Happily Ever Afterlives

by Olivia Waite

  Virginia was appalled. “That is your whole knowledge of paradise?” she demanded. “One half-glimpsed angel you wanted to fuck?”

  James flushed a slightly darker green and had the grace to look embarrassed. “I admit my past is as tarnished a litany as you are likely to find,” he said. “If I were to die at this instant, I’d be sent to Hell for certain.”

  The world was spinning on its axis so that the very ground beneath her feet felt unsteady and treacherous. She had wanted James to share her life, but not like this. Not if it meant his death and his damnation. As though her love for him had destroyed him in the most profound way. “What are we going to do?” she whispered.

  He rose and crossed the room to wrap his arms around her. She sank into the warmth of him, though she knew it could only be a temporary respite. “I suppose,” he said in a thoughtful tone, “that I could join a monastery in some hermit-like place, praying and repenting until my sins were all washed clean.”

  “You’d hate the wardrobe,” she replied, “among other things.”

  He laughed, a low rumble beneath her hands and her cheek. Virginia thought briefly and said, “We can’t go on as we have been, James. Not if you have a soul, if you are becoming something more like a mortal.” She took a deep, steadying breath. “A monastery is a bit much, but you can’t hide away here anymore either.”

  “Why not?” James countered. “In this room we can work on erasing my past sins without the fear that I’ll create new ones. It seems quite logical.”

  “No, it isn’t.” Virginia broke the embrace and stepped away. James reached for her and she took another step back. His hands fell to his sides and he looked at her in something like shock.

  Virginia continued, hoping against hope that she could make him understand. She hated to hurt him, but she knew deep in her bones that she was trying to do the right thing, even if it was hard to put her thoughts into words. “A full human life cannot be lived inside this one room,” she said.

  James’ voice was rough and raw when he answered. “It can if you are here with me.”

  Oh, how she ached to respond to that plea! Instead, she ruthlessly plunged onward. “But if I stayed here with you forever, if I locked myself away from the world, I would not be entirely myself anymore, James. I have family and friends who care about me, and whose lives are entangled with mine.” She shook her head. “It would be the worst sort of sin, to hide both our souls in the darkness as though the daylight world were nothing.”

  “You think what we’ve been doing all these nights is a sin?” James returned, his surprise turning to anger. “That this is some form of corruption, that I am some sort of monster?” His green-skinned wings unfurled behind him and his tail lashed at the night beyond the space the candles illuminated.

  Virginia stood her ground. “I wasn’t afraid of you before,” she reminded him, “and I have much less reason to fear you now.”

  He stalked forward, curving the breadth of his wings around her and blocking out the light. In that sheltered darkness his voice was everywhere, with her own rapid breath a whispering counterpoint. “It’s true that I offered you sin once,” he said. “But you demanded something more from me, a pleasure that was pure and honest and true. It’s been that way between us ever since.” She felt his fingers trail the side of her cheek, the curve of her jaw, and it was all she could do not to melt beneath the caress. “I loved you the moment I touched you,” he said. “You are everything to me now.”

  Her throat burned with tears she would not shed, not until this was over. “But there is so much more in this world—in human life—than simply me,” she said. It was easier to speak now that darkness shrouded them both. “You had no need of the mortal world when you were an incubus. But now that you have a soul—how can I keep you here, trapped in half a life?”

  She felt the air stir as his winged shoulders lifted in a shrug. “It’s more than I had before,” he said.

  “But it’s less than you deserve.” She reached out in the velvet blackness and placed one hand above his heart. It beat raggedly beneath the gentle pressure of her palm. “I need you everywhere, in all parts of my life,” she said. “Not only in my heart and my bed.”

  James’ wings and tail vanished abruptly and left Virginia blinking as the light flooded back into her eyes. “And if I follow every possible rule of human behavior,” he said, “what then? Will it change what I am underneath?” He began pulling on clothes haphazardly, jamming his feet into the trousers and yanking the shirt over his head without bothering to do up any buttons, laces or ties.

