“What is it?”
“My halo.”
“All the way around your body?” I asked, thinking of those old paintings of angels with their golden rings of light. They didn’t even come close to what a real halo was.
“It used to go much further.”
“I saw you that day I went to the hospital,” I said, recalling the girl who’d been stabbed. “Then you were gone.”
He leaned his elbows on the railing. “We’re often invisible when we’re working, but you’ve always seen me.”
“And with Fiona?”
He shrugged. “Going to the dentist freaks her out, and she’s not the best driver when she’s distracted.”
I smiled at that. Fiona was always getting caught up in the conversation, forgetting to look at the road, and she did have an appointment that day. He was trying to calm her down so she wouldn’t have an accident along the way.
“Angels do that?”
“She’s your friend,” he said.
He closed his eyes again, and his halo flared and hummed around him. Stiffening, Michael said, “We should go.”
“What is it?”
“I’m on duty tonight.”
“On duty? What does that mean?”
He led us down the boardwalk. “The Grigori still watch over people, keep things safe.”
“Safe from what?” I swallowed nervously.
“Things you shouldn’t know about.”
“I’m not a child, Michael,” I snapped.
My reaction rolled off him. “I never said you were.”
We turned down the street that his car was on, and I recalled that first day I’d seen him in the park. And the pieces started to come together. “That shadowy dog—you saw it, didn’t you?”
He gave me a wary look.
“I asked and you… You let me think I was crazy!”
“I was trying to protect you. You’re not supposed to see these things. They sense fear; they live on it. The more afraid you are, the more they can materialize. They’ll drain your life force until you pass out.”
“That old man! Is that what happened?”
He nodded. “After that, you’re just meat.”
“It was going to eat him?” Bile rose to my throat over the thought of being eaten alive, but I fought it back. “What the hell was it?”
“A hellhound,” he muttered. “Scouts. Damiel sent several of them to find you.”
“He did?” I shuddered at the idea of Damiel looking for me. “You were watching me even then?”
“I only knew there was danger. I didn’t know I would see you.”
Approaching his car, he clicked the remote and the doors unlocked. Within seconds, he was opening my door.
“What about that day I sprained my ankle?” I asked.
“Then too.”
Partway through the ride home, my mind overloaded itself and shut off, and an easy silence grew between us. Though sometimes obscured by passing streetlamps, the light around Michael still glowed. His halo burned beside me, brushing and tingling my skin.
“You’ve been through a lot tonight,” he said. “You ought to sleep. It’ll help you process.”
His sweatshirt draped open at the neck, exposing the edges of his collarbones and the dip in his throat where they met. Despite everything I’d been through, all I could think about was planting kisses there. Clearly, sleep was the last thing on my mind.
Catching my gaze, his face became shadowed. “Arielle said we should keep an eye on you.”
“Arielle?” I asked. At the mention of her name, I had a twinge of envy.
“Sure. We work together.”
So Arielle was a Grigori too. That explained a lot: her otherworldly beauty, the flickering lights that day in the café, and even the way the shadows—hellhounds—disappeared. “She’s not your girlfriend?”
“No,” he said, scrunching his nose. “It’s not like that.”
A knot in my chest relaxed. It had formed the moment I first saw them together at the movie theatre, but I’d become so used to the feeling I’d forgotten it was there.
Next thing I knew he was outside the car, opening my door. As I got out, I accidentally brushed his arm, and the draw to be near him was so strong I had to lean back against the metal to steady myself. Then, as if in answer to a silent prayer, he wrapped his arms around me and closed the distance between us.
Pressing his lips to the crown of my head, he breathed the words “I missed you” into my hair, softly, as though it were a secret that only I was meant to hear. Then, letting his arms drop, he stepped away.
All the lights were on when I got in the door and the house smelled of pine cleaner. Mom scrubbed the kitchen counter with the TV on, trying not to look like she was waiting up for me. From the looks of it, she’d cleaned the whole house.
She greeted me cheerfully, focused on removing a spot from the counter. “Did you have fun?”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to be understated. She seemed different to me now, still my mom, and yet not the same. Perhaps I was the one who had changed.
Realizing I was still wearing Michael’s jacket, I hung it up in the hall closet before she could notice.
“He likes you,” she commented.
“Mom,” I said. “So not ready to talk about it.” And I didn’t just mean my date. The things Michael told me—that I remembered—shook me. I’d lived another lifetime before.
Mom didn’t let up. “There’s something really good about him.”
I stifled a wry smile. “Angelic, even?” If she only knew!
“No, honey. Men are never angels,” she said sagely. “Besides, it’s the devil in them that we love.”
Before she could ask any more questions, I kissed her goodnight and went to my room just so I could be alone. I doubted I’d be able to sleep. Every idea I had about my world was being challenged. Demons were real and came here to hurt people. The strange creature that chased me that morning in the park was a hellhound, and Damiel—who was a demon—had sent it to find me. Michael was a Grigori—an angel—albeit in rehab, and I’d shared a life with him thousands of years ago.
As soon as I closed my eyes, memories of the night flooded my mind with dizzying speed: Damiel at my door surrounded by black sooty shadows, Michael fighting him with the blue sword in his hand. I wanted to know more about the past, who I was back then, what had happened to me. To us. Had I lived other lifetimes since? But no matter how hard I tried, my present-day memories wouldn’t give way.
An hour later I lay in bed still awake, shivering. It wasn’t from the cold, because I’d already cranked the heat up and covered myself with every blanket in the house. The only thing that helped was thinking about Michael. I remembered the warmth of his arms around me as he hugged me goodbye, and a flush of restlessness flowed through me.
With Mom now in bed, the house was quiet and still. I crept out of my room to the hall closet and retrieved his jacket. I got back into bed and laid it beside me, enjoying the comfort of its smell. This time when I closed my eyes, I remembered the feel of his arms around me, the sound of his beating heart, and with these memories I relaxed easily into a deep sleep.
***
I awoke well-rested. Sunlight streamed through my bedroom curtains, filling my room with a peaceful, warm glow. My phone was crammed with text messages from both Heather and Fiona, asking how my date went. I replied with a quick Good—I’ll tell you later which must have had them thinking Damiel was still around. But I couldn’t explain his disappearance, or even the fact that he was a demon. When I got out of bed, Mom had already made a pancake breakfast, so we ate together in front of the TV. Mercifully, she was focused on getting ready for a mid-shift at the hospital and didn’t ask about my date.
Shortly after she left for work, Bill called my cell.
“Hey,” he said. “Everything okay?”