Angel Academy Read online

  Copyright © 2019 Kate Hall

  This edition published 2019

  Cover Art © 2019 Kate Hall

  Published by Lost Window Publishing

  Neosho, Missouri

  United States

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:

  [email protected]

  eBook ISBN:978-1-950291-12-0

  Jacket Design by Kate Hall

  Interior Design by Kate Hall

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  About the Author

  Available Books:

  Chapter One

  Discovering that there really is an afterlife is sort of jarring.

  The last sound I ever hear should be the screeching of metal, the shattering of glass, but it’s not. The only sound on Earth is Desireé's heartbeat. But then, she dies, and I die with her.

  I expect it to be dark, or, more accurately, for there to be nothing. After all, I’ve never believed in the whole “life after death” thing. It’s just a fairytale meant to make people feel better, isn’t it? Instead, I’m lying in a field, holding her hand. None of that death stuff seems too important. She’s here, and her expression is so full of love that I might burst.

  I smile, and she smiles back, and a breeze blows over us, ruffling the flowers. I could fall asleep here for days, and I let my eyes drift shut for just a moment.

  “I love you, Avery.” Her voice comes to me in wisps, like it’s made of light instead of sound. My lips tilt up, but I’m just too tired to open my eyes or reply.

  When she removes her hand from mine, though, my eyes snap open.

  The field is gone, and so is the breeze, and so is she.

  Her name, I think. What was her name? I grind my teeth, and tears prick at my eyes. She’s not here with me, so of course it matters.

  The ceiling is high above me, built from intricate white marble that glitters in the golden light. I blink, but the brightness doesn’t dissipate. I glance down. I’m in a bed with white sheets. A hospital bed?

  “Avery,” a voice says to my left. I turn my head, and a woman is standing beside me in a knee-length gown of the palest blue, like a summer sky turned to fabric. I want to touch it to see what it’s made of, but my hands won’t obey.

  “Where am I?” I ask. There’s no way I would have ended up in the fanciest hospital in the world, not in my tiny town on the coast of Oregon. This place is grand, fit for a queen. Or a goddess.

  The meadow girl’s face is beginning to fade from my memory, the brightness of this place drowning it out. I grasp desperately at it, but it’s like trying to contain smoke.

  “You’re in the hospital wing at Theaa Academy. You were brought in this morning,” the woman says slowly, her voice light as silver bells. Her brown hair is up in a loose bun, small wisps falling to frame her face perfectly.

  “I’ve never heard of it,” I say, sitting up slowly. I don’t have any soreness, but that could be a trick of the medication. Except, when I look at my arms, there are no tubes or wires. If I’m in a hospital, shouldn’t I be hurt? The memory of shattering glass is somewhere in the depths of my mind, just barely within reach. Did I manage to escape injury?

  Whatever Theaa Academy is, though, it must be private and expensive. The room I’m in is old-fashioned, a medical wing from a movie set in the past. Each bed has a curtain that can be pulled around it, but I seem to be the only person here right now. Well, besides the woman. Is she a nurse? A doctor?

  She tilts her head, a kind smile crossing her face. I want to crawl into her arms like I used to do with Mom when I was little. That’s ridiculous, though. I don’t even know this woman.

  But, somehow, I feel almost like I do.

  Almost.

  “Avery, what is your last memory?”

  I open my mouth to tell her about the meadow, but it’s like my tongue is glued down. I can’t speak. I’m not…supposed to? That seems correct, although it doesn’t make sense. I close my mouth again and go through my mind, starting at the beginning of yesterday.

  “I was at school. No, driving after. It had been a bad day, and I wasn’t paying enough attention in the rain. The car lost traction around a curve, and…” There had been a scream, an impact of some sort, but then what? I rack my mind for what happened next, but the images won’t come.

  “It’s okay,” the woman says, sitting gently on the side of the bed. She rests a hand on my knee. I don’t usually like touching, but she’s warm, like coming home to a cozy fireplace. “You might never remember. That’s normal.”

  “Did I hit my head?” I ask, twining my hands together.

  Her eyes go sad, and she pulls her hand away.

  “Avery,” she says carefully, as if testing my name on her tongue, although she’s said it so many times already. “You are no longer on Earth.”

  The words don’t make sense. I bark out a short, sharp laugh. “What, am I on Mars or something?”

  She smiles, but the motion doesn’t reach her eyes. Why isn’t she laughing? It had been a joke, obviously.

  Right?

  My face falls. My throat tightens. “Where am I?” I ask quietly. Fear grips my heart like a vice.

  She doesn’t answer for a moment, instead taking the time to unwrap my taut hands from each other so that she can take both of them in hers. Her pale brown eyes bore into mine, almost as if she’s searching for something.

  Finally, she says, “You’re in Heaven, Avery.”

