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  “It’s not like you’ll get any signal down th...” he started to say, but his breath caught in his throat as the huge near-black wings unfurled, Mike launching himself skyward quickly. All Barrett could do was watch, stunned, leaving Brian all alone with the injured woman.

  “Please don’t die... please don’t die... please don’t die...” Brian kept repeating like a mantra as he held the woman’s hand, barely noticing what his brother had just done. His entire focus was on the crash victim, his stomach turning over, back tingling with gooseflesh, hair on his neck standing up. He touched her face and she gave a soft moan, opening her eyes a tiny bit. Brian looked back and, with every fiber of his being, willed her to be all right and make it. He gasped with the effort, a tear falling onto her arm, and he felt something shift inside himself. A new clarity, a feeling that everything would be all right. Almost some kind of peace. He concentrated on the feeling, and tried to pass it along to the woman somehow. His eyes widened as the cuts on her arm began to heal.

  With a rush of air, something landed heavily next to him and he looked up to see his winged brother standing there with Barrett’s cell phone in his hand and a look of awe on his face. Brian smiled up at him.

  “I think I healed her!”

  Mike knelt down and examined the woman again, then turned to meet Brian’s eyes.

  “Yeah. I think so. Congratulations, you got your wish.”

  “My wish?”

  Mike answered by giving the new white feathers of his younger brother’s wings a tentative stroke of his hand. They twitched of their own accord at the touch, Brian nearly falling over in shock, eyes huge as dinner plates. His mouth worked but nothing came out. Mike softly chuckled and looked up at Barrett, who was leaning against the car, unable to do anything but stare.

  “Am I dead?” came a soft voice from inside the car. The woman was more lucid now, her wounds healed, but her mind still reeling. “Are you an angel?”

  “You’re not dead,” murmured Mike soothingly. “You’ll be fine. The ambulance is on the way.”

  “But you’re...” the woman started to protest, but Mike lead Brian away from the car and tossed the cell phone back up the hill. Their youngest looked up at Barrett with a pleading expression, then at Mike. Barrett nodded.

  “Go. I’ll wait here for the ambulance. I’ll meet you back up the road a little ways.” His brothers nodded back, Brian’s eyes shining brightly, his expression still stunned. Mike held onto him and took off back toward the desert, knowing that Brian wouldn’t be able to do it on his own yet. All Barrett could do was lean against the car and watch them go. Watch them go and wonder if it would happen to him too. What would bring them out. Not if... but when it would happen. His gut said soon. He closed his eyes and sighed deeply.

  FOUR

  Once again, Barrett found himself simply leaning against his car. The desert terrain reflected in his aviator sunglasses as he waited for his brothers to return from... wherever they’d gone. Flown off to, he reminded himself. A shiver went up his spine and ran over his shoulder blades.

  A few more minutes of scanning the skies and he spotted them, Mike leading and calling over to Brian, the few words Barrett caught sounding like landing instructions. Near-black wings finally swept just above the surface of the ground, braking Michael as he landed 20 feet from the car, but this time he used the gritty soil to his advantage and his feet slid underneath him in a half-circle so that he was facing his incoming brother, arms out to help catch him, wings wide and perfect and beautiful.

  Brian nodded to himself, doing as Mike had said, but he ended up coming down nearly on top of his brother, grimacing with effort as he tried to brake himself. Mike merely chuckled and caught him, taking a few steps backwards to compensate as Brian’s feet hit the ground.

  “Not bad for a beginner,” Mike said with a grin. Brian, eyes bright and color high, grinned back. Barrett took off his sunglasses and studied them, his mind still having trouble believing what his eyes were seeing. But there they were, large as life, familiar yet unfamiliar. And he knew without a doubt, not a gut feeling but a firm knowledge somehow, that soon he’d be the same.