  “Be careful with those,” cautioned Virginia.

  James pivoted and brandished the length of the untied cravat. “Because the clothes are important, aren’t they? These human fabrics and coverings, so fragile, so easily spoiled. A single glass of wine could ruin all of it.” He gripped the waist of the trousers to hold them in place and gestured wildly at his own dishabille. “Is this what really matters most to you?”

  “Are you being deliberately obtuse?” Virginia demanded. “Of course clothes don’t matter most—but they aren’t nothing, either.” She picked up the waistcoat and flung it at his head. James caught it, but without his hands to hold them his trousers slid down around his ankles, leaving him incongruously bare from shin to stomach. The ridiculousness only stoked Virginia’s anger. “Every morning, in any city or country you can name, people wake up and put on clothing—whether it’s a coat or a gown or an Eastern sari. Then they go about the business of their day. To wear clothes is a fundamentally human activity—it marks you as a participant in the world.” She took a deep, steadying breath. “And if you cannot participate in the world, then you cannot truly live.”

  James’ face was stark with anger. “I may have a soul,” he growled, “but that does not make me completely human. I still have a demon’s appetites and inclinations, an incubus’s penchant to sin. Your world would destroy me, Virginia—sooner or later.”

  “But my world can redeem you as well,” said Virginia.

  He went on as though she hadn’t spoken. “Do you know what my life was like before I met you? Slipping into the dreams of women, taking on the faces I found there, fitting myself within the limits of someone else’s fantasies. I have been more myself in this room than in all the long centuries before.” He flung the waistcoat violently aside, buttons making a sharp crack against first the wall then the floor. “And now you ask me to set that aside as if it were nothing to me? When all I can ever be outside this room is a fraud and a trickster?”

  “You’ve changed, James,” she said, her voice rough with unshed tears. “You might not be human, but you’re not a demon anymore either. We can’t ignore that.”

  “I can—and happily.” He stepped out of the trousers and kicked them aside. The cravat was next to hit the floor—then James slowly, deliberately reached up and put his hands to the gaping neck of the shirt, the only garment remaining on his nearly naked body .

  Virginia narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you dare,” she said.

  James pulled—hard—and the linen shirt tore down the front with a sound like a scream.

  That noise scraped every raw nerve in her already wounded heart. “Get out!” she cried.

  Defiant and furious, he shed the ruined shirt and stalked to the window. Virginia counted two heartbeats while he opened it and another two while he perched on the window frame.

  Between that beat and the next, he was gone.

  Virginia unfroze and ran to the window, but he had already vanished out of sight. Furious—with him or with herself, she couldn’t say—she grabbed both tall boots and hurled them to the moonlit lawn far below. Then she burnt each item of discarded clothing, piece by piece.

  Eventually, dawn broke. Virginia’s heart broke with it, as morning light trailed delicate fingers over the tumbled sheets and limned the gray ash of the dying fire.

  Chapter Five

  Over the course of the next fortnight, Virginia drank
sixteen cups of chocolate, seven glasses of pale golden wine, four glasses of dark red wine and no fewer than thirty-three cups of strong black tea. The world narrowed to fit the span of whatever circle of porcelain or glass she held between her careful, still hands. She smiled at the right times and made sympathetic noises when those were appropriate, but on the whole she felt unmoored from the world and her own experience of it. Moment by moment, step by step, she began the piecemeal journey of a lonely, loveless life.

  Occasionally she would nourish a brief resurrection of hope—when the flutter of wings sounded outside her window during the night, or a man’s green coat sleeve appeared briefly through a jostling London crowd. But it always turned out to be nothing.

  There came one moment in a long, soundless night where she brought herself to a quiet climax, thinking this would soothe the worst of the restlessness and allow her to sleep comfortably for at least one entire night. But while she could bring herself pleasure, she could not be a second, warmer body in her own bed, or a second heartbeat to fill the midnight silence.

  Even the invitation to the Lambourne’s ball only caused a momentary respite from gloom.

