I woke the next morning to a cool hand on my forehead.
For whatever reason, I couldn’t recall climbing into bed. It must have had something to do with the hot tub and vodka. I know some humans managed it just fine, but heat and alcohol always knocked me out faster than anything else.
I groaned as the hand moved, brushing through my hair. The motion caused me to roll toward the cool body as my body tried to explode outward. That wasn’t—I realized almost too late—my body trying to explode, that was my stomach trying to toss up its contents violently. I swallowed quickly, but thankfully my stomach was too tight to release anything.
A tremor of self-loathing came over me, and I curled into a tighter ball.
“Ralph,” Sam murmured as he lowered himself to the edge of the bed. “Raphael, I need you to sit up to take some pills and water. Your body will do the rest of the work. Come up.”
Silence predominated for several minutes as I told my body to move, but it refused to budge. All I wanted to do was close my eyes and go back to sleep. Sam reached for my shoulder, pulling me up as I groaned loudly, not wanting to sit up.
My head swirled, and my stomach tried to follow suit. When I swallowed again, I ended up with a hand over my mouth, desperately trying not to be sick. Sam allowed me that awkward moment of being half-upright and not moving. He knew what it was like, to be that hung over. We had helped each other more than once.
Sam pulled me upward, and I opened my mouth obediently. He flicked two pills into my mouth, then brought a bottle of water to my lips. When I swallowed the pills, my headache disappeared almost instantly. The pulsing of my heartbeat in my ears took another minute to vanish, as my body began to right itself.
The one plus side of being who and what I was. A healing ability meant that I needed the nudge in the right direction and everything else just happened.
The hangover lifted slowly, leaving in its place only the exhaustion that came from not sleeping properly the night before. I dragged my knees up, wrapped my arms around them and set my head on my knees. I couldn’t let go of the tension, despite hours of soaking in the hot tub.
“How much did Grace drink last night?” Sam asked.
I struggled to remember. All that came to me was the sound of a hot tub and us giggling like school girls over something that escaped me. I also remembered the warmth, the heat of the water surrounding me. I felt as if I hadn’t been that warm in years.
My head swirled. I groaned, giving myself a light shake.
“Nothing,” I said. “She didn’t even stay in the tub long. She wasn’t feeling well.”
“What she actually said was that you told her to get the fuck out and wrap up in blankets and towels,” Sam said. “Which is a strange thing for you to say to my wife. Lilly was still in the tub. She admitted to drinking at least the same amount as you and was perky enough this morning to tell Michael he needs to fuck himself with a mace and die slowly.”
“Lillith,” I corrected.
The image that popped into my head gave me a little laugh. Nothing came out of my mouth, just a motion of my chest as I chuckled at the idea of it. Not even about Michael doing something nasty to himself, but at Lillith saying that over coffee with out being perky as she usually was in the mornings.
“She’s also decided that he’s now Michael because fuck him. Her words, not mine.”
I made a little, desperate, sound and kept my head on my knees.
“Raphael, why did you tell Grace to get out of the hot tub?”
Sam had plenty of reason to worry. When I had made comments like those in the past to humans, there had been something wrong with them. I couldn’t just shut that part of me off, and sometimes the more I tried, the stranger I behaved on a whim, I suppose was the best way to put it.
There could very well have been something wrong with Grace, and after all the drinking and smoking and the emotions of the night, it had simply come out. I had no idea what I had gotten worked up about involving Grace, I was drawing a blank on why I might have wanted Grace out of the tub.
We had gone in together to enjoy each other’s company.
Maybe she has a heart problem.
Heat could cause a human all kinds of trouble. Or, maybe, I was overreacting to nothing at all. Perhaps I was just worried because I knew one day Grace’s mortality would catch up to her and I knew how many germs a hot tub could harbour, the stuff that could happen in a tub because of the heat and bacteria. I knew those things. Grace didn’t.
Neither did Sam.
Not knowing what was wrong, however, I offered Sam no information.
“She should see a doctor, if you’re so concerned,” I said. “Maybe she caught a bug or something. From cleaning bodily fluids out of the bar. Actually, yes, get her checked out. Send her to a doctor today if you can. Remember, ugh, remember the last time I started doing that?”
“Black Plague.”
“No, I had that friend who had AIDS. Stupid doctors not even trying to diagnose it. He was a good friend. I miss him.”
