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Breathing through her nose, she scented earth and pine upon him, and she remembered what the Book had shown her… firelight on a stone wall. Mayhap he had sequestered himself away on a mountain somewhere—
Something was off. Something was… wrong about him.
Shaking herself to attention, she nodded down at the crinkled napkin and the empty burger box on his tray. “Are you leaving the now, then?”
Please do not go, she thought.
“I can wait while you eat.” He slid back into the bench. “Join me?”
Putting her tray down, she sat across from him and recalled the words he had spoken to her. “Forgive me, but I do not know whether I want fries.” She tilted her cup toward herself, even though she knew there was nothing in it to inspect. “And it appears as though I have forgotten my drink.”
Verily, she had forgotten everything when she had seen him sitting alone and staring out the windows. But she had been worried that he would send her away if she had no food.
“Here, have my Coke.” He put his cup on her tray. “Or what’s left of it.”
As she focused on the straw sticking out of the plastic top, all she could think of was that his lips had been on the thing.
“Wait,” he said, “I’ll just go fill your own—”
“No.” Her voice was sharp. “I would prefer—this is rather fine.”
With a flush, she picked up his drink. Cupping her palms around its base, the cold transferred through her skin and into her bones, and it felt like a warning. But she brushed that off by staring at the face that had haunted her.
“You have lost weight.” As one of his brows twitched, she feared she had offended him. “You look well, though. Very… well.”
He closed his eyes and sat back in the bench. Then he let his head fall loose as if he were staring through his lids at the ceiling.
“How did you know I was here?” He leveled himself and smiled, though the expression did not change the heaviness in his eyes. “Or do you come here often.”
“I have never been here before.”
He focused down at the fake wood table between them, and as the silence grew deep as a well, she glanced around at the humans who milled to and fro, gathering their sustenance, carrying it out or sitting down to eat. She envied them their easy lives.
“Would you prefer me to leave,” she asked as she tightened her hold on his cup.
“I already said goodbye to you,” he murmured. Like he was speaking to himself.
“Yes, you did. I was there.”
When he turned to stare out into the night, at the golden arches, she studied his profile. He had a fine nose, straight and true. And a jaw that was flexing and relaxing as if he were grinding his molars.
Tck-tck.
She looked toward the sound. Over at the bank of self-serve soda machines, a man was putting his cup under a green tab that read “Sprite.” Nothing was coming out, but he kept trying the little lever, the tck-tck released anew each time.
“If you’ve never been here before, how did you know where to find me? Or was this just a McDonald’s lottery you happened to enter.”
“I should not have come.”
Rahvyn went to put his cup back on his tray, but it caught the lip and started to fall—
Lassiter snatched the drink before it tipped over, but the force of his grip popped the top and Coke went everywhere in slow motion, the explosion shooting up a cascade of brownish liquid. Except suddenly, between one blink and the next—it was not soda. It was blood in the air, red as a ruby and thick as syrup—
The smell of burned flesh and chemical smoke flooded her nose, spearing into her, as she saw the portrait of the King in the Book, a black tide rushing in toward him from all four corners.
Death.
Rahvyn screamed and jumped up in the bench, her legs getting caught under the table, her arms paddling and flipping her tray, the burger, still tightly wrapped in its paper, going the way of the soda. The blood.
Abruptly, she was lurching as well, off-balance and falling, too. As her vision swung in a wild arc, she saw the ceiling Lassiter had not stared at, and next came the hard landing as she hit the floor. With her breath kicked out of her, her head rang like a bell, confusion and panic tangling her thoughts—
The one grounding she needed, indeed, that she had been searching for, appeared right above her, Lassiter’s face taking up her entire field of vision, blocking out the places to sit and eat, the humans who were gathering about her, the drinks machines.
All she saw was him.
The angel was talking to her, his lips moving, his strange and beautiful eyes boring into her own as though he were trying to will her into coming around.
