Cassiel

  Summer was a much more pleasant experience in Detroit but Cassiel was certain their future was not in the heart of the rundown city.
 “One of these days,” Sera chirped in his ear. “You are going to have to explain what happened that day.”
 “What day?” he asked innocently, squeezing her hand firmly in his.
 She grunted and punched him in the arm.
 “You’re just full of mysteries, aren’t you?”
 “Not any longer,” Cass replied quietly, encircling his arm around her waist to pull her near. “I am exactly what you see.”
 And he meant it. Gone were all his powers and Lucky’s voice in his head.
 He was able to experience the world as a mortal once again and his senses were on fire.
 I won a bet against Satan. I wish that was a story I could tell our children.
 As far as Sera could remember, there had been an altercation with a client who had gotten a little too close.
 The details of the day were fuzzy to her but Cassiel was grateful for small favors. How could he explain that he was really a demonic angel sent back after a misunderstanding?
 He was glad he did not need to figure it out.
 “You’re coming with me?” she asked, and he nodded, grinning.
 “Do you believe I would miss this?” he asked, and she laughed.
 “Sadist,” she replied, pulling his hand as they entered the unkempt lobby of the office building.
 Someone had been very generous to Cassiel after the terrible evening in the hotel, but he was not sure who; Michael or Satan.
 Two months after the fiasco, an envelope was slipped under the apartment door when Sera left for work. It was addressed to Cass in a pen which he did not recognize and when he opened it, there was a set of keys and directions to a house…in California.
 “It is yours if you should ever need it,” the note read. “Ask the girl how to use this.”
 A small rectangular card made of hard material fell into his hand. It bore numbers, but it made no sense to him until Sera explained it to him.
 “You really are from another planet, aren’t you? It’s a bank card!”
    He looked at her blankly and Sera had laughed, leading him to a building where she explained how to use it.
 “What do you do with all your money? Put it under your mattress?” she demanded, laughing. She stopped abruptly, her eyebrows raising with interest.
 “Do you?”
 “I have no money,” he replied, and she scoffed, glancing at the note which accompanied the card. At a machine he had never seen before, she punched numbers into a keypad and Cass watched her with awe.
 She’s so beautiful – what did I ever do to deserve her? he thought, a now-familiar blast of heat rising through him as he realized how good their life was going to be together.
 Sera whipped her head around and gaped at him.
 “You have no money?” she choked, pointing at the screen. “You have no money?”
 He looked to where she was pointing, his jaw falling slack as he read the impossible amount of numbers on the screen.
 What number is that? He asked himself. Do numbers go that high?
 “Who are you?” she demanded. “Have you been lying to me? Are you really an illegal alien?”
 Cass shrugged and nodded, unsure of what else to say.
 It was the easiest way he knew how to explain it to her.
 “Where has all this money come from, Cass?” she asked, her eyes nearly bugging out of her face. “I mean – “
 “It is family money,” he explained. “I inherited it. I just hadn’t realized there was so…much.”
 She gaped at him, a strange look in her eyes.
 “Oh,” she whispered, retrieving the card and handing it back to him. “That’s nice.”
 Cass grabbed her by the shoulders and peered into her face.
 “It is your money too,” he told her gently. “Everything I have is yours.”
 She stared at him, shaking her head firmly.
 “I don’t want your money,” she growled defensively, but Cass could hear the wistfulness in her tone. “I’ve always made my own way.”
 “You can still make your own way,” he replied. “With a partner.”
 That was how they found themselves climbing the dank stairwell to the third-floor offices.
 “Sera! Where have you been?” an over-eager man gushed as they pushed through the dilapidated door.
 “Down, Conrad,” she snapped, striding past him without pausing.
 Cass swallowed a smile as he followed her toward the back of the office space.
 She threw open a closed door and a stout, balding man looked up in shock as he saw her.
 “I have been calling your fuck – oh hello.” The older man caught himself as he noticed Cassiel standing in the doorway. “Who might you be?”
 “Cassiel,” he replied simply, and Harry jumped from his chair, hurrying toward the man but Sera stood in his path.
 “Keep your dick in your pants,” she instructed. “He’s with me.”
 The phony smile slipped off Harry’s porcine face and he scowled.
 “In that case, where the fuck have you been? I’ve been calling you for – “
 “I quit, Harry.”
 He gaped at her before a smirk fell on his lips. The attorney glanced at Cassiel leeringly.
 “Oh, you finally found a man to take care of you, huh?” he jeered. “You’ll be back here in a week, begging for your job.”
 “No,” Cassiel replied. “She will not.”
 Harry snorted.
 “You don’t know her type,” the lawyer snickered. “But trust me, when the novelty of her pussy wears off – “
 He didn’t have a chance to finish his sentence before a blow sent him into the far wall behind his desk, blood from his broken nose spilling onto his clothing and the furniture impartially.
 “She will not be back,” Cassiel said again and Serafina had to hide her smile behind her hand.
 “We better get out of here,” she muttered, yanking his arm as Harry moaned. “He’s the type to call the cops and file a lawsuit.”
 Cassiel shrugged indifferently.
 “I doubt they will come looking for us for something so trivial.”
 Sera’s smile widened and she paused, bracing herself on her tiptoes to kiss his lips.
   “I bet you’re right,” she agreed. “Let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”