“It’s all right,” he insisted, but she pushed his coat back over his shoulders and onto the floor without waiting for permission and opened his shirt. The wounds that had seemed to be festering before now looked like clean, healing cuts.
“I can’t believe it.” She looked up at him. “I thought they were going to kill you.” Looking up into his eyes, it was hard to even remember the fight. It was like something she had seen in a movie, not real. “I was so scared.”
“So was I.” A flush rose in his cheeks, and she could feel the warmth of his body, standing so close.
“You didn’t seem scared.”
“I was scared for you.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “If you feel weird, we should get you to a hospital.”
“Please, God, no,” she said. The last place she wanted to be was a hospital; she’d sooner go to Hell. “I promise I’m all right.”
“Are you sure?” His eyes were searching hers, and she felt herself breathing faster, her body feeling strangely light. He was a stranger, but this felt familiar, as if they’d stood this way before.
“I’m sure.” She put her hand over his heart under his shirt, feeling it beat against her palm. “I’m fine.” His eyes were icy blue but warm, so warm. “We’re safe.”
He kissed her just the way she’d known he would. He caught her hand in his, drawing her close to him, her body melting into his as his mouth came down on hers. Her lips parted with a sigh, breathing him in, and his arms closed around her, sheltering her, pressing her close. I shouldn’t want this, she thought. This is wrong. He was a stranger, but he felt so familiar when she touched him, as if he belonged to her. Tears spilled from her eyes, and he kissed them away.
“Don’t cry, Kelsey,” he said. The words were like an echo; she had heard him say them before. “Please don’t cry.” She drew back, and for a split second, it wasn’t Asher standing there but Jake, her darling Jake, come back to comfort her.
“The ghost,” she said. “You sound like the ghost…you smell like the ghost…” She felt dizzy, sick. “It was you.” The strange vision had passed; he looked like Asher again. But she couldn’t shake the feeling, the certain knowledge in her bones that somehow this man and the apparition that had come to her two nights before were one and the same. “Who are you?” His eyes were so brilliantly blue, they seemed to glow.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “It’s all my fault, I swear.” His skin, already perfect, took on a deeper, smoother sheen, like polished stone, his stubble disappearing. She couldn’t even see a pore. She touched the base of his throat, and his flesh felt feverishly hot, but there was no flush. He looked into her eyes. “But I am falling.”
“Falling?” She gasped as he fell to his knees before her, and his clothes seemed to dissolve, leaving him naked in front of her. His skin all over was as flawless as his face but for tattoos on his back, a beautiful design like a Da Vinci drawing, elaborately feathered wings, and the scars on his shoulder. She stumbled back against the kitchen counter, grabbing for it to stay on her feet. He lowered his head, his eyes falling closed. The tattoos began to ripple, shimmering black on his skin. “Holy God,” she said breathlessly, reaching out to him. He caught her hand and stood as massive, golden wings unfurled from his back, glistening, glowing with light.
The world seemed to crumble under her, leaving her falling through darkness. “Noooo,” she heard herself saying, her blood running cold. The image of the angel Asher wavered; her eyes were filled with tears. Not real, she thought, her heart screaming in pain. None of it was real.
“Kelsey, listen to me.” His beautiful face was too close to hers, impossible to shut out.
“No,” she said, snatching her hand from his grip, tucking it under her arm. “I don’t want to.”
“I’m a seraph,” he said. “An angel. Please don’t be afraid.” The pain on his face was unbearable. Her mama had always said the angels cried if she tried to turn them away. “I saw you in the cemetery. I read your letter—Jake’s letter.”
“I burned it,” she said. “Nobody could read it.”
“I put them back together.” He seemed to put his hands on her shoulders. She could feel him touching her. She had felt him kiss her; it had all seemed so perfectly real.
“Jake was there; he read it, too. He sent me to you.”
“Don’t say that,” she said. “Don’t you dare say that.”
“I was so afraid for you,” he said. “I just wanted to help.”
“Let me go,” she begged, closing her eyes, raising her fists to her face to shut the vision out. “Leave me alone.”
“I just meant to comfort you that one time,” he said. He sounded real, too, so loving and kind. “Jake thought that if you could see him one last time, talk to him, tell him face to face all the things you had written, and he could tell you he was all right, you would feel better, stronger. And he is all right, Kelsey, I swear.”
“Cruel,” she said, her voice barely more than a squeak. “So cruel…”
“He told me what to say,” he said. “He wanted you to not be afraid for him, to stop blaming yourself. I shouldn’t have agreed to it, but I was afraid if I didn’t, he would send a demon instead. But I was wrong; I’m the one who brought the demons here. I just wanted to save you, beloved.”
“Don’t call me that!” She had thought he was a real man who magically appeared just when she needed him, but he was a delusion. Deep inside her memory in the place she never looked, she saw her mama pacing in front of the china cabinet in the dining room, singing at the top of her lungs, trying to drown out the voices of the angels she saw all around her. “I can’t get no SATISFACTION!” How could she not have known? All her life she had lived in fear of this moment. As soon as she saw him the first time in the cemetery, she should have known. She realized she was moaning, keening softly.
“Kelsey, stop, I’m begging you.” She felt him take hold of her wrists so tenderly, trying to pull her hands from her eyes, to make her see him. “I didn’t know how it would feel to touch you,” he said, his voice rough with emotion, so intimate, so close.
“Stop it,” she said. “Please stop.”
“I didn’t realize I would be putting you in danger.”