Chapter Five
It's a Bird, It's a Plane…It's Azrael
Ella awakens when her bedside alarm clock blares out in static, and that's probably Jango being, well, if not exactly helpful then at least getting her awake again. She stirs and blinks, noting that Pepe is sitting on her stomach, his long tail wrapped around her wrist and his little ears-all three-twitching in his consternation.
"Ma! Ma! You okay?"
She reaches out and scratches his closest ear, and he chirps a bit. "Yeah, sure, cariño. I like I just had a bad dream."
It is at that moment that Rae Rae comes into the room with a huge, heaping mug of tea. "Lopez, hey you're up!"
She sets the tea down and fumbles with the alarm clock, finally giving up when it won't stop its static blaring. Eventually, instead of trying to find the off switch, she just yanks the plug from the wall.
Ella gapes at her friend (Kind of? Maybe? They're still on way shaky ground). "Wait, so that wasn't a dream?"
She shakes her head and nods to the tea. Pepe hops down from Ella's lap, scurries to the mug and takes a sniff. He shakes his head and glares up at Azrael. "Toots, you didn't put in any sugar! That's the best part."
"Pepe, be nice. This is your Aunt Azrael. Don't call her 'Toots.' Besides, Rae Rae knows I always liked my tea just with tons of cream in it."
"Explains why it's tan," he sniffs before trotting off to the kitchen either to gorge from the fridge (smart little diablo) or to chase around Jango. Either way, it's for the best since Ella's busy right now.
Way busy.
And possibly going insane. Well, more than her usual.
Rae Rae sits next to her on the bed, and Ella stares at the angel. Her mind is going a million miles an hour and none at all. Like one second, it's stuck in mud and she can't tell what's going on. Then she has a billion thoughts ricocheting and colliding against each other. A child? An angel child? Does the baby have wings already? Will it? How does it come out? What about college in like twenty years…so much money? Wait, does that make God-the Big Guy-like her father-in-law kind of?
She can't stop all the crazy, insane ideas in her head. Ella has this image of being dragged through thrift shops (because of course) with Michael to find affordable clothes they could cut holes in to let the wings out…because angel babies have to get wings eventually right?
She is vaguely aware of Azrael shaking her shoulder. "Hey! Ella? Wait, are you okay? You're kind of scaring me."
"Michael's…pregnant?" She has the worst, dumbest urge to ask if it's really hers. Not that she doesn't trust Michael. Wait, rephrase that. She can't trust Michael with the truth or her heart, but she knows he wouldn't have snuck out around her on the road even if they weren't really something exclusive or formal even then. But this is more insane than anything she's heard before. And it's been a long road trip and everything else already. "Like with a baby?"
Rae Rae's eyes are so huge behind her glasses. "Ella, oh jeez. I didn't think you hit your head when you passed out. You were already sitting on the sofa so it should have gone okay, you know?"
"No, I didn't bonk anything…I think," Ela replies. "But I'm a woman and he's stuck like he is for now."
She decides not to admit out loud that for an angel, a punishment could take centuries or ice ages or who knew how long. Rae Rae had to know that too. But he wasn't female technically, but his body was. And angel and human aside, Ella was pretty sure that two women didn't…well that wasn't how pregnancy worked.
Right?
"Yeah, well, being Creation is a lot." As if Rae Rae summoned bad luck by mentioning it, there's a crash from the kitchen and a harried squeak from Pepe.
"Hey, hijo, are you all right? Estás bien?" Ella calls out.
There's a few more clanks, and then Pepe calls back, "No worries! I was gonna get a snack , but I'm not sure how the burners work."
That gets Ella up and moving. She can't have her pet chinchilla burn the place down. After all, Pepe is very advanced for both a five month old and a rodent, but he's clearly not ready to cook himself food.
She finds him on the stove with a frying pan on one of the burners as well as the egg carton out as well as cheese and peppers and onions. "Pepe, what on earth?"
"You were upset, Ma, so I thought I could make an omelet?"
She sighs and tries not to think about soon enough a child that has wings allowing him or her to crawl into everything from floor to literal ceiling and instead sets Pepe on her shoulder as she starts making an omelet for each of them.
"Let me handle it," she says.
And it's easier that way. To have something simple and by rote to do. She used to make breakfast for her brothers once Mamí and Papí headed to work. Yeah, she was younger than almost all of them but Ricardo but it was also the way it was. She'd make sure they all got something to eat before school and becoming an the house omelet jefe had been part of it.
