Hooligans

by Chloe Garner

  She shook her head.

  “This is crazy,” she said. “It’s crazy.”

  “You’ve spent your whole life alone,” he said. “Do you really think you’re going to find someone who fits you like I do? Better than I do?”

  “It’s the wrong argument,” she said slowly, working it out.

  “All right,” he said.

  “I’ve been well-reasoned my entire life, and I got where I wanted to be. If I want something different, I have to do something different, and… maybe that means I need to be a little crazy.”

  He grinned, looking up at the stars. His stubble was back, and in the dim light, he looked just like he had that first day. What a lifetime ago that was.

  “I can get behind that,” he said. “It makes me the crazy one, though, doesn’t it?”

  “A little,” she said and he swerved his steps, slamming into her and knocking her off balance, then pulling her upright against him again.

  “A lot,” he said. “A lot, a lot. I’m tying myself to one woman for the rest of my life, when I’ve got no idea when or if I’ll ever see her again. And she’s an angel to boot. A normal woman, sure, she could follow me around if she wanted to, or at least she’d stay still in one place for a while. You could be gone tomorrow, same as me.”

  “Really?” Lizzie asked. “You think it could happen?”

  “Listen, you think what we’ve got going on here since Lara died is bad, imagine what the pack is looking at that has needed her for weeks earlier than that.”

  “You’re certain there’s a pack out there who needs an angel?” Lizzie asked, and he nodded.

  “If there are any rules, that’s it. Angels and demons come in pairs. Always. Demons tend to be the ones who wander, but angels do it, too. Could be that they’re just trying to upset things, of course. Making an angel move on is a great way to break up a routine that’s working too well.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him and he grinned.

  “There’s no way of knowing,” he said. “They don’t tell us anything. We’ve just come up with some really effective ways of coping with them.”

  “I don’t really want to talk about them right now,” Lizzie said.

  “We have to,” Trevor answered playing his thumb across her knuckles.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because as soon as we stop talking about furlings and start talking about us, I’m not going to be able to keep my hands off of you, and we haven’t hit the park yet.”

  Now that had sizzle to it. She swallowed hard and tried not to look at him.

  She couldn’t help it. He had a smug little smile that she wanted to bite, and the twitch in his hand told her that he knew she’d seen it. She closed her eyes and turned her face back away.

  “How do you do that?” she asked.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. She shook her head. He knew exactly what she was talking about, and she wasn’t going to say it out loud. There was shouting out of a house to their right, and a handful of furlings came scurrying out a window, disappearing into bushes and up onto the roof. She stopped, and he pulled her on.

  “We don’t interfere with normal stuff,” he said. “Just because you know something’s happening doesn’t mean you get involved.”

  “What just happened in there?” she asked as he dragged her another step down the sidewalk.

  “From the looks of things, something broke,” Trevor said. “But we aren’t going to find out because there’s no way normal people would even know something was wrong.”

  “But we do know,” she said. He stopped walking and reached for her free hand, pulling her to where she faced him.

  “Explain it to them,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You knock on the door and they open it. What do you say to them?”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Mind your own business.”

  He paused.

  “That was the door slamming in your face, there.”

  “I knock again.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll open the door one more time before I come back with a gun. What do you want?”

  “Are you sure everything’s okay?”

  “Go away or I’ll call the police.”

  He paused.

  “Once more, the door slams,” he said. She could see his point.

  “But what if it’s bad?” she asked. “What if it’s an old woman who fell down and broke her hip?”

  “She has a niece or a nephew or a concerned lady from church who will check on her tomorrow,” Trevor said, once more starting down the sidewalk. “You act like you know that something bad happened, and people assume it’s because you did it.”

  “Maybe if you look like you,” Lizzie said and he turned and grinned at her.

  “You think you’re a bright-light angel, now, do you? Okay. Lara could get away with that kind of stuff, sometimes, because she looked like you did. Look at yourself now.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Lizzie asked, looking down.

  Shoot. She was in pajamas and moccasins.

  “Okay, I see your point.”

  He grinned and came to put an arm around her waist.

  “Besides, I have better things to do tonight than get tangled up in perfectly natural chaos.”

  “Is that so?” Lizzie asked.

  They hit the end of the street, and her stomach went tight as they left the sidewalk and walked down a dirt path toward a clearing with play equipment and the stand of trees where they’d sat before.

  It couldn’t be real.

  None of it could be real.

  He was too close, right up against her now as they walked, slower. She didn’t let people that close. How had he done it?

  The moon was struggling through clouds, tonight, and what soft light there had been dimmed to virtually nothing as they got to the trees. She heard him lick his lips as he found a tree and leaned against it, letting her go. He caught hold of her hand by some unlit miracle.

  “Say it again,” he said.

  “Say what?” she asked.

  “Say that you’ll marry me. That you’ll be mine and I’ll be yours, even if we can’t make it work.”

