Chapter Fourteen #2
“Oh.” I grinned. “I have everything.” I hopped up from the couch and gestured to the bar cart between the kitchen and the living room. “I have the biggest bottle of whiskey known to man.”
“Yes.” He nodded approvingly. “But after I down it, what will you drink?”
“Gin.”
And just like that, we were outlaws, doing things we knew we shouldn’t.
We were already an angel and an antichrist in mixed company.
That scandal alone was one for the ages.
Then, we were at my house, even when wisdom might have dictated that we hunker down in a less obvious location.
Then, there was the unspoken taboo—the tension of him and I being alone together that was too outlandish for me to dignify with a coherent thought.
So, maybe a slumber party wasn’t the wisest choice, but we had a lot of problems, and alcohol was a solution.
I was suddenly twenty-one again. In lieu of shots, we did burning, cough-worthy pulls straight from the bottle. At least, I coughed. Silas made an exaggerated sound as if it were the most refreshing drink in the world.
I probably shouldn’t have tried to go one-for-one with a supernatural being—preternatural, I corrected myself—but I was who I was.
After our second drink, I disappeared to change into sweatpants, fluffy socks, and an oversized T-shirt, abandoning my bra to some corner of the bedroom.
After the third drink, I attempted to show him a reality show where the worst Americans brought their partners over from other countries on a fiancé visa.
After our fifth drink, my intensive theological training came out when he began to argue Biblical texts against the human interpretation.
He conceded that yes, given the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic translations, I was making fair points and couldn’t have possibly come to the same conclusion he’d come to with the information offered.
After the sixth, I’d switched to a short-lived arm wrestle and an equally fruitless thumb war.
By the seventh drink, we were the best friends in the world.
“Wait,” he said, “before we get drunker. Do you need to…you know…”
I looked at him through my tipsy blur before I understood his meaning.
“The venom?” I asked. A smile spread across my lips. “Silas, are you uncomfortable telling me to do drugs? C’mon. It’s the end of the world.”
“Hey, the first miracle was turning water into wine. Alcohol is good to go in my book. At least…for another day.”
“Do drugs after the concert, got it.” I nodded. I pulled out the baggy, then hesitated. “She was a little light on the instructions,” I said.
“We’re going to be awake for a while,” he said. “Do a little now, and a little more before bed.”
I pressed my lips into a line to conceal my smile.
Silas wanted to be awake for a while, which I had to take to mean he was having fun.
I dipped my silver mailbox key into the bag and lifted the substance to my nose, inhaling the gift of Gorgon invisibility.
It may not have been drugs in the traditional sense, but it still sent a jolt of lightning straight to my brain.
I blinked through the electric crackle, enjoying the hum it sent through my body.
I set the bag down and returned to my seventh drink of the evening.
At least, it was seven for me. I was pretty sure he was three-quarters of the way through one of many bottles of whiskey.
I was glad for it. It would be unfair for me to be plastered while he remained sober.
Plus, I was a high-functioning covert alcoholic with booze stashed all over the house.
If he made it through everything in the bar cart, I’d show off my secret collection in the cabinets above the fridge.
The TV was still on, but it had been muted ever since our lively debate. I’d put on Vexa’s discography in preparation for our upcoming mission, which he claimed made his ears bleed.
“She is an icon!” I gasped. “She writes all of her own songs.”
“Well, maybe she shouldn’t,” he mused, taking another swig.
“Tell that to her self-made billions.”
I plopped my feet in his lap as I leaned into the back of the couch, watching the blues and purples and whites of harsh plasma light illuminate his profile as the daylight faded.
He gave my foot a squeeze and looked back at me.
He flicked his fingers, and the volume lowered to scarcely more than a whisper.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered Fauna doing something similar to a honking horn many moons ago.
“Why?” I asked.
His hold on my instep slackened as he looked at me.
“Everything you said to Nia. Why?”
The program changed to commercials. Reds and yellows and oranges punctuated the whites as the sun beyond the river continued to set. He sucked in a breath.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?” he asked.
My lips closed, brows lifting in the center. I tilted my head to the side.
“I know Fauna’s identity came as a shock, and I don’t want it to be the same when you learn my name. I don’t know how to break it to you.”
“Then don’t,” I said.
He frowned at me.
“If you’re about to tell me something that will lose me another friend and ally…maybe keep it to yourself. I can’t afford to lose you, too.”
His gaze softened. He touched me. “It’s nothing like that.”
My frown deepened. I began to withdraw my feet, but he squeezed them once more.
“I mean it as a good thing. I expect you’d understand better if I knew my backstory. But I’m only mentioned a few times in the book of Enoch, which most believers consider the Apocrypha. It’s a little too on-the-nose for churchgoers. Too much supernatural, not enough metaphor. All that stuff.”
“You’re about to do it, aren’t you. You’re about to tell me who you are.”
“I’m an…” His face fell. He slumped into the back of the couch. “I was an archangel.”
Despite the buzz vibrating every nerve in my body, the important parts of my brain sobered up. “No fucking way. You’re a foot soldier! You’re a—”
“Because Fauna and I riffed one another for being unimportant? No. She’s a goddess in her own right, but she keeps it close to the vest. And everyone in Hell knows who I am because I was appointed as an overseer of the dark angels—the spirits of vengeance.
I was crafted for accountability, fairness, harmony, and justice. ”
I sucked in a breath. This time, when I withdrew my feet, he allowed the motion. I pulled my knees to my chest.
“When the angels showed up at Nia’s house, they mentioned something about a prophecy.”
He gave a short, pained chuckle. “It’s how everyone knows me.
