Free Shadow of the Sun by Laura Kreitzer Page A

have loved to take him down in some boxer-like style. Bite his ear and knock him out. So what if I had anger issues?
    Karen giggled, pulling me from my thoughts. “Yes, he wears sunglasses a lot, and the humans give him a hard time over that. He has a difficult time controlling his anger.” Her voice turned sour. “He was fired after he grabbed you—”
    “ Wait a minute. You said he ‘was’ a double agent? What happened?”
    Karen nodded. “The Elders and I took care of him.”
    “ He disobeyed our orders,” Paolo interrupted, his voice deep with loathing. “I knew it was a bad idea to begin with.”
    I shuddered. “When you say ‘took care of him’ you mean . . . ?”
    “ We didn’t kill him,” Paolo said, his voice hard as stone. The tone was fitting. “We can’t kill them. We can only bind them or cast them out to another dimension for a while.”
    “ Dimension?” I choked on the word. It should be hard to astonish me at this point, but there it was, me all astonish-y. “What do you mean you send them to another dimension?”
    Luke spoke up. He had yet to let go of my hand and gave it another squeeze. “Your world is not what it seems.”
    Duh, I wanted to say.
    He smiled at my expression. “I know you have many questions, and we will answer them, but for now you need to pack your bags. Now that we know who you are, you need to be with the angels on that plane.” I nodded. “Karen will travel with you as your Guardian. She swore an oath. And now that we know your significance, we’ll be assigning another Guardian when the angels awake.”
    “ But what if I can’t do this?” My voice was pleading, and I was embarrassed by the sound.
    “ I know you can,” Luke said, one golden tear dropping from his blue eye. And with that statement, they all faded from my living room. Karen stayed behind.
    “ What exactly do the Elders do?” I wondered.
    “ They’re protectors of knowledge.”
    That sounded important. She smiled at me, leaned in to give me a hug, and then she was gone, as if she fizzled into thin air. I needed a drink.

CHAPTER 8: SECRETS
     
    My bedroom was fairly basic compared to the rest of the house, with simple sand-colored walls and a high ceiling. I’d never done much to it since I lived alone and rarely had visitors, especially of the male persuasion. But it was still a cozy room. My large king-sized bed, opposite the dresser, dominated the space. Paintings purchased from the amazing unknown artists I had come across during my travels, as well as photos of my family and I doing the vacation thing, dotted the walls. French doors opened up to the sandy abyss outside, and from where I stood, I could see the waves crashing wildly around.
    My salary wasn’t huge, but I’d always been extremely good at saving and finding deals. I had purchased this house with very little money, even though it was beautiful beachfront property. My adoptive mother was a great bargain hunter who always told me there was no need to pay the full price for anything, and her advice served me well in finding this house.
    My closet was full of business suits, lab coats, and all my other incredibly boring attire. I was in desperate need of a new wardrobe. Because I never really went out, there was usually no reason to buy anything dressy or fancy. Maybe I’d remedy that in D.C.
    I had no idea how long I’d be away, so I piled a huge, towering stack of clothes in my suitcase just in case. I stared down at it, hoping that sitting on it would help me close it, and wondered how I would fit a bunch of new clothes in there too.
    My mind didn’t linger long on those humdrum thoughts. Angels dominated my mind as I thought of them flaunting their talents to humans. The angels came across as mystical, divine, and maybe even god-like, but not at all ancient. It was just too mind-boggling to think about them being several thousand years old.
    I had an overwhelming urge to read the Bible and find the stories about the