  She swallowed. Never in a million years would she have guessed that proposal, but there was something husky in his voice, needy. She had questions she wanted to ask, but she didn’t put them in the way. Not right now.

  “Yes.”

  There was a warm slick of metal on her finger, and then she was wearing the ring and he was curling his arms around her, his mouth finding hers in the dark. There was a rush of skin against skin as his hand found her back, and then she was pulling at his jacket. It had to be gone. He dropped his arms one by one to let her pull the sleeves away, and she started on his shirt, but there was something intent, almost ritualistic in the way he kissed her that stopped her.

  “Not here,” he whispered, kissing her again and pulling her tight against him. “They’re everywhere. Not here.”

  She didn’t argue. He held her tight for a long time, just the sound of their breath, his particular scent, his mouth against hers, a slow-moving tangle of arms, fingers. Just as her heart rate started to come down again, he pulled her face to the side and started down her neck with rough kisses. Someone pointed a flashlight at them, and Trevor held his hand up to block it.

  That was the first Lizzie noticed the flashing lights.

  “We’re searching the block for someone who broke into a house back there,” a voice said, lowering the light fractionally. Trevor hadn’t let go of her yet, but Lizzie dodged as far to the side as she could, trying to see and not look so obviously intertwined with him.

  “Good luck,” Trevor said, dropping his arm and putting his mouth back onto her shoulder.

  “Going to have to ask you two to go home after I search you,” the voice said and Trevor looked up again, annoyed.

  “It’s fine,” Lizzie said. “Is everyone okay?
”

  “I can’t say,” the voice said as Lizzie finally pulled free of Trevor and started toward the light.

  “Just stop there,” the voice said.

  “How do we even know you’re police?” Trevor asked belligerently.

  “Stop,” Lizzie said. “Let’s just go back to the house.”

  “You live here?” the voice asked.

  “My brother lives down the street,” she said.

  “You should go back there, then,” the voice said. “Turn around, please.”

  Lizzie started to turn, but Trevor held firm.

  “Just him,” the voice said. “Are you armed?”

  “Got two,” Trevor said, wiggling his arms from the shoulder. Lizzie grabbed his elbow and spun him.

  “Not helping,” she said. He grinned at her.

  “All right,” the voice said. “Go on. Be quick.”

  Trevor dashed back to the tree to recover his jacket, then came back and walked with Lizzie back up the sidewalk past three police cars and an ambulance.

  “I guess they weren’t all okay,” he observed as they passed.

  “How can you be so cold?” Lizzie asked. “We should have done something.”

  “You get in front of a knife, the furlings aren’t going to stop it,” Trevor said. “They’ll tell you where it’s going to be, but it’s your job to stay out of the way.”

  “We could have helped,” Lizzie said. He shook his head.

  “We do. But not like that. People do all kinds of chaotic, terrible things all on their own, and stopping them takes way too much time and effort. We need to be ready to do bigger things.”

  She looked back over her shoulder as they got past, then shook her head. She was tired and a bit cold, and while she could feel the swarm of furlings just over there, they didn’t feel as frothy and agitated as the ones from that morning. The paramedics, at least, had it under control now and there really wasn’t anything else she could do to help.

  She looked at her hand under a street light.

  “Wow.”

  He looked over.

  “I like it,” he said, and she grinned.

  “Wow,” she said again.

  They got back to the house and Trevor started around the side and she pulled him toward the front door.

  “I’m not sneaking in,” she said.

  “Don’t know why not,” he answered. “It’s lots more fun that way.”

  “Because you’re terrible at sneaking,” Robbie said from the front door. “I can always hear you coming.”

  He gave Lizzie a kind of tired exasperated look and she shrugged.

  “So…” she said, holding up her hand. He saw the ring and snapped his head back.

  “What’s that?” he asked. “You can’t do that.”

  “You married Lara,” she said.

  “It was different,” he argued. Trevor breezed past, winking at Lizzie from behind Robbie’s back. She widened her eyes at him, and Robbie shot a look back over his shoulder at Trevor, who disappeared down the hallway.

  “I don’t see how,” Lizzie said when Robbie turned back around.

  “You can’t do it,” Robbie said, turning to go back into the house. He paused and came back to the doorway. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  He drifted away, then went down the hallway as well. She heard his door close behind him. She looked at the ring, then shook her head. She’d made her decision.

  She turned off the lights behind her as she went through the house back to her room, opening the door to find Trevor halfway out the window.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Going back to the building,” he said. “It’s more fun, going out the window than the front door. Don’t know why you don’t see that.”

  She shook her head.

  “No. I don’t want you staying there again.”

  He put his foot down on the floor and tipped his head.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I smell like tree sap and I need to take a shower. And it would be an awful waste to use up all that hot water by myself.”

  The motion he made coming back out of the window was fluid, like he’d done it a lot of times before, and he crossed the room in three strides, pulling her against him and kissing her deep. She reached behind her, taking a couple of attempts to find the door before finally managing to push it closed.

