“Go on, then, Petunia.” Helen jerks her chin at Administrator Dagmar. “Take her out. Piece of cake. It’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s how it starts.”
Emery tries not to grimace. He doesn’t want to start anything, whether he’s supposed to or not. But he also doesn’t want to let Administrator Dagmar zap him out of existence, nor does he want his mother caving any skulls on his behalf.
“Wait, wait, wait!” says Sam, stepping between Emery and everyone else, hands up as though warding. “I’m sure we can work this out.” He lowers his voice and leans in so Emery’s the only one who can hear him say, “And if we can’t, I will fight for you.” That same warm light pulses from him like before, only this time it doesn’t feel comforting and happy. It feels… dangerous.
Emery sighs like a heroine in a romance novel. In his defense, Sam’s really hot when he goes butch.
And damn it, it’s not fair! Why can’t Emery just have this?
Helen’s hands are abruptly filled with that green fire she showed him in the alley. “Say the word, Sally.”
It feels like a powder keg. Emery has no desire to see what happens when any of these lit matches get near it. If he was a decent antichrist, wouldn’t that be something he’d actually want? Encourage? Instigate?
Clearly someone much more evil was supposed to have gotten his superpowers. Emery’s annoyed, because doesn’t that just figure? His whole life spent hiding and being afraid, and all because of some kind of angelic clerical error.
…Oh!
Wait.
“You said there was a clerical error.” Emery looks at Administrator Dagmar. “A clerical error. That’s what you said.”
Administrator Dagmar frowns and lowers her hands. “Yes?”
“So this all really is just a big mistake.” Emery goes to push Sam aside but remembers not to touch him without warning just in time. “Maybe I have the antichrist’s superpowers, but I’m not the antichrist. I mean, shouldn’t you be able to tell if I’m… I dunno, evil, or something?”
Sam nods, assertive, and looks right at Emery. “I can assure you, there’s not an evil bone in Emery Sutton’s body.”
Man, those eyes.
Emery drags his gaze back to Administrator Dagmar and clears his throat. “Right, so I got all the superpowers and whoever the other guy is got all the evil. Somewhere out there is an antichrist with no superpowers, so shouldn’t you be out looking for him? I mean, I’m not about to go destroying the world—I live here. And my mom would be really pissed.”
Administrator Dagmar glances over at Emery’s mom, who’s still got the poker at the ready and a try me look in her eye. Administrator Dagmar looks like she’s willing to concede the point.
“Now wait a minute, Natasha,” says Helen, mouth curled. “Are you freaking kidding me? I should’a known you were too much of a… you little…. What is wrong with you?”
“Ooh!” Lisa pops out from behind Biker-guy, hand up and waving wildly. “I know this one! Pick me!”
Helen shakes her head at Emery, scowl tight and fierce. “I mean, who wouldn’t want to be the antichrist?”
A gasp goes up from the crowd. “He doesn’t want it?” someone says, breathless. They peer around at each other, then finally over at Helen. They don’t look angry, really. More like confused.
“So why don’t you be it?” Lisa finally ventures away from the keg, cup behind her back again like she thinks they don’t all know. She seems to have lost the wine box, though, as she stalks up to Helen and jabs a finger at her chest. “Y’ve got power. Yer a demon. Wreaking havoc is what you do, right? Why don’t you go start World War III?” It’s all slurred and fairly sloppy but pretty savage for all that. She blinks hazily at the silent demon horde, staring back at her with mouths open. “What, I’ve read Dante. I know how this shit goes.” She waves around at them all, realizes she’s waving the hand with the wine in it, then quickly hides it behind her back again. “Here’s some minions, right? And more coming. S’ go—” She has to pause for a hiccup. “So go an’ pick a fight somewhere. Blow some stuff up, go ahead. Start with that shed over there.”
“Do not start with my shed,” says Emery’s dad.
“Oh, fine.” Lisa rolls her eyes and waves at the house across the street. “There, then. Take out the Masons’ house. If you’re lucky, all three kids are home.”
“Lisa Renae!” Emery’s mother has finally lowered the poker. She looks shocked. “What are you saying?”