Sam’s hand on my back did a little motion. For a long time he didn’t say anything, then he gave his head a shake and looked at me pitifully.
“Oh, you sound like you’re having one of your pity parties.”
“It’s not a pity party. I miss my friend. I’m sorry your friend is immortal, that’s not… I forgot what I was going to say.”
“You’re friends with Lillith.”
“Lillith was yours first.”
“She’s my ex, not my friend. She’s Grace’s friend, but, Raphael, you’re the only one she’s never been pissed at. Pretty certain when she forced us to be women, it was just so that she could go shopping with you and flirt with the lords.”
We had immediately done just that. We had also had a lot of fun doing it, owning the city like we were fancy ladies and I had ‘defiled’ more than one lord.
Though I think, given the century it had happened in, society would have viewed it as me being defiled instead of the other way around.
I smiled at the memory, longing for a simpler time.
“That’s true,” I said.
While Lillith and I had enjoyed ourselves, Michael, Gabriel, and Samael had struggled. In a month they had lost our home and fortune, been chased out of the city and got wrapped up in a war that Michael tried to fight in but couldn’t succeed in because his breasts kept getting in the way.
“Exactly,” he said.
I lifted my head and sighed.
“I’m a being. I am allowed to have emotions about things that have happened in the past.”
“You aren’t constantly moping, but we had to have a name for it so that we could warn each other and prepare accordingly,” Sam said. “There are certain things we always have to do, to make things better for you. We know you’re an emotional being and we love you for it.”
His voice was gentle, but I didn’t believe him in the least.
“You’re mean about it,” I said.
“Okay, let’s work on that.”
“I’ve told you that you’re being mean about it before.”
Sam was quiet for some time. He seemed to be considering his words carefully. Maybe he was thinking about what he had done in the past, how he had reacted to my other ‘pity parties’ and how he had treated me when I had protested that he was being mean.
It did seem like he was thinking about it, which was why I didn’t interrupt him or add anything. I just sat there until he spoke.
“Grace says that I have a lot of problems. A lot of strong opinions that I like to push on others. She’s said that maybe I bulldoze over the opinions of others rather than face the fact that we’re in trouble and doing the same thing we’ve been doing since the beginning of time isn’t going to fix anything. Or something.”
“Is that why you didn’t come in here yelling and going on?”
He had taken to doing that in modern times. After we had bought the bar, we had indulged a little too much, too many times. Sam’s responses had started out gentle, then gotten annoyed fast. I had been greeted with a bucket of ice on more than one occasion.
“I wanted to,” Sam said. “What kind of moron gets wasted to the point of being that hungover just because… Mike’s always been like that Raphael. You drinking isn’t going to change that.”
“My doing anything doesn’t change Michael. I’ve tried everything.”
“I know. The only thing that ever stopped him for a little bit was your violent streak, which I pray we never witness again.”
We were both quiet for a time. I didn’t want to talk about it, even think about it.
Just, one time, Michael had pushed me too far, and I had let loose on him and the surrounding area. Michael hadn’t said anything to me or picked on me for almost a century.
“Yeah,” I said. “That was weird even for me.”
“Mm,” Sam said as he sat on the edge of the bed. “Last night, Michael wasn’t spying for the sake of spying. He also wasn’t trying to figure out what you were doing with his date. He knew that before he went in. It wasn’t even about embarrassing you. None of that at all. There’s something about Sera that has caught Michael’s attention, and he came looking for an answer last night when I was so close to talking Grace out of her clothing.”
“You hoped to get rid of him by sending him in my direction,” I said.
I could understand that. We had all done that with Michael at some point in the past. He didn’t understand our need to be alone with our chosen companion. Even if it was a man for a riveting discourse. Sending Michael to the astral plane to check on something was our go-to escape route.
Though, given the wedding and so many guests, there were lots of places that Sam could have sent Michael anyplace in the estate and probably numerous locations across the city itself.
“Yes, desperately so. I asked if he had looked at Sera on the astral plane. He decided to do it while he knew where she was, rather than risk waiting. Except Grace was already up, so that was kind of pointless.”
“If it wasn’t about making a point, why’d he make such a fuss?” I asked.
“Sera has a set of wings.”
Those words did not explain why Michael had done what he did. They explained why he was so worked up, but not why he had kissed me or compared me to a human. Just because she had wings, didn’t mean that Michael could act out the way he did.
