi at the show with her and Sean ?
    He stepped back yet again, but I could hear him as clearly as if he were right next to me. “I was conceived on earth, from two angels while they were in human form. That had never happened before. While we are in human form, we are completely vulnerable to human emotions … and tragedy.” He paused. “That’s why Gabe was able to die. His human body actually died. He could not appear to you after his death since he did not have a human body to appear to you in. Because you were still human and not in imminent danger, you would not have been able to see him in his celestial form, unless he had been granted a Divine Exception.”
    It was strange hearing Remi refer to our father as “Gabe.” I could tell he was struggling, not just with what he was saying, but how he would say whatever it was he was trying hard not to say. Remi shifted his weight from his left to his right leg, then back again.
    “How did I see him just then?” I wasn’t born yesterday. “I did just see him, didn’t I?” I didn’t think my mind was playing tricks on me. Then again, I had gone from the hospital to the Larsons and back to the hospital, apparently without ever physically leaving.
    “I guess because you’re less human now. Already ascending … You saw your sister Emeria, and she doesn’t have a body. But humans can only see us if we want them to,