Chapter 2
ANGEL
I’d barely shut the office door behind me before Rob Zombie’s “Living Dead Girl” had it rattling in its frame. I shrugged out of my jacket and dropped it onto the leather two-seater, then collapsed into the desk chair. Jack’s incompetence was always exhausting, but I would need to rally; at midafternoon, my day was just beginning. Ah, the life of a bar owner.
After over a decade, I’d grown accustomed to not speaking. I’d also become increasingly frustrated with myself. I could heal an injury with a wave of my hand, but there was nothing physically wrong with my vocal cords, and my supernatural powers wouldn’t heal scars of the mind. Ripping away my ability to speak was the hardest thing I’d ever had to adjust to, and that was saying a lot: I’d lost my mortality all those years ago, after all. Being a teenager was difficult enough; being a freak was even harder.
With a sigh, I grabbed my phone. Only two things comforted me when I was drowning in my emotions, and the other one was currently checking IDs at the door. He’d come running if I asked him to, but I couldn’t do that to him. Not every time.
Luckily, there was a notification on my phone that had me grinning like a fool. My boyfriend, Elijah, never failed me when Raleigh was busy. Despite his hectic schedule as a surgical resident, I always had a text waiting before a shift.
Elijah and I met in college, back when he was Raleigh’s roommate. He’d always been kind to me and never questioned why I couldn’t talk. He’d been studying ASL on his own, picking up more over the years. One night, when I had to drag the big guy home after he’d had too much to drink, Eli invited me to stay because “he’d made too much food.” Only later did I discover that he’d done so on purpose.
We hit it off that night and hadn’t looked back. When Raleigh and I moved to Nevada after college, Eli landed a residency nearby. The only reason we hadn’t moved in together was our very different schedules.
In the privacy of the office, I let the goofy grin take over, and I replied to his text. The tension melted from my body. I finally felt comfortable enough to fire up the computer.
From the day we opened the bar, Raleigh and I had an agreement: I was the brains, he was the brawn. That wasn’t to say he wasn’t smart or that I wasn’t physically capable; I worked out nearly as often as he did, and though he could be a bit ditzy at times, Raleigh was smart as a whip. But being a bouncer was more than looking the part, and Raleigh had the voice to match.
Me? I was more than happy to hide in the office until I was needed. I had a calmer head than Raleigh and could focus on the important spreadsheets without losing my patience. In fact, they were oddly calming. I could pass hours organizing the spirit deliveries. If that Tanqueray rep kept playing games, I might have to find a word to say to her. I had a four-letter one picked out for her already.
I was halfway through a scary story podcast, three spreadsheets deep, when my skin started to crawl—something was wrong. I removed my headphones to listen. The bar’s overhead music cut, and I heard the sound of furniture scraping. What the hell? Raleigh loved to blare his music, so that couldn’t be a good sign. I got up from my chair to investigate the source.
I nearly had to squint when I walked into the bar. All the lights were on, bathing the interior in bright white light. I instinctively turned to my nearest employee, but it was Jack—he simply gave an “I’m clueless” shrug, which was his usual response to these things.
In the corner, Raleigh was shouldering one guy to the wall while holding another back with a single, tattooed hand. The veins popping along his arms distracted me from the intensity of the situation, but seriously; that man’s strength never ceased to amaze me.
I leaned against the bar, waiting to see how this would play out. It wasn’t until Raleigh whipped his head around that I noticed blood dripping from his right eyebrow, dark red framing the deep, ocean blue of his eyes. Every sense in my body heightened, my skin tingled. He must’ve seen me move because he gave the slightest shake of his head. He didn’t have to tell me twice.
“Out!” he thundered, sending a shiver racing down my spine. “Both of you, now !” Raleigh grabbed a fistful of Wall Guy’s shirt in one hand, and with his other gripped the second patron’s shoulder in an iron grasp. One mighty heave later, Raleigh all but threw them both out of the bar.
He made a beeline for me. “Can you keep an eye on things while I clean up?”