  The early morning’s hard rain had given Virginia cause to hope that they might stay home out of the wet, but luck was against her. By nightfall the skies had cleared and the mud lay dry and cracked between the cobbles. Virginia accepted the coachman’s help stepping out of the carriage in a pale gray gown and silver slippers, then saw that the street was swarming with demons.

  Her mother put a gentle hand on her arm. “We can always go home, dear, if you’re feeling unwell,” she said. Colonel Greening nodded in agreement.

  Virginia looked at the demons, large and small, curling in great agitation around the torchlit street but not daring to approach the threshold of Idared’s dwelling. Lambourne’s promise of a demon-free event seemed quite fulfilled—but while two weeks ago that prospect had delighted her, tonight the idea that she would be surrounded entirely by her fellow humans seemed...

  Restrictive.

  It would be pleasant, for a few minutes, to talk about the latest small scandal or social maneuvers among the diamonds and darlings of the ton. It would be a comfort to know that everyone in the room was visible to everyone else. There might even be a quiet man with a soft smile, who would be pleased enough with her to pursue the flirtation. But over the past month Virginia had acquired a taste for speaking her mind rather than watching her words, for offering and receiving a more robust intimacy of mind and body than was considered proper for a lady of her age and station. There were now parts of Virginia Greening that did not straightforwardly align with the meticulous forms of social geometry.

  There was so much more to life than the ton offered, she realized. She’d been born in the heart of a vast, teeming city, but despite its grandeur London was only a pip in the orange of the world.

  It seemed James wasn’t the only one who’d changed in the past month. Suddenly she was possessed by an itch for travel, a desire to map unmapped places and to mingle with more types of humanity than even London could offer. If she was going to feel lonely and out of place, she might as well do so in Paris or Rome or Istanbul.

  “Virginia?” her mother said, worry lacing each syllable.

  Virginia smiled at her parents. “I’m quite all right,” she promised them. “Just a little thoughtful.”

  She led the way across the supernaturally crowded street, grimly pleased to see the demons scatter before her in fear. Lambourne and Idared were stationed before the ballroom’s double doors, greeting new arrivals.

  Virginia smiled more sincerely. Here at least were two people who could understand her.

  A susurration of interest arose when people noticed that Lambourne’s former fiancée was curtseying to him and his bride. Virginia let the whispers fall around her like leaves, weightless and fragile. “Good evening,” she said to her friends.

  “Good evening, Miss Greening,” said Idared and presented her cheek to be kissed. Lambourne greeted both Virginia and her parents with evident warmth. The whispering crowd, cheated of a scandal, turned its attention elsewhere.

  Once inside the ballroom, Virginia was shocked by how different a social event looked without demons. Everyone was roughly the same size and had approximately the same skin color. The demure pastels of debutantes’ gowns and the evening-colored coats of gentlemen added to the impression that the scene was unnaturally leached of color, like an old pencil sketch exposed too long to sunlight.

  Colonel Greening meandered toward the inevitable card tables in an ancillary room. Miss Lakeland spotted Virginia and her mother and approached, clad in a dress of pale gold that complemented her blonde prettiness. “Miss Greening!” she said eagerly. “Have you met him yet?”

  “Met who?” Virginia asked.

  Mrs. Greening clucked in annoyance. “Lady Lambourne’s cousin, of course! I’ve been telling you about him all week, Virginia.”

  “Cousin?” Virginia asked. “Idared?”

  “Everyone’s been talking about him,” Miss Lakeland said in low, provoking tones.

  “Shh!” her mother said with an urgent flutter of her fan. “She’s coming this way!”

  And indeed Idared was walking toward them with a mischievous smile. Following slightly behind her was a tall gentleman, dark of hair and green of skin—

  A tall, green-skinned gentleman—

  Virginia felt the world spin around on its axis.

