Keeping it Real (6 page)

“I had no idea we had houses on Earth!” I breathed.

“There’s a few,” said a warm voice. A girl swung down from the driver’s seat. She wore a long rainbow-striped scarf draped over her combat jacket. “How many are there now, Hen?”

Hendrix shrugged. “It must be in the thousands now. Oh, this is Jools, who was completely against us kidnapping you by the way!”

“I was,” she sighed. “But Brice—”

“—is a terrible influence, I know,” I joked.

With her big boots, old combats and an even older cap jammed over beaded braids, Jools was probably not your nan’s idea of an angel. But she did look exactly like a lot of girls I’d known in Park Hall. EAs usually like to adopt the styles and cultures of their local human community.

Jools held up her angel tags to a device on the wall. There was a brief, intensely blue, shimmer. The door slid open and Brice, who seemed to think he was an honorary earth angel, grandly ushered me inside.

I was blown away. I couldn’t believe I was still in the middle of a twenty-first century human city. The vibes in the Agency house were so pure I could have been back in Heaven.

An angel girl in combat gear came hurrying down the stairs. “Oh hi,” she smiled, before disappearing into one of the downstairs rooms.

I heard a steady hum of voices coming through the door.

“That’s the EA communications centre for this area,” Jools explained. “Like the Angel Watch centre, but much smaller, obviously.”

I peered curiously round the door and saw twenty plus agents at their work stations, jabbering quietly into headsets. “Where did the incident take place?” one agent was asking her caller. “Any signs of You Know Who? OK, we’ll got you some backup. Do the best you can until then

“We’ll show you round properly later,” Jools promised. “Right now you could probably do with a rest.”

“I’ll carry that,” Hendrix said, taking my bag.

“You think you’re so smooth,” Brice told him.

As they shepherded me up flights of stairs, I was trying to take in the sheer scale of the Agency safe house.

In one open-plan area, trainees calmly worked at computers which had up to ten different streams of cosmic data racing hectically across their screens at any one time. Next door a lone trainee was minding banks of monitors, all of which showed local trouble spots. One had a split screen which showed the same house from different angles.

“That house used to be a vet’s,” I said in surprise.

“Those were the good days,” the trainee said grimly. “The life forms that live there now aren’t exactly man’s best friend.”

I felt a shiver go through me. “PODS live there now?” I’d taken my little sister past that house on the way to her tap lessons.

“Officially it’s inhabited by humans,” Hendrix explained.

“Just not any you’d like to meet,” Jools commented.

I’d met humans like that on previous missions: people so closely involved with the Dark agencies, they were half-PODS themselves.

“Much activity today?” Hendrix asked the trainee.

He shook his head. “Just the usual.”

We toiled up a final flight of stairs. A boy angel was pacing the landing with his mobile. I heard him saying, “No, since he started with the kick boxing, he’s much more confident, like a different boy…”

I followed the others into a big student-style sitting room. Two angel girls looked up and smiled, then went back to chatting. A boy was stretched out on one of the sofas, apparently asleep.

I’ve seen EAs in just about every time you can think of, but seeing them in my old neighbourhood made me so happy I wanted to cry. I’d been rubbing shoulders with angels all those years and I didn’t even know!

I LOVE my job
, I thought tearfully.
I have the best life ever
.

“Can anyone else smell that stink?”

I came back to Earth to see Jools screwing up her nose in disgust, and for the first time I noticed her tiny star-shaped stud.

“Mel found hell turds at the school,” Hendrix said super-casually.

Her expression changed. “Not again,” she said half to herself. She turned, flashing her warm smile. “Mel, I hate to be a pain, but I think you picked up something whiffy on those beautiful boots.”

“Oh, I thought I could—!” I nervously inspected one boot sole, hopping to keep my balance. “Oh, no, I
did
!” I wailed. “This is SO embarrassing!”

“Just give them here,” Hendrix offered with a laugh. Holding my boots carefully by their tops, he gallantly whisked them away.

