by Kristie Cook
“Do you like it?” Reed asks from just behind me.
“It’s beautiful. Did you do this?” I ask in awe that he can produce such magic out of a piece of stone.
“Yes,” he replies softly.
“I didn’t know that you’re an artist!” I exclaim, studying the delicately carved figure.
“I haven’t done anything in a while until recently … I was inspired,” he says with a stunning smile that makes my hands feel shaky.
I gently set the statue down and content myself with just looking at it from where it is on the table. Noticing another one next to it, I can’t help picking it up. This one resembles me as well, but this time in a field hockey uniform. My marble likeness is frozen in an aggressive pose on the brink of smacking the ball with my stick; the likeness is uncanny.
I study it for a moment, and then I ask, “Those statues, the ones in the library, the one you crushed when I was here before, you did those, too?”
“Yes,” he says, and I can tell he is remembering the day I had hurt my knee.
“The one you broke was of an angel. Was she a friend of yours?” I ask, smiling over my shoulder at him.
“Evie, do you miss anything?” he asks. He embraces me from behind, his arms wrapping around my waist.
I place his work gently back on the polished table before I twist in his arms. Pressing my ear to his chest, I listen to his heartbeat pulse a driving rhythm in my ear. No,” I say breathlessly.
Reed gently pushes me away from him as he says softly, “Evie … I brought you here to show you something. Something you need to see before you can make any decisions about what it is you think you want.”
“What do you want to show me?” I ask with a puzzled expression as he backs a few steps away from me.
Reed’s eyes are dark and watchful as his hand reaches up to his crisp, white shirt, slowly unthreading a button through the eyelet. Heat creeps into my cheeks as each button exposes more of his perfect chest and torso. When his shirt lies loose, he pauses to gauge my reaction. I didn’t really know that I’d moved closer to him, so it is a surprise to me when my fingertips graze his bare chest. His skin is smooth and perfect, lacking the imperfections of human flesh. With every centimeter of his skin I touch, my heart races a mile. As my hands travels upward under his shirt, I lift it off of his shoulders, sliding it down his arms and letting it fall to the floor.
This is where some of my courage begins to desert me. Apprehension enters Reed’s eyes as the sound of popping and crunching bone resonates from behind him. My eyes widen, seeing a mass of charcoal-hued feathers rising from behind his broad shoulders and continuing to arch well past his neck to about midway behind his head. The raspy sound of my shallow breathing echoes in my ears while his wings retract into a resting position. He hasn’t unfolded them fully so I have no idea just how far they can expand.
I am vaguely aware of my fingernails digging into the palms of my hand as I breathe only one word, “Oh!”
I back away from him a few steps before coming up against the edge of his bed. My knees buckle, and I half fall down on it, catching myself to rest on my elbows. It’s as if time has slowed down or maybe it just doesn’t exist anymore as I focus all of my attention on the creature in front of me. Staring at Reed, I think that maybe it hasn’t been too long since my transition into adulthood—and the subsequent abandoning of a world where things like this are possible—because being thrust over the threshold into this uncanny reality isn’t as terrifying as it should be. Slowly, so as not to break the spell of this moment, I climb off his bed. I creep forward tentatively, feeling his perfect, predatory eyes tracking every nuance of my movement toward him.
Reaching out, I trace the line of his clavicle to his left shoulder, circling around him and feeling his iron-strong contours play beneath my fingers. My fingertips slip from his shoulder to his charcoal-colored wing; they skim down the strong, downy appendage, feeling its silky texture. His wings nearly reach to the floor and are pointed, like that of a falcon. Lifting my hand, I place it upon his other wing, continuing slowly around the back of Reed like a ring to his Saturn. When I am before him again, my arms reach up, circling behind his neck.
“You’re magnificent,” I breathe, touching his hair gently. “Can you move them?” I ask, wanting to see the graceful limbs demonstrate their power.
Reed nods, his eyes never leaving my face. Extending his wings quickly, they make a snapping sound like a sheet being shaken out. The edges of his wings spread wide, causing the feathers to serrate to sharp points.
