18Christine
Raoul does not, in fact, get over it. He’s still insisting he’s fine in a high-pitched tone a couple hours later, when the Angel returns with breakfast.
We took turns in the Angel’s well-appointed bathroom, after which he ordered our meal through a food delivery app and walked down the canal tunnel out of sight to fetch it. Apparently there’s an exit somewhere along the canal route, a stairway that takes you up to street level and comes out by the riverfront.
I can’t say I’m surprised by the existence of this place—after all, there are steam tunnels under Nashville, not to mention Civil War–era escape routes for enslaved people and Prohibition-era hideaways for bootleggers.
Like I told Raoul, the literal existence of the death god took me a minute to grasp, even when I have plenty of proof, like the Angel’s shockingly addictive blood, his command of spirits, and his ability to wield mist and shadows. But now, with my mind refreshed by sleep, I’m remembering more of the mythos on which I was raised.
Wolfsheim’s cult possesses a giant compendium of Celticmythology and history. They require each Progeny family to own a copy and read from it at night, so I grew up on alternate versions of theMabinogion, theBook of Taliesin, and various historical texts. I still don’t know which versions of the tales are correct—the ones readily available online or the secret tome revered by the Progeny. The Progeny compendium certainly contains a lot more details, including entire family trees for the ancient royal families and the Tuatha Dé Danann themselves, some of them spanning dozens of pages.
I share a few of the stories with Raoul while we eat. The Angel doesn’t weigh in, but the unmasked half of his face looks contemplative, almost sad. Finally I ask, “These stories…are they accurate?”
His lips tighten, and he doesn’t answer for a long moment. “I don’t remember. The vampire who locked away my powers also suppressed most of my memories. My mind is often chaotic—fragments of recollection, whispers of memory, and the wails of the restless dead.”
“That sounds awful,” I murmur.
He meets my eyes, and for a second, I see it—the unending tempest, the torturous storm locked inside him. “Music quiets the noise.”
“Then we should play together after we eat.”
Raoul chokes on a bite of eggs. I pat him firmly on the back until he manages to wheeze, “Of course. What could be more normal? A jam session with a god, a vampire, and a—um…” He cuts himself off. “A human. A normal human.”
The Angel gives Raoul a strange look, but he doesn’t comment. He seems more at ease than he did last night—less prone to keep us captive. Perhaps he’s feeling reassured because Raoul and I didn’t leave while he was fetching the food.
After breakfast, Raoul gets up and begins poking around the instruments the Angel has collected. He pushes aside an afghan, uncovering a cherry-red Nord digital piano. “This is fantastic. Notcheap either. Where do you get your money? Do gods have some supernatural source of income?”
“The man who raised me left some funds in my possession,” the Angel says.
“Cool, cool.” Raoul locates a power strip into which the Angel has plugged a couple of lamps. Its cord runs all the way across the room, beneath the rugs, to an outlet in the wall.
I watch the Angel for a moment, marveling at his genius. From what he said, he’s been in this body for about a year, maybe less…and in that time, he has absorbed a massive amount of information. He learned to use technology, then leveraged it to amass the skills and knowledge he needed to set up this place. And judging by the piles of notebooks beside one of the chairs, he’s been writing music—tons of it.
When Raoul begins playing beats on the digital piano, the Angel rises, keen interest etched in every line of his body. He stands at Raoul’s side, watching him manipulate the sound in different ways.
“Teach me,” he says abruptly, and Raoul looks up at him.
My stomach flutters at the sight of them. Both shirtless, both gorgeous—the Angel with his broader, more powerful body and black hair, Raoul with his slim form and copper curls. Like the Devil and Cupid, bonding over music. I want to squeal with delight and smush them forcefully together, then wedge myself in between them and be the luckiest damn girl to ever exist.
But reality, that unrelenting bitch, crawls into my head and rips holes in the pretty picture I was painting.
None of this could ever work. Raoul is clearly freaked out about the vampire thing. Besides which, he has ongoing family trauma that apparently included some nasty abuse. The Angel is mentally disturbed on a number of levels. And I am more damaged than either of them could know.
That’s not even accounting for the fact that the reason we’re all here now together is that the Angel stalked me, decided to keep me here against my will, and threw Raoul in a torture chamber. Talk about a dysfunctional dynamic. There’s no way a relationship among the three of us could be anything but toxic.
But it’s hard not to smile as I watch Raoul teaching the Angel how to use the digital keyboard. He picks it up unbelievably fast, and before long, Raoul yields the piano to him, grabs a guitar, and begins strumming, singing in that light, golden tenor of his.
The Angel glances over at me and smiles—pure delight, pure joy. And suddenly I want to cry.
“Sing, Christine,” he pleads softly, and Raoul echoes, “Sing for us.”
I rise from the chair and take up a position on the other side of the digital piano, facing the Angel as he plays the intro to “As Long as You’re Mine” fromWicked.
This time, even though I know the song and I understand how intimate singing it will be, I don’t run. For the first time, I look at him while I sing. As I croon Elphaba’s words, I watch the adoration blooming on his face, the tears gathering in his eyes.Ihave the power to move him like this.Me.
Then, eyes locked with his, I listen to the passionate rise and fall of his voice through Fiyero’s stanza. And I know, with thrilling certainty, that no one has ever wanted me this badly before. No one has ever loved me this deeply.
Whatever he has been in the past, whatever he is now—this man, thisgod, adores me, body and soul.