  Mike put his wings away and set his hands on his younger brother’s shoulders, meeting his eyes and speaking quietly to him. Barrett had been staring at Mike’s back since he’d done his 180 upon landing, mesmerized, studying the point at which the tiniest of his feathers ended and his shoulder blades began. When the wings disappeared right in front of his eyes, he blinked, then blinked again as he watched it happen. But there was nothing to see... yet there briefly was. He saw how, in the literal blink of an eye, they got tucked back and then seemed to almost evaporate into thin air... or so he’d seemed to see. Maybe that was the problem, he thought to himself – he’d blinked at the wrong moment.

  “Can you feel how to do it?” Mike asked his little brother.

  Brian’s brow creased, but he nodded, his look growing a little unfocused as his mind explored how it worked. He closed his eyes for a moment, the white wings disappearing behind him, then he looked up and grinned.

  “Got it. They’re still there, but inside.”

  Mike nodded. “Exactly. Hard to describe, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it’s... wow...”

  Barrett chuckled softly but slightly nervously, interrupting them a bit. “Unfortunately, I still have to drive. So get in before we all melt in the heat out here. It’s only gonna get worse.” They smiled at him and nodded, both doing as they were told, but Brian caught the “unfortunately” part of his statement. Did that mean his oldest brother’s mind was changing at all? Or was he reading something into it that wasn’t there?

  Mike was buttoning up his shirt, then stopped and looked at his younger brother as the car moved along the road.

  “Waitaminute. You never took your shirt off.”

  Brian cocked his head, then blinked, belatedly understanding what he was getting at. “You’re right. But I’m not like... feeling a breeze or anything.” He turned his back to Mike, who smoothed his hand over the fabric. It was perfect.

  “Huh,” Mike said absently. Brian turned back around and looked at him questioningly. “Looks normal. I don’t get it. But...” He snorted softly and shrugged. Brian smiled.

  “But it’s not like any of us are suddenly experts on this stuff. When we get back to my place we can check it out more. How it works.” Mike nodded in agreement. Barrett remained silent, driving, reflective sunglasses back in place, a slight hardness to his jaw.

  They all piled back out at Brian’s studio, Barrett leaning against the open driver’s side door, arms crossed along the top edge.

  “Look, I need to get back. It’ll take longer and cost more to get another charter plane, so I’m just going to drive and return the rental car tomorrow. Are you guys all right? I mean... going to be all right...?” His voice trailed off, unsure what to say. He felt like he was being left out of something, but he didn’t want any part of it either. Barrett was torn in several directions, but one fact remained – where one Mason went, they all went. That was just how it worked.

  Mike nodded, then went over to hug him. “We’ll be fine. There’s some stuff I need to do before I go to Sacramento. Call the new boss, for one thing,” he said with a weak chuckle. He hoped Barrett wouldn’t ask about the other things.

  “It’s okay, Bear,” said Brian softly, moving over to hug him as well. “It’ll be okay.” Barrett hesitated, looking between them, then pressed his lips together and nodded slightly. They watched him drive away, looking into the empty street for a time before finally going inside out of the heat.

  “Gotta fix that,” Mike said, nodding up at the skylight. Brian put his hands on his hips and sighed, nodding.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to tell the insurance company.”

  A smile spread slowly across his face, then he looked over at Mike. The smile was infectious, and Mike found himself smiling back, then they were grinning, then chuckling, then laughing u
ntil they cried. They sat down on the makeshift sofa next to the windows, made from a salvaged pick-up truck bench seat, and continued to giggle at each other for a full five minutes, wiping laugh tears out of their eyes.

  Mike tipped his head back, the afternoon sunlight just starting to make multicolored patches on the plain cement floor through the stained glass above them. He gazed upside-down at the colorful panes above him, train of thought jumping from one track to the next, then got up and strode across the room to have a better look at them. The archangel with the flaming sword and black wings was there, the flowers, the peacock, Saint Peter, the healing angel...

  “What about that one?” he said, pointing at a panel at the far right of the row of windows. A third angel was there, leading people and other angels up a mountain, a walking staff in one hand and a builder’s square in the other. He held his head up with confidence, wings an iridescent pearl gray.

  “Oh, that one,” said Brian, leaning forward to see which one he meant. “I have absolutely no idea. Weird, huh? I’m thinking it must be some Masonic thing, based on the square in his hand. See it?”

