It took everything she had not to tear the front door off its hinges. The check-in clerk of the apartment block shot her a worried look, and, once he recognized just who she was, averted his eyes. While she could have levitated her way up to the third floor in the space of the open lobby, instead, she merely slipped her mind into the locks of the stairwell door, and undid them.
Power came with its perks.
She took the steps two at a time, and hardly even registered the existence of the landing before she stormed into the hallway beyond. The apartment block was full of open spaces, light shining in through expanses of stainless steel frames and plate glass. Potted plants dotted the spaces between apartments, along with paintings of holy scenes, paced so that the white expanse of drywall dominated the experience, giving this clean, sanitized sense to the building, a sense that really was quite inappropriate right now.
A small voice in the back of her head reminded her that she could, quite easily, tear all of this apart at the molecular level, and very quickly find her quarry. He'd probably even survive.
The temptation was fleeting.
Angels had to learn how to repress these thoughts, after all.
She'd even managed to stop floating by the time she reached room 308, and knocked firmly on the door. No response. She checked the name on the door. “Leor Pahaliah V” – correct, and knocked again, more insistently. Slight cracks formed in the paint, and hastily, shamefully, she repaired them. If he was there, if he'd heard, he'd have reacted by now. She amplified her hearing, and caught footsteps softly walking to the door.
It cracked open.
“Good morning?” A tired face, with a prominent nose, a scruffy beard, and curly hair, was visible through the gap. Exactly correct.
She lowered her shoulder, and threw her weight against the door, but it stopped after an inch of travel, held back by a surprisingly strong chain latch. Nothing less from the True Church.
The man blinked. “Tessawyn?”
She gave the latch a burst of pure velocity, and tore it off its mounting points, throwing open the door. The man raised an eyebrow, but nothing more.
“DID YOU KNOW?” she said, in the closest a whisper could get to a shout.
The words didn't even hit Leor. Recognition hit him, and a smile dawned over his face.
“TESS!” he exclaimed, just a little too loud, and threw his arms wide.
Every bit of conscious effort was spent in preventing her from tearing the walls apart in search of answers, and so, she was completely unprepared for the other effects of seeing her friend for the first time in years.
Tessawyn's eyes teared up, and she hugged Leor, thrusting her arms under his and picking him up. He laughed and squirmed in equal measure, but she couldn't let him go. Partially because she couldn't will herself to, and partially because he was gripping her just as hard. Before they knew it, both of them were sobbing, and eventually, the strength fell out of them, and Tessawyn lowered Leor to the ground.
Leor sniffled. “God, it's been too long.” Somehow, those caramel-brown eyes looked both exhausted and full of life, and entirely emotional energy crackled within. He looked up at her. “Come in, sit down. I'll make some tea, okay?”
Tessawyn nodded, and wordlessly, they walked into the apartment. With a flick of his wrist and a subvocal incantation, Leor repaired the door.
Tessawyn hadn't actually been inside a teacher's apartment before. She remembered, of course, the apartment from her Pairing days, but that was meant for three people. While the True Church afforded lavish accommodations to its educational professionals, especially considering that many were Angels, like Leor, it was different, and that dredged up memories of what was allowed and forbidden from those long-passed days. It felt wrong, somehow.
She followed Leor past the kitchen, well appointed with a quartz-rod activated toaster oven, a full size electric cooking range, and a refrigerator, all arrayed opposite an island, above which hung cast iron pans and stainless steel pots, and a veritable arsenal of utensils. The counter-tops were furnished in marble, and while things looked a bit less user-friendly than she was used to, the memories of washing dishes in a nearly-identical sink alongside her Pair rushed into her mind.
Leor brushed past her, kicking up the tails of her angelic coat, and grabbed a kettle.
“Still like Occitanian tea?”