“No, she’s right, Mom.” Emery grins over at Lisa. Obviously drunk or not, Lisa’s just pegged it. And she really would be better at this than Emery would.
Emery turns to Helen and then all the people standing around behind her. Middle-aged men in suits. Young women in yoga pants. Biker-guy. A teenager in too much lipstick, popping her gum. And is that…? Holy shit, that’s Dustin. Because of course it is. It makes so much sense now. No wonder he was such an ass in school.
It takes an effort not to send a little zap of superpowers Dustin’s way, just for spite, but Emery manages. “None of you actually want to end the world, do you? Or you would’ve done it by now. Because you could have, couldn’t you? You’ve been here—” He turns to Sam. “How long have they been here waiting?”
Sam shrugs. “Thousands of years, probably.”
“You’ve been here thousands of years,” Emery says, turning back to Helen. “And you haven’t ended the world because…?”
Helen looks away, looks down, and mutters something at her toes.
“Sorry, didn’t catch that.”
She gusts a huge sigh and rolls her eyes. She doesn’t repeat whatever it was she said.
“Because here’s better than there,” someone calls from the middle of the gathering.
Emery laughs, relieved. “Well, duh! Who wants to burn in hell if they don’t have to?” He looks out onto the crowd. “You like it here. You have jobs, friends, maybe even families. I bet you’re not even really homeless, are you, Helen?”
Helen still looks peeved, but now it’s leaning more toward embarrassed. She sniffs and looks away. “I’m a fashion editor for Elle.”
“I knew it!” Emery grins and turns to Sam. “I knew she had something to do with fashion. She’s always telling me—” Sam’s squinting at him with a What are you even talking about? look, so Emery clears his throat. “Um.”
He turns back to the crowd. “None of you want the world to actually end. You just think you’re supposed to want it. And you think you’re supposed to follow my orders to make it happen. So here you go—I order you all to go home. I order you all to be good decent peop—sorry, good decent demons, and go home and wait until I call on you. You are not to end the world, or do anything that might result in the end of the world, without my direct say-so. Is that clear?”
They all look at each other some more before heads start bobbing and smiles start blooming. It can’t really be that easy, Emery thinks, but it apparently is, because no amount of Helen complaining about “But I took all my vacation days off for this!” or Lisa hunting down her wine box while wailing “Wait, can’t I still have minions?” seems to convince anyone that starting the Apocalypse is the good idea they thought it was ten minutes ago.
They still seem up for a party, though. It takes a good half hour of Emery telling them all sternly to “Go home. Come on, guys, my mom has a shift in the morning” before they seem to get the message that not starting the end of the world is not, in fact, an excuse to go on an impromptu bender on the not-antichrist’s front lawn. When someone gets out of a van with a guitar and an amp, Emery finally puts his foot down.
Well. He actually just zaps every one of them on the ass with his superpowers and yells, “Get off my lawn!” like a grumpy old man, but same thing. Slowly the crowd starts breaking up into smaller clusters and wandering over the grass toward the street.
“Emmie!” says Emery’s dad. When Emery looks over, his dad lifts his eyebrow and shoots a speaking look out over the yard.
“Oh! Hang on!” Emery waits until everyone turns to look at him then says, “Take the tent and the keg with you. And replace any divots on your way out.”
Shockingly, they do. They follow every order Emery’s dad gives them. And he gives them a lot of orders. Emery thinks his dad might be taking slight advantage when he makes Dustin weed the begonias before he goes, but he doesn’t say anything. They’re just trying to shove the tent back into its canvas carrier when a Prius skids to a halt at the bottom of the driveway. A woman leaps from the driver’s seat and rushes around to open the hatch.
“Well,” says Emery’s mother as the woman coaxes the baby goat from the car, “that must be Jenny.”
IT WAS very kind of the Suttons to offer their rec room to Sam and Administrator Dagmar so they could have a private discussion. It would’ve been easier to just go back to Administrator Dagmar’s office, but Sam didn’t want to go back until they’d agreed on a few things. Administrator Dagmar isn’t entirely pleased with any of it, but she did eventually have to admit that allowing Emery to be the not-antichrist was the simplest solution to what could have been a rather huge and embarrassing oversight. Also, it will save her a lot of paperwork. Sam’s pretty sure that’s what finally convinced her.
