Small Miracles Read online

  SMALL MIRACLES

  OLIVIA ATWATER

  Copyright © 2022 by Olivia Atwater

  https://oliviaatwater.com

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and stories are the product of the authors' imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual persons (living or dead), organizations, and events is entirely coincidental.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Also by Olivia Atwater

  CHAPTER 1

  It was eight o’clock on a Wednesday morning when the Fallen Angel of Petty Temptations walked into a quaint café on the north end of Church Street. There were lace curtains in the windows, and a collection of ferns hung in between the low pendant lights over the small, round tables. It was the sort of café that attracted writers and thinkers—those who would gladly set up shop for hours at a time—though typically, there were still only a few tables occupied. Today, unlike most Wednesday mornings at eight o’clock, there was a substantial queue curving through the bistro tables. Gadriel had never seen the place actually busy before.

  Easy to overlook, Gadriel had the appearance one would expect from the Fallen Angel of Petty Temptations—that is, not at all special. Her short hair was a plain shade of brown—neither too light nor too dark—and her eyes were the same boring shade, set into a perfectly unobjectionable face. Her height was on the upper end of average, but she carried herself as if she were much taller, such that she had an awkward, gangly look about her. The awkwardness was only amplified by her out-of-fashion trousers and by the sleeveless argyle knitted vest she wore over a white buttoned shirt. All in all, her fashion sense was not the most appealing… but she was terribly comfortable, and that was what mattered.

  Gadriel was, in all respects, the sort of woman whom one would call ‘very pleasant’, but also ‘very forgettable’—which might explain why none of the café patrons paid her any attention as she studied the customers one-by-one, searching for the man she was supposed to meet there. When the face that Gadriel sought failed to materialise, however, she sighed to herself and joined the unusually long queue in front of the counter.

  At the front of this backed-up queue, there was a man—the handsome, fast-talking, sharp-dressed sort who’d likely sinned his fair share already that morning. Said gentleman was currently paralysed with indecision. He stared at the menu board with a slight wrinkle between his brows, shifting from one foot to the other. Before him, the barista at the counter looked on with a brittle customer service smile. Behind him, a woman in line groaned softly.

  This had clearly been going on for some time.

  “Hm,” said the man in front of the counter. The sound had an unusual weight—a gravitas, if you would. It made the gentleman’s agony over his morning coffee seem deep and meaningful. And perhaps it was a deep and meaningful decision on some level, given what Gadriel knew of the human soul.

  But either way, Gadriel wanted a bloody coffee.

  The fallen angel sighed heavily. “Just buy the expensive one, won’t you?” she said. “It’s only an extra quid, you nitwit.”

  Instead of shouting it across the café, Gadriel used what she liked to call her inside voice, which meant that the words came out more like:

  “Just buy the more expensive one, won’t you? It’s only an extra quid, you nitwit.”

  No one else reacted to Gadriel’s comment—none of them could hear it—but the man at the front of the queue nodded decisively to himself. The trick, Gadriel had found, was to make the words sound like something a mortal might say to themselves in private.

  “I think I’ll have the chai latte after all,” the man at the counter told the barista. As he said the words, a great tension left his shoulders; a recognition that he had conquered one more minor existential dilemma in the due course of his human life.

  “With extra whipped cream,” Gadriel added. “You might as well.”

  “Could you do extra whipped cream on that?” the man added quickly.

  As the man at the counter finished paying and stepped aside, a tall Black woman in an exceptionally tailored beige suit stepped into line just next to Gadriel. Her black, curling hair was closely cropped, accentuating the dramatic contour of her head and her neck. Her eyes were dark and intense, set above broad lips which curved with ever-present amusement. She was, in many respects, all of the things which Gadriel was not—that is, she was impeccably dressed, strikingly beautiful, and nearly impossible to ignore. Her name was Barachiel. She was, among other things, the Angel of Good Fortune, the Chief of Guardian Angels, and a regular thorn in Gadriel’s backside.

  “Good morning,” Barachiel said cheerfully.

  Gadriel narrowed her eyes. “No,” she said. “No, absolutely not. I told you I was going to be a woman today. That means you’re obliged to change and not me.”1

  If Barachiel was at all flustered by the obvious faux pas, then the emotion didn’t show upon her face. She glanced innocently at Gadriel, clasping her wrists behind her back. “And here I thought you weren’t very fond of rules,” she said.

  Gadriel scowled. “It’s not about rules,” she said. “It’s about style.”

  Barachiel swept her eyes silently from Gadriel’s head down to her feet. She didn’t say anything, of course—proper angels liked to pretend that they were more polite than the opposition. But her expression clearly implied her scepticism that Gadriel could ever be considered stylish.

  “Ah, well,” Barachiel mused. “If you say so.” She stayed right next to Gadriel, however, and it soon became obvious that she had no intention whatsoever of slinking out the door to change her gender.

  “You are… infuriating,” Gadriel muttered tightly.

