It was my own desire that made me kiss him, but his response tingled and rushed through me like a spell. I was playing with something strong and tempestuous and I wanted to be consumed by it. My life. Me. I didn’t matter. This mattered. His hand gripped mine tightly as he leaned into me, and I thought my heart would explode in my chest. When his other hand moved gently up the side of my waist, it shook. It was time to stop. But, oh God, I didn’t want to.
Just a simple kiss goodbye, that’s all I wanted. I needed him to know it didn’t have to be overwhelming or scary. But this, this was incredible. Squeezing his arm below the shoulder, it took all my self-control to slow down. My kisses shortened and, as though we were a single person, he responded in kind. I pulled myself away, basking in the warm haze that had formed between us. His eyes flickered blue around his dilated pupils. Intense as it was, this was normal desire, not enthrallment. I felt it, and I knew he felt it too.
But his expression darkened with shame and the warm haze turned to static. What he said next struck a blow.
“I’m sorry, Mia. I can’t be with you. Not like this.”
There was a whooshing in my ears and a sinking in my chest, as though my world was falling apart. I blinked back tears. “What?”
“It’s too much.” He swallowed hard, shaking his head, and he seemed so far away. “I can’t…I just can’t.”
Chapter Sixteen
I cried until nightfall. Lying in bed with the lights on, I tried not to think about Michael, but I couldn’t forget the taste of his lips. Or that look of shame in his eyes. I wanted to focus on reading my Gov/Econ homework, hoping to bore myself to sleep, to escape how repulsive and terrible I felt. I thought he wanted me. I thought it was safe to open up to him. We were meant to be together. But he’d pushed me away, and I couldn’t help but wonder Now what? Was he going to avoid me again, just when he’d finally let me in?
There was a faint tap on the window. Arielle was outside.
“I saw you were awake.”
“I’m not sure I want to talk.” I opened the window anyway and she leapt through it with the grace of a lioness. A light rain had been falling and the drops sat in her hair like jewels, as though she’d been sprinkled with it, not drenched. Her long blazer and T-shirt were mostly dry. When she turned, I noticed vents in the back of her jacket, but I was too nervous to ask where her wings were. She was that intimidating.
She paced my room, taking in the full bookshelf in the corner, the old Ikea armchair, my white dresser and desk. Having her there, I was suddenly glad I kept my room tidy. If she noticed Michael’s jacket next to me on the bed, she didn’t say anything. It smelled like him, and I didn’t want to talk about how that comforted me. I didn’t even want to think about it, in case she could read my mind. After all, if I could hear the angels’ thoughts, it only made sense they could listen to mine. Does that mean Michael can hear me as well?
Suddenly the light around her, which I assumed was her halo, shone, a ring of golden flame. Behind her was the same blue outline I’d seen on Michael the night he fought Damiel. But on Arielle, the outline was even more pronounced, a gossamer grid of blue light extending from above her shoulders to below her knees.
“Wings!” I said a little too loudly then covered my mouth, hoping my mother didn’t hear.
“You can see them?” she asked as she paced the confines of my room.
“I thought they’d have feathers,” I said, trying to not look too amazed as her wings shimmered and glistened like jeweled light behind her.
“They’re cloaked right now. I bring them out when I’m flying or if I need to deliver a message. When people see the white feathered wings, they know you mean business.” She peered back over her shoulder at me. “But I don’t need to do that with you, do I? You know what I am.”
“No, I mean, yes. I know what you are,” I said, still intimidated by her.
“Most people can’t see them when they’re cloaked,” she added. I could tell she was making an effort to put me at ease. “Have you always seen things?”
I remembered Bill telling me how I saw angels as a kid, and then the hellhound a few weeks ago, the flickering lights around Michael. Yet there had been nothing for all the years in between. “Once when I was a kid, maybe, but I think it’s more of a recent thing.”
She stopped pacing and turned to face me. “Around the time you first saw Michael?”
“I saw the hellhound first.”
“Michael was near. Given your connection, I’m not surprised.” Tilting her head, she closed her eyes and smiled. The gesture made her look pensive, connected to another world. “Sight is a gift that God gives people when He wants them to see the truth.”
I wondered exactly what kind of truth I was supposed to be seeing, when her manner changed. She stood up a little straighter, became more formal, courteous.
“I came to see how you’re doing,” she said.
“Fine,” I said, though I was anything but.
“I’m sorry you feel hurt by what happened.”
Something about her apologizing brought up all my sadness again. Did she know Michael had dumped me? Did he tell her? I tucked the duvet around my legs, though I wasn’t cold, and fought back the urge to start crying all over again.
Not wanting to get into it with her, I changed the subject, remembering something she’d said earlier. “What’s a sponsor?”
She sat beside me on the bed, and the shimmering gold light from her halo washed over me like a spring breeze. “When Michael came back, he needed help to rejoin the ranks of the Grigori again, so I was assigned to help him.”
“How do you help him?”
“However he needs me to, which is a pretty big job description.” She smiled. “Michael has a very difficult journey ahead of him. Lust was his weakness and he just came back from…a type of limbo, essentially. He’s lucky he didn’t fall further. We’ve never had a Grigori come back before, so Michael’s an experiment, a prototype. He’s the first angel in a real human form.”
“Don’t you have one?” I wanted to ask her how far Michael fell, how bad things really were, because I didn’t know anything about that part, but something stopped me. What if he’d done something so terrible I could never forgive him?
“My form,” she said, motioning to herself, “is made of light. I can make it solid at will. Michael doesn’t have the strength for that. Having a human body is new to him, to all of us. It may give him a type of strength, but it may also backfire and become a weakness.”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
“You will. In time.”
As though remembering something, she looked at me intently, her golden eyes fierce and beautiful as a big cat’s. As her halo flared slightly, I heard the sound of white noise in my ear.
“Did you hear anything?” she asked.
“Just static,” I replied.
“You can’t hear my thoughts anymore, which is good.” She relaxed and her face softened. “You are better.”
“I knew I would be,” I said.
“Do you mind if I show you something?” she said. “I don’t know if it will work, but I’m curious and I thought it might be worth a try.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked nervously.
“Take you down our communications network and show you what Michael does.”
“Your what?”