They emerge into the living room to find the entire Sutton family waiting for them. Emery’s father looks annoyed still, and Emery’s mother looks wary when she rises. Emery gives Sam one of those face-eating grins that make Sam’s guts go all warm and sloppy.
“Mrs. Sutton. Diane.” Administrator Dagmar offers her hand with a smile. Emery’s mother gives Sam a hard look, inquiring. She must be satisfied with whatever she sees, because she takes Administrator Dagmar’s hand and smiles back. “I commend you on the fine job you and your husband have done in raising your children,” Administrator Dagmar says. She ignores the way Lisa is slumped in her chair, looking a little green and hiccupping, and instead points her shrewd glance toward Emery. She smiles and says to Emery’s mother, “It is to your and your husband’s credit that it took twenty years for us to even suspect your son existed, and then through no fault of his own.”
“The name’s Dave,” Emery’s father grouses from deep within his chair. He looks like he’s still smarting over the yard. And the goat. Of course, that might be partly because Lisa had insisted on drunkenly cuddling it, then crying when their dad said she couldn’t keep it because “It isn’t a puppy, Lisa, for God’s sake,” and even if it were, “It’ll ruin the grass. Do you have any idea how hard it was to get the pH in the soil exactly right?”
“Emery,” intones Administrator Dagmar.
Emery blinks and sits up a little straighter. “Er. Yes, ma’am?”
“Your”—she rolls her eyes and sighs a little as she says—“superpowers are vast and a great responsibility. They are not something I am comfortable just leaving to your discretion. So you’ll understand why I find it necessary that you be supervised.”
“Supervised.” Emery frowns. “What, like a babysitter?”
Lisa waves her hand around from her sprawl on the chair. “I volunteer as tribute!”
Administrator Dagmar ignores her. “More like a….” She smiles at Sam, softer than he knew she could. “More like a guardian angel.”
Emery’s gaze darts to Sam, eyebrows high and his mouth open. Sam grins at him just as he feels that little fizz of Emery’s superpowers patter at his senses.
Violin music swells from nowhere. The lights go dim and soft-focused.
Administrator Dagmar’s eyebrows shoot right up her forehead.
Emery’s voice is low and pained when he groans “Oh my God, not now” but Sam hears it quite distinctly. He thinks Emery seems more panicked now than he did when there were demons on his father’s lawn demanding he start the Apocalypse.
“If that’s all right with you?” Administrator Dagmar asks, bland but with a little twitch at the corner of her mouth and a wry glance at the fairy lights that start floating around the room like fireflies.
Emery glowers at them, then bobbles a nod at Administrator Dagmar. “Um. Yeah. Good. Fine, I mean. Right.” He mutters something between clenched teeth. Sam is pretty sure it’s an aggrieved “Would you cut it out? Seriously, you’re killing me here.”
The music doesn’t stop. In fact, Sam thinks he can hear the crash of an ocean tide beneath it now, and… yes, he can definitely smell sea air. Which is interesting since they’re about a hundred miles away from the coast. Any coast.
Lisa snorts. Then she hiccups.
Every candle on the mantel flares to life.
Emery gives them a filthy look and growls, “Jesus Christ, will you stop” under his breath before apparently deciding to pretend his superpowers aren’t busy setting up a lovely, if a bit clichéd, little romantic scene without his permission. He abruptly sits back, slinging his arm nonchalantly over the back cushions of the couch, and shrugs, determinedly blasé.
“Guardian angel. Cool, I guess. I mean, you know, whatever.”
Emery’s father shakes his head with a roll of his eyes. “Jesus, Emmie.”
Lisa laughs so hard she doubles over, hiccupping through the snorts, before everything about her goes still. She hangs her head between her knees, face abruptly pale as milk, and mumbles, “Oh crap.”
“Oh no you don’t.” Emery’s mother all but climbs over Administrator Dagmar’s back in her effort to get to Lisa before Lisa chucks up half a wine box all over the living room. “Not on the rug!”
