Текст книги "The Watcher"
Автор книги: Lisa Voisin
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
Chapter Fifteen
He took me to Alki Beach, partly because it was close and partly because it was one of the best places in the area to walk. I liked it there. I especially liked being there with him. By daylight, I could see out over Puget Sound, where the choppy gray water reflected the storm clouds above.
He was right about the rain. It looked as though it would come down any minute, and when I stepped from the car the cold air smelled of ocean, seaweed, and evergreens as it filled my nose. With the exception of a few joggers, the beach was deserted. The tide was low, and acres of rocks, teeming with marine life, stretched out along the shore.
Some of the nearby trees had already started to turn. Half-ochre, half-green, their leaves had dried around the edges, holding onto the memory of life. Others had fallen to the ground. As we walked, Michael seemed to notice them too.
“What was I like? You know…before?” I asked. “Was I different?”
When he turned to me, his eyes were the color of the Mediterranean Sea, and they had a way of looking at me that made me feel equally vast and deep. “What do you remember?”
I closed my eyes and recalled the house we lived in, the glow of sunrise along its walls. But mostly I remembered Michael. The way that being near him made me feel exactly the same as it did now. They were the same images and sensations over and over, no more than the night before, but no less.
I felt the heat of him and opened my eyes to find him standing only a foot away from me. Could he see what I saw?
As though catching himself, he stepped back. “Arielle suggested I spend time with you.”
The mention of her name gave me a twinge in my chest. Obviously they were close. “You saw her last night?”
“Of course. We check in,” he said. Turning, he headed toward the rugged shoreline.
I followed him, my sneakers crunching and slipping on the damp rocks. I had to watch my step. “Why did she suggest you do that?”
“She’s trying to help me.” A gust of wind blew his hair into his face and he lazily pushed it back. “When we first came here, many of us became sick and fell to one of the seven deadly sins—envy, pride, lust. It took me longer. I thought I was different, but I got caught up in it just like the others.”
“Caught up in what?”
“Lust,” he said and flashed me a sideways glance that was positively scorching. The effects rippled all the way down to my knees. As though sensing my reaction, he turned back to the white-capped waves crashing against the shore. “It wasn’t just about sex…” He checked my reaction again, as though expecting me to shy away from him. I didn’t. Hearing him use the words sex and lust made a shudder of want rise within me. “I forgot who and what I was.”
Instead of saying more, he brushed his fingertips along my cheek, and his halo glimmered. I could hear the waves slapping the rocks behind us, the wind driving them in. That same wind whipped against my skin, but the touch of his hand on my face was all I could think about. It sent a current through both of us and filled me with longing for something I wasn’t sure I understood.
“I’m sorry.” He stepped back and shoved his hands into his pockets as the light around him faded. “You don’t know what it’s like. Being near you now, remembering those moments we had…” His hair blew into his eyes, but this time he didn’t move. I wanted to brush it back, but I didn’t know how he’d react. Would touching him be bad?
“You want to know who you were?” he asked. “You may look different, but you’re the same. I look into your eyes and see you.” He took in a deep breath, fixing his attention on the horizon. I’d seen and heard so much now that the logical part of my brain had long since given up arguing with me. I could feel what he was saying was true. All of it.
“What was my name?” I asked.
“Sajani.” When he spoke, his voice was a chord, and the sound of my name echoed through me like I was an instrument being strummed. “It means ‘beloved.’”
I drew in a deep, shaky breath, letting in a stream of emotion that practically drenched me. Very gently, he pulled me into a hug. The sound of his voice echoed through his chest as he spoke. “I’m supposed to let you go, but I can’t.”
“Then don’t.”
Placing a finger under my chin, he gazed into my eyes. His were filled with warning. “We can’t…I can’t be with you that way.”
“What way?”
He pressed his lips into my hair and I flushed as I realized what he meant. I wanted to ask why, but didn’t want to say anything that would interrupt this moment. His heartbeat pressed against my cheek as I breathed in the scent of his skin. Out of the corner of my eye, the sparkling glow of his halo surrounded us and a tingle of energy buzzed, stronger than anything I’d ever felt before. It awakened every cell in my body, and I thought if we could just do this, the feeling itself was incredible. Surely this would be enough.
