It seemed like I should be panicking, but I felt this strange sense of relief. At least now I knew. No more worrying, no more fearing the worst. Because the worst was happening, and it left me exhausted and empty, like a scooped-out melon.
“Before you do anything, there’s something I need to tell you.” He gently pushed on my shoulders until I sat back down. It didn’t take long, because I wasn’t fighting. I needed to save my strength. “I promise it won’t take too long. But here. Drink this first.”
Michael handed me a glass of water, and only then did I realize how parched I was. I gulped it down and barely restrained myself from trying to lick the last few drops from the inside of the glass. My tongue probably wasn’t long enough for that anyway.
“I’ll get you some more,” he said, holding out a hand. I gave him the glass and watched him walk into the kitchen. His shoulders were broader than I remembered, but maybe that was because I’d been too busy staring at his butt.
I heard the low rumble of his voice from the kitchen and the laughing tones of my mother’s response. I waited for Mom to charge in and fuss a little, which kind of seemed warranted, given the situation, but it didn’t happen. The whole thing was beyond surreal. I rubbed my temples and tried to put it all together in a way that made sense, but I failed.
“Here,” Michael said, emerging from the kitchen with a glass of ice water that tinkled musically as he carried it to the couch.
I wanted to push it away and demand some freaking answers, but I was just so thirsty. So I downed the second glass without stopping for breath, and then gasped the words out.
“So, what do you have to tell me?”
“Ah.” He shrugged, looking over my shoulder at the wince-worthy painting of dogs in clown makeup that hung over the sofa. It was still a little singed in one corner from the time I’d tried to burn it. “Well, I didn’t exactly tell your mom what happened yesterday.”
I blinked. “So let me get this straight. You and Darcy brought me home unconscious, and I slept for about fifteen hours, and she thought that was normal?”
“No,” he said. “No one was here when we came in yesterday. I stayed here until your parents got home around midnight, and I came back this morning. Your mother doesn’t know how long you were out. I told her you fell asleep while we were watching a movie.”
“Why would you do that? Don’t you get it? I’m sick. It’s not something you fool around with.”
“You don’t have all the information, Casey,” he said, staring at his clasped hands. “There are some things I need to tell you.”
“Like what?”
“What happened to you yesterday has nothing to do with your health. It has to do with what happened when we touched. You know, the whole shock thing?”
“You’re certifiably insane.” And it figured. The first guy I’d been even remotely interested in since I’d been sick, and he turned out to be a total loon. “I was probably hallucinating. It’s not real. Look, I’ll prove it to you.”
I grabbed his hand. Nothing happened. No mysterious, semi-electrical current or anything else, except for the warmth of his skin. We locked eyes. His were wide and blue.
When it hit me, it was like a fireball.
The hair on my arms suddenly tingled with static, standing on end. A whip crack of electricity whirled through my torso; my face went immediately numb, all the soreness draining away. When I spoke, my voice vibrated, making me sound almost robotic. My lips felt like they were actually buzzing.
“You tell me what’s going on right now,” I said.
“Let go,” he said, and if his voice had been awesome before, now I felt it thrum through my body like I was listening to it on headphones with the bass turned way up.
“Casey, you need to let go,” he repeated.
“Not until you tell me,” I murmured. “Not until you promise.”
Now it didn’t even sound like my voice anymore. It was too far away; I blinked and found myself floating near the ceiling. It felt so natural that I didn’t even freak out when I looked down to see my body standing next to Michael. My arms were shaking uncontrollably; my skin glowed. Like, literally glowed.
He looked up and actually saw me floating, disembodied, in the air. Which was really freaky.
“Get back here,” he ordered.
He pulled my body close and mashed his lips to mine.
I felt a rush of vertigo so intense that I nearly threw up, but the warmth of his mouth quickly distracted me. I was back in my body now without quite understanding how it had happened, and the electricity was muted, like he was sucking it out of me. He kissed me insistently, and I pressed against him hard, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt.
His mouth tasted sweet, like he’d been rubbing his lips with oranges. As if the whole situation could possibly get any weirder than it already was. I couldn’t help myself; my tongue darted out to taste it, and the kiss slowed and deepened until we weren’t trying to devour each other anymore. His mouth opened against mine, and his hands slid up to my jaw and cradled my face.
It was amazing, until I realized he was only doing it to distract me. I pulled back and slapped him.
“Ow!” he exclaimed, putting his hand to his cheek and looking almost comically surprised. “What did you do that for?”
“You were … I was …” I couldn’t come up with anything to say that didn’t sound totally insane. So I latched on to the one thing that did. “You were trying to distract me.”
“No, I was kissing you. Unless that whole lip-contact thing means something completely different on whatever planet you’re from.”
My limbs were shaking pretty uncontrollably by this time, so I sat down and folded my arms.
“You were only kissing me because that was the best way to make me …” Return to my body? No sane person would say anything like that. “Shut up,” I finished lamely.
“That’s not the only reason,” he said, not meeting my eyes.
“Oh?” I flushed. “I mean, oh.”
