I look up and see Valery and Max standing near the kitchen table. Righting Charlie on her feet, I take a couple of steps toward the redhead. Then I hook my thumbs under my new kickass red belt with the skull belt buckle. Said belt is supposed to take the edge off the fact that Rector stole my favorite kicks. It doesn’t quite work. “Your timing is perfect, Val,” I say. “Too late to be of any help.”
“Help with what?” she says, readiness overtaking her stance.
I jab my thumb toward the door. “Two guys. One staring up at Charlie’s window. The other claiming it’s just his nutcase bother.”
As Max watches, Valery races to the doorway and looks out. Then she glances back at me, her face creased with worry. “Did you sense a cuff?”
I steal a look at Charlie. She raises her eyebrow as if to imply she’s not alone in thinking I’m overreacting. “No,” I admit. “No cuff.”
Valery swings around and saunters back toward the kitchen. Max never takes his eyes off her. “We can’t afford to draw attention to ourselves right now, Dante.”
“There was a guy watching my girlfriend,” I say, spitting each word.
“Are you so surprised by that?” she asks, and for the first time, I feel a little like an idiot. Before, I wondered if maybe I was visiting Looney Town. Now it’s like I know I did.
“Still don’t want random dudes hanging around like dogs in heat,” I mumble.
“Something tells me you took care of it,” Red says, checking herself out in a nearby mirror. “Besides, you’ve got bigger things to think about. Like your assignment.”
“Come to strong-arm me, Red?”
“No, came to confirm you’re intoxicated again. Imagine my surprise,” she says in her typical slow, even way. “Must be strange with all that blood in your alcohol stream.”
I look to Max for back up, but he’s biting his lower lip and looking at Valery with such intensity that I wonder if he’s stroking out. “Max?” I say.
“Hmm?” he answers, eyes still on Valery.
“A little help?”
He finally manages to look at me. “Sorry, D-money. You’re on your own.” Max stands up and leaves the room.
I glance at Valery. “What’d you do him, Red? Threaten to withhold your parasitic love?”
She straightens. “When are you leaving for your assignment?”
“This again,” I say, sighing.
Valery sits down at the table. “I understand your reservations for leaving.”
“Do you?” I growl.
She looks me dead in the eye. “Yes, I do.”
As much as I tease Red about her relationship with Max, I do believe the two care about each other. So yeah, maybe she does get how I don’t want to leave Charlie. But what I don’t tell her is that there’s more than just leaving Charlie that makes me hesitate. Being a liberator—pretending to be someone who does good—doesn’t feel right. I’ve never been good, and I don’t play nice. So the idea of my being this person who saves people doesn’t fly.
Just thinking about it turns my stomach, though I can’t put my finger on why exactly.
I need a drink.
I head to Gram’s stash and pull out a bottle of dusty champagne. “Mimosas?”
Valery’s chest deflates, and for one moment, I feel guilty. I may pretend to hate Valery, but she helped save Charlie’s soul, and I’m grateful for that. But I can’t be who she’s asking me to be, so I pop the cork off the bottle and listen to the fizzle of the happy juice inside. Pouring myself a glass, I risk a glance at Charlie. She’s putting syrup and butter out on the counter and shoots a smile my way. I recoil seeing the faith in her eyes. A part of me feels like I’m just waiting for that faith to fade, like I’m testing it. But somehow, she never stops believing I’ll be the person she thinks I am.
If only I could be like her.
It’s easy to admire Charlie. But how she’s able to accept me so easily, so freely—that’s something I’ll never understand.
Max returns to the room. “Not that I was eavesdropping—okay, maybe I was, but Val’s right, D. You’ve got to do this assignment.”
I look at him, fight setting my muscles ablaze.
“You’ll be back before you know it,” he adds. “And really, what else can you do? If you don’t go, Big Guy will give you the slip.”
I glance from Max to Valery. She nods. I’d wanted to avoid this conversation, figured if I kept myself in a haze for the next few days, the topic would somehow disappear. But apparently this is an intervention, and I’ve got to get on a plane or pick out a cemetery plot.
“Who did you even get the assignment envelope from? I’m sure Big Guy handed it to you himself, right?” I say it mockingly, but I’m half hoping Valery says that she did get it from God himself. That he has that kind of interest in me. But even as I think this, I know I’m kidding myself.
“Kraven gave it to me,” she answers.
Pow! My interest is piqued. “Home boy with the white wings?”
She shrugs like it’s not a big deal, like we all haven’t been beating our brains as to how a liberator sprouted wings the night Blue died. Valery, Max, and I have spent many nights trying to figure out how to do the same thing, yet we’ve gotten nowhere. Our objective might be a lot easier if Valery would do what we’ve been asking her to do, which is to ask Kraven about how he summoned his wings.
I hang my head and groan, rubbing my temple with the hand that isn’t holding the champagne bottle. The answer on what to do about this assignment should be easy. I know it should. But it isn’t. When I look up, Charlie is standing before me. “Charlie?”
“Do what you think is right, and don’t worry about anything else,” she says.
I squeeze my eyes shut against the sound of her voice. It’s so sure, so soothing. I don’t want to be away from the sound of her voice. I don’t want to be away from her. Charlie is my happily ever after.
When I remember this, that this assignment is only a blip of time, and that it’s the only way to ensure we aren’t apart for the long haul, I know I have to go. I wanted to ignore my new placement as Big Guy’s soldier. I wanted to live my life as Dante, not as a liberator. Not as something I will never really be.
But for Charlie, I’ll pretend to be anything.
I squeeze the ivory horns in my pocket and pull in a long breath. “I’ll go,” I say. “But only if we have one hell of a send-off.”
Max pulls out his new phone, the one he hasn’t shut up about for the last six days, and pushes a few buttons. Pulsing music fills my ears, and I raise the bottle in the air. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
Max dances in place, Charlie hands me a plate of bacon and waffles, and Valery comes to stand beside me. She takes the champagne from my hand, holds it up even higher, and says above the music, “To Aspen.”
Then she puts the bottle to her lips and drinks.
4 
Connection
The day flew by in a blur.
Grams woke up a few minutes after our makeshift party started. She didn’t seem too upset, though. Just came downstairs, sat in her nearby oversized love seat, and nursed her water bottle. Of vodka. Max and I acted like morons and insisted Valery, who was now sober, chauffer us around in her Mercedes. We hung our heads out the window and howled at the afternoon sun, and later, the moon. Charlie sat between us as we cruised Peachville, Alabama, stopping here and there to complete dares, and capturing the idiocy with Max’s new phone. We also stopped at The Wireless Hut so Valery could buy herself a cell and, in a moment of coolness, buy Charlie and me phones, too. I would have done it myself, but I couldn’t since I was now cut off from my hell-issued AmEx Black Card.