Rae Rae pulls out a seat at the kitchen table and it causes the chair to squeak first against the tile.
Jango must not like it much because overhead the lights flicker and threaten to go out.
Ella sighs and shakes her head. "No, we had a deal. I'll get you a vintage gaming system next time. Maybe an old Atari? Saw one at the pawn shop last," she says.
The lights stabilize, and she flips the omelet.
Azrael frowns at her. "Okay, so the lights-"
"I have a gremlin," Ella explains, like it makes much sense. "Anyway, he's usually pretty…uh cooperative, but I think it's a lot of excitement for him."
"Wow, usually places with gremlins don't have any tech at all."
"I limited mine, but we bartered!" She raises her voice on that last part and stares up at the ceiling. The lights flicker just a hint again before staying on and bright.
"Definitely a long time since I've seen one. Maybe the 1970s," Rae Rae says.
And then Ella remembers that like all angels, her friend (friend-light? Friend on probation?) is ancient and fifty years back is just an anecdote to her.
Will I be just a blink to the baby then?
She banishes that thought away and flips the omelet again, sprinkling cheese and some parsley to garnish it as well. Pepe chirps happily from his perch on the counter.
"That smell really wets my whistle," Pepe adds.
She sighs and plates the food for both of them. "Stay at your counter, cari o. I have to talk to your Aunt Rae Rae."
He nods and digs into his omelet. She makes a note to get very tiny utensils and teach him to eat cleanly. He's got pretty dexterous hands, and just because he's a chinchilla doesn't mean he can't have good manners too.
She takes her plate and sits at the table across from Rae Rae. It's not a bad creation, considering her wandering state of mind, but she's not tearing into it with the ravenous hunger of Pepe either. She just feels too confused and anxious to do more than take small bites. The onions feel a bit bitter on her tongue.
"So we made a baby?" she asks, and Ella's not sure if it's hope in her tone or frustration or fear or all three at once. She'd bet all at once, to be honest.
Azrael shakes her head. "Not exactly."
"You just said-"
"I mean, oh yeah, wowsers, Michael is pregnant. He got an ultrasound and everything."
Something small and sharp twists in Ella's stomach when she hears that. Michael's already seen the baby and she hasn't. It's an insane thought because they're not really talking. Okay, not talking at all, and she hasn't laid eyes on him in over a month, but the first time any of them saw the child, and she couldn't be there.
It guts something in her, definitely.
"He saw the baby already?" she croaks.
"Babies."
Ella drops a chunk of omelet on her pj pants. "Wait, how many does he have? Do angels come in litters?"
Rae Rae blanches at the turn of phrase. "That's kind of insulting and no. We're sterile…or we're supposed to be, but then again the rest of us aren't Creation with the big 'C.'"
Ella nods numbly. She knew that, but what does she know? Maybe Michael has six or something cooking in there. Until about twenty minutes ago, she'd have sworn her and Michael, two ostensible women of very different species couldn't have made children together at all.
Celestial rules were confusing, especially when they broke at the whim of the Big Guy. Apparently.
"How many?" she asks the angel.
"Twins. I…they're so small and squiggly. I can't tell anything on the ultrasound thing, but the doctors said it was two, so it must be."
"Doctors? You mean not just Linda?" Ella asks, and her heart pounds at that, already wondering if it's safe for Michael and the twins-their twins-for just anyone to know.
"A friend of Linda's. She said he was a concert guy? Or a bell hop or I dunno."
"Concierge?" Ella asks.
"Yeah that one!"
She frowns, but if Lucifer coughs up enough cash, then she could imagine whichever concierge Linda vouched for would stay mum. It was more profitable to keep not just the Devil but the best favor granter in L.A. on your side.
It was very bad to spite him.
She never had, but even Ella could guess how unpleasant (to put it mildly) Lucifer could make things for anyone who, as Pepe would say, sang like a canary.
"Twins," she says. "Did they say what kind? Can you tell the sexes? I mean, how far are they?"
She thinks she can guess how far they can be max. In New Orleans was the only time they slept together like that, the time with Michael glowing so bright that she knew he'd changed. No matter what he'd been before his Father's punishments and their road trip, Michael was a goddess by then.
No one could glow like that and be anything less.
