I’ve been doodling angels all day.

On post-it pads, my legal pad, my planner, and even the leftover receipt from lunch. No one’s said anything, but then again, there’s hardly anyone in the office.

Christmas Eve.

Most people left the party last night and won’t return until after their vacations.

Christmas Eve, and I’m drawing angels.

It started this morning. I slept hard all night—not the wine-soaked sleep I normally have, but a true rest. I woke up early and couldn’t wait to get back to my easels. A dozen renderings of my sexy angel later, and I was nearly late to work. It would seem I’m fascinated by his male member, given how every one had an impressive erection. Each had a different pose—striking the vampire, held up tight against me, half-disappeared—but my hand wouldn’t let me paint him with anything other than full-standing arousal. My real frustration, however, lay with his face—I just couldn’t do it justice.

By comparison to that fresh start, the day has dragged on, and I’ve been mindlessly doodling. I don’t even realize how late it is until I fill up another page with faces and look up.

Not a soul in sight, and it’s after five.

No sense in staying any longer. And strangely, I’m eager to return home. To paint. That’s like a miracle unto itself, and I’m holding on and riding it for as long as I can… until the darkness returns. I grab my purse and clear my desk of the half-dozen disposable coffee cups. My Starry Night Mug has been MIA since I fled Rick and Sarah. It wasn’t by the potted plant when I returned this morning, and I already searched the break room. Since the place has cleared out, I poke around each of the cubicles, peeking inside to see if someone has adopted it. I could get another one, but this one was a gift from Daniel—and those are the only things that have meaning for me anymore. I work my way toward the break room, but there’s nothing on my co-workers’ desks. The office is already half-lit with the “energy saving” mode it goes into before it hits full-dark—I’ve spent plenty of nights working late, dreading the return to the house, such that I know all the quirks and patterns of the nightlife of the office. Like that the janitorial staff comes precisely at 7pm. The night guard does a sweep around 8pm. And another at 11pm. I usually force myself home before the overnight guard arrives.

I reach the break room empty-handed, but I figure I’ll take one more look.

I’m bent over, checking the low cabinets, when a male voice behind me makes me jump. “Looking for this?”

I wheel around, heart pounding. It’s just Rick. I guess junior VPs work late on Christmas Eve, too. He’s standing in the doorway, a hand on the doorknob and a smirk on his face… and he’s holding my mug.

“Yes!” I smile. “Where did you find it?”

His smile broadens, and he steps the rest of the way in, casually swinging the door shut behind him. He holds it out to me, but he’s still by the door. “Found it next to the potted plant.”

I flush and give a quirk of a smile. “Good thing you saved it from being lost.” Something’s raising the hair on the back of my neck, but I step forward to take the mug from his outstretched hand.

Just as I touch it, he pulls it back, out of my reach. “What’ll you give for it?”

The raised hairs bristle further. “What do you mean?”

He grabs my hand still suspended in the air and brings it quickly to his lips. His grip is hard, and I can’t pull away until he’s pressed his lips to my palm. Then he releases me, and I pull back, cradling my hand as if he’s wounded it. Which is what it feels like. A sickening dread fills my stomach. This is no fantasy. No hallucination. And I’m trapped in the break room with Rick the Sleaze.

“Oh, don’t be that way,” he says his smirk dropping into a pout. He steps forward, offering up the mug again. “I was just joking around.” He holds it out.

I slowly reach for it. This time, he lets me take it. “Thanks,” I whisper. “I should be going.” I move to dart around him, but he’s fast—his arm is around my waist, and he’s got me pressed up against him before I can even blink. Then his hand is on my wrist—the one with the mug—so I can’t bludgeon him with it. And his mouth has crashed down on mine, forcing my lips open with his invading tongue.

I want to scream.

I want to kick and fight.

But my whole body is locked up as Rick hauls me backward toward the door—

Then the door flies open, and Rick jerks back in surprise, loosening his iron grip on me. I gasp, and my body comes to life, twisting free of his hold. Miraculously, I still have the mug in my hand. My first impulse is to take a swing at him, the fury inside me just now coming to the surface—but I freeze when I see who’s come through the door.

My angel.

Only… he’s not. He’s the janitor. What? I can’t make sense of it.

But he’s staring down Rick like he wants to knock him clear out to sea.

“What the hell, man?” Rick complains. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

The angel—the janitor—turns to me. It’s impossible. The same blue eyes. The same chiseled cheeks. He’s wearing the crisp blue uniform of the janitorial service, and he has a nameplate that says Cassiel. But it’s him.

My mind is spinning in circles.

The fiery look the angel/janitor had for Rick softens when he turns it toward me. “Go,” he says quietly. He means leave… as in, leave him alone with Rick.

I clutch my mug to my chest, grip my purse, and dash for the door. I nearly brush against this Cassiel-angel-janitor person as I go, and I’m afraid my legs will fail me, but I make it out… and I just keep running. I hear the break room door close, but nothing else… just silence.

Is he going to hurt Rick? Fight him or just threaten to report him or… what? My mind is still spinning as I stab at the button for the elevator and scramble on board, purse and mug in hand, finger shaking as I press the button for the parking garage.

It’s not possible that the janitor is the angel. I know this. The janitorial staff doesn’t even come in for another two hours. But I also know what I saw, and he’s the same man. The angel from my fantasy… is real. Or at least, the man is real.