  “Heaven?” I gasp out after sitting there for far too long. This has to be some sort of joke. I didn’t die. There’s no way. Maybe it’s a dream. I bark out a laugh at the absurd statement. Heaven isn’t even real.

  I look around the room once again, then down at my hands. Nothing has changed. I remember reading that I should check the time twice to see if it changes during a dream, but there are no clocks in this room, and my phone is nowhere in sight. In fact, the whole place looks like it’s straight out of the forties.

  The woman nods sagely. “I know this may be difficult to process, but it’s the truth. Yesterday at four thirty-six in the afternoon, in Brookstown, Washington, the vehicle you were driving went off the road and into the river. You and one other passenger were killed on impact.

  I open my mouth, then close it again. I should feel sad, panicked, even. Instead, an irresistible calm washes over me. I’m dead, and there’s nothing I can do about it. And now I’m in Heaven. Actual Heaven.

  Okay, then.

  “What about…” I search for the name of the passenger, any memory of who could have been in the ca
r with me, but it doesn’t come to me. It’s like a censor blur has been placed over them completely.

  Her face falls. “I’m afraid that she was not as lucky as you.”

  I bite my lip. I feel a little bad about the whole situation, but I can’t even picture who died with me. That should make me feel worse, but instead, I just feel distant. Who knows, maybe it had been a hitchhiker that decided to kill us both by making me swerve off the cliff. It’s probably best not to dwell on it.

  Instead, I ask, “Who are you, anyway?”

  The woman’s face brightens by several degrees. “My name is Azrael. I am the Dean of Theaa Academy.”

  I tilt my head. The name definitely rings a bell. “Wait. Azrael, as in…”

  She nods. “Yes, I’ve been mentioned in a few notable books in the past.”

  An angel. I’m having a conversation with a freaking angel.

  I stand up carefully, although there’s no need. I feel better than I’ve felt in years. No hunger pangs in my stomach, and my once bad ankle isn’t sore at all.

  “Wow,” I mutter, looking over myself. I’m wearing a flowing white linen gown with gold stitched into the fibers, and it hangs off my shoulders elegantly. The blonde hair that floats around me is paler than before, nearly as white as the marble room, and it’s practically glowing.

  Azrael gives me an amused smile. “Just wait until you get your wings.”

  I freeze and stare at her, my eyes practically popping out of my head.

  “Wings?”

  Chapter Two

  Azrael doesn’t explain the wing comment, merely winks and leads me out of the great marble hall. When we leave the room, we enter another area, this one a walkway over a sheer sparkling mountain. Waterfalls cascade down with no apparent source, the water glistening in golden light. The stone we step on shines and sparkles like it’s made of diamonds.

  It might be.

  Because this is Heaven.

  For real.

  “This is one of the many quarters of Heaven,” Azrael explains, extending an arm outward. I look past the mist and clouds, squinting until I can just make out another mountain in the distance. Whatever is on top is a shining gold, like something out of a fairytale.

  “Wow,” I whisper, leaning out over the marble rail that extends from the floor up to an open-air window, pillars every few feet to form several elegant arches. “This is unreal.”

  This definitely isn’t a fancy hospital. These places don’t exist in real life.

  “I assure you,” Azrael says gently, “this is all quite real.”

  I sigh and follow her, my head swiveling side to side.

  “I’ll be taking you to your room first,” she says. “You’ll want to get changed in time for dinner.”

  “Dinner?” I ask. “Aren’t we, like, immortal beings or something?”

  She shrugs. “Eating may not be necessary to sustain us, but it’s a pleasant time that we like to use to help you all come together at the end of a long day of training.”

  I frown. “Why do we need training? Isn’t there a way you could just…” I wiggle my fingers in front of my face. “Matrix the information we need into our heads?”

  She watches me for a moment. “Our Creator still insists that all previous humans be imbued with free will. We do not give you anything you do not already have.”

  I nod. I guess that sort of makes sense, but it would be much cooler if the information I’m supposed to learn were just siphoned into my head.

  We end up in another grand hall nearly identical to the first, except this one is lined with dark wooden tables instead of hospital beds. I look up, but the ceiling isn’t a starry sky like in my favorite book series. Oh, well.

  A few other people are in this room, reading from books or eating food or just hanging out. There’s one notable thing about all of them, though. They’re all teenagers, most with glowing white wings, and a few without. A few look up and smile at me, and one, a girl with strawberry blonde hair and iridescent white wings tucked against her back, gives me a little wave. I wave back, although I feel exposed in the long white gown instead of the navy blue school uniforms they all appear to be wearing. This dress may be magical and elegant, but it also stands in stark contrast to everyone else.

  I chew on my lip for a moment.

  “Why is —” but I’m cut off before I can complete the thought.