  ***

  She lay in the bed next to him, curled on her side, listening to his breath and the sounds of furlings skittering around outside of the room. She thought he was asleep. She wouldn’t have blamed him; it was nearly four in the morning and she was physically exhausted, but her mind was refreshed and alert, and she’d been listening for a while.

  “I’m not going to tell you what you can and can’t do,” Trevor said, surprising her, “but you shouldn’t absorb any more furlings for a few days.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “They take something important out of you,” he said. “It takes a while to come back. That’s how they killed Lara.”

  “Order,” she said and he laughed.

  “Maybe.”

  His fingers played a pattern up and down her back and she sighed.

  “Thought you were asleep,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “Not tonight.”

  “That good?” she asked and he laughed again.

  “Yeah, but that’s not it. You’re vulnerable right now, and even if there’s no reason they’d take advantage, I don’t want you alone.”

  “This whole protect-the-damsel thing is going to go away soon, right?” Lizzie asked, and he rolled onto his side, picking up her hand and running his fingertips up and down her fingers.

  “Angels glow,” he said, propping his head up on his palm. “I think Lara could see it, but I never asked. Orderly things glow. Furlings steal that. And you haven’t even got a glimmer to you, right now. I could tell you absorbed one the same way Robbie and I could tell that you were an angel, the second you really became one. You glowed then and you…” He shrugged. “You don’t now.”

  “I passed out on the floor,” Lizzie said. “Robbie found me.”

  He stiffened slightly, then kept rubbing his fingers against hers.

  “It was close then,” he said. “You really do need to be careful.”

  “You could be more clear up front,” she said. “That would help.”

  He laughed and kissed her fingertips.

  “That’s not how we are,” he said. “It’s not like school where someone sits you down and tells you everything. This is our life, Lizzie. I’ve never met a brand new angel before. I don’t know what you don’t know. And I don’t know what you need to know. I don’t even know what you’re going to know, someday.”

  “I don’t believe you that it’s that complicated,” she said. He tapped her fingers against his forehead, then rolled back onto his back again.

  “You think I’m going to sit you down at a board game and talk it through and you’re going to know all the rules and all the plays. That this is a sport.” He turned his head to look at her. “It isn’t like that. Half of us have no clue how we do what we do, and the other half have learned not to talk about it. It isn’t something we measure and plan.”

  “It is,” Lizzie said. “I’ve seen you do it.”

  He shook his head.

  “We all react to the same information, and we do it like a pack. We know how the pack works. Adding you to it is… It’s not easy.”

  “But you have to do it,” she said. “And the best way to do that is to tell me things.”

  He laughed.

  “What do you think I’m trying to do?”

  “I glow?” she asked. “You didn’t think to tell me that yesterday?”

  He rolled over onto his stomach.

  “Wasn’t until yesterday I figured out that it wasn’t normal to see it. We’ve all seen it, most of our lives.”

  “But you don’t know if
I will,” Lizzie said. He shrugged.

  “Don’t know if Lara did. Robbie might.”

  Lizzie wrinkled her nose.

  “Not sure he’s speaking to me, right now.”

  “Having sex with the demon in the bedroom next door is hardly going to be high on his list of good guest behaviors.”

  “Am I a guest?” she wondered. “I’ve kind of been thinking of this as home.”

  Trevor shook his head.

  “Between the two of you, I expect.”

  “Will you two go to sleep?” Robbie asked from the other side of the door. “I can’t hear what you’re saying, but I can hear you.”

  Lizzie blushed. Trevor wrinkled his nose playfully and pushed himself up on his elbows.

  “No one’s sleeping in here tonight,” he called. “Way too busy.”

  Lizzie pushed his shoulder and he scrambled not to fall out of the bed.

  “Sorry, Robbie,” she called. “Go back to bed.”

  She heard the door across the hallway close again and she shook her head at Trevor.

  “You’re just a terrible person.”

  He nodded.

  “Demon. And your fiancé. Just saying.”

  She looked at the ring. She’d almost forgotten. It still gave her a hot chill, and she closed her hand to feel the metal with her thumb.

  “I have to think about a wedding.”

  He shook his head, throwing himself onto his back and putting his arms out to either side, working one until it made it under her neck.

  “I don’t do weddings,” he said.

  “You were at Robbie’s and Lara’s,” Lizzie argued and he nodded.

  “Very rare exception.”

  “You wouldn’t make an exception for your own wedding?” she asked.

  “That one least of all. I don’t have anyone to invite. Do you?”

  “Maybe some people from work…”

  “You think you could explain it to them?” he asked.

  “What part?” she answered, seeing his point.

  “No, we’ll go sign papers downtown, whatever it is you do to make it real. If that’s even worth doing.”

  “It is,” Lizzie said. “To me.”

  “Thought it would be.”

  “If it weren’t for the fact that I don’t know how we’d get all of them out there, I’d say we should take everyone to Vegas.”