Read No Angel for Free Online Page B

ceilings and creamy pale stone walls made the sanctuary seem echoingly peaceful, in spite of the carnival excitement of the crowd as they scurried up the aisles.
    Sasha detached herself from the throng rushing toward the pews and scanned the sanctuary, looking for signs of stairs. She needed to find a way down to the crypts before the ushers realized she’d broken away from the herd. She hardly expected a large flashy sign pointing toward the entrance to Hell—it might ruin the happy Christmas buzz of the holiday faithful—but there had to be stairs somewhere.
    Sasha moved toward the altar along the edge of the sanctuary, scanning the nooks and alcoves for stairs. Worshippers poured eagerly into the pews as the organist segued into “Away in a Manger.” The atmosphere was an odd combination of festive and reverent—the religious equivalent of a boy band concert. The pious bounced in their chairs, whispering excitedly to one another and pointing toward the nave.
    Curious to see which Arch had inspired such levels of giddy adoration, Sasha stepped out from behind a pillar and looked toward the altar. Jaded though she was, and in spite of her recent less-than-ideal encounter with an angel, Sasha’s breath caught in her throat at the sight of him. Even in the muted light from the candles, he seemed to glow. Or maybe he really was glowing. Sasha had heard of angel light, but cameras could never capture it so she’d always just thought it was a product of the overactive imaginations of angelophiles.
    He stood with his back to the congregation, wings partially spread. They seemed white at first, but the longer she looked, the more colors she saw sparkling inside the white. Her memory called up an old physics lesson a lighting tech had given her backstage when her mother was going through her Broadway phase. Sitting on the catwalks with their feet dangling down over the stage three stories below, he’d shown her how to slide colored gels in front of the lights to cast pools of richly saturated color onto the actors, mixing them together until the combination of all the colored lights created white light. “Light controls the show, Sasha-girl,” he’d bragged, showing her how the different lights could change the colors of the costumes, make the actors appear sickly or tan and make the theatre feel hushed or noisy without a sound.
    Then her mother had stepped onto stage and the techie had sighed. “Now angels are different, Sasha-girl.” He’d laughed softly, gazing down at her mother with the same hopeless adoration she’d grown up seeing on every face. “Angels are made of light.”
    The angel in her kitchen hadn’t been terribly light, but the Arch was a different story. White feathers were supposed to be the absence of pigment, but instead his wings were like white light—the combination of all colors. Shining even in the dim, reverential candlelight.
    No wonder the sight of a single angel was rumored to have brought mankind out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance. The heavenly host were magnificent, even when all she could see were partially furled wings, blond curls more commonly seen on cherubs and a slice of his back.
    That blond head tipped to the side, as if he was listening to a voice only he could hear—and for all she knew, he was. The angels always implied God spoke to them, never giving any details on the whens and hows. The white-light wings flared then folded more tightly to his body. He turned, deliberate and unhurried— I’m ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille —and just as his profile came into view, a ray of light bounced off the pipe organ and illuminated his angelic face. A sigh traveled through the audience.
    Uriel. The Archangel of Transformation and yearly contender for People magazine’s Sexiest Angel title, capable of simultaneously inspiring religious awe and screaming fangirl crushes.
    And he was looking straight at her.
    Sasha swallowed, incapable of breaking eye contact even