  “Azrael,” a young man calls. His hair is a pale brown, his skin is dark as night, and his wings stand out brighter than the sun. Does nobody here have dark hair? Maybe it’s a Heaven thing. I study Azrael, whose darker brown hair is completely different to the students. I’ll have to ask someone about that.

  We stop, and I wrap my arms around myself. I am not wearing a bra, and I’m suddenly very self-conscious about it. I’ve never gone anywhere without one, and now I’m flitting around like a lost fairy princess with far too flimsy apparel.

  “Yes, Gabriel?” she asks, lifting her chin.

  Gabriel like the archangel?

  “I needed some help with my theory homework. Will you be returning to normal office hours tomorrow?”

  She nods, a soft smile on her face. “I will also be available as soon as I finish showing Avery around. She’s a new student.”

  The boy turns to me, and his face lights up with a grin. He sticks a hand out. “Hi, I’m Gabriel, but everyone calls me Gabe. Not the famous Gabriel, though.” He laughs at his own words and rolls his eyes. Well, at least I have an answer to one of my many questions. “That one teaches fencing.”

  Fencing?

  I consider his words as he says goodbye. That’s two archangels from theology. Will I be meeting others? I try to remember their names from the very small amount of church I attended as a young child, but I only know the names of Azrael and Gabriel from TV shows. Is Metatron a real one, or was he just made up for that show? It sounds fake, so I can’t be sure. I frown.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in,” Azrael says, placing a soft hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, you will fit in well when you get used to being here. You must have been extraordinary in life to make it here. The Creator doesn’t take this responsibility lightly. They only choose the best of the best for our purposes.”

  I nod gravely and follow her. We walk up a spiral marble staircase to a long hallway.

  I sigh. It’s going to take forever to get to where we need to go.

  Azrael smiles deviously. “Would you like to see something cool?”

  I’m a bit concerned about what an ancient being might consider “cool.” I’m not sure what else I can handle today, but I nod.

  “Two hundred twenty-three,” Azrael says, knocking three times on the unlabeled door directly to the right of us. Slowly, golden numbers become visible. Two hundred twenty-three. “We try to make life easy for our students,” Azrael says. She opens the door, but I’m almost afraid to look in. Will I have a roommate? Is the room frightening and foreign? Does it look like a magical palace bedroom from a movie? She smiles at me and puts a finger under my chin so that I look into her eyes. “Avery, everything is going to be okay.”

  When I walk through the door, I gasp.

  Chapter Three

  “It’s…mine,” I say.

  The room is my room from back home. There’s my bed in the corner, but it’s about twice the size of my usual cramped twin. There are posters and paintings on the wall, almost all gifts from friends and family. The ugly crack in the wall is gone, and so are the mold-scented water stains in the ceiling. The bile-yellow wall is now a more pale shade that’s light and airy, and the desk in the corner is the fancy one I kept looking at online for college, but in its essence, it’s my room. Instead of a field of rusting cars and tall grass, the window reveals a scenic view of clouds and waterfalls streaming down the mountains below the shining white building.

  “If you want any changes,” Azrael says, her voice careful once again, “you only have to focus on what you want, and it will be done. We just find
that students are more comfortable with the transition when they’re encompassed in something familiar.

  I take a step inside, my mouth agape. My fingers trace over the footboard, then the lamp in the corner.

  “So if I wanted it to be bigger, or the floor to be hardwood…?” I ask, turning back to the angel in the doorway.

  She nods. “Anything you’d like.”

  I picture the floor as hardwood, but I also consider what it would be like for it to be heated, and it changes immediately. My bare feet are heated on the dark, warm wood, and I smile to myself.

  “I’m going to give you some time alone,” she says. “You will be notified when it’s time for dinner. There are proper clothes in your closet. If there is anything you need, you only need to focus on it.”

  I nod, but I’m not paying much attention at this point. What more could I possibly need in this place? A sleeve of Oreos, maybe, but nothing else. When I glance back at the desk, there’s a pristine new package of Oreos resting on the white wood.

  The door closes as Azrael leaves, and I take the Oreos and collapse on the bed. Should I be crying? I am dead, after all. But I can’t summon tears, or even sadness for that matter. I may be dead, but I’m in Heaven. Freaking Heaven. My heart races with elation. Of all the people in the world, I’m one of the ones that made it to Heaven.

  I sit up and put an Oreo to my mouth, but then, the question that’s been niggling in my mind finally comes to the forefront.

  Why is there a school in Heaven?

  Chapter Four

  A gentle bell rings at the door right as I finish getting changed, and I check myself in the door’s mirror, which is cleaner than the one at home, but otherwise identical. I look like me, but different. More. My skin is clear and luminescent, not a red blotch or pimple in sight, and my hair is so much paler than the dirty blonde it used to be. Instead of being a frizzy mess of split-ends, it falls in the gentle waves I would’ve had on Earth had I been able to afford the fancy shampoos and conditioners needed for it.