“It’s okay,” I said, leaning to look up at him.
“It’s not really fair to you, to be with you and not be able…” A lock of hair had blown into my face. He tucked it gently behind my ear. “I can never be with you like that, Mia.”
“I don’t care,” I said. The heat of his touch lingered on my skin. “I don’t think I could never have this again and be okay.” My voice broke as I realized how much he meant to me, how much he had always meant.
“You’d be fine,” he reassured me. “You’re much stronger than you think. Stronger than me. You always were.”
My eyes filled with tears. “What are you saying?”
“Shhh,” he whispered. “Please. Don’t cry.”
His hands gliding to the sides of my waist, he leaned in close—so close I stopped breathing—and kissed a tear that had fallen down my cheek. Afraid he’d back away, I lifted my lips to his, brushing against them, softly, tentatively at first, awakening the current that trembled through me. Twining my arms around his neck, I drew myself into him. And with a sigh, he tightened his arms around me, parted his lips, and the culmination of thousands of years of waiting poured out of him like a dam had burst.
The energy around us built with the wind off the water, rushing past my skin, tangling my hair. I wanted to be swept away, carried above the clouds to the heavens. For a moment, everything was warm and bright like the sun.
In the distance, I could hear a gentle female voice in the wind, then a chorus of voices, speaking all at once, calling Michael by name.
His body tensed, but he pulled me closer, his kisses more urgent. The wind had died down, and a golden flare brushed my skin, searing me. I crushed myself against him, hips against his thighs, welcoming that heat. There was nothing I wanted more than this.
“Michael,” the voice—or voices—said firmly, “you must stop now.”
Why couldn’t the voice just go away? I wanted to get closer to that heat, crawl into it, let it consume me. But with those words, he froze. Gently but firmly he untangled my arms from around him and backed away, not looking at me but at the ground.
Behind him, Arielle was furious.
“Is this your idea of being on duty? You were wide open. We could have easily had another breach,” she said, her voice still sounding choral. “If I wasn’t here, anything could have come through.”
Michael shook his head gravely. “I didn’t expect…”
“You were sent into the body of an eighteen-year-old male for a reason.”
He glared at her, his expression all at once wild, dark, and haunted. “The ultimate test?”
“For your own recovery,” she said. “You know you’re not being punished.”
They talked as though they were discussing some kind of science experiment and not the intimate experience we’d just had. Still reeling from the intensity of his kiss, I couldn’t help but think that if she hadn’t arrived, we might have enjoyed ourselves a little longer. What would have been so wrong with that? My heart sprinted in my chest, aching to be near him, and my body craved his touch. I was cold, so cold I started to tremble. I wanted—needed—him close to me. This was how an addict must feel. It was as though someone had just filled the needle and tapped it, about to plunge it into my veins, and then someone else came along and took it away.
Arielle gave Michael a stern look. “Your energy’s way too much for her. You’ve enthralled her.”
What did she mean, enthralled?
Michael clasped his hands behind his head and huffed out his breath. “Not on purpose.”
“That doesn’t matter. You know our laws are absolute. What if the others found out?”
As I listened to them speaking as though I wasn’t there, I couldn’t help but wonder how she’d found us and why she was telling him off. Did she want more than friendship from him? If she did, she had a funny way of showing it. My confusion must have shown on my face, because they both stopped talking and turned to me.
“It’s not how you think,” she said, her voice sounding more human. “I don’t feel the way you do for him, and I don’t disapprove of you, either.” She then turned back to Michael and said in a more musical voice, “She doesn’t know I’m your sponsor, does she? If you’re going to keep her around, you might want to think about telling her.”
“Hello, tell me what? I’m right here,” I exclaimed. “Why are you talking about me when I’m right here? It’s rude.”
Arielle looked sharply at Michael. “She can hear us?”