My eyes soften as I ask, “They’re lovely. When do I get mine?”
Reed’s eyes soften, too. “You’re not frightened of me?” he asks me in a perplexed tone.
With his dappled, charcoal wings towering around me, I say honestly, “A little, but it’s really more thrilling than frightening. How do they fit inside you? They’re huge! I mean, is it uncomfortable to pack them away … because I don’t get how they go in and out like that … does it hurt? What’s it like to fly? How did you learn to use them … did you just know instinctually, or was there, like, a flight school?” I stop talking when Reed bends down and kisses me.
He breaks off the kiss soon after beginning it, to my absolute frustration, to ask, “Why aren’t you afraid of me?”
“I don’t know, maybe it’s because you’re a really good kisser,” I reply, rising up on my tiptoes and trying to start up where we left off in the kiss.
Reed pulls back, just enough to see my face better, and says, “Every human I have ever encountered who has seen my wings is … well … terrified. I have to persuade them that they saw nothing in order to get most of them to stop screaming at me.”
“Oh, well, maybe it’s because I already knew what you are, you see, so I wasn’t very surprised. Anyway, you’re not the scariest thing I saw this weekend,” I reply as an afterthought, before again attempting a continuation of the kiss.
“Pardon me, what did you say?” Reed asks politely, frowning.
My teeth tug at my bottom lip. You idiot! Way to ruin the moment, I think, closing my eyes in a grimace that lends weight to my words.
“Evie, what did you see this weekend?” Reed asks sharply, grasping both my upper arms and frowning down at me.
“I was going to tell you, but I forgot because I was so happy to see you—”
Reed cuts me off by letting go of one of my arms and covering my mouth with his hand. His voice is edgy when he says, “The scariest thing you saw this weekend was …”
He stops speaking and uncovers my mouth so that I can fill in the blank. I quickly tell Reed about going to Coldwater and seeing the shadow man in the parking lot of the coffee shop. When I finish, Reed’s frown is darker.
“Evie, that thing, your ‘shadow man,’ is nothing short of a demon from Sheol wrapped in a human host,” Reed says, looking grave.
My voice is weak as I ask, “A what?”
“When the Fallen are awarded a soul from a human, they take it to Sheol, to the abyss. It gets changed, mutated by them over time. It grows more corrupt, and if it becomes evil enough, they release it so that it may find a human host, someone vulnerable in some way, to possess. To most normal humans, the possessed person can usually go undetected. They never see what it truly is. There are exceptions, but for the most part they wreak their havoc on the world unchallenged by humans. We can see them easily and dispatch them when we come across them.” He pauses to study my face, before he says, “It sensed you, and yet it did not attack you.”
His comment strikes me like a veiled accusation. I pale, stammering, “Well, we were at a coffee shop. Maybe he hadn’t had his first cup of coffee yet … I mean, I rarely start working until I get that first cup of coffee.”
Reed’s lips turn down grimly. “No, Evie, that’s not it … you said his shadow seemed to be looking at you?” he asks me.
I nod, feeling a lump forming in my throat. “So, are you saying that it probably thought that I wa
s one of them—an evil spawn released on the world to destroy it?”
Reed’s eyebrows rise. “No, that is not what I’m saying! Evie, what I’m saying is either it did not realize what you are exactly, and it was puzzled, or it was intimidated by you because you are part angel.”
“You mean, it might’ve thought I could kick its’ butt?” I ask, relaxing a bit.
“Yes, it’s strong—much stronger than you are, but I’m not sure it knew that. Whatever the case was, whether the demon was confused or intimidated, you were lucky. That thing could have eviscerated you without even spilling your coffee,” Reed says slowly, trying to make me see the gravity of the situation. His eyebrows lower dangerously as he points out, “You should not have even been in Coldwater.”
