CHAPTER NINE

Amy stood in front of the offices and sighed. She peered into the window and saw all of her co-workers scribbling down numbers, notes, or answering phone calls.

"I'm not going to do it. No, I just won't," she stuttered under her breath.

"Won't do what?" a voice behind her asked. Amy turned around, quite surprised.

"Oh, Gloria, right?" she asked in an embarrassed tone. "I didn't know you were there."

"Well, my motto is to never be late for work…though it seems like I might of set my watch a few minutes off," Gloria said in her quick but cheery voice. She glanced down at her watch and then back at the one in the office. "Yep, I knew it, one and a half minutes off."

"Don't worry," Amy said. "Mr. Kalio probably won't even notice. And believe me, if he notices, you're in deep trouble. You don't want to experience him mad."

Gloria smiled and pushed her way in, through the glass door. She walked towards the office that she and Monica usually shared. But today they wouldn't.

"Oh, that reminds me," Gloria started. She turned around to face Amy. "Monica…she won't be here today," the smart angel said sadly.

"Reason being?" Amy pressed. "It's only her second day of work here. She's one of the top publicists. We can't have her missing like this."

"I know you can't, but Monica is far…well, she just was delayed and won't be here today," Gloria said. That was all she could think of. She couldn't just tell Amy the straight out truth. Monica was captured by demons and then taken hostage. She might not be back for awhile. She's in quite a dilemma. Gloria laughed at her thoughts. This was going to be a hard day today. The breakfast that morning had brightened it up a little bit.

As he walked back towards the park, not knowing what he'd find there, he though about his assignment. He would have to go back to France this afternoon and he wasn't looking forward to it. His head hurt from the past day. His fingers went numb as he rolled them into a fist and hit the bench.

"Oh, Father, I need some help. I don't want to leave. And what's going to happen to Amy? What's going to happen to Tess and Gloria?" Tess was still missing, Gloria was working on her assignment that was now Amy, and Monica was still gone. "Father, I need some sort of directions."

Suddenly he looked up to see two figures standing on the opposite side of the park.

"Sam, I can't do this…" a woman's voice trailed off.

"Tess," a stern voice replied. "We've already talked about this. It's time."

Tess stared at her angel baby who wandered the trail parallel to them. Her heart told her to do it, but her mind told her not too. It was God's choice, whether her mind and heart both said no. And right then, God was telling her that His time was now.

"Okay," Tess said shakily. "Here goes."

She walked towards the angel of death. Her brown eyes met his green ones. Their gazes locked for a long moment of silence until Tess leaned forward and embraced her angel boy. They both held each other for a long time. Andrew opened his mouth but nothing came out. He guessed that Tess knew about Monica, considering that Sam had talked to her. He looked at his supervisor with a serious look on his face that told her how much pain he was in. Tess already knew his pain for she shared it as well.

"I love you, Tess," the angel of death mouthed. Tess pulled back and brushed a few loose locks of blond hair out of his face and cried.

"I love you too, Baby," she told him with an honest voice. "We're going to get through this together. Now I have something to tell you…" her voice wavered. Right at that moment, both angels started crying heavily as Tess shared some words with Andrew. The words were unknown to anybody accept God, Sam, and Andrew. Those were the only three that knew the secret.