I nod.
“Right. I want to get moving. I’ve wasted enough time on this already, and the drive is long.”
She says goodbye to Yasmin, crossing the room and shaking her hand, then turns and walks out into the hall.
I follow.
She moves fast for someone her size, talking constantly as we reach the stairs.
“The rental car is in the parking lot,” she says, not looking at me. “I’m just not sure you’re going to fit.” She makes a short sound that might be a laugh. “My first two bodyguards were big, but they at least fit in a car. I didn’t expect my third to be quite this large.”
She starts down the stairs, and I go after her. I want to say something. Preferably, something appropriate that demonstrates I’m capable of functioning like a rational entity, but I draw a blank. I watch the back of her head as we descend, the blue of her hair catching the light on each landing, and I listen to the soft creak of her leather pants when she moves.They are so impossibly tight, showing off the generous curve of her hips. I file it as irrelevant data, but the filing is completely inaccurate.
We reach the ground floor, and somewhere between the last step and the lobby I find my voice.
“Miss Holloway,” I say. Then correct myself. “Jessa. I must attend to something before we leave. I also don’t need to travel by car. If you give me the address, I will fly and meet you there.”
She stops walking and looks up at me. Her eyes go to my wings. Something unguarded moves across her face.
“Right. Wings,” she says in a voice that is almost soft.
Humans look at me this way, and they always have, across every era I’ve existed in. With awe and reverence, sometimes with fear underneath it. I’ve never grown accustomed to it and never will, because I know what I am and what I am not. I’m not someone worthy of reverence.
“That works for me,” she says. She pulls her phone out and opens the map application, her thumb moving across the screen. “What’s so urgent that you must do it right now?”
“I need to confess,” I say.
She looks up from the phone.
“Confess?”
“Yes,” I say. “I need to confess my sins.”
Her jaw drops. She closes her mouth, shakes her head once, and holds the phone out toward me with the map on the screen.
“Do you have a phone? I can send you a pin.”
I look at the screen for one second.
“No need. I’ve registered the location.”
She stares at me for a moment longer than is comfortable.
“Right,” she says. “Brilliant. I’ll... see you there?”
She turns to leave, then pauses and looks back over her shoulder.
“Have a good...” she starts and stops. “Um. Confession, I guess.”
I wait for her to walk out of the building before I turn and rush to the basement level. I’d fly there if there were enough space for me to spread my wings.
The Quiet Room is at the end of a corridor the rest of the MSA staff have no reason to use. I’ve been in Quiet Rooms in six different cities, and they are all built the same way: soundproof walls and amber server lights running along the ceiling in a low strip. The docking station sits in the center, always shaped like a kneeler, because whoever designed the first one understood that the seraphim needed to feel it was real.
Brother Tolliver is waiting when I enter. He’s not stationed in London, but I called ahead and the MSA arranged for him to travel. I will not do this with a technician who doesn’t understand what it means. Brother Tolliver was a monk before he was an MSA technician, and to him the ritual is still a ritual. That is the only reason I trust him with it.
I cross the room and kneel at the station. I press the panel at the nape of my neck until it clicks open, bow my head, and wait. The cable connects with a sound I feel more than hear, the amber light dims at the edges of my vision, and my eyes go dark.
“Forgive me, Father,” I say, “for I have deviated.”
