“I’m confused.”
He turned his body toward me. “I know how to fix your situation with Evey. If I tell you, will you teach me that trick?”
Zack had been hassling me about the same stupid trick for a hundred years. Literally… a hundred years.
“I’ll try, but it takes a pretty strong set to pull it off.” I glanced at his pathetic wings, all dry, brownish-red, and sparse-feathered.
“I can do it,” he said.
“Fine.” I stood. “Let’s get a bottle first.”
He rolled his eyes. We headed back to Evey’s street while we downed a bottle of Glenfiddich. We still had about an hour left.
“Okay, show me the trick now,” Zack said once we were in front of Evey’s building.
He wanted to know how to do a three-sixty loop. You fly fast up and flip back around, but it’s really only cool if you have grace. Zack could barely fly straight. But I’d said I would teach him.
“Tell me your secret first.” We flew up to sit outside of Evey’s window and finish the bottle. I was sauced again for the third time in less than twenty-four hours.
“You have to kill her.”
“Excuse me, what?”
“That’s what happened to Connie and Jeff. She drowned him in the Mississippi, and he happily went along with it just to be with her. Now that is a love story, man. I guess they’re angels in New York City on the same block.”
I shook my head. “It’s a myth. It has to be.”
“No, seriously, that’s how we’re made. We were all human once, then we got killed. Some of us come here, some go to other places, but we all get jobs in a way. They got lucky that they ended up in the same place. But it’s true—we were all human and we all definitely got axed before our time. I know that for sure.” He made a slicing motion across his neck.
“I don’t believe you. I think I have to kill myself to be with her.”
“Nah… you got that from a movie. You can’t be with Evey now, the way you are. You’ll start dying, really slow and painful. Like each time you get with her, you’ll die a little, and then all of the sudden, lights out. When we die, that’s it, man. Poof! We’re gone. You’ve seen it?”
I had seen it. I once saw an angel get shot. It’s as if we disintegrate into a powdery dust and that’s it. Any humans who witness it, instantly forget that we even existed. It’s really depressing.
“Why would I die from being with Evey? Wouldn’t I just get banished?”
He looked thoughtful for once. He pitied me. “I don’t know. It’s just what I heard, okay? I’m not totally sure. You should talk to Mona.” He shrugged. “I could be wrong.”
I was staring through the window, wondering how I would ever be able to kill Evey. Even if what Zack said was true, how would Evey know she truly wanted to be with me when I was basically made for her comfort? It wouldn’t be fair to her.
“Isn’t it kind of weird that you want her when you’ve been watching over her since she was a baby?”
“What are you saying, dick?”
“You know what I’m saying,” he said.
“Fuck you. It’s not like that. She’s beautiful and amazing and kind. I trust her implicitly.” I drank the rest of the bottle in three large gulps. “There’s no one like her. And she’s an adult.”
“You’re like, two thousand years older than her. You’re taking ‘robbing the cradle’ to a whole new level, man.”
“Not exactly two thousand years,” I mumbled.
“I told you what you have to do.”
“Kill her?” I shook my head. “I could never hurt her. Never.”
“Well then, you better learn to accept your fate, buddy. Start following the rules unless you want to be schlepping drinks, dressed like a Wookiee until the sun explodes.”
We laughed then, full belly laughs until tears were pouring from my eyes. I imitated a Wookiee sound.
“Good, you’re practicing. Now show me that flip,” Zack said.
I looked at my watch; we only had about five minutes left. We were both pretty drunk, and I was not in any shape to be doing aerobatic stunts. I stood anyway, set my wings out wide, and flew straight up. I arched my back, flipped, and a second later, everything was black.
I WOKE UP trying to figure out if the whole night had been a drug-induced dream. “Lucian,” I whispered, and there was nothing. Someone had to have drugged me.
It was a Saturday. I had planned to go for a run then work on a few designs for Tracey’s stupid denim line. Before I left, I peeked into Brooklyn’s mess of a room and spotted her lying on her stomach on top of a pile of dirty clothes strewn across her bed. She was sound asleep and drooling, and her room smelled faintly of bad breath and old pizza. I smiled.
After shutting the door quietly, I jogged down the stairs, feeling unusually good for having been drugged the night before. I wondered if Beckett, that freak, had slipped me something or if it had all just been a vivid dream. I smiled and laughed out loud. It had to have been a dream. Having a sexy guardian angel that I wanted to get naked with was just too good to be true. Then on my way down the steps outside of my building, I stepped on him.
Yep, I stepped on my guardian angel, and he groaned. He was lying on the concrete, facedown. Someone had stuck a piece of cardboard over him as if he was a homeless person. When I pulled the cardboard away, he turned and looked up at me through squinted, swollen eyes. I gasped when I noticed his face was bruised and bloodied.
“Lucian!” I got on my knees.
“I’m okay, Evey,” he mumbled. “I drank too much and had a little collision with the side of your building.”
He sat up slowly, holding a hand to his head. When he tried to stand, he swayed to one side. I hitched an arm around his waist and led him back up the stoop.
“Come up to my apartment, and I’ll clean your face,” I said, and then something occurred to me. I looked at him pointedly. “Did you drug me last night?”
“Of course not. I made you tea… so ungrateful.” He huffed, shaking his head, and then grimaced and held his free hand to his neck.
“You’re a mess. I’m trying to understand how a celestial being with magical
powers, assigned to protect me, is a drunk who runs into the sides of buildings. This doesn’t bode well for my future.”
“Such a smartass, Evey, really. I technically flew into the side of your building, but that’s neither here nor there. Zack wanted me to show him a trick. You were sound asleep and safe. I threw caution to the wind.”
“Who is Zack? And I have a feeling you were throwing back a hell of a lot more than just caution.”
“You’re right, a bottle of whiskey—single malt Scotch to be exact—and Zack is my best friend. He’s an angel too.”
“So you guys got trashed and decided to fly into walls?”
Lucian sighed the way a person does when they’re just too tired to explain themselves. I helped him up the stairs then led him to my bedroom, hoping Brooklyn wouldn’t notice.