The room around us was lit only with the waning moonlight that streamed through the wall of windows in the back of the living room. That light cast harsh shadows along the planes of Oz’s face, emphasizing the anger in his expression.
“Because I have standards, new girl,” he started, leaning his face in so close to mine that we breathed the same air. “And even I won’t take advantage of someone exercising a complete lack of judgment.”
“I am glad that we can agree that my judgment this evening was in err.”
“That we can.”
“Rest assured, it will not happen again.”
I looked at his hand that still held me in place and then turned my impassive gaze back to his face. With a moment’s hesitation, he let go of me, taking a small step back to allow me passage. As I walked around his imposing form, he muttered something under his breath so low that I almost could not make it out.
“What did you say?” I asked, seeking clarification. I was having great difficulty believing that what I thought he had said was correct.
“I said I want to show you something.” The repetition of his statement confirmed my suspicion. “Are you coming or not?”
I assessed him, wondering what he could possibly have that I would want to see.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll find out when we get there.” He started makingstaoul his way toward the front entrance, but I did not follow. After only a few steps, he turned to see me eyeing him dubiously, unmoving from my position. “You don’t trust me,” he said, somewhat amused by the revelation.
“You show me nothing to trust.”
“Well, that’s too bad, new girl, because this is a one-time-only offer. You either trust me and come, or don’t and stay. Which will it be?”
“Drew said that I am not to leave,” I argued, citing my brother’s earlier orders. The ones I found so offensive at the club.
“Well, well . . . it seems you’re at a bit of a crossroads then, aren’t you?” he mocked, extending his hand toward me. “Which path will you choose?”
I looked at his hand for what it was: an offering, though of what I could not be certain. What I was certain of was Oz’s knowledge of my mother. It was plain in his earlier dealings with Sean that he knew something, if not a lot, about her, and I wanted to be privy to that information as
well. She was potentially the key to unlocking so much about my past; balking at the potential opportunity to learn all that I could about her seemed lunacy. Father would not have approved. “Tedious alliances,” he called them, but he had many of his own.
Perhaps I needed to form one with Oz.
Never taking my eyes off his, I took his hand, accepting both the gesture and his offer. I said nothing as I did.
“You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you, new girl?” he purred, before turning to lead me away. “And as for Drew: What he doesn’t know won’t kill him.” He stopped to look down at me, winking wickedly. “But it might just kill you.”
16
“Precisely how is it that we are getting to the top of this?” I asked, looking up at the skyscraper Oz had taken me to. It was still dark outside, though the sun was threatening to rise far off on the horizon. I could not fathom why he had brought us there.
Oz threw a smug glance my way before replying.
“How do you think?”
“I will not fly up there with you.”
He laughed at my defiance.
“Good, because we’re taking the stairs.” He pulled two small metal implements out of his pocket and began fiddling with them in the lock of the door in the alleyway. He smiled mischievously once the heavy metal door swung open and gestured for me to enter. I did not oblige him. “Still with the trust issues, eh?” he asked, looking at me curiously. “Fair enough. I’ll go first.”
I followed behind him, up an eternally climbing staircase, until we finally reached our destination: the roof.
“Watch your step,” he warned, looking over the ledge. “It’s a long way down.”
“But if I could fly, that would remedy such a hazard in the future, would it not?” I baited, hoping it would lead to a discussion on how to force my wings to emerge and put an end to the worries of Drew, Kierson, and Sean. I was not so certain that Pierson or Casey cared about what end I met.
“I suppose it would.” He looked down at me with a condescending grin and said no more.
“So this is what you wanted to show me? The rooftop of an old art deco building?”
“Interesting,” he replied, drawing the word out dramatically. “Subterranean girl knows her architecture.”
align="justify">“I was not raised solely in the Underworld, Oz, nor was I without an education. Contrary to what you may believe, my father’s home is not devoid of books and other forms of teaching. And, more recently, in the past few decades I spent with Demeter, I occasionally was provided with a television, though I detested it. Books are far more companionable.” “You really are full of surprises tonight,” he muttered under his breath. “Tell me something then: If you are so educated on all things earthly, why do you seem so out of your element here?”
I shrugged ambivalently, uncertain of the answer.
“Facts are not reality. What I saw in pictures or read about in periodicals were facts. They had no context. No meaning. They were not experiences. One may see a photo of a 1920s building, but cannot appreciate the shadows it casts when the sun sets or the three-dimensional details that adorn it.” I looked to Oz for a sign of understanding in his expression but found none. Leaning against the concrete ledge, my gaze turned to admire the patinated eagle statue perched beside me. As I continued to explain, I ran my finger down the edge of its copper feathers, rubbing my fingers together lightly after pulling them away. “Take this bird, for instance. You know that its green shade is caused by the oxidation process that copper goes through when exposed to the elements, but you cannot feel its chalky texture or appreciate the minute changes in hue that give it its own identity—its unique fingerprint. Such things need to be experienced, not merely read of, for one to truly know them.” I paused for a moment, my eyes still fixed on the statue next to me. “I think I have much in common with this winged one. We have both spent a solitary lifetime observing things from afar.”
