As I walked into my building after dropping Seth off, I was surprised to see the guy who staffed the front desk still working. He usually went home at dinnertime. A sheaf of papers in his hands indicated some sort of mandatory overtime. He brightened when he saw me.
"Miss Kincaid! I have something for you."
I blanked for a moment, then remembered the daily Post-it reminders on my door. There'd been a total of three now. "Oh, yeah," I said. "Sorry I haven't had a chance to pick it up yet. I keep forgetting."
He was already rustling around for something behind him on the other side of the window. I strolled over, just as he heaved a huge box up onto the counter. The printing on the side was upside down, but I could still make it out: Christmas Tree - Austrian Fir.
"Oh, man," I grumbled. "This is somebody's idea of a - "
But the guy was busy hauling another box up to the counter, a smaller one with pictures on the side depicting the 'pre-decorated fiber optic tree' inside. It was followed by another box, a bit smaller than the Austrian Fir, and a smaller one still that was about two-by-two feet. These last two boxes were wrapped in glittery green paper, with a wrapping job so perfect that only one being on earth could have managed it: Peter.
The desk guy surveyed the boxes. "You must really like Christmas."
"I thought each of those notes was a reminder for the same package."
"Nope. New one each day. Want some help?"
We hauled the trees up to my apartment and deposited them on the living room floor. I thanked him, and as soon as he left, Aubrey emerged and began stalking the boxes.
"That's a lot of tannenbaum," a voice behind me suddenly said.
I jumped and turned around. Yasmine. "Don't do that. Carter does exactly the same thing."
"Sorry," she said, looking sheepish. "Wasn't intentional. I just got here." She walked over to the boxes, tilting her head to read them. She wore jeans and an LSU sweatshirt, her black hair pulled into the trademark ponytail that made her look seventeen. "What's up with all these?"
I took off my coat and flounced onto the couch with a sigh. "My friend Peter started this whole buzz that I needed a Christmas tree after Carter burned mine down. So I guess everyone made good on it."
"Wait," she said. "Did you say Carter burned down your Christmas tree?"
"Yeah, it's a long story."
"He must feel bad."
She pointed to the little fiber optic tree, the one that was already decorated. Words were scrawled on the side of the box in spidery, nearly illegible writing:
G -
Figured you could handle this one. Ready and decorated!
- C
P.S. - And flame retardant.
"Hmm," I mused. "'C' could be Cody too."
"Nah. I recognize the poor attempt at penmanship. It's Carter."
"Okay, so the angel repents. But who are the rest from?"
We soon found out. The wrapping job on the two matching boxes had already given Peter away. The larger box contained a very beautiful, very expensive tree with 'winter moss green' needles that were lightly dusted with silver glitter. The smaller box contained a matched set of lights and ornaments all done in purple and fuchsia. Peter apparently hadn't trusted me to decorate his gift myself.
The Austrian Fir turned out to be from the bookstore staff. A card from Maddie read: Surprise! We all pitched in for it. Now you can't be a Scrooge. It was signed by other store workers, as well as Seth.
I looked back and forth between the boxes. "It's a Christmas miracle. I had no tree. Now I have a forest."
"C'mon," said Yasmine. "I'll help you set them up."
I looked at her in surprise. "Aren't you here to meet up with Vince or something?"
She shook her head. "I'm here to talk to you."
Uh-oh.
I didn't really want to set up the Christmas trees, but a being vastly more powerful than me did, so I set to it. Carter's tree was the easiest since all I had to do was plug it in. I placed it in a window sill, one with an outlet right underneath. The tree's fiber optic needles lit up to pale pink, then purple, then teal, then white.
"Good God," I said. "It's the Christmas tree equivalent of a lava lamp."
"I like it," declared Yasmine. "It's got moxie." She looked really excited. She could have been a kid on Christmas morning. You'd think after seeing so many Christmases (and trees) in her existence, they'd get kind of old. She pointed at Peter's tree. "Let's do the prissy one now."
We were stringing purple lights on the 'winter moss green' tree when she finally started The Talk.
"So. Vincent told me what happened." She paused as she looped the lights over a branch. "I'm glad your guy is okay."
"Me too. He was lucky...if Vincent hadn't been there..."
More silence. I didn't entirely know where Yasmine was going with this. My guess was that she was concerned I'd tell someone about Vincent. I felt absolutely certain, however, that she wasn't going to threaten to break my kneecaps or anything to keep me silent. In fact, I realized then that what she wanted was reassurance. It was a crazy and startling idea. She was an angel, after all. A being of hope and peace, a being that others prayed to for comfort. Yet, here she was, seeking it from me - a creature of Hell.