  “Yeah,” said Mike softly, studying the image.

  “Thing is, as far as I know, Mr. Jefferson wasn’t a Mason.”

  The word hung in the air until finally they both looked at each other.

  “Mason,” echoed Michael. A chill went up their spines

  “I wonder,” said Brian at last, getting up to stand with his brother, “what he knew. What he saw in me. He told me once that he was guided to do these windows. That they weren’t any part of a commission or job. He made them because the glass told him to.”

  All Mike could do was nod. After the events of the morning, it sounded perfectly reasonable and sane. He looked again at the three windows.

  “Brian? What’s the name of that first one?”

  His brother hesitated, then relented. “Michael.”

  He closed his eyes with a tiny flinch and a nod. “Do you think that third window shows...”

  Brian looked at the three works of art, the afternoon sun shining more strongly through them by the minute. They were luminous. Almost alive. The warrior, the healer, and the leader. The backgrounds were similar enough that they could almost be a matched set if placed side by side in a triptych.

  “Yeah,” he said in a near whisper. “I think this is us.”

  Mike looked up at them again. “Me first, then you, then Barrett. In order, left to right.”

  “In order...?”

  “Manifesting.”

  Brian chewed on his lip and nodded. Then his brow furrowed a bit as he looked at the backgrounds again. If they were placed in order of age, him first, then Mike, then Barrett, they matched perfectly. The figures were even all facing the right direction toward each other. He pointed this out to his older brother, who nodded mutely.

  “I wish Bear was here,” Brian said at last.

  “I wish he was too. I feel like we should be together right now. I don’t want him going through this alone.”

  “He belongs with us,” said Brian with a firm nod. Mike found himself nodding in agreement. They needed to be together now more than ever, that much he knew. They could both feel it in their bones.

  Meanwhile, Barrett was just driving. Cell phone headset in place, music on softly, hand draped over the top of the steering wheel, aviator sunglasses. He was the very picture of a successful VIP, but his business was the last thing on his mind as he zipped down the southbound freeway back to San Jose.

  Why?

  He idly glanced around at the traffic. All those people in all those cars, most of them alone. Did they know that angels were real? Had they ever seen one? Did they even believe angels existed at all? Did they believe in anything?

  Why us? Why now?

  Something had changed inside him, he could feel it. Nothing like what his brothers were describing, but something...

  His daydreaming screeched to a stop with the traffic ahead of him, Barrett slamming on the brakes just in time to avoid clipping the car ahead of him. With a groan, he realized there was a sea of brake lights ahead of him, and turned up the radio as he prepared to wait.

  A half hour of stop-and-go later, he passed the accident, the ambulance still on the scene. A yellow drape covered the driver’s seat of one of the cars. A fatality lay inside.

  His mind went back to earlier in the day, to the woman that would have been a fatality if not for what his brothers had done. He glanced over at the cell phone in its caddy, the phone that an angel had carried skyward and made an emergency call on. Barrett shook his head. It was all so damn crazy, but it was real. All of it. He glanced at the large near-black feather that was tucked into the trim over the windshield.

  Why us? And what is that weird feeling? It’s like a door’s been opened inside my chest...

  He turned up the radio still more, blasting Rush to take his mind off of things and got to his office in what seemed like record time, despite the accident.

  Mason Imports took up the seventh floor of the Heritage Bank Building, the only one sitting at a 45-degree angle to the rest of the buildings in downtown San Jose, and he chose it for that reason. It was different and attractive and, at the time, he also liked that it was near the swanky Willow Glen house he’d shared with his trophy wife Mandy, who was also different and attractive. Since the divorce, he’d been wondering if he should relocate the business to San Francisco or Oakland, closer to the freight receiving centers, but he couldn’t do that to his employees.

  He sat in the parking garage for a while, waiting for the song to end, running his hands over the leather grip of the steering wheel absently. This was the center of his world, the business that he’d built from the ground up. It was the rock of stability in his life, and the buck stopped with him. It was a good place to be.