“Of course I can hear you,” I replied. “What do you mean you’re his sponsor?”
Arielle spoke to me in the same voice I’d heard her use at the movie theater. “You can hear me now, right?”
“Of course!”
“What about now?” she asked. Her lips didn’t move, but her voice was musical and clear. It was a different voice.
I nodded, my mind reeling. How can I be hearing her speak when her lips aren’t moving? I wanted to cry again.
“She can hear us telepathically,” she said out loud this time, and her serene, perfectly balanced face registered alarm. “I wonder how far along the network—”
“What’s going on? What network?” I asked. Their serious expressions were beginning to annoy me.
“You can hear our thoughts, Mia,” Michael said. “We’ve not known anyone who could do this before.”
“You’ve not known,” I said.
Looking concerned, Arielle took a step toward me. “Have you heard us before?”
“No,” I said quickly, then recalled the morning in the park, the flash of light. I’d heard something that morning too. “Once, maybe. After I was chased. But it was really staticky. I thought it was just a radio or something.”
“It’s clear now?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“People hear things when their adrenaline is up, like when they’re afraid, but having it come in so clearly…” She turned to Michael. “Another side effect of you kissing her. You have to be careful.”
“I am…” he began, but stopped at Arielle’s look. He ran his hands down his face and let out an exasperated sound. “Do you think its effect will wear off?”
“It better.” I let out my breath, trying not to panic. “Because this is a little too weird for me.”
“I’m sure it is,” said Arielle, a wry grin on her face. It was difficult to dislike her, even though everything female in me felt threatened.
“We should watch her carefully. I’ll keep an eye on her tonight, make sure she’s all right.”
Arielle frowned and a gust of wind blew tendrils of hair into her face. “No, Michael, I think I should watch her. You need to recover, too. You’ve both been impacted. You couldn’t even feel me coming.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said hastily.
“Will she be, if you’re around all night?”
With a sigh, he acceded and turned to me. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”
We drove back in silence, not touching each other, not talking. The distance hung between us, palpable and heavy as a lead curtain. I tried to focus on the music instead, but it sounded harsh, so I turned it off.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling the car in front of my house. He didn’t look at me but at the dark clouds looming in the sky. Rain would come any minute.
“What?” I asked, biting my lip to keep my voice from wavering. “Sorry you kissed me?”
He reached a hand to touch me but let it drop. “Can’t you see? You could get hurt. Really hurt. I’m not good for you.”
I shook my head, not wanting to hear what he had to say next. “Please. Don’t.”
Turning to face me, he leaned against his car door and sighed, clearly upset. “The feeling that you couldn’t get enough—I put it there. I don’t even know how. I just wanted to be close.”
So did I. “I don’t see what’s wrong with—”
“It’s dangerous,” he warned, cutting me off. “Had we gone any further…” He stopped talking, but the look in his eyes spoke of anguish and terror and shame. “I don’t know how to control it.”
I didn’t understand all of what he was saying, but I knew him. I also knew how I felt, how I’d always felt for him. I’d wanted that kiss as much, if not more, than he had. “What if you could?”
“I can’t—”
Before he could finish what he was going to say, I leaned across the console and put my finger to his lips. He didn’t move but held my gaze, warily, as my finger traced the outline of his lips. When he raised a hand to my elbow, I thought he was going to stop me. But he didn’t, so I leaned in and kissed him. His body tensed. I pulled back. I could see the struggle behind his eyes, the war raging within him. I should have been afraid—of him, of what I was doing—but I couldn’t be. Instead, I kissed him again and felt him relax as his mouth responded to mine.
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?”
“As you discovered earlier today, we communicate telepathically. But it’s more than that. We’re linked into each other like a network, so we can see what’s going on with each other when we need to.”
So that was how she had found us earlier. “You mean you can see…” Michael and me kissing?
“Only when he’s working,” she replied quickly, as if she’d read my mind.
Can she hear my thoughts? I stared at her intently. Is she listening now?