Wings weren’t new information.
“Uh huh, tattooed on her back.”
“Fused to her soul.”
I did a double take at that.
After the words sunk in, I was still furious. Even that information didn’t give Michael just cause to act the way he had. Wings linked to Sera’s soul was reason for panic, absolutely, but Michael should have told me about that, not do what he did in front of so many witnesses.
And then it really sunk in and I tried to figure out how that could even work.
“W-b-bat?” I asked, trying to say but and what at the same time. “How did he see her soul? Michael isn’t capable of that kind of vision. Toby could. Did Toby tell Michael about that?”
Human souls couldn’t be seen on that plane. We could see a lot of different things, we could definitely see humans and creatures hanging around them, but we couldn’t look at their souls. That was outside of our vision. Some Heavenly Hosts could see the soul, such as guardian angels, but that had something to do with the colour of the soul and where it might be heading.
Complicated things which were outside of my duties.
“Good point, it is weird that Michael saw her soul. That probably means something else is going on.”
I gave my head a shake. There was still no way that Michael should have been able to see Sera’s soul. The most he should have been able to see were the wings attached to her.
Then the significant bit trickled back into my mind.
She has wings.
“Those are real wings,” I said. “But… but that’s not…”
“Not possible, technically speaking,” Sam said. “Somehow, someone got their hands on a set of wings that haven’t been tended in a while. Do you know any angels who would part with a pair of wings?”
I liked how he could be so calm about it. Like he was talking about a curiosity, instead of an action that should have resulted in an explosion. A literal one, that would rip through both the astral and physical planes of existence as Heaven tried to reclaim the wings and Hell reached upward for the soul of the human, to drag them into the depths.
There were safeguards to prevent a human from gaining a set of wings by accident. Those safeguards didn’t just vanish because a bit of magic, even if it was dark magic, was applied to the human and wings to stitch them together like some freak of nature.
“Parting with a pair of wings would severely diminish an angel’s power and keep us from being able to return to Heaven because the guardians wouldn’t recognize us as us. They would think a mortal had claimed part of our wings to try to gain access.”
“Do you know how they came to be attached to her?” Sam asked.
There was only one explanation. I didn’t know how it was possible, just that it happened.
In reality, there might be two explanations, but somehow I doubted Father decided to attach wings to a human soul without the Heavenly Host screaming out about it and telling me, one way or another.
Which left one explanation, and Sera had told me all about it because I had been curious about the details. I had thought I’d have to go in to clean them out and keep them from using Enochian in their spells or something.
“Tattoo parlour downtown below a Wiccan shop with the entwined vortex symbol in the window,” I said.
“That’s oddly specific,” Sam said.
“I asked her last night.”
“Right, Michael said the ink was winding the wings into her soul, binding it to her. The act of having sex with you brought the wings deeper into her soul. I don’t know if you knew she orgasmed, but good work.”
I had known, that was how I had been able to end our interaction. Thankfully Sera wasn’t used to men lying about orgasm, so she didn’t even try to look for proof. I was also adept at faking it for women. All I had to do was screw up my face and sound like I got stabbed in the ribs, it worked out great.
“She knows what she likes, and just tells you what she wants and how to do it,” I said. “She practically did all the work.”
“I didn’t tell Michael that the wings went deeper when she had sex.”
That told me that Sam had a conversation with Toby before the Heavenly Host had left the estate. Toby must have seen something that he hadn’t told me about. Not that I had given him the time to talk to me about what he saw.
I had been so intent on getting Sera home and then getting back to hit Michael that I hadn’t taken the time to get an outside perspective on what had happened.
“You think the more sex she has, the deeper the wings go until they’re just a part of her?” I asked. “Angel wings surely can’t mesh cleanly with a mortal soul. It doesn’t work like that.”
“Unless she’s grace incarnate,” Sam whispered.
I swore and looked away. Her being like that meant that Michael would fight harder for her, assuming that he would be next on the list because he was second oldest. He was just that egotistical that he would make that assumption. And him having found her wouldn’t help matters at all.
I want her.
“How do we figure out whose grace she is?” I asked.
“Michael’s not missing a pair of wings. We know that. Are you missing a pair of wings?”
I didn’t understand why he was suddenly on the wings. I had just asked about grace, not the wings. We needed to know whose grace it was first, to keep Michael and I from fighting over her. The wings would come out in time. All I had to do was get a close look at them, then ask Heaven who was missing some wings.
