In a move that was part supernatural necessity and part theatrics, Reyes slowly dematerialized, cell by cell, disintegrating into a cloud of billowing smoke. Then he was gone.
The forlorn look on the girl’s face said it all. No way was she leaving now. Damn it. I thought about telling her about the butt thing but decided against it. She’d leave when she was ready. At least she’d stopped screaming.
*
I ended up going back to class after all, after talking to some of my classmates, then I hit an all-night diner with a couple of them. We’d bonded instantly the first day of class. Mostly because they worshiped coffee almost as much as I did. Almost.
Reyes joined us incorporeally, as did our Scottish friend. They spent the whole time eyeing each other as though waiting for the other one to make a move. Which neither ever did.
Our group eventually got kicked out of the all-night diner. Apparently my definition of all-night and theirs were two totally different things. We said our good-byes, which would have gone better if I could’ve remembered their names. I was so bad with names. And the one girl I thought I knew the name of kept looking at me awkwardly every time I used it, so I finally gave up the struggle. Which was real. The struggle.
Oddly enough, they all knew my name. Probably because Mr. Hipple had used it so much in class. For better or worse, I did tend to make an impression.
By the time I got home, however, Reyes was already asleep. Or he was faking it. Either way, boy was hot. His lean body shimmered in the low light, one arm thrown over his eyes, the other wedged behind his pillow. His wide chest took up half the bed. He had one leg out from under the covers. One hip open to the moonlight streaming in from the massive windows. He was like a Greek god. Sleek. Surreal. Temperamental.
Did the Fosters see the darkness in Reyes? Is that what compelled them to take him when he was a baby?
I shifted. Not all the way. Just a little. Just enough to see what they might have seen. Darkness, yes, but so much more.
The world around me changed from the blackness of night to bright, bursting colors. Oranges and reds and yellows, swirling in a perpetual storm where lightning and tornadoes converged. And Reyes, seemingly so serene, burned brightest of all. Engulfed in flames, a true child of hell. But at the center, at his core, was the darkness. The same darkness he tried to hide. He tried to overcome.
I shifted back to the tangible plane, changed into a nightie that fell just past my hips, and slid in bed beside him to spoon, my favorite utensil. I was only there for about five seconds, nestling against him, burying my face in his hair, when he spoke, his voice deep with sleep.
“Did you do it?” he asked, the tenor of his voice as smooth as he.
“Did I do what?”
He took the hand I’d draped over him and lifted my fingers to his mouth, scalding the tips one by one as he tasted me, then said, “Drop the case.”
I decided it was high time I broke in our new sofa: Captain Kirk.
*
Captain Kirk wasn’t as comfortable as I thought he would be. Not after snuggling with a hell-god. I was able to get in about three hours before Mr. Coffee began serenading me. Whoever invented a coffeemaker with a timer deserved a Nobel Prize. He’d probably saved more lives than Prozac.
I slipped on a pair of bottoms and tiptoed past the angel lounging against my living room wall, the arch of his wings brushing our twelve-foot ceiling, to get to the kitchen. The same kitchen I was fairly certain used to be my neighbor’s apartment. Reyes had remodeled the entire apartment building.
Thankfully, he bought it first.
But he took out all the apartments on the entire top floor and reconstructed it to create only two: ours and Cookie’s. Now I lived in an apartment that resembled a Park Avenue penthouse. And it had the kitchen to back that up. Gorgeous industrial appliances. Deep Tuscan hues. And my favorite part: a butler’s pantry.
I cracked up every time I thought about it. Still, if we ever did get a butler, he’d have his own little corner of the world. With running water and a wine rack. The lush.
Part of me wanted to offer the celestial stalker a cup of joe, but I didn’t want him to stick around. If Reyes found one of them in our apartment, he could come unglued. And gluing that man back together was not an easy task.
It was still dark out when I padded back to the captain and sipped on my cup o’ panacea. But even with a cure-all flooding my cells, my brain felt like one of those inflatable bounce houses. I had so many question marks jumping and colliding and twisting arms and breaking ankles, pretty much like a real bounce house at a seven-year-old’s birthday party.
What had ADA Parker meant when he called me a god eater? I mean, Reyes was a god and I liked to nibble on him, but what an odd thing to call someone. Unless I was drunk when I hit an all-night drive-through and ordered chicken McGodlets—with fries, of course—I’d never eaten a god in my life. Still, I bet they’d be good with ketchup.