I nodded and took up position behind the bar. Jack scrambled to get the music going again as Raleigh disappeared down the hallway. A moment later, I winced as Korn continued their assault on my ears.
Watching the bar alone made me anxious. If another problem arose, I couldn’t exactly shout to stop it.
I turned my attention to Jack, watching him move effortlessly between customers. I had to hand it to the kid—the customers loved him. I watched as he snatched two bottles of alcohol off the top shelf and flipped them before easing into a steady pour. It disappeared into a shaker with ice and juice before he slammed the lid on.
I was so entranced that I flinched when a heavy hand landed on my shoulder.
“Relax. It’s me.” Raleigh’s voice hit my ears and I unclenched my jaw. I looked up at him, my eyes finding the cut beside his eyebrow piercing. My powers simmered beneath my skin, itching to reach out and heal the small injury.
But I shouldn’t.
“Are you all right?” I signed instead. I wasn’t always sure how he saw my hands in the dim bar, but he rarely asked me to repeat myself.
“I’m fine,” he said. “You can’t put this much metal in your body without a little blood every now and then.”
I chuckled. Every part of Raleigh’s face had some piercing sticking through it. When he’d run out of room in his ears, he turned to his eyebrows, nose, lips, and tongue. The tiny diamonds on the tips of the jewelry sparkled when he moved, and it was mesmerizing .
“Thank you for handling that.”
He shrugged. “It’s my job. Go on back to the office and do yours.” He said it with an affectionate smile. “I’ll come get you after last call.”
I started toward the office, but watched Raleigh work his way through the crowd out of the corner of my eye until he disappeared from view.
Sometime later, three knocks echoed through the office. I glanced at the clock. Two a.m. had ticked over, and it was time to start cleaning up for the night.
I returned two knocks, the signal that let Raleigh know it was okay to enter. The door swung open as I shut down the computer and scrubbed my bleary eyes.
“You okay?” he asked, leaning against the doorframe. He crossed his muscular arms over his equally toned chest, pulling his black T-shirt tight and making his tattoos dance over his biceps and ripple across the space below his collarbone.
“Tired,” I signed. To the point where even moving my hands felt like work.
“Why don’t you go to bed? I’ll help Jack close the bar down. Kali’s sending a car for me, so I won’t be home tonight.”
Despite my true feelings toward Kali, I gave Raleigh a cheeky grin. “What’s she giving you this time, sugar baby?”
Raleigh pinned me with a look that would have sent one of our drunk patrons scrambling for another bar. I stared right back, unfazed. Raleigh could never scare me. “A one-way ticket to Tanzania for a certain friend of mine that can’t keep his hands quiet.”
I ignored his joke. “Are you sure you’re okay closing without me?”
“Go. To. Bed. The dishes are already done and I think between Jack and I, we can handle the trash. I’ll see you in the morning?”
Raleigh retreated to the main area of the bar, while I took the rickety wooden staircase up to our apartment.
I hardly ever set foot into the main area of the bar, yet there was something about it that never failed to make me feel dirty . Maybe it was the sheer thought of how much booze they had to scrub off the floors by the end of the night. Regardless, the first thing I did after every shift was head for the shower, and tonight was no different. I stood under the spray, waiting until the water started to run cold before actually washing myself. I quickly rinsed and jumped out, tucking a towel around my waist.
In the privacy of the apartment I could finally relax. Somewhat. Until the town car came, there was still a chance Raleigh could come upstairs, so I stayed in the bathroom for now. I let out a deep breath, one that I felt like I’d been holding all night. My skin crawled, my marks demanding my attention. It was tough keeping them at bay for hours on end, like an itch I couldn’t scratch. I looked in the mirror. The all-seeing eye decorated my body, starting at the tips of my fingers, running up my arms and across my chest to fall back and down both legs. To anyone else, they looked like mere tattoos. It scared the shit out of me the first time they activated . Over the years the sensations had grown until they felt akin to a hundred butterflies tickling my skin.
