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I could have answered the second question with a dozen details about my fall. None would have mattered without telling her what I'd done to cause it.

“Human fate is protected,” I told her. “There are things even angels aren't supposed to see. I found a way into yours because I wanted to know more about you, and I knew perfectly well I wasn't allowed.”

Everly set her handbag aside and rose from the sofa.

“Tell me exactly what you did, Cillian. I want to know everything.”

I moved away from the armchair to give her room. The soles of my boots scuffed over the old floorboards. My wings were still folded, but even like that they took up a ridiculous amount of space. I kept to the far side of the room while she stood between the sofa and the windows.

“I'll tell you,” I said. “But I need to start with what I could see before I broke anything, because there's a difference.”

Everly folded her arms. She didn't sit again. I'd risked Heaven to be near her, and now she stood across my loft looking as though she'd rather be anywhere else. I couldn't blame her.

From Heaven, a human life wasn't a story laid out from beginning to end. I could glimpse moments where possible paths crossed, but following any particular person beyond that glimpse was forbidden. Humans weren't exhibits put there for the entertainment of the curious.

“The first time I saw you, you were on a street in the rain,” I said. “Your umbrella had turned inside out. You were laughing at the damned thing instead of taking shelter.”

I still remembered the umbrella's bright fabric buckling in the wind, the way she wrestled with its handle and finally gave up. She was an ordinary woman having an ordinary bad afternoon. I'd watched her tuck the ruined thing beneath her arm and stride off, wet hair sticking to her coat, as though she had somewhere worth going and a little rain wasn't going to prevent her getting there.

She lowered her arms slowly. “And you remembered that?”

“I couldn't seem to forget it. I wanted to know where you were going, what you'd laugh at next. I wanted to meet you and see whether you were as interesting when you weren't fighting the weather.” I held her gaze. “I could've left it there. I didn't.”

A truck rolled over the uneven cobblestones below. Its tires thudded through the loft floor, then the sound passed and left us alone with what I had said.

“Instead, you went looking for me,” she said.

“For your path. There's a distinction, although it won't make me sound any better.”

“Try me.”

I rested my hands on the heavy wooden table beside the kitchen, well away from the computer screens. They were dark, their reflections showing only the overhead lights and the black feathers behind me. The equipment I used to earn a living had nothing to do with what I'd done in Heaven. I wanted her to understand that without using my respectable job as camouflage for something far worse.

“Every human life has possibilities: places you might go, people you might meet, choices you might make. You're supposed to be able to move through those possibilities without someone like me prying into them. I found a weakness in the protection around yours.”

“Like the security problem you found at Harbor & Main?”

“Similar principle. Vastly worse judgment.”

She looked from the monitors to my face. Her expression had tightened, but her attention was sharp. Everly knew the difference between an assessment done with permission and someone helping himself to information that wasn't his.

“You didn't just happen to see something you weren't meant to,” she said. “You found a way around a safeguard.”

“Yes. At first, I only opened enough to see where some of your possible paths led. I shut it again, convinced I could walk away.”

I had told myself a great many flattering stories about that first breach. None survived the next part.

“I went back,” I said. “And when the protection resisted me, I pushed harder. By then I wasn't satisfied with knowing there might be a way for us to meet. I wanted to make sure I could take it.”

Everly took a step away from the sofa. “You keep saying 'my path' as though it belonged to you to investigate. What did you find out? Did you know where I lived? Who I dated? Everything I thought was private?”

She wanted to know exactly how much of her life I'd seen. I had an answer about the limits of my access, but not one that would make her glad I'd used it.

“I didn't hear your thoughts, and I wasn't looking through your bedroom windows,” I said. “I could see possible events and connections. That still gave me knowledge I had no right to. I'm not going to pretend the boundary mattered only if I learned your secrets.”

She looked down at the polished boards between us. “So you knew enough about my future to put yourself in it.”

She'd said it before I could find a way to make the confession any less ugly.