“So are you going to whip out lunch now? I have to say, my curiosity is killing me.”
He changed positions and sat cross-legged before responding. “Remember, I did not profess to be a culinary genius.” He smiled at me as he removed a brown paper bag from the basket. He placed the bag in his lap and reached into it, pulling out a plain sandwich wrapped in clear plastic.
“Here. Peanut butter and banana. With honey. My personal touch.”
“Wow, peanut butter sandwiches. You’re spoiling me.”
“Well, if you would prefer to do without…” he started to put the sandwich back in the bag.
“Give it here already,” I replied, grabbing the sandwich from his hand. I unwrapped it and bit into the chewy white bread. The peanut butter and banana were tastier than I’d expected.
I watched as Adam took out a second sandwich and unwrapped it, taking a large bite. He smiled at me as he chewed. I put my sandwich down on my lap and looked back at him.
“I still can’t believe you’re not human.” It was true. Yes, he was very tall and almost too thin, but there wasn’t anything about his appearance that said supernatural.
Adam placed his sandwich on his lap before wiping the corner of his mouth with his finger. “You assume that because I look like you that I am made like you. I am not. As the Creator’s children, we may be genetically compatible on some level, but my”—he struggled for the right word—“substance is altogether different from yours. I am sorry if that makes you uncomfortable.”
“Was the bit about your family real, or did you make it up for my benefit?”
“Poesy, whatever I tell you will always be the truth. Lying is not my way,” he said quietly.
“Do you miss them?” I asked, wishing for a moment of human connection.
“Sometimes, but my upbringing was not exactly normal, even for my own kind. My uncle Lucifer tried his best–”
“What?” I interrupted him.
“My uncle gave us the best life he could,” he replied, puzzled for a moment before it hit him. He stared at me, a frown forming. “Poesy–”
“OH MY GOD.”
I scrambled to my feet. My heart had stopped in my chest. I could feel the fear travel from my rib cage up into my throat as I started to back away from the blanket.
“Calm down,” he said, rising slowly, his hands out in front of him.
“This can’t be happening.” Where could I run? Why hadn’t I driven?
“Stop panicking. Would you please stop for just a second? It is not what you think,” he said in a low, placating tone.
“I may not go to church every Sunday, but I sure as hell know who Lucifer is!” I turned and bolted for the gate. It was useless to run, but primitive instinct overpowered any sense of reason. Adam was at the gate, blocking my exit, before I even took two steps toward my escape.
“Go sit down,” he commanded, no longer feeling nice, apparently. An unreadable expression passed over his face before he sighed. “Please? If you are still afraid after I explain, I will take you home.”
“Promise?” Not that I was in much of a position to bargain.
“Of course. Please, sit.”
I glanced over at our picnic under the tree and slowly walked back to where I’d been perched just minutes before. I kneeled on the blanket, crossing my arms. “Explain away.”
Adam sat back down on the blanket, his fingers steepled in front of his face. He didn’t look at me. “Lucifer Morningstar is not the devil or Satan or whatever words you want to use. Satan does not exist. Metaphysical evil does not exist. It is just biblical fabrication.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“For someone who has never read the Bible, you seem happy to defend it,” he replied, his voice hard.
“Well, you yourself said the Flood was real and angels slept with women and–”
He interrupted me. “Yes, you are correct, but Lucifer was not in charge of the rebel angels. My father was.” He looked away from me out toward the sea.
“Are you serious?”
“Unfortunately, yes. In fact, both my parents were involved in the plot to overthrow the Creator.”
“Why would your mother want your father to sleep with human women? And why do you keep saying Creator? Do you mean God?”
“You do not understand.” Adam paused to shake his head before staring at me. He rested his elbows on his crossed legs, his fingers fiddling with the plastic wrap from his sandwich. “My father did not sleep with any of the humans. He was the leader of the rebellion.”
He paused again, longer this time. “I was too young to know what was going on, really,” he said finally. “Lucifer did not fill me in on the details until I was much older. All I remember was my parents being taken away, and I got sent to live with Lucifer and his family.” His voice was hollow. “So Lucifer is not the evil creature he is painted out to be.”
“So Lucifer is Lucien’s father?”
He nodded. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to reach out and touch his hand, but it felt too awkward. “What happened to them? Your parents.”
“They are somewhere where they cannot cause any more harm,” he replied, looking down at the plastic wrap pinched between his fingers.
He had ignored my question about God on purpose, I could tell. Although I wanted to push further, I didn’t, and instead I finally reached out and covered his hand with my own, the buzzing immediate.
“I’m sorry.”
“It is fine.” Adam pulled his hand away from mine. “Things were put right, and my kind moved past the drama. There is not a lot more to say about it.”
I secretly disagreed with him on that part, but he had said all he was going to say on that subject, and I made a mental note to avoid making snap judgments in the future. It would be difficult to ignore thousands of years of religious dogma, but I had to try. After all, Adam didn’t look like your stereotypical angel.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“It depends,” he said cautiously. He crossed his arms again and looked at me.
“How can you move so fast?”
He seemed surprised. “It is not a question of being faster—or stronger, even. I can…” He paused before choosing his next words. “Let us just say I can manipulate probability.”