Emery’s father gets there first and waves her off. “I got it.” He hauls Lisa up and starts heading up the stairs. “It’ll save me from having to watch my son trying not to be lame.”
Emery sputters, “Lame!” to which his father retorts, “And failing,” as Lisa cackles, then wobbles out a pathetic little moan halfway up the stairs. Emery’s father quickens his pace.
Face red, Emery scowls and watches them go. “It’d be so easy to give them all tails.”
“Well!” says Emery’s mother, bright and overloud. She gestures to Administrator Dagmar. “I’ll show you out.”
Administrator Dagmar doesn’t really need to be shown out, but she accepts with a significant lift of her eyebrow at Sam. And yes, thank you, Sam will happily take the excuse. He waits until they’ve made their way over to the front door and out onto the lawn before he sidles over to sit beside Emery.
“So.”
Emery smiles, though he doesn’t quite meet Sam’s gaze. “So.”
The music is still lilting softly. A tiny green vine winds around the leg of the coffee table. Petite buds dot it, then burst into rich red roses.
“Goddamn it,” Emery mutters as he glares around the room, jaw clenched, but the candles still burn, the lighting is still soft, and the violin concerto moves on to a duet.
Buoyed—because Sam might not remember everything yet, but he knows what wooing looks like—Sam holds out his hand, hovering it just above Emery’s knee. “There is touch, and there is Touch. May I?”
“Yes. I mean—” Emery rumbles a tiny growl and ducks his head. “That would…. Yeah. Okay.”
Sam settles his hand, confident, because once he’d understood what was happening, it was easy to not let it happen again. And Administrator Dagmar had been surprisingly helpful with a few tips and instructions. He thinks they’ll need to be careful, keep their natures from clashing, but the fuzzy little hum he feels vibrating from the touch is pleasant instead of concerning. He thinks it might become second nature, if given a chance.
“So, you’re my guardian angel now.” Emery shoots a nervous glance at Sam. “What exactly does that mean?”
“Well.” Sam shrugs and leans back into the cushions. He doesn’t move his hand. “To them—my superiors—it means I’m to keep an eye on you. Make sure you don’t suddenly turn evil. See to it that no one finds out about you. That sort of thing.” He looks down, fingers reflexively squeezing Emery’s knee just a little. “To me, it means… whatever you’d like it to m
ean.”
“Yeah?” Emery smiles, still not quite looking Sam in the eye as he leans in, careful, and gently slips his fingers into the breast pocket of Sam’s shirt. He draws back almost immediately, a playing card between his fingers, and asks, voice low, “Can it mean this?” His cheeks go a delightful shade of red. “I mean… crap, that came out really lame. Thanks, Dad.” He rolls his eyes, giving the developing miniature arbor on the coffee table a frustrated scowl. “This would’ve been so much smoother if I hadn’t gotten smooshed in that alley, and now it’s just… really disgustingly sappy, and… kind of embarrassing, really. But at least it’s not the ‘Did it hurt when you fell from heaven’ line, right?” Emery huffs a sigh, runs a hand through his hair, and holds out the card. He still won’t look at Sam. “Can we at least see if it can mean this?”
Sam looks down at the card. It’s the ace of hearts. With a phone number written across it.
He grins. It is kind of sappy—the entire situation is right out of a romance novel… a very, very weird romance novel—but it’s also delightfully awkwardly charming.
He says, “Yes.” Because yes! It feels like spiking the football after a touchdown, and he’s pretty sure he used to actually do that, so he’d know. He opens his mouth to say more—yes, yes, absolutely, please, I’d really like it to mean that—but Emery’s mother comes shooting through the front door and barrels past them.
She stops at the bottom of the steps. “Dave?” she calls. “Honey? We might have a teensy problem.”
“What now?” There’s the muted sound of Lisa retching, then Emery’s father’s voice again, amplified by the acoustics in the bathroom. “Kinda busy here! Can’t you handle it?”
Emery’s mother doesn’t answer, just turns to look at Sam and Emery with wide eyes and a stifled laugh. Then again, she doesn’t really have to answer, because it’s only a second or two later when there’s a gruff deep-bellied bleat from the front yard.
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