  It was James, impeccable in a deep blue coat and cream trousers. Every button was buttoned, his coat was tailored to within an inch of its life, the cravat was a frothy fountain at his throat and a gold watch chain glittered against the stripes of his waistcoat. She glanced at his ankles and noted that he’d got the silk stockings he wanted after all. Even his shoes were faultless, shined to a mirror-bright finish.

  “May I present my cousin, Mr. James Grieve?” Idared said. The incubus bowed quite politely to Miss Lakeland and Virginia’s mother while Idared completed the introductions. “And of course, their daughter, Miss Greening.”

  James turned to her and smiled—just this side of proper, that smile, his sensual nature irrepressible despite all that starch and tailoring. Just like the very first time he’d smiled at her, across a ballroom very much like this one.

  Except that then they’d been ignored—and now absolutely everybody was watching.

  Virginia swallowed hard and managed a curtsey.

  “Miss Greening,” said James with another bow. He rose and, when she still could find nothing to say, he tugged absently at one cuff—and she realized that two weeks might not be quite enough time to make an incubus entirely comfortable in eveningwear.

  Yet here he was, starched and pressed and shining.

  In some other world there was a Virginia Greening who would throw her arms around James and beg his forgiveness in front of God and her mother and anyone else who cared to see how much she loved him and how deeply she’d regretted their argument.

  In this world, Virginia Greening merely held out her hand and said, “How do you do, Mr. Grieve?”

  He brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “A little nervous, Miss Greening,” he replied.

  She smiled at him, a conspirator’s grin. “Never admit it, sir,” she said.

  “Shouldn’t I?” he asked.

  “It’s far too charming a thing to do. All the young ladies will be quite disarmed and vulnerable to your blandishments.”

  His smile grew and he took a step closer. “You are an excellent guide, Miss Greening. Tell me, what particular blandishments might you be vulnerable to?” His hand, still holding hers, raised it to his lips a second time.

  Mrs. Greening cleared her throat, with more than necessary phlegm.

  The flirtatious spell was broken, leaving only a sharp silence in its wake. Miss Lakeland openly goggled. James dropped his hand and blushed again—Virginia was half amused, half astonished. Her mother had made an incubus blush!

 
; Idared attempted to smooth over the awkwardness. “My cousin has only lately moved to London,” she said. Virginia could all but see her mother narrow her eyes at James and inscribe the word foreign over him as an explanatory label. “They’ve offered him a post at the Museum and he has quite wisely accepted it.”

  “I have some knowledge of antiquities that they hope to find useful,” James explained.

  Mrs. Greening angled forward. “Are you an Egyptologist, then?” she said, reluctant interest sparking in her eyes. “My husband is quite the amateur of such things.”

  “My expertise is mostly Roman,” James said, “though I have studied a little in the Ptolemaic line.”

  Virginia had a sudden vivid flash of heat and sand and dampened linen. James’ eyes met hers and from the teasing look in them she knew it was a memory of his, from some long-ago liaison. She gave him a quelling glance.

  “We shall have you to dinner some night,” said Mrs. Greening, with an amiable smile and a considering eye on her daughter. “I’m sure you and my husband will have much to discuss.”

  “You are very kind, ma’am,” said James and turned back to Virginia. “And I hope, Miss Greening, that I might claim the honor of a dance?”

  Her mother turned cat-canaryish at this and Miss Lakeland’s smile was sly. Virginia hesitated—she knew further temptations would come if she touched him and she did not entirely trust herself to retain every fragment of her self-control, even before so avid an audience. They had already skirted perilously close to the verge of impropriety.

  But then, two weeks without him had felt like eternity—she was simply not strong enough to resist the opportunity to feel his hands on her again. “Of course,” Virginia managed to say. James offered his arm, she took it and together they walked toward the space reserved for dancing.

  It was unsettling and strange to feel her hands on him through layers of shifting wool and linen and the kidskin of her gloves. She was seized with the urge to slide her finger beneath the edge of his coat sleeve, just to get that much closer to his skin. But that would cause comment and scandal and brand them both for years to come. The room seemed suddenly crowded with eyes and whispers and the fluttering motion of fans.