I groaned. “I’m not going to like this conversation very much, am I?”
“Probably not.” Adam gave me a glimmer of a smile. “But I will give you an example. It is like rolling a set of dice, Poesy. You could roll a six and a four or perhaps a three and one and so on. You do not know what you will get until the dice stop moving, right?”
“Uh, okay.”
“Now apply that to reality. There exist at any one time a large number of possibilities. Now you could say, ‘Well, what about the probability of something happening?’ Probability is not certainty. Probability still leaves chance.”
“Okay, Albert Einstein, you’ve lost me.”
He took a deep breath. “All right, take a real-life example, then. The other night, when you jumped off the roof. In all probability, you should have fallen and been hurt. But there was also the possibility that I could pull you back in time. That was only one of many possible outcomes. I am able to change an outcome up to a certain point.”
“So you can manipulate time and space?” I asked. All of a sudden, I had a rerun of Birdie’s Dr. Who in my head.
“No. I cannot create an outcome that does not already exist. And the more observers there are observing the outcome, the harder it is to change it,” he replied.
“What?” I asked, truly wishing I’d never brought up the question.
“Every potential bystander starts to close down realities. The more observers there are, the faster the collapse toward the one certain conclusion. So if there had been more people on the roof with us, it would have been harder for me to save you. Each one of their observations interferes with th
e final outcome.”
“Do I need to remember this? Am I going to be tested?” It was a feeble joke as I tried not to feel overwhelmed by what he’d just said.
“No, but you need to remember not to do anything foolish in a crowd of people. It was hard enough with those men in the alleyway, and even then I had to resolve the situation with sheer force in the end. I cannot necessarily save you.”
Although his response rankled, I bit back a reply. “So, can all angels do this thing, or only you?”
“It depends,” he said cautiously. “There are others of my race who can do what I do, but not other Watchers.”
“Why not?”
“It is not a Watcher’s place to interfere.”
“And yet you can and do change outcomes, by your own admission.”
He scowled at me, but said nothing. I had pushed the wrong button.
“What about the glowing?” I asked quickly, trying to put our conversation back on the right footing.
“You should not be able to see it.”
“Why not?”
“Most humans cannot see our haloes.”
“Did you just say ‘haloes’?” I asked, my mouth suddenly dry.
It was as if he could read my mind. Adam reached into the basket and pulled out two small cartons of milk, just like the ones I used to get in elementary school. He passed one to me before opening his and drinking from it.
“Yes.” He shrugged as if I had just asked him a mundane question about the weather. I looked at the carton of milk in my hand as the reality sunk in.
“How come I don’t see your halo all the time, then?”
“I do not know. Perhaps our bond strengthens the signal, so to speak.” The explanation seemed weak, and it didn’t make me feel any better that Adam was no more clued in than I was on the matter.
“So what now?”
“Well,” he started, “I thought you might want to go for a walk on the beach and then–”
“No. I mean, what now? You, me, this whole angel thing?”
“I do not understand.”
“You can’t expect me to just go back to being normal and stuff.”
“Poesy, that is exactly what I expect. It is forbidden knowledge. You cannot tell anyone,” he said warily. All of a sudden, he was on guard.
“But Birdie would love–”
“Especially not James. No one, Poesy. That is how it works.”
“So that’s it?” I asked, exasperated.
“I am sorry you are disappointed, but it has to be this way,” he replied, packing his trash away into the basket before rising from the blanket and stretching. He extended his hand to me.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it,” I said, arching my brows as I made a point of getting up without his help. I picked the crumbs off my jeans and sweater before brushing my hands together, never once looking at Adam. Turning my back to him, I headed toward the steps to the beach.
***
By dinnertime, we were back on the road, heading for home. I had hoped we would stay longer and talk more, but the waning sunlight chased us from the beach, and I didn’t want to hang out in the creepy mansion. Plus, the longer we stayed out, the more likely I’d have dog pee to greet me at home. There was only so much leg-crossing a dog could take.
When we arrived home, I was relieved to find my carpet dry and spotless. Daisy promptly scooted out the door past me and took off toward her favorite patch, not that I could see her well through the darkness. I allowed myself a moment to smile and relax. It’d been a good day.
“Do you want to come in?” I asked lazily.
Adam leaned up against the porch rail, the glow from my security light bouncing off the tips of his untidy hair. Even in the twilight, he was handsome. That somehow seemed unfair.
“I am afraid I cannot tonight,” he replied without further explanation.
I hadn’t expected that. After having him around for the last twenty-four hours, it didn’t seem possible he’d leave. I frowned.
“Poesy, I will see you soon, I promise.” It was short for “please don’t be sulky.”
“It’s fine.”
“Be good and stay put, for once,” he said with a small smile.
“Sure. I’m tired anyhow.” I yawned, suddenly overwhelmed by the whole day.
I let myself and Daisy in and gave him a halfhearted wave before closing the door. I didn’t even wait for him to back out of the driveway and instead dropped my bag on the sofa and rummaged around the freezer for my dinner. I was pleasantly surprised to find two slices of leftover pizza.