My face is ashen as I say, “I know, I know, I know!” Trudging over to his bed, I sit on the edge of it and hug one of his pillows for comfort, the mocha-silk bolster flattens against me as I say, “I know we talked about the rules you want me to follow; we talked about a lot of things … and I know that I’m different. I saw my knee mend itself, and I understand that you’re an angel and that you told me there are scary monsters, but that doesn’t mean I could actually wrap my head around the dangers of my actions.”
Dropping my eyes from his and worrying the edge of the pillow with my fingers, I continue, “It’s like my brain can’t dwell on the fact that I need to be cautious because there are seriously so many phenomena occurring in my life from day to day that I’m becoming unable to focus on them all. You could say that I was pretty much in denial about scary monsters until I saw the shadow man, but now that I have, I’m totally on board with the rules. You say, ‘no Coldwater,’ and I say, ‘Amen.’”
Flopping back on the bed with my legs still dangling over the edge, I put the pillow over my face to hide. The bed moves under Reed’s weight as he sits next to me, pulling the pillow from my face to ask, “When?”
“Saturday mid-morning,” I reply, staring up at him apologetically.
“Did it follow you?” he asks, staring down at me tensely.
“I don’t know. Freddie was driving. I watched the auxiliary mirror to see if it was chasing us, but I didn’t see anything.” I explain, rising up to lean on my elbows.
“Who is Freddie? What did you tell him?” he wants to know.
“He’s just a student—my friend—and I didn’t tell him anything. He didn’t seem to notice that anything was wrong,” I reply quickly.
“You had better start from the beginning of the weekend and try not to leave anything out.” Reed sighs, lying down on the bed next to me on top of his wings. His arm stretches up to drape across his eyes, like he’s weary of my explanations already.
I start from the point that I had found his note on my window. I am brief when explaining the party at the Delt house. I tell him Buns and Brownie had invited me to go with them as my reason for being there. I don’t want to explain the plot to swipe the composite because I’m afraid that our plan might fall under the heading of “nothing dangerous.”
I am very nonspecific about my conversation with Russell as well. It isn’t because I don’t want Reed to know about it—I believe he deserves to know the specifics of what occurred between Russell and me. It’s just that I’m still emotionally raw over what happened and I can’t trust myself not to cry if I tell him everything.
When I end, I study Reed’s face to see how he’s reacting to what I had told him. He’s in much the same position that he had been in when I had started. His arm shields his eyes from me so that I can’t see what he’s thinking. At his continued silence, my mind races, and I begin to understand what I’ve done. Panic slithers icily through my veins, and I feel sick.
“I’m dead … aren’t I?” I ask Reed in a near whisper. “All I had going for me was the fact that no one knew I was here. That was my advantage, and now it’s gone.”
Reed’s arm falls away from his eyes, and he frowns. “No, Evie,” Reed says gently, “it will be okay—there are other advantages.”
“What else is there?” I ask him bluntly, feeling anxious and scared.
“There is you and there is me … you are cunning and courageous. Soon you will be strong enough to face your shadow man and defeat him. Until then, you have me,” he says, which makes my throat burn with unshed tears.
“I’m sorry,” I rasp, feeling guilty and horrible.
Reed’s hand reaches out to cup my chin, lifting my eyes to his, he says, “I’m sorry, too … I should never have left you alone. I should have made you see the importance of what I was saying. You would never have been there without me if I had not made the wrong decision.” His jaw is tight as he adds, “The problem I am facing with you is that you are so unorthodox that it is difficult to predict what you will do next. That is a great asset to protect you against your enemies because it makes you formless, but it also makes protecting you difficult for me as well,” Reed says, his expression pained.
“Reed, I’m a logistical and tactical nightmare. You can’t be in two places at once. Stop making this about anyone else’s bad judgment but mine,” I say grimly, and as an exclamation point to my statement, my stomach growls loudly.
Reed’s eyes narrow suspiciously, “When did you last eat?” he asks.
“Breakfast I think,” I reply, but don’t tell him I barely ate then because the smashed firewall made me lose my appetite.
“Evie!” Reed says sternly. “You need to eat. You should take better care of yourself,” Reed says, getting up off the bed.