"I meant it," I told her. "What I said to him. I'm not going to tell anyone."
"I believe you," she said, confusion all over her face. Angels knew when others were telling the truth. "But I don't understand it. Why? Why wouldn't you? You could get into big trouble if your superiors - if Jerome - found out you knew and weren't telling." Vincent had said the same thing. It was true. "Your people tend to get pissed off over stuff like that."
"What, and yours don't? Would they be forgiving if they found out?"
She looked away from me, diverting her attention to hanging a pink glass dove.
"Look," I said. "I work for Hell, but I don't, like, delight in others' suffering. Especially since I like both of you. I don't want to see you get into trouble. I don't even think what you're doing is wrong. Dangerous, maybe, but not wrong."
"Which part? The loving part or the nephilim part?"
I shrugged. "It's all risky."
She smiled at me. "You talk about nephilim pretty calmly. Most people - in our circles - go running for the hills."
"I met one once. Dated him." I hung a bejeweled purple orb on the tree. "He was scary as hell, yeah. Had this whole homicidal revenge thing going on, which kind of negated his sexiness a little. But at the end of the day...I don't know. He wasn't much of a monster. He couldn't help being born what he was."
I was glad to be free of Roman, glad he was somewhere far away from me. He'd posed too much of a threat to both me and those I loved. Still, there had been something in him I found appealing. It was why we'd connected before things literally blew up. I understood his weariness with the games Heaven and Hell played. He'd offered to take me away and free me from it all, and there were days I would still wake up and long for that.
"No," Yasmine agreed. "They can't help what they are. And it's not their fault. But their existence is a reminder of our faults...of our weaknesses." She held her hands open in front of her, studying them as though they held answers. "None of us higher immortals want to be shown that we're weak. That's our hubris, I guess. Especially the angels. No one's perfect, but we like to play that we are." She sighed and let her hands drop. "I should walk away from this. I should have a long time ago."
I jerked my head up. "But you love him."
"Sometimes loving someone means you have to do what's ultimately good. What you need instead of what you want."
"I suppose. But ending it seems so extreme. There must be a way to...I don't know, have it all."
The door opened, and Vincent walked in. He didn't look surprised to see either of us, but then, he would have sensed our auras. His eyes met Yasmine's, and it was like lightning crackling through the room. Both of them lit up, shining in a way that I doubted my succubus glamour could even begin to compete with.
He expressed surprise over my Yuletide Forest but jumped in to help us, appearing just as excited as Yasmine over the activity. The two of them never touched, but I noticed the same thing that I had at breakfast: an intimacy in the way they interacted with each other. They didn't need to touch. Their relationship was obvious, and I wondered how it was possible none of the other angels had ever noticed this. Maybe it was like what Yasmine had mentioned about angels and hubris. Maybe angels always assumed they were perfect and were too blind to see flaws in each other, whereas someone like me - who exploited weakness - knew what to look for.
We finished Peter's tree, and then I found my ornaments from last year - the ones that hadn't been destroyed in the fire - and used them on the bookstore's tree. When my woodland paradise was finally complete, Yasmine and Vincent made their farewells and left. I still had no idea what their divine mission in Seattle was, but I assumed it had universal consequences. I felt a little weird that it had been put on hold to decorate my home.
As I cleaned up the boxes, I kept thinking about what Yasmine had said about needing versus wanting. In some ways, that was what Seth and I did. We wanted to have sex. We needed to avoid it.
I also found myself recalling Andrew again, that annoyingly good priest who'd caused me so many headaches. I hadn't thought much about his story since last week, but as my body mindlessly completed chores, the images began replaying in my mind.
Despite my best efforts, he'd remained a bastion of purity and willpower. While frustrating, it nonetheless continued to make the game fun. And although I didn't appreciate it as much back then as I did now, I sort of took pleasure in just hanging around him. He was good company, and he came to mean more to me than just a sexual conquest. It was obvious he cared about me too.
It would figure that things went bad between us on a beautiful, sunny day. I remembered it distinctly. I had wandered over to the church he ministered out of and sat with him in the vegetable garden. I stayed clear of the dirt, conscious of the yellow silk dress my bishop had just had made for me. Andrew, less concerned, worked on his knees, unhesitatingly digging in - literally - and cultivating the church's small crop.