Unwrapping the pizza, I stuck it in the microwave. As I waited for the timer on the microwave to go off, I turned on the TV and pulled off my shoes. Thirty seconds later, the familiar ting of the timer chimed and dinner was ready. I was making my way over to the couch when there was a knock on my door.
So Adam decided to stay after all. I smiled to myself. Setting my pizza on the coffee table, I put on my best “I told you so” look as I opened the door.
Amanda stood six inches from the door frame. The warm brightness of the overhead light shone on her battered face. Her left eye was blackened and swollen to a small slit. A gash on her lip had bled, leaving a small crust of blood at the corner of her mouth. Her hair was pulled back from her face in an unkempt ponytail. She tried to hide her face from me by looking down, but it didn’t matter.
“My god,” was all I could think to say. I stood rooted to the spot.
Her shoulders shuddered, and she started to sob.
“Don’t cry.” I quickly stepped out onto the porch to wrap my arms around her. My embrace was awkward as I tried to accommodate her swollen belly. Her sobs came out harder, and I couldn’t hold back my own tears.
“Shhh. It’s going to be okay.” I rubbed her back as a tear slid down my cheek. “We’ll figure something out.”
Not that I was sure we would.
Not that I was sure of anything, these days.
10
I led Amanda over to the couch and gently sat her down. Tears still flowed down her face, but her sobbing had ceased. It was like a switch had been turned off. One moment she was sobbing harder than I’d ever seen, the next she was unnaturally quiet. It was starting to freak me out. She barely moved as I set up the coffeepot. It was going to be a long night.
I sat down next to her on the couch and rubbed her hand. It was clammy and cool to the touch. A small shudder shook her frame as I braced myself for another round of crying. She squeezed my hand tightly.
“I’m sorry for coming here,” she whispered.
“Don’t be.”
“No, I know I shouldn’t be here, especially after you tried to help me before and I didn’t listen. You were right.”
“About what?”
“About everything,” she said with a small, tortured laugh.
“Amanda–”
“This baby is a mistake, Poe,” she whispered.
“You know I’ll help you, and so will Haylee. But who’s the father, Amanda? Did he do this?” It had to be bad if she still wouldn’t tell.
“I can’t say. If I tell anyone, he says I’ll get worse than this.” She pointed to her blackened eye and bloodied lip.
“We’ve got to go to the police. He can’t beat you and get away with it!”
“No, I can’t, Poe. I don’t know what he’d do if I went to the police. I’m–”
“Scared.” I finished her sentence.
“Yes.” The word rushed out of Amanda’s mouth in an agonized breath.
I didn’t know what to say, so I called Haylee. Amanda had resisted at first, but I knew I needed Haylee there, too. She showed up almost immediately. Unfortunately, she didn’t have any better luck getting Amanda to cooperate than I did. Amanda’s fear was strong and unyielding. Haylee and I were at a loss—we wanted to protect her and keep her safe, but it would be nearly impossible without knowing what
was going on.
“I know you’re scared, but don’t let no man have this power over you,” Haylee said.
“Haylee’s right, Amanda. Don’t let him win. Talk to us. I don’t know what else we can do if you don’t let us in.” I untangled my hand from Amanda’s, running my other hand through my hair. I looked down at my cold coffee and wished it were a shot of vodka.
“Can I stay with one of you?” she asked, her voice a whisper.
“What?” asked Haylee, looking uncomfortable.
Amanda put on a brave face and turned toward me. “Please, Poe? I promise I’ll do my share around the trailer. I don’t have a lot of money, but I’ll help pay for stuff.”
“Amanda, are you sure you want to stay here? I mean…” My words trailed off.
“Poe, I don’t have anywhere else to go.” The tears were back in her eyes.
I was horrible and selfish. Amanda being here meant my time with Adam would be curtailed. When had I stooped to this level? I looked at Haylee, who had glanced away, preferring to stare at something on the wall above the kitchen table. I sighed. What kind of friends were we if we couldn’t put up with a little inconvenience in a crisis like this?
“You can stay here as long as you need to.”
“Thanks.” Amanda threw her arms around me. “I don’t know what else I would’ve done.” Her hardened belly brushed up against mine, and I was surprised by the force of the thump that erupted from her middle.
She looked as shocked as I did.
“Was that the baby?” I asked, startled. Haylee looked at me funny.
“I guess so,” Amanda said, her face pale and stricken.
“How’s that possible?”
“I don’t know.” Fear had crept into her voice.
I patted her hand and put on a brave smile.
“It’s okay. We’ll get through it,” I said, trying to bolster whatever courage I could lend her.
***
The next two weeks passed by in a blur of long shifts and semi-sleepless nights. On the one hand, having Amanda around wasn’t as bad as I had thought it would be. It’d been nice to come home to a tidy house and a home-cooked meal. Amanda was a whiz in the kitchen and put my own basic culinary skills to shame. On the other hand, the sleeping situation was a bit cramped. Initially, Amanda had insisted on sleeping on the couch. I couldn’t deny I was relieved to have my bed to myself—well, to myself and my sixty-pound dog. But the situation wasn’t sustainable.
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