“I was also kissing you to …” He made some vague gestures in the air above his head that may have referred to my out-of-body experience or may have been him trying to avoid saying anything else embarrassing. “Get your attention.”
“You’ve got it. I want to know what’s going on. Right now.”
He nodded, and of course Mom picked that moment to come in with a couple of strawberry smoothies and some sandwich-type thing. Any sandwich made by her was an adventure. Most of the combinations she came up with were so bad that they qualified as cruel and unusual punishment, but some were surprisingly good. When no one else was around to witness it, I sometimes ate my mother’s infamous pickle and mayo sandwiches.
“I thought you’d be hungry since you missed breakfast, honey.” Mom put the sandwich on the table and followed it up with the smoothies. “And I made your favorite smoothie. I thought you might like one too, Michael.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Kent,” he said.
She kissed me on the top of the head. “I’ve got to get going, sweetheart. We’re doing character-building exercises today. I mean, as long as you’re okay? You slept in pretty late.” She stopped, shifting uncertainly from foot to foot as if trying to decide where she was needed most.
“I’ll be fine, Mom,” I said, not really sure but knowing that if she was hovering, I’d never find out what the hell had just happened. “Your students will be pissed if you don’t show up to class.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” But she didn’t go. She stood there for another moment or two and then finally turned to Michael. “Are you going to be around for a while? My workshop is only a couple of hours. It would make me feel better to know she’s not alone.”
“Mom!” I protested. “I do not need a babysitter! Let alone one who’s a couple of years older than me, tops.”
“But I’m mature for my age,” Michael piped in helpfully, grinning like this was all really amusing.
“Humor me,” Mom said, all the dreamy ai
rheadedness gone from her voice. Now she was in stern-parent mode. It didn’t happen often, but there was no budging her when it did. “I’d feel more secure knowing you have company. Do you mind, Michael?”
“Not at all,” he said. “I like Casey.”
“Of course you do,” Mom said happily. “She’s the nicest girl in the world. I hope you’ll stay for dinner too?”
“I’d love to,” he told her, but he didn’t take his eyes off me.
She didn’t seem to notice that she was intruding on our staring contest. “Great. Well, cheerio!” Mom kissed the top of my head yet again and then bounced out.
Michael and I kept staring at each other until the door closed. When he wasn’t moving, he looked almost like a statue, with his too-perfect face and equally awe-inspiring physique. Not that I wanted him to kiss me again. In fact, I was concentrating very hard on not wanting to make out with him until he gave me some answers. It was more difficult than I would have liked to admit.
I opened my mouth to demand he start talking, but he spoke first. “Well, I guess I’d better just take the plunge.”
“What plunge? Will you please for the love of God start making sense?”
He started to sit down only to pop up again, looking more than a little agitated. “Casey, I haven’t told anyone this before, so I hope it will come out right.”
“All right …,” I said cautiously. “I’m listening.”
“Yeah.” He held his hands out to his sides. “I’m not exactly human.”
I didn’t have time to scoff before a pair of flaming wings burst from his back and lit the dog painting on fire.
I found it difficult to argue with the whole I’m-not-human thing when Michael’s blazing wings were immolating my living room. Something about those flickering wing-shaped flames convinced me. It’s hard to argue with burn holes.
“Oh, crap,” Michael said, glancing over his shoulder at the black circle of ash slowly growing on our wall. “I always forget how big they are.”
“Put those things away, or whatever it is you do with them.” I tore my eyes away from his wings and smothered the smoldering wall with a sofa cushion. “I don’t think our insurance policy covers magical fire wings.”
This time, I could almost feel the electric crackle in the air as the wings popped out of existence. Under different circumstances, I probably would have asked him to do it again, but I had other things to worry about. The cushion was burning now too.
“Damn it!” I snapped.
“What?” He was at my shoulder instantly, looking down at the pillow like it might decide to pop out some wings too.
“Um, in case you haven’t noticed, that wall is burning. And the ugly painting. And my pillow. Could you …” I gestured with my hands in front of my mouth. “You know, put it out?”
He only looked confused. “With my mouth?”
“Well, can’t you breathe on it or something?”
“Ah.” He shook his head. “I’m not Superman. If you have a fire extinguisher, I can get it for you, but that’s about all I can do in the putting-out-fires department.”
“Well, you’re no help,” I grumbled, taking the pillow to the kitchen. He followed.
“Not my fault. We don’t exactly have fires where I come from.” I glared at him, and he added belatedly, “Sorry.”
I flicked on the cold water and shoved the cushion underneath. The smell of wet, scorched polyester quickly filled the kitchen. Sadly, it smelled better than most of Mom’s cooking. It also set off the smoke detectors. We had three of them, all in one room. I didn’t get it either.
“Take the batteries out of those things before we go deaf, will you?” I asked.
“Gotcha.” He climbed up onto one of the breakfast-bar stools. Within seconds, the piercing noise stopped. “There you go.”
“You were talking about heaven, right?” My voice came out very calm, as if I weren’t having a conversation with an angel in the middle of my kitchen. I’d been in shock before, and I recognized the faraway feeling, as if everything were happening at a distance from which I could safely make wisecracks about it.