Jools started madly spraying everything in sight with some kind of heavenly Febreze. “You must think I’m so rude,” she said apologetically. “I just have this incredibly sensitive sense of smell.”

I couldn’t believe I’d trekked hell dog poop into an angel house!

“I tamed a hell puppy once,” Brice said with a straight face.

My poopy boots were instantly old news. Every angel in earshot stared at him in horror. Even the boy who’d been snoozing sat up open-mouthed.

Jools giggled nervously. “Brice, I never know when you’re joking!”

“It’s true,” he insisted. “He was a smart little guy. Answered to his name and everything.”

“Yeah, yeah,” laughed Jools. “What did you call him? Fluffy?”

“I called him Bob,” Brice said with dignity.

“Why would anyone call a hellhound Bob?” spluttered the boy.

“You think I should have named him Fang?” Brice snapped. “He was a little motherless puppy, man!”

Jools suddenly looked horrified. “My manners! Did we even introduce you?”

I shyly shook my head.

“We’ve given you such a terrible welcome,” she wailed. “First the guys kidnap you off the street then we tell you have stinky boots, and then we don’t even— OK, let’s do it now. This is Delphine, this is Tallulah, and Sleeping Beauty here answers to Dino.”

I stood there in my socks, nodding and smiling, but absolutely no info was going into my brain.

“When did you last eat, angel girl?” Brice interrupted.

Hendrix had reappeared with my decontaminated boots. “I could murder a pizza personally - how about you guys?”

“You get pizza?” I said amazed. “You don’t just live on trail mix?”

“Don’t talk to me about that stuff!” said Jools with feeling. “Girl, it gives me the worst wind!”

I creased up laughing. “Doesn’t it!”

Minutes later Jools and I were in the shared kitchen, hungrily tearing up pizza. The boys were eating theirs in the TV room.

“I’m so grateful I ran into you guys,” I told her happily.

“It’s great cosmic timing,” she smiled. “My room mate is actually away on a course, so you can have her bed - if you don’t mind sharing,” she added quickly.

“Are you
kidding
? I was worrying I’d have to sleep in a doorway!”

Jools was carefully picking off her sweet corn. “Is it OK to ask what you’re doing here?”

“You can ask,” I mumbled through too-hot pizza. “All I know is my mates are in some kind of trouble.”

“Have you managed to hook up with them yet?”

“Not hooked up, exactly,” I sighed. “I’ve seen two of them.”

Jools was a natural-born listener, giving me her total attention as I described the disturbing changes in my friends.

“You’re sure they’ve broken up finally and for ever?”

“It certainly feels pretty final,” I sighed.

Jools looked sympathetic. “It happens.”

I nodded unhappily. “I know, I know, people move on.”

“Is that how it feels? Like they just moved on?”

I bit my lip. “Actually it doesn’t.”

While we were talking, Brice wandered in with Hendrix and a couple of boy EAs.

“So where are we going, girls?” Hendrix demanded. “It’s Friday night! We can’t just stay in eating pizza!”

“There’s that new club down the road,” Jools suggested. “They’re getting that DJ - what’s his name again?”

“Ruff Justice?” Brice said unexpectedly.

“How come you always know this stuff?” I marvelled. “You only got here like about sixty minutes before me!”

“You’ll come with us, won’t you Mel?” Jools asked hopefully.

I shook my head. “It’s been a really long day.”

Brice patted my head. “Mel’s going to curl up in her jammies, aren’t you, and reread the intro to the Angel Handbook?”

I swatted him. “I got to chapter two, for your information!”

“You did well!” Jools laughed. “That book is
so
heavy going.”

This is exactly why Lola and I are going to write our Cosmic Survival Guide, but this is still a big secret between me and my soul-mate, so I kept my lips v. firmly sealed.

Jools slung an arm round my shoulder. “Come on Mel, don’t you want to see how earth angels party?”

“Actually, yeah!” I decided.

