Forgotten Souls (The Saving Angels 2)

"Good call, as long as we don't forget," I said solemnly.

"Um, Krista, no offense, but I'm not sure you could ever forget about chocolate."

Laughing, I swatted his arm lightly. "I can't help it. I think it's a part of my DNA. Subject must love chocolate," I said, trying to sound serious.

"Along with junk food," Mark added, indicating our food.

"Oh yeah, definitely junk food too," I said, emphasizing my point by dunking my corn dog in the ketchup and mustard before taking a bite of the deep fried treat. "Although, how could anyone call something like this junk? We need to rename junk food. I say we call it 'yummy food' or 'yum food.' What do you think?"

"I like 'yum food,' that way if you want extra, you can say I want 'yum, yum food,'" Mark said laughing.

"Oh yeah, and if you're on an eating binge, it would be "yum, yum, yum, yum food," I said, trying to get the mouthful out without giggling as my tongue tripped over the words.

We laughed through the rest of our meal as we tried to outdo each other with how many 'yum's' we could say without getting tongue tied or laughing.

Once we were done, we gathered our trash and left our own little private oasis. Dropping the garbage in the receptacle, we headed down one of the paths we had yet to take. By the time we reached the end of the row, we both had our hands full with more purchases and were both dusty from the dirt that had been stirred up by all the people that now crowded the market.

"Sheesh, this place is packed now," I said as we juggled our stuff.

"I can take the stuff back to the Navigator if you still want to keep shopping," Mark said, shifting the two plants I had bought for my mom into one arm so he had a free hand for my bags.

"Nah, that's okay. I'm beat and the heat is starting to make me feel a little sick," I said. "But I had a lot of fun," I added, so he knew how much I appreciated our excursion.

We rounded the next corner and headed up the long, dusty row. Our pace was faster now as we ignored the stands that lined each side of us. We were just about to the end of the row when a girl about my age, dressed similarly to how Lynn dressed reached out to hand me a flyer.

Though she had a firm smile planted across her face, I could feel her despair three feet away from her. My first instinct was to shy away from her emotions like I had been doing for years, but as our hands made contact, I decided to try the training we had been working hard at with Haniel. I allowed her emotions to flood into me. I was instantly blinded by the pictures that flashed behind my eyelids. I could see her cringing away from groping hands and trying to clutch a blanket up to her chin. I shuffled away from her, blinded by the images, trying desperately to keep my lunch down.

"Krista, are you okay?" I could hear Mark's voice asking from far off.

Shaking my head weakly, I felt Mark propelling me away from the center of the row. He dragged a white resin chair from one of the eateries near us and I dropped into it like a ton of bricks. I shut my eyes and willed the nausea back by trying to breathe only through my mouth. The smells of the market that had seemed so appetizing just minutes ago, now worked against me as my lunch swirled wildly in my stomach.

"Krista, what's the matter? Is it the heat?" Mark asked, kneeling on the ground to look at me.

"No, it's this," I said, showing him the flyer I still had clutched in my hand.

He reached over and gently pried it out of my sweaty fingers. "It's some kind of revival thing," he said, sounding puzzled, holding it up for me to see.

"Not the actual paper," I said, concentrating on breathing through my mouth as I answered him. "It was the girl who handed it to me," I said, swallowing back another wave of nausea.

Mark turned around looking for the girl that had handed the flyer off to me, but she was gone, already swallowed up by the crowd.

"What about her?" Mark asked, still confused.

"I allowed her emotions in. I saw her past," I said miserably. My insides were a twisted mess from the images I had seen. I wanted to hunt down the sick person that had taken something so important from her.

"Krista, maybe you misunderstood what you felt. We've been training wicked long hours and you said the heat was making you feel ill. Maybe those two things combined made you a little more sensitive."

"No, I didn't miss understand," I said stubbornly. "Her pictures were exactly like the forgotten soul images Haniel has been assaulting us with all week. Something happened to her awhile ago and someone is definitely using it to their advantage now. Haniel said that forgotten souls are consumed by their past hurts and that’s what the Abbadons feed on. They use their pain against them allowing them to only focus on the awful images instead of any good ones. Trust me, she's being used for something," I said as I stood up on shaky legs. I was disappointed in myself for not holding on longer and filtering her emotions like I was created for.

"Well, we still have this," Mark said, picking the thoughts from my head as he held up the orange flyer.

He handed it over to me and I read the headline. "Feel like you've been wronged? Come by and hear what you can do to change that around." Beneath the words was a silhouette picture of a group of people standing side by side. Below the picture was the date and time of the event. At the bottom of the page was an address.

"We can go take a drive over and see if we see anything. It's probably deserted today since the next meeting looks to be tomorrow," he said, grabbing onto my hand.

I felt a wave of relief flow over me that he believed me.

Our mission made us walk back to the car faster than our previous pace and within a few minutes we had reached the SUV and were throwing our stuff into the cargo area at the rear of the Navigator. I climbed into my seat and was relieved as the last of the nausea finally left me.