  Barachiel ignored Gadriel, peering over the fallen angel’s head to consider the queue in front of the counter. “Well, look at that!” she said. “That whipped cream’s put Mr Indecisive in a cheerful mood, hasn’t it? I think he just left a few quid to pay for the woman behind him. How generous.”

  Gadriel whipped her head around to look, just in time to see the man with the chai latte strolling for the door with a smile on his face and a spring in his step. As he passed, the man whistled softly to himself.

  Gadriel calculated numbers quickly in her head. As she finished her arithmetic, she stifled a groan. “I’ve put him into the positives, haven’t I?” she muttered.2

  Barachiel nodded. “Quite likely,” she said. “And my goodness—you’ve moved the line along as well! Splendid news. Poor Becca up there was having a terrible morning, but things are really starting to look up for her. She’s having troubles at home, you know, and every little bit helps.” Barachiel jerked her chin towards the barista, who was looking very relieved indeed at the slowly shortening queue.

 
Gadriel glanced sideways at Barachiel. “Becca?” she repeated sourly. “On a first name basis, are you? I thought you were middle management now. You’re not supposed to be anyone’s personal guardian angel, are you?”

  Barachiel shrugged elegantly. “I’m allowed to make small talk with my regular barista,” she said.

  Gadriel raised one sceptical eyebrow.

  Barachiel smiled. “I can’t help it if I’m naturally curious. And Becca says I give good advice.”

  Gadriel shook her head. “One of these days, you’re going to discover a rule so silly that you finally decide to break it outright,” she said. “I look forward to it.”

  Barachiel frowned at that. It was an old argument of theirs—the Oldest Argument, in many respects. But Barachiel despised arguments, and so she diverted the subject instead of rising to the bait. “You’ve inspired something, Gadriel,” she said. “The next customer just paid for the woman behind her, as well.”3

  Gadriel closed her eyes and sucked in a breath. “For the record,” she said. “I hate you.”

  Barachiel laughed. It was a rich, pleasant laugh from deep in her chest—the sort which made you feel instantly warm and at ease. “I didn’t do anything,” she said. “Honestly, I often wonder if you botch the job on purpose.”

  Gadriel opened her eyes to fix Barachiel with a withering stare. “Perhaps neither of us knows the other quite so well as we’d like to believe,” she said flatly.

  Barachiel deflected that stare with another warm smile. “We could always find out,” she proposed.

  It was at this point that Gadriel realised Barachiel had started shuffling an ornate deck of cards from hand to hand. The cards were long and thin—made of a sturdy, flexible material which most mortals would have mistaken for cardboard. Gadriel, who could see in several extra dimensions, knew that Barachiel preferred playing with fate.

  Barachiel offered out the deck to Gadriel—who leaped backwards with a soft hiss of alarm.

  Barachiel smiled innocently. “Why don’t you pick a card?” she asked.

  Gadriel eyed the gold-trimmed cards as though they were a cobra within striking distance. “The last time I touched that deck,” she declared, “I played three hands and lost my metaphorical shirt.”4

  Barachiel assessed Gadriel’s knitted vest critically. “You could do with a fashion update,” she observed helpfully.

  Gadriel wasn’t fond of Barachiel’s cards on the best of days—they were bossy, they knew too much, and they had a tendency to be smug about it. And while Gadriel was absolutely certain that angels weren’t allowed to stack the deck, she had of late begun to wonder whether the deck was allowed to stack itself.5

  Gadriel narrowed her eyes. “Stash the cards,” she said. “Let’s just get our business over with, shall we?”

  Barachiel tilted her head thoughtfully. There was a spark of mischief in her dark eyes. “You could always try for double or nothing,” she offered.

  As temptations went, it was a fairly good attempt. But Gadriel was very familiar with temptations, thank you very much.

  “No,” Gadriel said emphatically. “No more bets. No more wagers. No more… cards.” The recollection sent a shudder through her. “I’m deep enough in debt with you already. So just tell me which favour you want this time, and I’ll be off to do your bidding.” Under her breath, she added: “I never learn. Ought to know better than to play cards with the Angel of Gamblers.”

  “I am not the Angel of Gamblers,” Barachiel protested. “I can’t help it if they keep praying to me.”

  “Miss?” the barista at the counter called out timidly. “Er, miss? Could I take your order, please?”

  Gadriel and Barachiel were the last ones in the queue.

  Barachiel waved a hand at Gadriel, dismissing the argumentative tone between them once again. “Let’s discuss over coffee,” she said with a winning smile. “I’ll pay.”

  Gadriel slouched after her, sulking. As Barachiel put in her order, Gadriel said spitefully: “Get the one with chocolate.”

  Chocolate was always worth at least half a point of sin, and there was rarely any resistance to the temptation. It was the low-hanging fruit of sins—but Gadriel surmised she’d earned a bit of pettiness.

  “I’ll have the mocha please, Becca,” Barachiel said pleasantly. “Oh—with extra chocolate, if you don’t mind.”

  Gadriel shot a satisfied smile at the barista. “I’ll have the same, thanks,” she said.