He blinked. “Heaven?”
“I was asking if you came from heaven. You said they don’t have fire there.”
He burst into laughter, and I threw the wet, charred pillow at him. Not hard; it barely grazed his stomach before splattering on the ground, spraying sooty water all over. But it definitely got his attention.
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t look it. His mouth kept turning up at the corners. “But the idea of me as an angel is pretty hilarious. I mean, look at me.”
“I am,” I muttered.
I looked again for good measure. He had a great mouth, and just thinking about that made me think of the lip-lock from earlier, and that made me flush redder than your average stop sign. He raised an eyebrow at me, and I decided it would be a good idea to do something else. Like maybe keep my house from burning.
I pulled out the biggest pitcher in our house, which was porcelain and shaped like William Shakespeare’s head. The sculptor hadn’t done a very good job; poor Will looked really constipated.
“What are you doing?” Michael asked, squinting at Will. “And does he need a laxative?”
“Shut up,” I said, but without any heat behind it. “I’m putting out your fire here. Either help me or get out of the way.”
I hurried back into the living room and hurled the water at the painting. The water splattered and hissed. And dripped. I didn’t even want to think about how I was going to clean all this up.
“I’m way too impatient for this,” Michael said.
He snatched the pitcher away from me so fast that my fingers stung. A mere second later, the kitchen door started ratcheting back and forth, almost tearing itself off its hinges. I heard the water running, heard it turning off, and then the water splashed onto the wall before I even had time to breathe. He repeated the process three times, moving so fast that all I could see was a blur.
Maybe he was lacking in the putting-out-fires-with-his-breath thing, but he had the super speed thing down pat.
When the wall was completely soaked and the couch dotted with random droplets, he stopped. The guy wasn’t even breathing heavily, which I found really aggravating, considering that I’d had a hard time making it up the stairs not so long ago. But nothing seemed to be burning anymore, so I guess I had that to be thankful for. It distracted me from the fact that I had a not-an-angel in my living room. Or maybe I’d just had a psychotic break.
“Better?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah,” I said faintly. “Much better.”
“Good. Can we talk now?”
“It’s preferable to burning down my house.”
“You’re taking this awfully well.” He cocked his head. “Or are you in shock?”
“I haven’t decided whether to believe you or not.” I took a deep breath and sat down on the floor, as far away from the soggy bits as possible. “And yeah, I’m in shock too.”
“Fair enough.” He took a long, deep breath. “I’m a Sentinel.”
He probably would have explained what that meant if his phone hadn’t gone off. Sensitive-guy guitar music filled the air, and it took me a moment to figure out it was his text alert. The deductive process was aided by his taking the phone out of his pocket and glancing at the screen.
“Oh, crap,” he said, not even glancing up from the screen as his fingers beat out a rapid return message. “I’m supposed to be at practice right now. Ruthanasia’s going to kill me.”
“Derby practice?”
“Yeah.”
A wave of regret passed through me. If I hadn’t fainted, or whatever it was that I’d done, I would have been able to go with him. Now I had bigger things to worry about, what with the out-of-body experience and the not-an-angel with the flaming wings, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t spare a moment to mourn my hope. I wasn’t going to be able to go back to the way things had been. In a way, the cancer
had killed me after all.
My complaint came out with less heat and more resignation. “Well, you can’t just leave. I deserve some answers. You can’t pop me out of my body, burn my house, and then run for the hills. That’s really uncool.”
His hands dropped to his sides as he shot an exasperated glance in my direction, like somehow the flaming wings had been my fault. I would have smacked him if I hadn’t been so desperate to figure out what was going on. My health and sanity had been compromised, and if the flaming-wing guy knew something about either topic, I wasn’t letting him get away from me until he spilled it.
“I have to go, Casey,” he said in a pleading tone. “I’m sorry; I know it’s really crappy to leave you hanging like this, but I’ll come right back after practice. We’ll talk.”
“Skip it.” I sounded—and felt—desperate. “Ruthanasia would probably love to be left in charge anyway, and this is important. You can’t just up and leave.”
He shifted from foot to foot, looking increasingly restless. I wanted to grab the guy and shake him. Honestly, if anyone had the right to be a little shifty-eyed, it was me. I was the one who had fainted. I was the one who’d had an out-of-body experience. My health hung in the balance. And he was all worried about a derby practice? If one of us was certifiable, I was beginning to suspect it wasn’t me.
“I have to go,” he said. “I made a commitment, and breaking commitments makes me …” He trailed off, shuddering.
“Great,” I muttered. “I got stuck with the OCD angel.”
“I’m not an angel!” He threw up his hands. “I told you that already!”
“Dude, you have flaming wings and your name is Michael. What am I supposed to think? It kind of screams ‘angel’ to me.”
He hung his head. “I did the flaming wings because I thought it would look impressive. And for your information, all the Sentinels in my pod were named Michael. I’m number six hundred ninety-two. We’re not exactly creative in the naming department.”
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