I blink far too much, sucking in air as I stumble to the Tesla, gaze darting around for vampires to leap out of the dark. I make it safely inside, lock the car, and take several, deep calming breaths. I’m not sure I can drive in this state.

How to make sense of this? Is it possible that I’ve seen the man before? Like… he was part of the custodial staff, and I just inserted him into my fantasy/hallucinations? No. Just… no. I don’t care how dead I was to the living world, a man like that walks in, and you notice. There’s no way I could have dreamed him up based on seeing him before and not remember that.

So… no. The man is real. Or maybe… maybe I just thought he looked like my angel?

Cassiel, said his nametag.

It’s something to go on. I take another deep breath and decide I can trust myself to drive. All the way home, I’m mentally recreating his face. The colors and angles I’ll use. The long lashes—I hadn’t noticed those before. And the lips… they’re the same, full, almost ridiculously sensual lips I remember searing mine. Only now I’ve had a good look at them. And his eyes. And the way his short-cropped hair falls slightly to the side like he’d mussed it with his hands. Perfect in the way runway models are. Like they’ve just had crazy sex then finger-combed their hair. Sexy messy is what my drawing prof in college called it.

Cassiel is 100% sexy messy.

When I get home, I boot up my laptop and search the website of the maintenance company, but they don’t list their employees. I search whitepages.com, but there’s no Cassiel, male or female, first name or last, in all of Seattle. Plenty of Castles and Cassels but no Cassiel. I give up on that and hurry to my studio while his face is still fresh in my mind.

Go, he said, blue eyes blazing at me.

I’m mixing paints for just that color of blue when a realization ripples through me. That voice. It was the same. The same as in my hallucination. I pause mid brush-stroke and stare at the half-formed angel face in front of me. “Who are you?” I whisper. And as hard as I try, I still can’t recreate the masculine beauty of his face. It’s not just my clumsy attempts at painting once again—I’m getting a feel for the colors and the strokes; it’s coming back—it’s just that the man is so damn beautiful. It’s almost like he’s not real… and I’m back to wondering if I’m going insane and just imagining the janitor who busted in to save me from Rick the Sleaze is my angel.

My angel.

I can’t help the possessive. It just feels right. Even though I have no idea if any of it is real, or I’m just losing my mind. I put down the brush and stare at the dozen attempts I made this morning, scattered all around the room, some on easels, some leaned against the windows to dry. They’re all horribly imperfect, but I forgive myself that. I decide I’m trying the impossible—to capture an unearthly beauty with earthly paints.

I stand up and back away.

There’s an agitation in my body that I don’t know what to do with. After so long of feeling dead to the world, this aliveness—this jittery awareness of life—feels like I’m coming out of my skin. Adrenaline is still pumping through me from Rick’s attack and Cassiel’s intervention. I was terrified, then relieved, then… attracted. There’s no other word for it. I’ve already felt his lips on mine, his body against my skin. Unless that was a dream. But even as a dream, even though I’ve never actually spoken to him, Cassiel is making me come alive again.

And my body and mind are coming apart with it.

I stumble backward out of my studio, then head for the kitchen. I grab a bottle of Pinot Noir, a glass, and the corkscrew, then head to my bedroom. Maybe the old routine will settle me down. I need to settle down. There was a time, early on, right after the funeral, when I felt this jittery need to do something. As if some action on my part would change the way the world worked, spin it backward on its axis to go back to a time when Daniel was still alive. When the world was as it should be. In my desperation then, I did all kinds of things. Dangerous things. Things that were no good for me.

A bottle of wine a night was the answer to stopping those dangerous jitters.

I sit on my bed and wrestle the cork out of the bottle, pour the glass, and the wine is sliding down my throat before I realize… I don’t want this. I don’t want to numb this aliveness. I don’t want to stop feeling the excitement. The allure. Maybe Cassiel is just a fantasy, but he’s the best one—the only one—I’ve had in years. Even if I have to live in delusion, I want to enjoy him a little longer.

I set the glass down.

Outside my window, the bridge looms, dark and massive. The moonlight gleams off it, and there’s no traffic. It’s Christmas Eve, but for the first time in three years, I don’t feel like the day or the bridge are taunting me with their specters of death. I no longer need the reminder that I’m still alive. I feel it, deep in my bones.

I will make it through this.

Even if Cassiel is just a figment of my imagination, he’s real in one very important way—the mere idea of him has reminded me I can feel good things again. Like my skill with the brush—it wasn’t dead, just dormant. Waiting for me to be ready to hold it again.

The jitters in my body calm with a suddenness that leaves me light-headed.

I almost laugh with how good it feels.

But then something on the bridge catches my attention. I squint, thinking maybe it was just a shadow—no, there it is again. Something ghostly white, reflecting the moonlight, moving steadily across it. A person. They must have a white hoodie on or something that glows with an unearthly sheen. They’re running across the bridge.

I’m mesmerized.

Who runs across a bridge on Christmas Eve at night? There’s never any pedestrian traffic up there—

The person stops.

Dead center on the bridge.

Alarm jolts me to my feet.

They’re going to jump. I know it even before they start scaling what looks like a tall, mesh barrier no doubt designed to stop exactly this from happening.

I turn and run, grabbing my keys and a coat on my way out the door. I’m in my car, headed for the bridge before I even question why I think I’m the one to stop this jumper. I dial 911 and hastily tell them there’s a jumper on the bridge, but then I get off the phone and focus.

I’ve mapped this route out a hundred times in my head… and I know I’ll get there first.