“Except you don’t have wings,” Oz countered. It seemed as though this was an attempt at playfulness. My sour expression illustrated his failure, and he tried a different line of observation. “And you weren’t alone. Not really. You were surrounded by all those souls.” His voice was softer than normal as he spoke, disbelief tainting his words.
I looked at him over my shoulder while my long hair danced wildly in the wind.
“You can be alone even when surrounded by others, Oz. Population does not inherently negate solitude.”
His brow furrowed.
“Surely you had those who you befriended over time?”
“Like you have my brothers?”
It was his turn to sour at my retort.
“Fine, but Hades cared for you. You said so yourself.”
“And he is the ruler of the Underworld, a job that requires almost constant attention. Do not misunderstand, Hades was good to me, but I was not the center of his world.”
“What about your time with Demeter?”
“What about it?” I volleyed his query back at him curtly. “In the beginning, our months were spent together, just her and I. She must have feared that others would find out about my existence. But later on, when she grew bitter and resentful toward me, she would leave me alone in my hidden home, only coming to see me on occasion. She rarely, if ever, spoke, and when she did it was never pleasant.”
“Is that why you never really speak of her, only of Hades?”
“I suppose, though I do not do it intentionally. I never truly considered my time spent with her in the woods to be time spent at home. She did not care for me like a mother. Hades, however, cared for me as a father would
, and my time in the Underworld felt right,” I explained. at apla/p>
“It shouldn’t have been that way,” he whispered, looking away from me to the city below.
“Yet it was,” I replied. I returned my focus to the buildings surrounding us. “Do you think it would have been different if I had been raised as a Light One?”
“Very.” His answer was abrupt but not unfeeling. Something about my past appeared to have reached a part of him that I had not known to exist. “Everything you just described to me is the antithesis of what heaven is.”
“It is strange to know that my true home is the extreme opposite of where I was raised. Do you think it would have impacted me so greatly that I would have turned out differently had I grown up there?”
“Who knows?” he replied, his jaw tight and eyes distant. “Better yet, who cares? You are who you are. It’s absurd to waste your time contemplating something that inherently can’t change.”
“Beings cannot change?”
“Oh, they can,” he scoffed, “but only when something prompts it. They do not change of their own volition, just because it’s the right thing to do. Change is always brought on by external circumstances, which, ninety percent of the time, are unsavory ones. Your mother knew a thing or two about those . . .”
“My mother—”
“Is something I refuse to get into right now,” he said sharply, interrupting my chance to learn more about her.
“Fine,” I replied tightly, hazarding a glance in his direction. “Then explain your assessment of change; you speak of it as though you have much experience with it.”
“In more ways than you could imagine,” he said harshly. “And for reasons you shouldn’t know.”
“You know far more than you let on, and I am not speaking only of my mother,” I observed, seeing his tight expression tense even further. “Age can be an enemy when the years are unkind. You are older than me, and I have seen much in my time. Your experience with the unsavory is surely extensive by now.”
His dark eyes narrowed at me before a smug grin further tainted his expression.
“I am unsavory, remember?”
“Nearly impossible to forget.” I let the words hang between us, creating a physical barrier. My response was curt, as it seemed to always be when addressing Oz. However, if my goal was to procure answers from him, that tactic was unlikely to work. It was time to employ a new strategy, just as my father would have. “I find it interesting that Sean was told my mother—”
“No!” he shouted, holding his hands up as though to deflect my unfinished query. “I’m serious. I’m not touching that one. You know nothing about her for a reason. And that is how it will stay.”
“But you knew her?” I pressed.
He eyed me incredulously.
“Of course. She was an angel.”
“A Light One or a Dark One?” I pressed, hoping to clarify what he had said earlier to Sean.
He shrugged in response.
It was my turn to give a dubious look.
“But your contention earlier was that she—”
“What part of ‘I’m not touching that one’ do you not understand?” he growled”tio. “Don’t think you can worm any shred of information out of me that I don’t want to freely give. And you can never take anything I say at face value; I specialize in mind fucking. Maybe just fucking in general.”
“So what you said to Sean about her was an attempt to anger him?” I continued, ignoring his threats while I stepped closer to him. He glared at me with a look of self-satisfaction. I had hoped to glean something helpful from his answer. My need to know more about my mother was ever increasing.
He shrugged ambivalently.
“Maybe. Or maybe it was true. What you don’t seem to understand is that I don’t give a shit. I do what I do because it pleases me. I get bored,” he replied smugly. “I like to be entertained.”