My name has always been closely intertwined with my fall.
But that’s not how time has passed in Heaven.
I haven’t fallen. I haven’t planned to. I know it’s non-linear, and that can be confusing, but I could have had thousands more years of being a faithful angel.
My fall could have been like Judas Iscariot’s role—only dastardly because it served a greater purpose in the Plan. I didn’t expect…”
“Maybe you are serving the Plan,” I said, putting air quotes around the last two words. “Maybe I lose.”
Silas pulled his legs onto the couch in turn, facing me fully. “This is something I’ve always struggled with. Our king knows past, present, and future, right? But where’s my free will in that story? Where’s the fairness when free will is an illusion?”
“They’re coming for you tomorrow. Doesn’t that mean you still have a choice? You could betray me between now and the concert. Write your own narrative.”
Sober me would probably have been displeased that drunk me was making such assertions, but I couldn’t stop myself.
His voice dropped. He averted his gaze. “No, I couldn’t.”
I knew I should close my mouth. I couldn’t imagine how I looked, drunk and shocked as I struggled to focus on him. “There are only seven archangels. You’re a big deal.”
“Six, now,” he said quietly.
I shook my head, room spinning with gin and confusion and color as I did so. “Is that why no one in Heaven has questioned your whereabouts? They aren’t worried about you reporting because—”
“Because I only answered to the King.” He lifted his forearm, uncuffing his brace to reveal the inky message on his wrist once more.
“They trust that I have an agenda. They couldn’t possibly fathom that I chose Hell and a human over my kingdom, my army, my title.
It’s why I still have time to prove that I’m on their side. ”
Gin pickled my thoughts. My only rebuttal was, “But Fauna said—”
“Fauna”—he said her name testily—“called you an idiot every ten seconds. She said it so many times that you started to believe it. Here you are, Forbes 30 Under 30, speaks five, six, ten languages, international bestseller, is Hell’s Princess but manages to navigate between realms while bound to no one.
Fauna talks down to people affectionately.
And she has a liberal relationship with the truth. ”
I deflected his compliments with a correction. “She’s a liar.”
“Tell me something,” he said. He beckoned for me to unfurl myself.
I looked down at my knees and frowned, but the truth was, I was drunk, and I wanted to sprawl.
I returned my feet to his lap. He rubbed my arch idly as he said, “When you left the church and started escorting, why didn’t you tell your mother? ”
My gasp cut through the last lights of sunset.
I was suddenly too sober for this conversation.
“I think you didn’t tell her because you knew that it would hurt her. That you were doing what you needed to do, and that her knowing wouldn’t be in anyone’s best interest.”
I growled as I punched him in the arm, then winced, shaking my hand free of the numbing sensation it sent through my arm. Through my teeth, I said, “It’s not the same. For this to be an accurate comparison, I’d have to be whoring out my mom without her knowledge.”
“I’m sorry. Did Fauna force you to have sex with a demon?”
I glared.
“Did she push either of you into a relationship? Was she the one who guided you into sex work so you’d fit some lore and be whatever they needed you to be to fulfill some prophecy? She knew what everyone knew. And she knew it would hurt you to hear it.”
“But you told me.”
He sighed. “And I hurt you.”
I turned to get up from the couch. The night was over. I wanted to go to bed.
Silas grabbed my wrist. “You’re mad because she didn’t do anything to you except know things you didn’t. You’re holding her accountable for omission. Do you know how many things I know that you don’t?”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Sit down,” he said, tone softening. There was no hard edge to his expression. I studied him carefully before sinking back into the couch.
I should have fought it. I should have stormed off.
But I didn’t. He lifted his arm, and I wasn’t sure why I did it, but I let him tuck me against him.
It felt so good to be held, gorgeously buzzed at home while the TV played.
“Damn it, Marlow, life is going to be very hard if you don’t learn how to let people love you. ”
“Then let it be hard,” I said, closing my eyes as I relaxed into his cloud of spice.
“You don’t mean that.”
I folded into a comfortable ball, curling against the pillar of warmth and strength on my couch. My body was more liquor than blood at this point, but I liked the way it felt. I frowned, nuzzling closer to listen.
“You don’t have a heartbeat,” I said.
He grabbed my hand gently and guided it to his neck, pressing my fingers against his jugular.
“Oh,” I murmured sleepily. “Then maybe you shouldn’t wear your armor all the time. It’s hard to hear through this.”
He chuckled quietly. “I suppose I’ll have to change out of this, soon.”
“I have some things from an ex,” I said, though the words struggled to swim up from the dark bottom of a lake.
“He was almost your size. I’ll find them for you tomorrow.
” I slumped downward with my final word.
I groaned when he didn’t let me fall asleep on his lap.
Instead, I dry heaved as the world moved, the ground disappearing beneath my feet.
He could have been dropping me out the window and into the river or jumping me to Heaven; it all felt equally discombobulating. My hand flew to my mouth.
“Shh, hang on,” came his voice as a cloud of silk and comfort cradled me. Fingers scraped against my temple, holding the side of my head as a thumb wiped across my forehead. In an instant, I felt the poison leach from my body. My nausea evaporated. In its place, only exhaustion remained.
“I need to do my skincare routine,” I mumbled.
“Go to bed.” He laughed quietly as he headed for the door.
“Silas?”
His silhouette blocked out the dim light from the hall as he waited.
A swelling pendulum swung within me, each anxious throb tugging me between possibilities. I could remain silent. I could keep my thoughts to myself. But I stared my past and present in the face as I invited an angel into my bedroom.
“Maybe you don’t have to go to the other room. Maybe…you could sleep next to me tonight.”