If she was, she didn’t let on. “The network’s in place so we can back each other up. It’s how we communicate. If an angel on duty disconnects from that network, the way Michael did today, we have to check on each other, in case of injury. It’s for our safety. Any number of things could attack us when we drop our connection.” She turned to face me. “I didn’t know what I’d see.”
“Oh.” Her explanation didn’t make the idea of her being able to see us any easier, but at least she couldn’t read my mind. “How do we do this?”
Still sitting beside me on the bed, she took both my hands in hers. “You relax and look into my eyes. I don’t know exactly how it will appear to you. It could appear as a vision, but it may seem like you’re there.”
I looked into her beautiful golden eyes, and a light flashed behind them, like sunlight through amber. I had the sensation of being pulled in, as though I was falling into her. I gasped.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “Just breathe and let me do all the rest.”
I kept staring into her eyes as my bedroom disappeared around me and I was speeding down a wide tunnel of misty, silvery light. I flew through it as it bent and twisted several times and then opened into a room—a dirty, rundown apartment with cracked paint and water stains on the walls. It was so realistic, as if I was actually there, and yet I knew I wasn’t. Arielle’s presence blazed behind me as I took everything in.
There was no furniture—even the sink had been torn from the wall—and the carpet was stained with blood, vomit, and God knows what other bodily fluids. On the floor, amidst tattered clothes and broken glass, lay a sandy-haired guy in his early twenties, not much older than Bill. His eyes were glazed, haunted, and slightly open, and it seemed as though he hadn’t showered or eaten in days. Beside him, pieces of tinfoil were scattered among a filthy-looking needle, a dirty ashtray, and a threadbare red bandana.
Most notably, on—or rather through—his chest sat something fuzzy and black, half the size of a man. It looked like lint, if lint could be animated, and it had hollows for eyes. Something about seeing it made my stomach churn, my chest tighten like the skin of a drum.
“You see it, don’t you? I wasn’t sure if you would.”
“Oh my God,” I said. Realizing I was cursing in front of an angel, I covered my mouth. “What is that thing?”
“A lesser demon. I guess you’d call it a minion of sorts. It’s feeding on his addiction and despair.” Her hand touched my shoulder. “They’re parasites. They stir up negative emotions so they can feed off of them.”
The thing writhed silently on the guy’s chest and, suddenly agitated, the guy staggered to get up and reach for the tinfoil beside him, what I assumed were his drugs.
“How did it get on him?” I asked Arielle.
“They attack people and make them do horrible things, but nobody knows they’re there. People think they’re doing these things to themselves, but really they’re feeding a parasite.”
“So when people say ‘a monkey on your back,’ it’s almost true.” I shuddered at how it was more through than on him. I thought of Fiona, how she’d said she wasn’t the one who hurt herself. “Do they attack everyone?”
“All the time, but it’s about the choices people make. If someone chooses to hurt themselves or someone else, these things get in. If someone is happy and loving, it sours the milk and they leave.”
“What about my friend Fiona?” I asked. “She wouldn’t hurt herself, and yet…”
Arielle put a hand on my shoulder. “Fiona is insecure about her attractiveness. Damiel used that vulnerability to get in.”
“She didn’t do anything to deserve that.”
A note of sadness crossed Arielle’s face. “People seldom do.”
I was trying to get my mind around this strange reality she was showing me when Michael appeared in the room. My chest tightened until it ached.
Despite the filth around him, his expression was serene, as though he were untouched by the grime. He was bathed in a golden light that made him awesome to behold, but the guy didn’t even see him. Instead, with clumsy shaking hands, he fumbled to open the folded tinfoil.
Michael crouched behind the young man and whispered in his ear. Though I thought I’d seen Michael work before with Fiona at school, I couldn’t ever hear what he’d said. This time I could. Arielle must have made it possible.
“Dear One, I bring you a message. Will you hear it?” He spoke in tones so beautiful my own heart leapt in response.
Tears filled my eyes as the man emptied the contents of the tinfoil into a spoon, preparing his next fix. The beast on the man’s chest writhed and snarled. Michael spoke to him again, touching his shoulder and addressing him by name.