  It was only after they’d retrieved their drinks and settled into a corner table that an unpalatable thought occurred to Gadriel, souring her mood further.

  “You let me have that one,” she accused Barachiel.

  Barachiel took a long sip of her very syrupy coffee. “You seemed like you could do with a pick-me-up,” she said.

  “Hm,” Gadriel muttered. She slouched down into her seat. “Heartfelt act of generosity, that. Probably earned yourself extra points with the boss. Wanker.”

  “Is that a bad thing?” Barachiel asked. “I know you don’t approve of the system—”

  Gadriel scoffed. That was an understatement. Given the chance, she could rage for millennia about the system.

  “—yes, I know,” Barachiel sighed, holding up a hand. “We both know I can recite your rant from memory. Chocolate shouldn’t be a sin at all. Everyone deserves a bit of chocolate. And then you’ll say—”

  “It’s utterly ridiculous!” Gadriel burst out. The words slipped free before she could contain them. She threw up her hands, only narrowly avoiding the coffee cup she’d left on the edge of the table. “Did you know that taking the last piece of chocolate is worth an entire extra point of sin? What’s the reasoning, I ask you? If no one ever takes the last bit of chocolate, then we’ll have chocolate going in the bin for no reason! And binning food is a full point as well, so what’s the solution there?”

  Barachiel sighed and leaned back in her chair, waiting patiently.

  Gadriel slammed her palm onto the table in front of her, unable to stop the torrent of irrational fury. “Have I told you about the—”

  “—yes, the Cynics,” Barachiel said. “The ones in Ancient Greece.”6

  “Your boss probably loved them,” Gadriel said sulkily. “They’re exactly the sort who’d never eat chocolate at all, even if you offered it to them. Perfectly miserable people.”

  Barachiel nodded politely, but Gadriel knew that she’d probably exhausted the angel’s attention span on the subject sometime last century, if not well before then.

  Gadriel sucked in a deep breath all the same, preparing herself for Part 1.1.2 of her rant (“Regarding the Proper Disposal of Sweets”). But this time, Barachiel shot the fallen angel an exceedingly pleasant smile and opened her mouth to interrupt.

  “I agree with you, you know,” said Barachiel.

  Gadriel closed her mouth with an audible snap. She stared at the angel, caught halfway between suspicion and satisfaction.

  “I agree with you… somewhat,” Barachiel amended herself. “As least as far as the chocolate is concerned. I’ve been thinking on the matter for the last century. I’ve come to believe that a little bit of sin is good for the soul—in moderation, of course.” She sipped thoughtfully at her mocha. “Which is precisely why I think you’re the best candidate for this job.”

  Suspicion abruptly overwhelmed satisfaction. Gadriel narrowed her eyes. “And… which job would that be, Barachiel?” she asked slowly.

  Barachiel smiled, folding her hands together in front of herself. “I only want you to do what you do best,” she assured Gadriel. “There’s a mortal woman—Holly Harker. She has one of the lowest Cumulative Sin Metrics I’ve ever seen. Truly, she must be even more miserable than a Greek Cynic.” Barachiel raised an eyebrow at Gadriel. “I want you to tempt her. Not too much, obviously. Just… enough to make sure she’s enjoying her life.”7

  Gadriel eyed Barachiel carefully. “You’re serious?” she asked. “You want me to—”

  “—t
o do what you do best,” Barachiel agreed. “I’d hazard, oh… twenty net points or so should do the trick.” She lifted one well-manicured finger towards Gadriel in a display of imperious warning. “But Miss Harker only needs to sin a little bit, Gadriel. If you overshoot and get her damned, I will consider you even deeper in my debt than before. Understood?”

  Barachiel picked up her cards again, shuffling them idly from hand to hand.

  “Hm,” said Gadriel. Doubt dripped from the sound. “That’s it, then? I get this mortal to eat a bit of chocolate, nick a few flowers from her neighbour’s garden… and then my debts are repaid?”

  “That’s it,” Barachiel said cheerfully.

  Though they were no longer on the same side, Gadriel and Barachiel had always considered themselves siblings. Oh, there had been an initial adjustment period following Gadriel’s Fall—but there had never been any real animosity between them. Unlike many of her contemporaries in Hell, Gadriel wasn’t out to wreck the world or doom humanity. In fact, for all of its foibles, she rather liked humanity. She just thought it deserved, well… better.

  Perhaps the road to Hell had been paved with good intentions, as far as Gadriel was concerned. But she liked to think that Barachiel appreciated those intentions, even if the angel disagreed with her conclusions.

  “It… sounds simple enough,” Gadriel said slowly.

  “Oh yes,” said Barachiel. “Simple enough for you, surely.”

  “Surely,” Gadriel mumbled. Still… she had the peculiar notion that this must be what a moth felt like when confronted with a lovely bright light. She wanted to believe that it was all just a convenient arrangement—but she also knew from experience that Barachiel always came out ahead, no matter the stakes. There was a reason that gamblers prayed to the angel, after all.