When the magic hours began, I was the first to walk through the jingling door. Doug greeted me. “Hey, Luc, the usual?” He had a secret stash of whiskey under the counter that he’d pour in my coffee.
“Lay off the bottle, you drunk!” came Mona’s voice from the corner booth. All I could see was the top of her head, the bright red and perfectly coifed bun popping up over the green vinyl booth back.
I looked at Doug and smiled. “Make it a double.”
“You got it.” Doug didn’t care about pissing off Mona.
I slid into the seat across from her as Doug set my coffee in front of me.
Mona shook her head in disgust. “You know, Lucian, I was thinking… a few of us are getting tired of meeting here. The music is terrible, and honestly, we’d enjoy a drink every now and then too. Doug doesn’t spike all of our coffees.”
The door jingled. Zack walked in and took a seat at the bar while simultaneously flipping me off.
I put my focus back on Mona. She had the tiniest mouth, pursed red lips, and a pointy ski-slope nose. Impish would be an understatement. “You look nice tonight.” I arched my eyebrows and dropped my gaze to her mouth.
She sucked in a breath and held it.
I leaned forward over the table and whispered, “Wanna fuck?”
She swallowed. “Lucian,” she said in a warning tone.
“I know you want me. Why don’t you live a little?” I lowered my voice. “I want to taste you, Mona, you little tart.”
Her face flushed. “Don’t. Stop.”
“Oh, I don’t plan to. Not until you’re screaming my name.”
“I meant don’t say another word.”
Since angels didn’t age, we were all perpetually in our prime, which meant that even though Mona was centuries older than me, she had all the same feelings that I did. I was getting to her; she wanted me.
“I want to bite your perfect ass,” I said.
That did it. That put her over the edge.
She cleared her throat and held up a Wookiee costume from the bench. “How would you like to work at the Star Wars bar for eternity? You’d get to see Evey every weekend with one hipster after another, her heart getting more mangled each time. Maybe we’ll reassign her to Abigail.”
“No!” I said, banging my hand on the table. I could handle the Star Wars bar for eternity, but I could not handle knowing self-absorbed Abigail would be looking out for Evey. “You have to get her someone better.”
“I don’t have to do anything. I know what you’re doing, Lucian. You’re trying to get banished. You want to sabotage yourself because you’re some kind of masochist.”
“I’m not, Mona. That’s the thing.” I shrugged. “If I were, I’d enjoy watching Evey date these cretins she goes out with.”
“This is so out of the ordinary. It has to be all the drinking. You’re just not thinking clearly. I don’t want to have to go to my supervisor with this.”
I smacked my hand on the table again.
“Stop doing that!” she said.
I was getting so tired of the cryptic shit. “Who the fuck is your supervisor? Is it him?” I pointed up.
“No, no, of course not. It’s David.”
“Like as in the David?”
“No, a different one. He’s just my supervisor,” she said.
“Where is the big guy? Let me talk to him.”
“You know you can’t do that.”
I took a deep breath. I felt like I was going to throw up. Zack, Bob, and Lauren were all at the bar now, eavesdropping. I motioned for Mona to lean in over the table so I could whisper to her.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not falling for that one. You’re so arrogant.”
“Please, I’m serious,” I pleaded.
She huffed then finally leaned over the table toward me.
I cupped her ear. “I’m in love with her,” I whispered.
She yanked her head back and scowled. “With who?”
I mouthed, “Evey.”
“That’s impossible. She’s human. You don’t even have the chemicals in your body to be attracted to her.”
All three angels at the bar turned on their stools and stared at me with wide eyes.
I stood abruptly. “Oh, fuck all of you. You don’t understand.” I rushed out of the door and took off toward the sky.
We couldn’t actually breathe outside of the atmosphere, so as soon as I hit about ten thousand feet, I started gasping and choking—plus I was freezing my ass off. I just had to get away. Nothing made sense. We were living and breathing just like Evey. I had a heart that beat. I could smell and taste and touch just like Evey. I came barreling back toward the ground, landed in the same spot I’d taken off from, and stumbled to my left. Zack was sitting outside the soda shop, watching me.
“What happened to you? You used to be so good at that,” he said.
“Everything is turning to shit.” I sat down next to him at the curb. “What did Mona say after I left?”
“She thinks it’s the drinking.”
I looked at Zack; he had strawberry-blond hair, freckles, and a boyish face. He was my best friend, and half the time I knew he was looking out for me. The other half of the time, he was heckling me. We were like brothers. He was the closest thing, besides Evey, that I had to family.
“What’s eating you, man? And why’d you tell Evey? You know what you’re gonna have to do now, right?”
“I know.”
I had to erase Evey’s memory of me. We didn’t like to do that often because occasionally it caused forgetfulness—a response to the energy we forced into the brain. We did it by pressing a thumb to the forehead and funneling the electrical currents in our body out through the fingers. If you did it right, you could go on unseen, and your soul would just pick up where they’d left off.
“You should do it soon—before she starts talking. They’ll have her committed.”
“I will, first thing after we go back.”
Angels had gifts. Obviously we could use other physical bodies, we had invisible wings, and we were generally more efficient beings. Our hearts were faster, we could eat and drink more, and though we were ageless, we weren’t immortal. We weren’t susceptible to diseases or age-related illnesses, but we could still die by getting hit by a truck. At the instant of our death, we’d just disintegrate into nothing and immediately be forgotten. What a legacy.
One thing about my job that had been bugging me for a century at least was that we were kept in the dark from all the higher-ups. We had been created and predisposed to protect our souls, but the rules, especially Zack’s long list of rules, came from hearsay. Mona acted as a lawyer in a way. She would interpret information from the higher-ups then try to apply it to our situations, but I didn’t think she could prove that me being in love with Evey was impossible.
I didn’t know what was happening to me. I had heard stories of angels falling in love with their souls, but I’d never heard about what had eventually happened to them.
“Remember Connie? That one that fell in love with the musician?”
“Yeah, I remember,” I said.
“It wasn’t that long ago,” Zack added.
We had all heard this story about an angel in Memphis who had fallen in love with her assigned soul, but the guy died. That was the end of it.
“He’s one of us now.”
“What?”
“Yeah, in New York. Connie took him out herself.”
“What? Why? How?”
“So they could be together.”