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“I have to find out what happened to my father.”
He stiffens underneath me. “I know,” he says quietly. “But you must stay away from the river, Benji. Please. I know I can’t explain much, and I know it may not make sense, but you must hear me. Please. Stay away from the river.”
“It’s Griggs,” I tell him, certain. “It’s Griggs, and Walken. It’s Traynor. It’s whoever they were calling the ‘boss’. It’s them, I know it. They killed my father. They killed Corwin. They killed Arthur Davis.”
“And they’ll kill you,” he snaps, suddenly angry. “We must wait. We must wait until whatever comes shows its face. After that, I promise you I will do everything I can to help you. But we have to wait, Benji. Promise me.”
“We won’t have much time. They said they were moving everything on the day of the festival. Jump Into Summer Fest is only a few weeks away. I have to—” “Promise me!” he snarls in my ear, slamming his fist down on the roof. “I promise,” I whisper, though it feels like a lie, to placate. To soothe. And then a sharp intake of breath.
“What?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”
“Damn,” he mutters. He tries to hide whatever is wrong, but I can see he’s favoring the hand he’s just hit against the roof. I pull on his arm to show me, and my fingers feel slick. He sighs but doesn’t resist. The sun chooses that moment to peek over the Cascades and the first rays of sunlight on a new day catch upon my life, now so unreal.
Embedded into the side of his hand is a small carpenter’s nail, undoubtedly forgotten at one point on the roof. It’s jammed into his hand almost to the nail head, his skin puckered around it. But it’s not the nail itself that catches my eye; it’s the dark-red blood welling around it.
I lift my hand in front of my face, staring at his blood on my skin. “That’s not….” I breathe. “You got shot. I saw you get shot and—”
he is weaker
“—nothing was wrong with you!”
He winces as he pulls the short nail out of his hand. I pull my shirt off over my head, the morning air cool against my body. I wrap his hand with my shirt to stop the flow of blood.
“It’s what the Strange Men said, isn’t it?” I demand. “They said someone like you couldn’t stay here. What happens if you do?”
He looks away, but not before I can see it in his eyes. He knows. This isn’t a hidden thing, lost in whatever his Father took from him before he fell. He knows this.
“Calliel! You better fucking answer me on this! I deserve some goddamn answers after everything I’ve been through, after everything we’ve done. If you even remotely care about me at all, you will tell—”
“I’m becoming human,” he says quietly as the sunlight catches his red hair. It reminds me of blood, and I almost cry out. He looks like he is covered in blood. “Father put it in place to avoid angels becoming corporeal. The longer I stay, the more human I become. And if I stay….” He watches the horizon.
“Cal?” I ask, already knowing the answer but needing to hear him say it. “What happens if you stay?”
He turns and kisses me deeply. I can feel the desperation behind it as he pushes into me. He’s clawing at my back, trying to get as much of me as he can. I pull away only because I don’t know what’s wrong. He grabs my neck and jerks me close again. When he speaks, his voice is a rasp in my ear. I tremble. “If I stay… if I stay, the moment I become human, I will die. My soul will not be allowed to ascend. I’ll fall into the black and be lost forever.”
The sun continues to rise.
a knock at the door He’s dying.
Ever since that night on the roof, weeks before, I haven’t been able to think of much else besides blood dripping down Cal’s wrist, the nail jutting from his skin, the curiosity on his face as he felt physical pain for what had to be the first time. Even pressed against me, his lips near my ear as he told me what would happen if he stayed, he seemed to be more worried about me than himself.
“You have to go back,” I choked out. I wanted nothing less in the world, but it seemed to be the only way.
“No,” he said, his dark eyes flashing. “I will not leave you.”
“But—”
“Enough, Benji.”
But it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. How could it be? I was angry that he could be so selfish as to allow me to watch him to die, knowing everything I had been through. I had nowhere near recovered from the loss of my father and he was expecting me to go through that again? The bastard. How dare he? I was drowning in a fucking river that he was still attempting to save me from, and he was telling me he was going to push me back in and hold me under. My father’s death had nearly destroyed me. Cal’s death would finish me.
This, of course, led to the question of how Calliel, after such a short amount of time, could mean as much to me as Big Eddie did. That was the question I didn’t know if I wanted answers to. It’s easier to ignore what’s in your heart if you pretend it won’t hurt you in the end. But even I knew that was a lie I used to placate myself.
I watched for signs of Cal weakening, of humanity springing forth and leaving his angelic side behind. I stayed awake long into those nights, lying against his chest, listening to his heart beat against my ear, his chest rising and falling with every breath he took. Aside from the nail in his hand and the blood from it, there was nothing else. He looked the same; he sounded the same. He tasted the same.
In those weeks leading up to the festival, no threads called to him, no reasons to leave my side. Again I wondered if it was because he was already more human than angel and had been cut off from God, or if he had been replaced by a new angel who was watching over Roseland. I listened for gossip to spread like wildfire, but heard nothing unusual. There were other rumors, of course. Rumors about me that I overheard at the diner. Rumors I overheard while shopping at Clark’s on my day off, Cal at my side, dropping box after box of Lucky Charms into the basket (“I think I am just going to take all the green clovers out of each box and put them into one box so I can have a box of just green clovers.”) These rumors were accompanied by furtive glances at us. No one seemed quite sure how we had met. Sometimes these questions were asked to others, sometimes they were asked, almost shyly, to me. He was just passing through town, I told them. He decided to stay a while (“Not so much passing as falling,” Cal would tell me later, a grin on his face).
Most spoke of the fact that Cal lived with me and that each of us was rarely seen without the other. It’s good for Benji, they said. He’s been such a loner ever since Big Eddie passed, God rest his soul. It’s nice to see him smile again. So they shacked up quickly. When you know, you know.