In the end a whole gang of us went down in the angel carrier, including Tallulah and Dino, the Sleeping Beauty boy.

You could feel the bass line pumping from the other side of the street. I felt a naughty buzz as we waltzed past security. I thought we all looked quite groovy. Brice had put on a fresh T-shirt under his leather jacket (I
know
!). I’d borrowed a sweet skirt from Jools and a cute top which said SHINE ON.

The club was already packed out.

Hendrix gave me his flirty smile. “Want to show the humans some real dancing?”

Next to flirting with good-looking earth angels, dancing is one of my all-time favourite activities! But when angels and humans dance in the same space, ohh - it’s PURE magic.

As the night went on I was amazed to see some of the human dancers picking up on our dance style. At times the DJ actually seemed to sense our vibes. “I’m feeling some sweet energy in the house tonight,” he kept saying. “You Park Hall people must have serious auras. Yeah man, there’s enough lies and illusion in this world, but you guys are still keeping it real.”

“We’re trying, Justice, we’re trying,” yelled one of the earth angels, and the entire angel contingent cheered!

At that moment I wouldn’t have swapped with the old Mel Beeby for anything. Even Brice appeared to be having a good time.

But this was Park Hall, so obviously it couldn’t last.

Chapter Seven

A
round two in the morning, Jools and Hendrix got a call - a gang fight with suspiciously high levels of PODS interest

I was up for anything by this time. Just as well, because we were in for one of Jools’ white knuckle drives. We bombed over speed bumps, taking interesting short cuts which definitely weren’t in the London A to Z.

At last we drove into a dead end behind some council flats.

There’s a thing our Dark Studies teacher calls ‘miasma’: a sticky dark aura which collects wherever Dark agents gather together.

“Your bad boys have an audience,” Brice said grimly.

“How big?” Hendrix asked.

“Hard to tell - they’re kind of overexcited so they keep changing shape.” Brice was using what me and Lola call his ‘Dark radar’, a disturbing ability to detect Dark agents even when, like now, they weren’t in human disguise.

As we pulled up, there was another shock. The call centre hadn’t thought to mention that this was a
girl
fight.

I couldn’t tell how many girls were milling about. There was only one streetlight and that was on the blink. You just caught dramatic glimpses - a gold hoop glinting in an earlobe, a sneery mouth, a flash of designer trainers. Smashed cider bottles littered the ground; some gang members had been doing some serious underage drinking.

I just didn’t get why the PODS were watching. This kind of teen ruck is a depressingly routine event in my neighbourhood, yet the local Dark entities had not only got wind of it before it started, they’d turned out in the snow to get a ringside seat!

“They’re not moving in on the girls?” Jools asked Brice.

He shook his head. “Just perving on the hate vibes.”

“Let’s keep it that way, guys,” she said. “Boost your light levels everyone - and good luck!”

It turned out we’d arrived just as things were hotting up. As we piled out of the people carrier, a girl hurled herself at another girl from the rival gang, bringing her crashing to the ground with a shriek of rage.

The girls rolled around in the slush, grunting with effort as they grabbed at each other’s earrings and tried to rip out clumps of hair, while invisible beings from rival cosmic agencies watched.

According to our Dark Studies teachers, the safest technique for clearing Dark entities from the area is to raise the vibes. Sounds hippy dippy, doesn’t it? Like we hold hands in a circle and chant?

What we actually do is beam incredibly high-octane angel vibes from the palms of our hands.

Raising vibes in the middle of a gang fight is like trying to meditate in a tsunami. You get a peaceful little vibe going and DOOF! A wave of pure cold evil knocks you over and you have to struggle all the way back to shore.

Brice couldn’t be fussed with all that, he just went over and started knocking the sassafras out of the PODS, and after a while Hendrix went to help him out.

The first girl had managed to kick her opponent away. Breathing fast, she scrambled to her feet and immediately put up her fists. “Anyone who disses my girls is going to have to kiss these!” she screamed.