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."
"No," I said. "No way. I don't care if this is a mess. It's worth it that I didn't end up hurting you." You spared him physical pain , a nasty voice inside me taunted. But what about Maddie? Pain isn't always physical, you of all people know that. What about the heartache you've caused her? I ignored the voice.
"I don't care," said Seth. "I would have done it. I would have sold my soul for you. You and me...I told you. Something's always going to keep us near each other...even if we aren't together."
I rose from my chair and sat on his lap, wrapping my arms around him and wondering how it was possible that my heart was both swelling and breaking at the same time. I leaned my head against his shoulder.
"I love you," I said softly. "And I forgive you." Something weird about those words made me shiver, as though I'd never said them to anyone. "And I understand now why you did what you did." I didn't elaborate on the "what." I didn't need to.
Seth kissed my cheek. "Do you ever feel like...we're reliving this moment over and over?"
I thought about our troubled past. "If we are, I don't want to worry about it. Not right now."
I think he was going to say more, possibly even correct me, but I didn't give him a chance. I kissed him, and like every other time, it was sweet and powerful and the most right thing in the world. We wrapped ourselves together, and somehow, despite the cold weather, we got enough clothes off and made love with the wind whipping our hair and the stars shining down on us. And like that first time, I still had that sense that we weren't close enough. Even when our bodies joined and he moved in me, it still felt like I could never, ever be close enough to him. Maybe it was this mystical connection he kept talking about. Or maybe it was just a metaphor for our lot in life.
We sat together for a long time afterward, draped in blankets and saying little. I wanted to stay there all night. Forever, even. In this affair, it was the one thing we hadn't done: spend the night together after sex. We always had to part and go on to the rest of our lives.
He finally dropped me off at my car, and we kissed for a long time before I could finally extricate myself. Seth ran his hand along my cheek and hair, reluctant to let me go. I shared the sentiment.
"What will you do now?" he asked.
"I don't know. One more search tomorrow, I guess. If there's even time. I expect Ephraim to name somebody any minute now."
Seth nodded, eyes dark and thoughtful. "Well, if you need company again..."
I smiled, unsure if that was a smart idea or not, but it wasn't a decision I wanted to make tonight. I didn't know if I wanted the balcony to be our last moment together in this fling or if I wanted to cling to another few precious seconds, even on the beach.
"I'll let you know," I promised. I kissed him one last time and then left to find my own car. I had just unlocked it when a voice spoke to me out of the darkness.
"Can you give me a lift?"
I sighed. I really didn't like the way everyone could sneak up on me lately. Of course, with Carter's sick sense of humor, I wasn't entirely shocked. He'd lurked while hiding his aura plenty of times in the past because he liked the element of surprise. Still. I didn't even have a fighting chance now.
I opened my door. "Sorry. I don't pick up hitchhikers."
Undeterred, he slid into the passenger seat and put on his seat belt. "Did you have a good evening, madam?" He spoke in an old-fashioned, genteel sort of way.
"Don't take that tone with me."
"What tone? I was being polite."
"You know exactly what I've been doing, so don't act like you're making pleasant conversation."
"Why are they mutually exclusive?"
I refused to look at him. "I don't want to be judged."
"Am I judging you? Sounds more like you're judging yourself, which really, is the way it should be. The best jury of your peers that you'll ever find is...well, you. Only you know what you're capable of and what you want to be."
"Did you find me just to delve into the philosophy of my morals?" I grumbled.
"Nah," he said. "Whenever I find you, I just sort of go with this free-form thing and see where the mood takes me."
"Maybe the mood could take you to Jerome."
"That's your quest, not mine. Any luck?"
Again, I faced that dilemma. Who could I tell what? Grace, Roman...so many players on the board now and no clear opponent. "Some," I said at last.
"Oh-ho," he laughed. "You could be an angel with an answer like that."
"Well, I don't think it's going to be enough to find Jerome, not unless a miracle happens." The drive was short. I pulled up outside my building, getting a lucky front spot.
Carter turned and winked at me. "Well, you know my take on those. Thanks for the lift."
"Wait," I said, realizing he was about to teleport away. "I have a question."
He arched an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"How come when mortals want things, their only option is to make a deal with Hell and sell their soul? Why can't they make deals with God in exchange for good behavior?"
It was another of those rare moments when I'd surprised Carter. I waited for the glib answer I'd mentioned to Seth, something along the lines of goodness being its own reward. The angel considered for several seconds.
"Humans make those deals all the time," he said finally. "They just don't make them with God."
"Then who are they making them with?" I exclaimed.
"Themselves." He vanished.