  Until yesterday had slammed into him just like Mike had slammed into Brian’s studio, leaving things a broken, tangled mess to be cleaned up carefully and with gloves on. Emotionally expensive, and there was no insurance to cover this.

  He plucked the feather out of the window trim and grabbed his planner, then made his way to the elevator and punched the button for his floor. He watched his distorted reflection in the polished metal doors. Just the same as any other day. Barrett snorted at the absurdity of that thought and shook his head a little as he looked at the feather in his hand. It would never be “any other day” again.

  Navigating his way to his office, he managed to avoid nearly everyone, waving at a couple people before he made it inside and closed the door. A stack of client folders and “While You Were Out” slips littered his ordinarily spotless desk, and he sat down heavily with a sigh.

  “Normalcy. Right.”

  He popped the feather into his pencil cup, flipped open a folder, and started to read. It was on the sixth try on the same paragraph that he rubbed his eyes, giving up. Surely coffee would do the trick. He always had a cup in the afternoon. Maybe the habit of it would kick things into place and he could concentrate. Once in the little kitchen area, he focused on the simple ritual of making himself some coffee.

  Has it already come to this? Getting through it one minute at a time?

  “Hey, how was your visit with your brothers?”

  Barrett jumped a little, spilling some sugar on the counter. “Hey, An... Angela...” He blinked at her for a moment then recovered, hoping she hadn’t noticed. Angela? Seriously? It was almost like someone was either playing a joke on him or sending a message. “It was... interesting.”

  She peered at him, then got a damp towel for the sugar. “You all right?”

  He sighed. “No, not really. Personal family stuff.”

  “No problem. If you need to talk...”

  “Thanks.” He nodded, watching as the cream swirled around in his coffee. He turned to look at her then, studying her a bit. How many more were out there? If he and his brothers could be... was Angela one too? Or someone in her family? Or someone else at the offic
e, or in the building, or walking down the street?

  Suspecting that something drastic had happened, she gave him a little sad smile, patted him on the arm, and slipped out of the room, leaving Barrett alone, lost in thought again. He was on his second sip of coffee before he’d even realized that she’d left.

  “Christ,” he muttered, unsure how he was going to make it through the rest of the evening. It was late enough in the day that most had gone home, the rest soon to follow. He’d spent enough late nights in his office that it was nothing unusual, so he went back in, closed the door and the blinds between him and his employees, and turned to gaze out the bank of windows. He sipped his coffee, looking down at the street below, rush hour making itself known in the form of people walking to taxis and light rail and cars. Cars everywhere. Stopped at lights, moving, stopping in a kind of orchestrated dance of traffic. Seen from above, it gave a new perspective. A wider view and a more distant horizon. A bigger picture. He began to daydream what it might be like to fly, playing what he’d just been witness to over and over in his head. It seemed impossible that just that morning he’d seen his brothers fly. It seemed impossible, period.

  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, leaning his head against the cool glass. Reaching inside himself, he focused on the strange new feeling in his chest, in his heart. There was light there, he somehow knew. He could see it. Like a door opening onto a sunrise. He’d never been one for meditation or newagey stuff, but this was instinct somehow – he could see and feel the truth of it. He just knew, and it felt even stronger than his usual gut intuition. A hundred times stronger, and more solid. Truth with a capital T.

  Mentally, he reached into the light, and for a moment saw a glimpse of pearl gray feathers. With a loud gasp his eyes snapped open, a cold shiver going up his spine, the hair on his neck standing on end. Barrett put down his mug and began to pace, hands unsteady, clenching and unclenching at his sides.

  Ever the planner, the schemer, he preferred logic in general, but tempered it with dreams. As a teen he’d worked in the stock room of an import store and been fascinated by all the exotic goods coming out of the plain brown cardboard boxes from all over the world. Thailand. India. Brazil. Senegal. Jamaica. Japan. New Zealand. El Salvador. Who made them? Who designed them and ordered them and bought them? From there the idea for his company was born through both logic and dreams.