Stretching my muscles, I looked over my shoulder. Tattooed there were wings that fluttered and rippled beneath the surface of my skin. When they’d first appeared, they’d been so faint you could hardly see them. Hadn’t been hard to hide them behind long sleeves until it became socially acceptable for me to have “tattoos.” As I got older and my powers grew stronger, the lines and shadows darkened. The wings on my back were the most prominent. If you looked close enough, you could see each and every barbule on the feathers. No tattoo artist could accomplish that level of detail—I know; I’d been told as much.
In the mirror those tattoos blurred, twisting and contorting until my wings—my real ones—broke the skin. It used to be painful but I’d gotten used to it. Keeping them hidden all the time was far worse.
I shuffled into the center of the bathroom, trying to stretch out my wings as much as possible. The small bathroom wasn’t overly accommodating, but it was better than nothing. I stretched out as far as I could, but even a soft beat left our set of hand towels clumped on the floor. I’d worry about it later. I was too busy basking in my true form—even if only for a few minutes. Though I used the term “enjoyed” loosely.
I sighed. The word “basking” was a little too triumphant for a quick stretch in a confined bathroom. I examined myself in the mirror. The eyes dotting my skin emitted a warm glow that blurred the edges of my form. If I turned the bathroom lights off, those glowing tattoos would’ve almost been enough to illuminate the room.
It had been fifteen years, and I still hadn’t adjusted to my new life.
I hadn’t always been this way. When I was fourteen, I died. Though if you asked Raleigh or my parents, they would tell you I was in a coma. A medic saved me—an angel. Another angel, I suppose I should say. She took one look at me and decided I was too young to die. Sometimes, I wish I’d been asked. Or that she could have saved someone else from that night—because in all that time, I had yet to meet another angel.
I hadn’t come clean to my parents, or to Raleigh. The more time that passed, the more insecure I grew about the secret, and the more stressful talking became. Like every word was an omission. But if I didn’t speak— couldn’t speak—I wasn’t lying to the people I loved.
When someone pictured an angel, I’m sure I wasn’t what they imagined. Raleigh and I grew up in a small, rural town in Georgia. From a young age, we’d been exposed to the image of what Christianity wanted us to believe angels were: gorgeous creatures, often women, with great swanlike wings and a radiant halo. That was all well and good, except the Biblical description of angels was totally different, even nightmare-inducing to someone unfamiliar with them. And seraphim were on another spectrum entirely.
Not that either existed.
True angels were sort of a hybrid. Instead of six wings like a Biblically-accurate seraph, I only had two. Second highest in the angels’ ranks were the cherubim, depicted with eyes decorating their entire bodies like my markings. Somewhere along the line, the eyes vanished and wings were clipped. Artists began to paint halos on them to distinguish angels from humans, and we became a thing of beauty.
Though as I stood there staring at myself, I couldn’t see it. Maybe a halo would have helped. Instead, every strand of hair on my head shimmered like vibrant gold thread. Someone else might appreciate that, but it only set me further apart from everyone else.
As if being mute didn’t already do that.
I could heal others with a touch, could purify the deadliest of poisons from the veins, could stop death in its tracks. Why the hell couldn’t I make myself talk ?
If I had my way, I’d keep my true self hidden under the surface of the skin, but it got uncomfortable after a while. Besides, with Raleigh around, my powers were always primed to kick into gear; it was like that car accident only challenged him to be as reckless as possible. That man needed an angel at his side.
Deciding I’d had enough, I closed my eyes and focused on retracting my wings. My flesh wriggled and crawled as the wings fought against me, but after a few moments the twitching under my skin ceased and my marks stilled, the soft cloud of light winking out.
As I left the bathroom, I could see the bright lights of the Vegas Strip splashed color through our apartment. Las Vegas at night was one of my favorite views in the world. I moved to the window in our living room in time to see a fancy town car pull up outside the bar. I busied myself watching the flashing lights of the Strip as the bar door opened, Raleigh stepped out, and locked it behind him.
He, too, had shed his blazer early in the night, and his tattoos cascaded down his arms from under his T-shirt. He brushed his fingers through his shaggy black hair before opening the car door for himself.
I watched as the man I was madly in love with sped off to spend the night in someone else’s bed.