I replace the pillow I had taken from his bed. Looking up at Reed again, my mouth falls open because his wings are no longer visible. “How did you?” I ask, gazing fixedly at his back while he shrugs into a new t-shirt that I never saw him move to get.
His smile is heart stopping, making me forget what I am saying. Looking down so that I can try to remember what I’m doing, I realize that I’m still in my grubby hockey uniform and cleats. I smile self-effacingly, saying, “I hope Andre has leftovers in the refrigerator because I’m not dressed for dinner.”
“I gave Andre the weekend off since I was not here. I’m sure we can manage in the kitchen if that is more appealing than dining out,” Reed says.
“Whatever you have I’m sure is fine,” I reply.
At a more sedate pace than when we arrived, Reed leads me out into the hallway. We pass several doors in the corridor leading to the staircase. I want to peek in at each one to see what lies beyond the doors, but my stomach growls again, and I resign myself to asking for a tour of the house later. When we arrive in the kitchen, Reed has to show me where the refrigerator is housed because the sleek cabinetry artfully hides it. I rummage through the refrigerator and freezer until I spot something divine.
“Reed! You have frozen mac and cheese!” I grin at him, pulling out the familiar orange box with black lettering from the freezer.
“Is that good?” he asks me with a skeptical expression.
My eyebrows rise, “You’ve never had it?” I ask him.
“No, I don’t think so … it must be something Andre enjoys,” he says, studying the box suspiciously.
“Reed, you haven’t lived!” I say enthusiastically. “Where’s the microwave?” I ask, looking around for the appliance so I can cook it.
After Reed points it out to me, I get to work preparing the mac and cheese. Reed, watching my every move, helps me locate a bowl. Using a fork, I stir the creamy, piping-hot macaroni, and then I scoop a little bit out. Blowing on it softly to cool it, I cup my hand under the fork so that I won’t drop any.
I bring the fork to Reed’s mouth, saying, “Taste this!” Reed never takes his eyes from mine as he allows me to feed him the mac and cheese from my fork. “What do you think … it’s good, huh?” I ask, realizing now that the act of feeding him is so sensual that I want to do it again.
“Delicious,” he replies in a sultry tone that makes me almost drop the fork “May I?” Reed asks, taking the fork from my han
d. He scoops up some mac and cheese and blows on it as I had done. Holding the fork near my mouth, my heart nearly separates from my chest as I let him feed it to me.
“Mmmm,” I smile, “almost as good as Twinkies,” I murmur.
I retrieve another fork from the drawer, before hopping up onto the counter to sit next to the bowl of mac and cheese. Reed grins as I pat the counter on the other side of the bowl. He follows my lead and sits next to me, using his fork to get another bite of macaroni for himself. We eat together in companionable silence. I keep stealing glances at him whenever I can’t resist any longer.
“What’s our next move, Reed?” I ask as we finish the macaroni.
“I want you to stay here tonight,” he says, watching me for my reaction. “I will give you a bedroom to sleep in near mine.”
He wants to torture me for breaking the rules. I begin to squirm a bit, imagining sleeping so near to him, feeling the butterflies all night long and having to resist the pull of our attraction.
Resting my fork in the empty bowl, I ask, “Is that such a good idea?”
Reed nods. “I have to make sure your shadow man is not waiting for you. I’ll go and do a sweep of the area and your room,” he says, putting his fork in the bowl and hopping down from the counter.
“Wait!” I all but shout at him. “You can’t! What if he is there? He is really creepy and you could get hurt—I’m coming with you,” I finish, jumping down off the counter.
In the next second, I’m right back up upon the counter, seated as if I hadn’t moved at all. Reed’s hands rest loosely on my waist while he stares into my eyes with a smile that could melt ice. “No, you’ll stay here,” he says firmly.
“It’s freaky how fast you can move,” I say breathlessly.
“Is it?” he asks with a sublime smile.
“You know it is,” I reply.
His tries to suppress his smile, “Speed is an asset when one is hunting shadow men,” he replies.
“But what if he really is out there,” I reason, touching Reed’s hair gently.