“Steven. You must stop this. This dose will kill you.”
If he heard him at all, the man named Steven did not acknowledge it. The beast grew larger, its writhing more animated, as it snarled at Michael.
“Why doesn’t he kill that thing?” I asked Arielle.
“He can’t. Not unless the man releases it. We must respect his free will,” she said. “Otherwise, another will just take its place.”
“What about Damiel? Michael fought him.”
“Demonic possession is different. If the host isn’t willing, we can dispel them. This man, Steven, has given his will to the parasite.”
Michael continued, “This is not the only way. You are loved. You are forgiven. Everything you have done is forgiven.”
The man filled and tapped his syringe, ignoring him. The scene shifted and blurred as Arielle pulled me out back through the tunnel. I felt dizzy and strange as my eyes grew accustomed to the soft incandescent lighting of my room. The bed beneath me was soft and warm. A stubborn lump formed in my throat and I swallowed it back before I could speak.
“That’s what he does?”
“Some of it.”
“He’s amazing!”
“He’d be even more amazing if he realized that the same forgiveness applied to him.” There was sadness in her voice that made me feel foolish for gushing. “How do you feel?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Fine,” I said. Actually, I was bright and awake and, for some reason, my mouth tasted of orange peels.
She did that thing with her halo again to see if I could hear her telepathically. “Well?”
“Just static,” I replied.
This seemed to satisfy her. “I wanted you to see that…I know you look at him and see an angel, and I know that’s astounding to you.” She stood and turned toward the window, as though checking the night, and when she turned back to me, her expression was filled with sadness and a quiet determination. “He has his choices to make, and I will respect them. But I really don’t want to see him go down again. Not when there’s so much at stake.”
She saw me as a threat to Michael’s well-being, even now that he’d chosen to push me away. Surely I wasn’t still a threat?
“He doesn’t want to be with me,” I said, hoping she couldn’t sense my shame. I’d been so caught up in my feelings about him that the fact he was a messenger of God hadn’t really sunk in. I never considered how wrong it might be for him, how wrong it always was.
She placed a hand on my shoulder. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. It’s natural for humans to be in awe of angels. That awe is part of who we are, what we do. For an angel to act on that is wrong in so many ways. It’s strictly forbidden.”
“Why is it forbidden?”
“Because of the impact we can have—that awe—it’s so easy for us to affect you. Being close to one of us can lead to a type of enthrallment, which you experienced earlier today. It becomes intoxicating for you, addictive, for both the human and the angel. We were never designed to be with you physically. That is considered perverse among our kind. It’s an abuse of our power, a line we’re not meant to cross. Those who do suffer immensely for it.” She got up and paced my room again, ruffling her wings, and specks of blue light danced around her.
“What happened to them?” I asked.
“Many became addicted to the enthrallment, as did the people they enthralled. Eventually, the fallen learned how to use it to manipulate and control. The further the angel fell, the more dark and self-serving the enthrallment became, where they drained the life force of their victims until there was nothing left.” Arielle turned to me. “You’ve seen Damiel do it. It’s what makes him so dangerous.”
I recalled the way I’d had a hard time breaking my date with Damiel, how tired he’d made me, and shivered. I was lucky Michael had come along when he did. Damiel had used that same charm on Fiona and look what happened to her.
I wanted to ask Arielle if Michael had done that with me but didn’t know how to ask. I searched my memories from both lives, old and new, but found nothing, nothing that seemed like I was being controlled. Instead, Michael shut himself down, trying to keep us apart, as if he had the right to choose for both of us.
“You said before it was a line you’re not meant to cross. Where—exactly—is it?” I asked. Michael had said he couldn’t be with me that way, but he’d kissed me. Had we already crossed it?
“It’s not easy to define, since it’s a matter of enthrallment and addiction. There are some alcoholics who can have a glass of wine and not go on a binge, while others can’t take even one sip,” she explained. “Our way has been to avoid human contact altogether, and Michael’s track record hasn’t been very good.”