“Yeah,” she said, and navigated her way through the living room, eventually sitting down on the near end of a couch. The last time she'd been in one of Leor's living spaces was back… oh, it must have been ten years ago, in North Africa. While just about all of the material conditions were different, there was a certain familiarity to it. For most people, they'd place their radio directly opposite of where most of the seating was – after all, if you had guests, you'd want them well entertained. But Leor's was shoved off in a corner, and instead, the focal point of entertainment was a well-lit curio cabinet, made almost entirely of glass and mirrors. It was filled with trinkets – fragments of ancient porcelain, a Twilight Age circuitboard that somehow hadn't been stripped for copper in the intervening centuries, coinage from the brief, bright existence of New Carthage, a wooden child's toy from Nepal – She'd given him that one. A girl in one of the enclaves there had carved and painted a little doll of an Angel, and gave it to Tessawyn. She hadn't known what to do with it, and somehow, it ended up here. Everything had a story to tell, and Leor was more than happy to be the interpreter.
“I can't believe not one of us figured out that you'd end up being a teacher,” Tessawyn said, smiling.
In the kitchen, Leor was still fussing with some inscrutable part of the tea-making process, though it didn't seem to bother him. “To be honest, I didn't figure it out till I got here. When I applied, and started training for it, I was just thinking of it as a way to live closer to Madeline. Turns out I love it.”
He always did try to keep his Pair safe, Tess thought. “How's she been doing lately?”
“Cute as a button and happier by the day. She's still a little miffed that she has to live in her own place, but now we work close enough that we can see each other almost daily. Though,” he said, “she's been applying for special dispensation to live here, with me. I don't think there's any precedent for it, but we've been good to the Order, and if anyone can convince them, it'd be her. Sugar?”
Tessawyn blinked. “Sure, if you've got some.”
“If?” Leor laughed. “You really have been out in the wilds for too long. Production's been way up this year. Maybe now that you're a Guardian, you'll actually get to see some of what you've been protecting.”
With that, he came into the living room with two simple mugs, and handed one to Tessawyn before sitting down in a chair off to the side of the couch. Tess took a sip, and felt no small amount of tension flow out of her.
“So…” Leor said. “How have you been holding up?”
Tessawyn sighed, and sank back into the couch. “Okay. I just wish I could have seen him one more time, y'know?”
Leor nodded. “Me too.”
A heavy silence fell over the room, and Tessawyn had made it halfway through her mug before it ended.
Leor leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “So, you were asking… Do I know about… what, exactly?”
Tessawyn gently put down her cup of tea.
“Julian's back.”
Leor stared at her for some long seconds. Maybe this was some kind of off-color joke from Tess? Or he'd heard her wrong? It couldn't be right. “What?” he asked.
“He's doing his guardianship.”
“What? No, that can't be right.” Leor could hardly comprehend the possibility. “No one said anything. That should be news!” The words fell out of his mouth like so many dominoes. “Someone should have warned us.”
The air vibrated around Tessawyn. Her magic was leaking out, and frankly, she didn't care. “I saw him, Leor,” she said through clenched teeth. “He was on top of the Basilica, watching us, and I checked with Administration. He's here.”
Leor ran his hands over his face. “And he hasn't even visited…”
Tessawyn slumped. “Do you really think he would? After all this time?”
Leor sighed. “Maybe they finally forced him to actually adhere to some kind of obligation.”
“No,” Tessawyn insisted. “As if he'd be forced to do anything.”
He sat up straight. “Do you know who his Wards are going to be?”
Tess shrugged. “I was hoping you'd know.”
“No, but-” Leor stood up, and ran over to a drafting table in front of the living room's picture window. Perched atop it was a pane of infused glass, which flickered to life at his touch. His fingers manipulated the screen, and connected to the school's database of currently employed staff.
His eyes scanned the lines after lines of spreadsheets, until he found his quarry.
“Tess?” His voice wavered.
She leapt to her feet, and vaulted over the coffee table to stand next to him. She looked over his shoulder, and saw it on the list of students. Elza. It was only one letter off.
Tess grabbed Leor by the shoulder, as much to reassure him as to brace herself. “He wouldn't.”
Leor peeled his gaze off the screen to look back up at her. In any other situation, this would have been a happy reunion. But he looked deep into her eyes, and opened his mouth.
“He hasn't spoken to us in years. How can you be sure?”
And she knew that she couldn't.