So what? Maybe ten or eleven weeks?
She tries to think back to her primas and so many showers and support prima and/or godmother duties. Ella's brain is so scattered that she's not even sure if elevenish weeks is enough to tell much.
Azrael shakes her head. "It's too early the doctors said."
"And Michael sent you?"
"Uh…not exactly."
She sets her fork down and pushes her plate away. Her appetite is truly diminished now. After everything that had transpired in her life and that had come between them, Ella cannot have Rae Rae revert back to "ghost rules" levels of bullshit and spin.
"Don't lie, Rae Rae."
"I'm not! I just…he didn't want you to know yet because he thinks you need a normal life and we all know angel stuff is way not normal and super dangerous. But I know he'd regret it, and he's scared, and he can't go through this alone. I mean, sure, Lu is there but Lu isn't being nice to him. Mi can't leave Lux, and who even knows how Menny is gonna react to it. I just…he needs you in his corner, and you deserve to be there if you want to for every minute of it."
Ella's heart still hurts. The idea that Michael might have tried to cut her out of the twins' lives-oh mierda she has twins…or will-out of some stupid, wrong, noble sense of letting her go ached.
For once, she is grateful that Rae Rae never followed rules or, honestly, what other people want.
She might not know how to reconcile all the lies Michael told or all the ways her friends, especially Lucifer, kept her in the dark for years, but she cannot turn her back on any kids of hers. Hell, at her age…she never thought she'd have any, let alone two.
A small voice in her head reminds her that despite everything they are quite literally the grandchildren of God, that Michael was once called the Prince of Heaven. It's not quite accurate, but the Catholic in her, the part of her that was almost a nun (well except she was never good at the Celibacy part, apparently still isn't) thinks about how these are not just magical, holy children but royalty in their way. Heirs of the first and by far most fucked up family she's ever heard of.
Ella isn't quite sure how to wrap her mind around that.
And for a moment, her mind goes into a blue screen of death.
She's just Ella, and she has no idea how she got pulled into all of this. Sure, the archangel-now Goddess-she has fallen hard for, even if she's pissed at him…Michael is sarcastic and surly and cheap. Dear Big Guy is Michael painfully cheap. He seems ordinary most of the time, but she's seen him fight and seen him level the true power of the angel of fear on people like Pete. Seen his eyes go gold and felt the power thrumming through him flow through her too. She has seen his blood make Pepe and watched the most unearthly golden glow sweep over his skin.
Even if most of the time, it's like road tripping and being near her abuelito, there is something both otherworldly and all-consuming about Michael, about what he is underneath. Who.
Especially now that he's a Goddess.
She's just Ella, and she has no idea how a human fits into all of this, especially one who's beyond ordinary, not even a Miracle like Decker.
"Does he want me to come at all?" she asks, trying to ignore how her voice quakes.
Pepe has finished scarfing down his eggs. He gives a little burp-and they really have to work on manners soon-and then scurries over to her. Soon, he's back in her lap and his tail, as its wont to do, curls around her wrist.
"Ma, you okay? Estás bien?"
She's proud of him for picking up a bit of Spanish here and there too. He's really very smart. Ella pets the tip of his head, which is soft like down. "I dunno. I…you're not the only person Michael made."
Pepe squeaks again. "I have brothers? We can have a regular little gentlemen's club; birds of a feather flocking together, am I right?"
Rae Rae laughs. "Wow, and I thought the Silver City was weird."
"I think I'm a magnet for weird. I mean, Decker's a literal Miracle, but I attract the weird better than anything."
Azrael takes her glasses off and rubs them on her sweater's hem. "I'm not that weird."
"Really?"
"Angels came first. Not my fault if humans don't get the awesome of a psychopomp."
Ella laughs and it feels good. It shouldn't because Rae Rae has done everything she wanted for their whole relationship and hurt her gravely, but it feels nice.
And that's the problem with angels, except so far for Charlie (and he is only half). They all lie and only let you know what they want you to and when they want you to. They don't see humans as equals; Michael made no secret of it, that he preferred her as an exception but everyone else is mostly a monkey to him.
Lucifer, Azrael, and Amenadiel might not be so blunt, but they treat humans around them the same way. Everything curated for them and nothing fully honest.
And it chills Ella because no human can live that way; you have to know the truth, even if it hurts. Have to know the truth.
Without that, it all leads to madness.