"Don't you have other people who could do this for you?"
Squinting up at me in the bright light, he smiled. "Nothing compares to the satisfaction of doing something yourself."
"If you say so."
He returned to his work, and I continued to sit quietly, watching him and the lazy vista of that golden afternoon. Not far away, the sounds of daily hustle and bustle carried over. I liked this town - it was a nice break from the large, busy cities I'd spent most of my succubus time in. Eventually, though, I knew I'd grow restless and move onto some place with a little more excitement.
I turned back to Andrew. "Thomas Brewer just got back from Cadwell. He says they're all getting sick there."
Andrew nodded. "People are getting sick everywhere. There have been outbreaks in a lot of the western towns."
"Are you worried?"
He shrugged. "What comes will come. None of us can change God's will."
I grimaced. I'd heard about this illness, what later generations would call the Black Death. The rapid onset. The blackened skin. The swollen lumps. Even if it couldn't technically hurt me, I didn't want to see it spread here.
"I don't think God can be as merciful as you say in mass if He's inflicting something like that on his people."
"It's a test, Cecily. God is always testing us. It makes us stronger."
"Or dead."
He didn't respond.
"What will you do if it comes?" I pushed. "Geoffrey says he'll leave. Will you go with him?"
His dark eyebrows rose in surprise, like I'd asked if the sun would take tomorrow off. "Of course not. I mean, as bishop, I'm sure Geoffrey must...do what is necessary to continue fulfilling his duties, but me? I serve the people. I will continue to serve the people. If they're sick, I'll tend them."
My sarcasm gave way to shock, and I leapt to my feet, striding toward him. "You can't do that! Haven't you heard about this? People don't come back from it. The only thing to do is get out and let it run its course."
It was true. Call it cruel, but as I'd told Liam on our post-auction date, that was the way the world had dealt with epidemics for a lot of human history. Certainly, some people cared and ministered unto others, but when disease grew really terrible, with no clear answer in sight, ignorance and fear reigned supreme. Most people of that era saw the simplest solution as putting as much distance as possible between them and the illness.
Andrew stood up as well, wearing an expression so annoyingly wise and serene as he faced me. "If that's what you must do, then you must do it. My place is here."
I didn't even have seduction on my mind when I reached out and grabbed his hands. He flinched with surprise but didn't let go.
"It's stupid," I told him earnestly. "You can't stop it. You'll die, and I - I can't watch that."
"Then go. Go with Geoffrey. Or go...out to the convent. It's isolated. You'd be safe there."
I scowled. "Not that again."
"I just want what's best for you, that's all." One of his hands reached up and cupped my chin. "I don't want to see you suffer either."
It occurred to me then how close we stood. The heat building between our bodies rivaled that of the sunshine pounding down on us from above. Andrew, realizing this too, started and tried to pull away. I held on to his hand, anger flaring up in my chest.
"So that's how you'll let it end then? You spend your whole life living in poverty and chastity, only to die in a pile of stinking corpses with oozing sores and rotting skin?"
"If that's what God - "
"Stop it," I said, leaning forward. "Just stop it. Don't you get it? God doesn't care. He's not even paying attention."
"Cecily - "
I didn't let him finish. Instead, I pressed my mouth against his mouth, molding my body to his. I don't know if he'd ever kissed anyone else before, but if not, he was a quick study. He didn't break from me. In fact I would have sworn there was an eagerness to his lips as they explored mine, willingly letting my tongue stroke and dance with his.
And oh, God help me, he was so very good and noble that I tasted a sunburst of energy just from that kiss alone. It poured into me like honey, glorious and sweet.
And surprisingly, it was me who finally broke the kiss, though I still stayed pressed against his body, my arms encircling him.
"Don't you see how stupid it is?" I whispered, our lips so close we shared each other's breath. "Are you going to die without having lived? Without having tasted everything that's out there? Are you really just going to rush into death like that?"
His eyes weighed me, his own hands resting on my waist. "I don't need fleshly pleasures to complete my life."
"You're lying," I told him. "You want to."
"Wanting and needing are two different things." He stepped away from me, and I suddenly felt incomplete without his body against mine. I had a fleeting flash of some connection bigger than both of us, and then it was gone. "A long life means nothing if it's empty and has no purpose. Better to live a short one filled with the things that are important to you."
"You're a fool," I snapped. "I'm not going to stay and watch you die."
"Then go."
And I did.