“I was just thinking about glitter and how, long after I’ve been unmade, new Novices in Sanctuary will find tiny little specks of color wedged in all the cracks in every room, and think of me.” I liked to believe that even if I was unmade someday soon, I’d leave an indelible, sparkly stamp on this place.
I pulled the kazoo out from under my pillow and played a mournful tune on it. Well, I played “Baby Got Back” but super slowly and with a lot of emotion. When I was done, I held it out to Sunny for her to try, but she turned me down again. She said even touching it made her feel nervous. She hadn’t been able to take it back to the storage closet since Righteous had changed the combination on the door lock, and the idea that she was a thief horrified her.
I thought the Protectors in general needed a little more moral flexibility. Was it really stealing if no one was ever going to play it again? I called it liberating an unjustly imprisoned instrument. Then again, I had spiritual syphilis. Maybe my moral compass had been contaminated along with the rest of me.
Sunny grabbed the kazoo out of my mouth and pitched it back under the bed. “Don’t let anyone catch you with that. I’m serious, there’s been a lot of talk in the Assembly Halls. Don’t give anyone ammunition to use against you right now.”
“Ammunition?” My cheese cube turned to chalk in my mouth. “They’re talking about me?”
A tiny line appeared in between her eyebrows as she nodded. “Among other things. You… and the High Angeli, too. I’ve never heard such disrespect before. They think Mikhail should have unmade you already. I heard two Guides saying they thought you might be a spy from the Abyss.”
“What? Did Righteous start that rumor? I’ll shove a fistful of glitter up his—”
“Ha! The look on your face. No, but the origin of glitter is the deepest level of the Abyss, you know.” She ate another grape from the bedside tray, lost in thought.
“They sure act like glitter is a crime,” I muttered. “That gives me an idea!” I jumped up, grabbed my sketchbook, and began to draft a new shirt design.
Sunny peeked over my shoulder, reading the words aloud. “If Glitter Is A Crime, I’ll Do The Time.Catchy. I like it.”
“I’ll make you one tonight while you’re at the sex club.”
“I told you, The Merge is not a sex club.” She brightened, glad to change the subject. “And you know I’ve only watched.”
“Hey, everybody has their own kink. No shame.” For some reason, Sunny’s face was turning pink between the freckles. “Wait. Sunny, are you… Is this the night?” I jumped off the bed. “You’re going to merge?!”
Sunny nodded furiously, smiling so wide I was surprised her face didn’t crack. “Yes! One of the other Protectors from my Novice cohort said she admired the way I’d been working on my smut issues in group. She thinks I’m genuine and hard-working. She’s only merged once before, so it’s probably not going to be, like, amazing…”
“Hey, you never know.” I fought to keep my smile bright. “I bet you can make up for experience with enthusiasm.”
“I hope so,” she agreed cheerfully. “I really, really like this Protector, and I was so worried I wouldn’t get asked. It’s the big quarterly merge, and everybody has partners.” She took something out of the pocket on the side of her toga. “And it’s my favorite—it’s The Masked Merge tonight.” She held a gold and turquoise mask over her face. “See? My smut freckles don’t even show!”
“I love your freckles.” I hadn’t realized the ones on her face were smut, in fact.
Sunny shrugged. “Well, normally I hate them, but tonight? I’m incognito!”
“Have fun, Incognito!” I called, as she gathered the dishes and walked to the door. “I wish I could be there to watch you merge. Even though, to be completely honest, it seems super perverted. Public merging, how crude.”
“Don’t knock it till you try it, Feather.” Sunny laughed. “Don’t wait up. I’ll be super late tonight. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.”
“Carpe noctem, girlfriend!”
The evening stretched long and empty before me. Rumple hadn’t shown back up to chat since that first time. The gate still sang and screamed louder than ever. And the one time I’d tried to sneak out and check on it, Sunny had woken up and caught me. She’d warned me that someone like Valor was stationed there pretty much all the time now to keep watch.
I rolled around on my sheets, trying for sleep, imagining Sunny and her new lover, and all the other Protectors. What did merging even look like? It couldn’t be actual sex. Would quasi-angels really do that, all together in a group? I’d seen an orgy once in Greece, centuries before. Well, I’d had to stop a politician’s manservant from slipping poison into the wine jugs, and I’d spent most of the night trapped underneath his dying body in the wine cellar, so I’d really onlyheardan orgy.
It had sounded messy.
Would the Angeli show up? Gavriel was still away, as far as I knew, but would Mikhail stop by for a little bit of low-level hanky-panky? The idea of that made me itchy, and slightly angry. He couldn’t, right? It was like an Indiana Jones and the Ark of the Covenant thing. Any Protector who stared into the pants of a High Angelus was burned up, according to Sunny.
But what if Sunny had been exaggerating? If everyone was going to The Merge, Mikhail would be there.
I sniffed. I was an everyone, too. A girl had needs, right? And this girl needed to know more about merging. And to make sure my Growly Bear didn’t accidentally laser some poor Protector’s private parts off. Or that some sneaky jerk like Valor didn’t pull an “Oh no, I tripped and fell on his dick” move on my big, grumpy sweetheart.
That capped it. I was going to The Merge. I just needed a disguise.
I held up my mostly clean hands. If I cut up one of my sheets into cloth strips and wrapped up like a mummy, then made some sort of mask out of more cloth, maybe some pages of a book… that might work. I had been pretty good at origami two hundred years ago.
Jumping up, I ran to my chest of drawers, energized for the first time in days. I was out of paper in my craft drawer, and I didn’t want to use my sketchpad…Aha!I opened my tiny bedside table drawer where I’d seen a book someone had snuck in there, written in some angelic language I couldn’t read anyway. I’d sacrifice a few pages for my mask, then go take a very quick, totally harmless peek at The Merge. I’d do it for Mikhail’s sake. Just in case.
