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"It was so real," I said quietly. "More real than my own life. I remember everything."
Whatever snarky retort was on his lips disappeared, and he turned serious again. "I'm sorry I interrupted. So, what happened then? With you, the girl, and the cattery?"
"We were just all there together, warm and happy. Then a car pulled up outside, and I carried the girl out to look. A man was getting out, and he was the one . My lover, my husband, her father. The one my life centered around."
"Who was he?" Roman asked, face intent.
I shook my head. "I don't know. I couldn't see his face. It was dark out, and it was snowing. I just know that I loved him, and that he and the girl completed my life."
Roman didn't answer right away as he turned my words over. "But it was a dream."
"I don't know. Nyx can show the future...she showed others theirs. She claimed this was mine, but it's impossible. I can't have any of that. And yet..."
"...and yet, you secretly hope it might be true."
"Yeah. And when this whole stasis thing happened, I thought maybe..."
Again, Roman completed my words. "...maybe it could be true. After all, you could suddenly touch Seth. Maybe you could have a kid too?"
He'd guessed my secret hope. "I didn't know. I still don't. Maybe I can get pregnant. I mean, my body is kinda sorta human, right?"
"Yes. But not enough. I don't know every detail of this whole demonic hierarchy and the way they channel their powers, but I know you can't have kids. Even if you seem human, you're still immortal. You still belong to Hell. I'm sorry."
I held his eyes for a moment and then looked down. "Well. I guess I can't really be surprised by that, huh? And I have no reason to trust Nyx anyway. Not after what she did."
There it was. No kids. Another piece of the dream had slipped away from me. All I had left was the faceless man, the man I wanted to be Seth, and even that seemed unlikely now.
Roman tugged me up. "Come on. Let's head back before the rain comes. We'll get some ice cream. Maybe that'll cheer you up."
"I'm not really sure ice cream can fix my failed hopes and dreams or an impending demonic takeover."
"Probably not. But it'll help."
CHAPTER 23
Dante wasn't around when I got home, nor was he reachable by phone. That relieved me of any guilt I had about going out with Seth, meaning my only other obstacle was the accusatory look Roman gave me when we parted. I had no idea how he would spend his evening, and honestly, I didn't really want to know.
The problem Seth and I had with going out was that we pretty much had to avoid the city. We knew people in the suburbs too, but the odds of running into anyone were a lot smaller. The rainy weather Roman and I had experienced in the afternoon had blown over, and we suddenly found ourselves in semi-warm conditions that made it almost possible to go without a coat. I would have read the fortuitous weather as a divine blessing, if not for the fact that I'd given up on such beliefs long ago.
To my astonishment, though, Seth said he wanted to go downtown and felt pretty confident we wouldn't be spotted. He drove us over to Belltown, parking underneath one of the many high-rise apartment buildings that seemed to be sprouting up there every day. A mysterious key let him inside, and the elevator took us all the way to the top floor.
"What is this?" I asked when we entered a sprawling penthouse suite. It kind of made me wonder if I should have been setting my real estate aspirations in a different direction. I gave him a startled look. "You don't own this, do you?" Seth having a secret vacation home wasn't entirely improbable.
"Belongs to someone I know who's out of town. I called in a favor."
"You have friends I don't know?"
He gave me A Look, and I let the matter go. Besides, the place was so beautiful that I had plenty of distraction. The colors were all done in shades of navy and gray, and the furniture was plush and expensive. I especially liked the fact that the walls were decorated with huge reproductions of pre-Raphaelite work. Nowadays, abstract art was the trendy way to go, and it was nice to see something a little different.
"Wait'll you see the rest," said Seth, beckoning me out to the balcony.
Or, well, "balcony" was the closest word I could come up with. It was practically half the size of my apartment and faced west, showing part of downtown's glittering array of lights and all of Puget Sound. I stared in wonder, watching a ferry move across the dark expanse of water.
"Wow." That about summed it up.
We stood there for a few moments, and Seth's arm slipped around me. This high up, the unseasonable warmth had turned to seasonable gusts and coldness. I shivered, and Seth draped me in a blanket that had been neatly folded on a wrought-iron chair.
"Have a seat," he said. "I'll be back with dinner."
I grinned at the gallantry and sat at an ornate, candlelit glass table that still allowed me to take in the view. Waiting for Seth, I felt all sorts of strange feelings stir to life within me. This was it, I realized. I didn't know how I knew, but this was the end of whatever it was that we had right now. Maybe something new would take its place. Maybe we'd never have anything again. Regardless, this moment was crystallized in time for me. Nothing like it would ever come again.
Dinner turned out to be an array of tapenade and bread, as well as-to my shock-a bottle of wine. "Is that whole thing for me?" I asked.
He shook his head. "I'll have a glass."
"What? Starbucks, now this?" I peered at the bottle to make sure it wasn't some kind of weird alcohol-free kind. Nope.
"It's a special occasion," he said with a smile, and I knew he'd gotten the same vibe that I had, that this was the end of something. "Besides, how can I live out the Rubaiyat if I don't have all the accoutrements?"
"Of course. Your uber-romantic date would be based on a poem." I could already see him getting into quotation mode. He cleared his throat to speak.
"Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse-and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness-
And Wilderness is paradise enow."
I tsked. "You've got the bread, wine, and me...but no bough. And hardly the wilderness."
"It's the urban jungle," he argued.
"And no book of verse," I continued, liking my contrary role. Then I reconsidered. "Although, I did finish All Fools Night ."
Seth's expression immediately grew serious. "And?"
"You already know. It was beautiful."
"No, I don't. It's a mystery every time-no pun intended. The words come out, but in the end..." He shrugged. "You never know how they'll be received, what people will think. I'm always kind of surprised."
"What did the opening quote mean? The Kate Bush lyrics about making a deal with God?"
"You should hear the cover of that song that Placebo did. It'll blow you away." Seth gave me a knowing look. "You think there's some hidden meaning?"
"There's always a hidden meaning. You added it in after you met me, didn't you?"
"Yeah...I mean, it relates to the book obviously...to O'Neill's revelation at the end. But I guess it relates to us too." His eyes drifted away, lost in the vista around us. "I don't know. We've had to deal with so many complications. We're still dealing with them. And what can we do? Nothing-well, unless we take your side's point of view and make deals with the devil. But why? Why can't we make deals with God?"
"People do all the time. 'God, if you do this for me, I promise to be good.' Stuff like that."
"Yeah, but I don't see any contracts like you guys have. No hard evidence that it works." If I wasn't mistaken, there was a little bitterness in his voice. "How come we can only get the things we want by being bad? Why can't we get them by being good?"
"I'll ask Carter the next time I see him," I said dryly. "But I have a feeling he'd say goodness is its own reward."
We'd picked over the tapenade by now but hardly touched the wine. His claims aside, I wasn't sure Seth had even sipped his. He turned back toward me.
"You and I aren't being very good, are we?" he asked. That was an understatement.
"You and I are the victims of unfortunate timing." I paused. "And a lot of other unfortunate things."
"Would have been a lot simpler if this stasis thing had happened when we were dating. Or if we'd just given in then."
