This, I find interesting. “The good demons? There’s a few in town. There’s one, she—”
“There are decent ones. Never confuse decent with good.” Memories spark in his gaze, the resulting smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Or maybe it’s just the ones I’ve come into contact with. The demons I know wouldn’t appreciate being called good. I doubt they’d even appreciate being called decent.”
The demon talk is becoming too much for me.
“They call me a generational curse,” I blurt out, stepping back. Lucas keeps his distance, the flames from the hearth shadowing his face. “My father is psychic, but my mother was mortal.”
Shut up, Harper, I tell myself.
My heart couldn’t give a shit about what my logic thinks. I never get a chance to babble, except with Eloise. Having Lucas here is like having a therapist I don’t have to pay for, who’s being forced to stay and listen. Bless him. “My parents had trouble getting pregnant, so it was this huge thing when they discovered they were having me.”
Pausing, I go into the kitchen and pull out a loaf of bread from a box on the counter. It’s homemade sourdough wrapped just for me by the supe who works in the bakery section of our local supermarket. No labels. “Do you eat grilled cheese?”
He told me to be comfortable. Grilled cheese makes me comfortable.
Lucas’s brows arch. “What happened to your parents?”
Sighing, I rest my hands on the counter. “Something went wrong with the pregnancy. I wasn’t going to make it. The doctors told her it would be best to terminate. For her sake.” My heart breaks for a woman I never knew. “My mother had a breakdown over it. She couldn’t accept the idea of losing me, so Dad took it before the Court and begged them to do something—a spell, a ritual, or anything—to save me. They refused.”
I swallow hard. “You know, I hated the Court for that when I found out. By then, I was ten years old. My aunt sat me down and said,” changing my voice, I try to imitate Eloise, “‘You’ve got to understand, Harper. It’s not a simple thing trying to cheat death. It often hurts others worse than the person dying.’”
Abandoning the bread, I move back into the living room. “My aunt is right. She has this uncanny knack for being right about things.” I cringe. “My parents heard of a sorceress in Louisiana who did black magic. So they went to her. She saved my mother’s pregnancy, but what she neglected to tell them was that, by doing so, my mother would be forfeiting her life and I’d be hounded by evil.”
Lucas remains unmoving by the fire. He’s too still, as if he’s a sculpture rather than an angel. “And your father?”
“When my mother died in childbirth, he blamed himself for her death. It was too much on him, so he left. My aunt raised me.” My chin dips, my gaze tracing the wood grain on the floor. “I tried to find my dad a few years ago. He’s in California. Married with two kids. He doesn’t remember Havenwood Falls, my mother, or me. The Court protects the town by ensuring people who leave here forget it.” My gaze finds Lucas. “It’s for the best. I think he’s happy now.”
“He knows something is missing. A spell can’t take that away,” Lucas says.
Swallowing past a sudden thickness in my throat, I ask, “How do you know?”
“Because I have a lot of practice with magic and a deep history with witches.”
He steps away from the fire. The afternoon light from the one window in the living room grazes his face.
I haven’t bothered with turning on the lights, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m more comfortable in the natural light from outside or because I’ve grown used to dark corners.
Firelight and slanted sunshine transform the room into something wholly unrealistic and yet entirely too real.
Lucas stops before me. “Magic and the supernatural tend to make mortals uncomfortable. Even dangerous. No one likes feeling weak.” He glances at the window and at the snow-touched mountains beyond. White brilliance. “Those with differences have to protect themselves. They have to do things in order to protect their families, things that don’t sit well with them, but magic has its limitations. It can get rid of memories, but the emptiness the memories leave behind is always there, lurking.”
“You sound like you should get along better with Saundra Beaumont—with all of the Court—better than you seemed to today.”
Lucas’s gaze swings back to me. “Let’s just say we understand each other, but I’m less willing to confine myself to one place.”
He leans forward, putting him so close I can make out every detail of his face. It’s unnaturally perfect, rugged and covered in stubble. Just enough to be sexy.
He’s a mirage. I don’t know how I know it, I just do. Maybe it’s the psychic in me, the psychic I could have been if I hadn’t been cursed. Looking at Lucas is like staring at a man who never changes. A man who never has to sleep or eat. A man who never has to shave. A man who just is.
“What kind of angel were you?” I whisper.
“What kind am I?” he corrects. “Being fallen doesn’t make me any less of what I was.” His gaze searches mine, and then, “A Seraph. I am a Seraph. The best and worst kind of angel.” There’s nothing human in the way he looks when he says it.
“What made you fall?”
We are nearly nose to nose when he replies, “I murdered a man.”
If hearts could stop beating, mine would quit. Instead, it races, as if beating faster can get it far away from the creature in front of me. Except my body traps my heart, forcing it to face a moment it wants to avoid.
Hearts are cowardly things.
Bodies are shockingly resilient.
I don’t run. I don’t run because I’ve murdered a man, too, and although I wasn’t wholly responsible—hell, I’d only been a child—the guilt remains. I feel like I murdered him.
“I can’t judge someone for something I’ve done,” I breathe, surprising him.
He straightens, amusement lightening his eyes. “Bonding over murder. I’d say that’s a first.”
He doesn’t ask me who I killed. Either the Court has supplied him with the information or he doesn’t care.
I don’t care for the humor. “Did you mean to do it?” We may have something in common, but I never meant to hurt anyone.
For a moment, I think he’s not going to answer, but then he touches my face, startling me. “I was trying to save someone not too unlike you. He was hurting her. I shouldn’t have interfered. I wasn’t supposed to interfere, but I did. He’s dead, and I’m fallen.”
From the way he drops his gaze, I know he hadn’t intended to answer me. Maybe he’d planned to lie.
“Thank you.” If I’m stuck with an angel who’s supposed to help me fight demons, I can at least appreciate his honesty.
“What’s it going to be like when the archdemon comes?” I ask out of nowhere. “If I’m a portal for him, will he,” I look down at my stomach, “burst out of me?”
If I’m going to be a conduit for a demon, then I want to go into it as knowledgeable about it as possible. Knowledge is power.