He smiles. “Good girl.”
“Where d’you come from,” I ask around the mouthful.
“There are many planes of existence. I come from another.”
“Stop being so vague.”
He bumps my lips with the dumpling.
I sigh and take another bite.
“I, and the many others like me, come from a plane inhabited solely by a single, powerful being. The place is both a universe of its own, and the being that dwells there.”
I never thought a place could be a person, too. Wheel of Fortune is gonna have a ball with this one.
“How did you get here?” I ask, then take another bite. I realize my eating is payment for his answers. I’ll eat the whole container to hear him talk more about himself.
“They released us to go experience the worlds. Particularly, your plane, and Earth.”
I finish the second bun. “Why?”
He shifts me in his grasp, and I sense that he’s stalling. His gaze moves around the room, as if there’s something he’s following only he can see.
“They can’t experience pain, or fear, or love. They are knowledgeable in all things but don’t comprehend emotions. They sent us as vessels for their understanding. One day, I’ll return to them, and my experiences will enlighten them.”
My stomach clenches. “One day when?”
He smiles down at me, his fingers tracing the line of my cheek to my jaw. “Not soon.”
I sigh in relief, and a sudden wave of exhaustion hits me. I stifle a yawn, but he notices. He stands and brings me back to the wax-caked dais where my dress sits in a bunch. He puts me down on the edge, then lifts my dress from the floor by his tail and holds it over me. I put my arms up and let him pull the material down my body. The trail of his knuckles against my sides is borderline illicit. It makes me want to stay here, but I know I have to go.
Not in a rush like before. Not fleeing from what I was feeling, my fears…but because I need rest. There’s still a lot hanging over us. He knows I have to leave, but that doesn’t seem to matter to him.
“Where do Sylvia and Apollo live?” I ask sleepily.
He chuckles. “Why, you want to go for a visit?”
“No, I mean, how do they get here?”
He hums as he helps me down. “Apollo is a powerful demon like me. He can traverse great spatial distances when he moves between the realms because of the power he can put into his astral doorway.”
“And when I leave the coffee shop, I lose your power.”
He nods.
“So, I wouldn’t be able to make a door from Boston to here?”
“I don’t know.”
He tucks a pink strand behind my ear and follows the line down to my neck. He cradles the back of my head and leans down. I stretch up to meet him in a gentle kiss, one that lingers on my lips long after it’s ended. He presses his forehead to mine, and smoke curls around our faces from his heavy exhale.
“That you would want to makes me happy,” he says.
I cup his cheeks and kiss him again. “You deserve happiness.”
His hand tenses on the back of my neck, and then he pulls away. “Time for you to go to bed.”
I smile. “Thank you for the date.”