“And is that why we are here now, for your entertainment?” I countered, challenging his bravado. “If you were so bored and in need of entertainment, you should have let me stay in your room and fuck you. You may perceive me as cold and inept at many things, but, I can assure you, fornicating is not one of them.”
I watched his eyes widen momentarily. It amused me immensely.
“So very, very full of surprises, new girl,” he muttered under his breath while his lids hooded his eyes.
“Something you should remember.”
“Oh, I will,” he purred, still staring at me.
I broke his heavy gaze to look out over the city and the nearby river that wound its way around and through it, hoping to clear my mind and get our conversation back on track. He was unwilling to tell me about my mother; that was abundantly clear. What was not clear was whether or not he could resolve the issue regarding my Unborn status. I needed to determine that as quickly as possible and convince him to rectify it, providing he could.
No small feat, indeed.
“Tell me something, Oz,” I started, my voice as neutral as it normally was. “What are we to do about the fact that I remain Unborn? You said that my wings had not yet been birthed, implying that they will or can still be. How can we achieve this?”
“We?” he scoffed, his surly attitude flaring. “There is no ‘we,’ new girl.”
“Tell me something. Who cared for the Unborn before they became Light Ones?”
“I think that answer is rather obvious, is it not? They were mentored and cared for by appointed Light Ones.”
“Did the Light Ones not see them through their metamorphosis then? Could you not be the Light One to do the same for me?”
Again, he shrugged.
“You’re assuming a lot of things based on very little,” he started while he also looked out over the city as though the rooftops held the answers to my probing questions. “What I will tell you is that I am in no position to help.”
“Fine. I will let the others know,” I replied, accepting his response. Interrogating him further on the issue would yield no results. Of that I was certain.
“Do that,” he said gruffly. “Maybe they’ll listen to you. I’m pretty sure I’m on their shit list at the moment. Even more so than usual, if that’s even possible.”
“I am confident that it is.” He spared a sideways glance at me, but my expression was unreadable. The wry smile I felt attempting to break through my façade, however, would have made Kierson proud. “Tell me something, Oz. Are you going to share with me why you brought me here? Your request seemed so pertinent at the time, yet I fail to see I fell you iswhy. Why is this somewhere I needed to go?”
“You’ll see,” he said enigmatically.
All I saw was the slowly disappearing darkness that surrounded us and the lights of the city beneath us.
“What were you like before you fell?”
I saw him tense instantly at my words. The harsh planes of his face seemed even more angular.
“I was a totally different being once,” he replied, his gaze drifting off to the heavens. I had seen him do it earlier when we first arrived and wondered if he did it consciously or if it was some internal compass calling him home. I felt no such pull. “Now, I am a shell of what I was.” His attention dropped back to me as a lecherous grin distorted his face. “And I like this guy far more. He lives by his own rules. Does as he pleases. I’m bound to no one. True freedom—nothing is sweeter than that.”
When he spoke of freedom, his eyes were hypnotic, beckoning me to join him in his euphoria. Before my time in the city of Detroit, I had never known what it was like to be free, but I had never questioned the absence of this feeling. My existence just was. But having enjoyed the slightest taste of that freedom—and seeing the raw pleasure it gave Oz, who had chosen to live his life how he saw fit—made me ruminate over the possibilities. Perhaps his particular brand of freedom was exactly what I needed.
“And how does one procure this ‘true freedom’ that nothing is sweeter than?” I asked, standing to see the
light of the sun begin its ascent into the sky.
I felt him move in close beside me, the warmth of his body a welcome barrier to
the cold breeze blowing around us. His breath was soft on my ear, a breeze all its own.
“Simple,” he whispered softly. “You take it.”
My eyes closed involuntarily. I pictured a life without limits or boundaries or consequences. It was a seductive fantasy indeed.
When the heady feeling subsided, I opened my eyes to see the most glorious fiery glow cresting over the horizon. In that instant, I knew that was why he had brought me there—to remind me of my home. I looked over to him, struggling to understand how someone so self-indulgent could be capable of doing something so generous, but my question went unanswered. Instead, I found myself alone on the roof.
Oz was gone.
17
I surveyed my surroundings but saw nothing. It was only me and the statues of the eagles that adorned the roofline. Having no other reason to remain, I made my way to the exit and descended the numerous stairs before returning to the back alley where Oz and I had entered the building. When I turned to make my way back to the vehicle, I found Oz leaning casually against the brick façade of the building, smiling wildly.
“Took you a while.”
“I was not aware it was a race, nor that it had begun.”
“I think it’s time we get you home before the boys get good and riled up, don’t you?”
I stared in response.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he replied, turning his back on me to lead the way to his personal vehicle—a Jeep, he had called it. “And you’re welcome for the field trip. I’m not sure you’ll be getting out much now with the boys knowing what they know.”
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