She would know.
And yet, laughing with her…just chatting with Rae Rae reminds her of good times too, and she leans into it for now because her world is spinning. Ella is a mother. A mother of Nephilim not yet born, and for now, she needs every friend she can get.
Even kind of crap ones like Azrael who made her think for decades she was a shitty medium…or worse.
"I just…does he want me there? I…I want to see him and see the pics because I know Linda and there are some printed out by now, but I just…I want to be there for them. I can't miss a moment in their lives."
"He thinks you need to be happy, and I'm gathering Mi doesn't think he makes you that."
"He hurt me. You both did. You lied and hid it all and part of me wonders if I was a con to get to Lucifer. I don't think I was. It doesn't feel like that, but it hurt. I spent a few weeks spiraling and feeling like this had to be even worse than what Pete pulled." Her words get fast, even for her, and she rubs at her eyes.
Pepe's tail wraps tighter around her wrist. "Don't make with the water works. It's all right. I'm here."
She nods and pets his snout. "Lo sé. I know that, hijo…I just…if he doesn't want me there, well, tough. Those are my kids too."
"Mi wants you to have normal because he thinks you want it."
"I might," she admits. "We might get through the next nine months or however many and then we'll co-parent like Linda and Amenadiel, and I'll move on to mostly normal day job and being single or a new person who's human. I don't know right now. But normal doesn't mean walking away from my kids. Normal doesn't mean I'd ever want to reject my kids, half angels or not."
Rae Rae beams at her. "I told him that. Like a lot, but boys are dumb."
She stands then and spreads her wings. "So, Lu and Mi are calling a family meeting. No way Dad will show because He just doesn't do that much. I mean, sometimes He visits with Charlie, but I don't think the cat was supposed to be out of the bag yet but Gabriel shot off his mouth. Because of course he did!"
Ella gapes at Azrael. It is so weird to hear her talk about Gabriel—the one who told Mary everything about the coming of Jesus, about being pregnant at all-like just a tía llena de chismes, like some gossipy aunt or something. It will never stop being surreal that Michael's family is literally the archangels of the Bible and God himself.
It just won't.
"So who is coming?"
"They are calling Amenadiel to come, so the three of them are on the same page. I mean, Menny watches Michael pretty often."
"Guards him," Ella spits out.
It's infuriating. She knows exactly how little Amenadiel thinks of Michael. In some ways, she understands why Amenadiel assumes Michael is so crappy. But he wasn't there the last year almost with him on the road. He knows the angry, bitter archangel. The displaced and injured general. He doesn't know the Goddess struggling with himself and the weight of a cruel sentence already. Doesn't know how kind Michael can be, how patient.
At least with her.
Rae Rae tears up a little. "I don't like it either. I…I overheard Michael saying he was gonna pray for Gabriel. It was why even though I was getting air on the balcony I knew I had to come here. He needs you. The twins need you, and since some of my brothers and sisters are asshats, especially Gabriel, then he needs you STAT, Lopez."
She nods and settles Pepe against her chest. "So, you're gonna fly me?"
"Yup. I'm short but strong. I know Amenadiel flew you once from…from New Orleans," Azrael stops talking and trails off.
Ella does appreciate that whatever Michael has told her about one of the worst nights of her life, and the utter soul-destroying way Michael's real identity was revealed to, well, Rae Rae keeps it to herself.
Sometimes discretion is truly, really not overrated.
Rae Rae's wings twitch behind her as she holds out her arms. "I got you, Lopez. Now, let's get to Lu's. I hate Gabby. He's mean, and Mi shouldn't be alone with him. Or he'll feel alone because Lu and Menny-"
"Don't like him either."
Rae Rae sniffles again, and Ella lets her pick her up in a bridal-like carry. Her heart clenches at the thought that the last time an angel held her like this it was Michael in some crappy motel in Arizona, but she has missed him.
Despite all her mixed feelings, she truly has.
"Great then," Ella says, trying to sound brave even as her voice quavers. "Up, up and away, right?"
Azrael laughs. "You know it."
Pepe pokes his head up from being burrowed under the collar of her t-shirt and against her chest. "You drop me, Toots, and you sleep with the fishes!"
Ella groans and shoves him back tight to her. "Pepe, stop being rude."
Before he can offer a rebuttal, Rae Rae is taking off and they're soon away and into the Los Angeles night.