“Why would you even ask that?”
“Well, we’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “I have to guess that you know more about our anatomy. You could tell me if I’m wrong, but would the wings not need the grace of the angel that the wings belong to, to not explode and rip a hole in the plane of physical existence? Creating a type of black hole that drags everything down into it and would be the best cause for Gabe to be sitting in the living room right now, strumming a guitar and humming?”
I winced.
We didn’t like Gabe playing with music. Whenever he picked up an instrument, we all felt that strum up our spines. The calling to war.
Gabe meant nothing by it. He just liked instruments. While in Heaven he had created numerous instruments just because he loved the way they sounded. On Earth, however, every time he strummed or plucked or poked an instrument, we felt it, and we all got just a little more anxious.
“Yeah, Grace thinks it’s adorable, she’s encouraging him,” Sam said.
“As long as it’s not his trumpet, we’ll be fine,” I said. “Gabe takes to musical instruments when he gets stressed.”
“You’re right, you and Michael fighting is a good reason for him to be stressed,” Sam said. “What about the wings? Is it possible?”
“Very possible,” I said. “See, wings will reattach to the owner of the wings like that,” I snapped my fingers, “the grace of an angel will automatically draw the wings back. Like yours did when you took Baal back into yourself. Therefore, the grace does not belong to the angel whose wings were stolen.”
Magic ink and a soul that wasn’t a soul, but was angel grace instead would explain how Sera wasn’t exploding.
“Right, and the ink is magic, that’s what’s connecting them,” Sam said. “Need to investigate the tattoo parlour.”
“Exactly. Orgasm, as it expels a demon would draw in the light. The more often she has sex, the deeper the wings will go into her soul or her grace. We don’t know what kind of creature that would create. We have to figure out how it was done and separate the two before the grace gains wings. That would be weird.”
“Reach out to Heaven, would you?”
“I definitely will,” I said. “I’ll also head to the parlour and check it out.”
There was a minute or so of silence. Sam seemed to consider whether he wanted to tell me, then came right out and said it.
“Michael is having her over for a picnic. Gabe thinks he’s talked him into having sex with her.”
It was meant to be a warning. I was to behave and not start anything over the fact that Michael was having Sera over to the estate, but she had already been clear with me, and I would give her that. Sera was a woman in the modern age. I couldn’t just buy her love by sending a letter with a drop of my scent on it to win her over.
She would come to her own decision, and I doubted what Michael called sex would keep her interested for long.
“But that’d be bad,” I said. “Her orgasming, I mean.”
“They’re barely attached,” Sam said. “Just at the tip.”
I chuckled. He smiled in response and rubbed at his chin with the back of his hand. Then he shook his head.
“It might help things, and he’s obsessing over her,” Sam said. “Weirdly obsessive. Maybe that’s how it looked when I started focusing on Grace.”
“And so you think that Sera is Michael’s grace,” I said. “Which is impossible because dark witches are still controlling his grace. There’s no way that they’d just let that wander into the body of a woman to be reborn and not… oh.”
“And not find the woman and tattoo a pair of angel wings into her soul so that it’s easy to find us so that they can try to steal our graces, not realizing that we don’t have our graces. And maybe they’re doing it because maybe they’re running low after all these years? Let’s face it. If it was a limitless magic, they would have taken over the world already, instead of parcelling out the magic.”
“Right,” I said. “That means Grace is in danger, you know that, don’t you?”
“I do,” Sam said. “Need to get Grace to a doctor first, then I’ll see about pushing the tickets. Mary might not be happy about flying down by herself, but she’s a grown woman.”
We had a rule that Mary went on any vacation we took.
Even a honeymoon.
She would fly down with Sam and Grace and join them a few days, maybe, but she wouldn’t interfere otherwise. Mary would get a nice vacation, with someone nearby in case something went wrong, and Sam would have Mary there in case he got nostalgic.
Grace had agreed, but she and Mary were friends, sort of. She more of acted like Mary was her mother-in-law except they got along.
“Right, while I go save Michael’s grace,” I said.
“No, don’t do that,” Sam said. “Dark witches are still his issue to handle and figure out. All I want you to do is check out the tattoo parlour, see if you can figure out what is going on. The witches know we’re here, but they don’t know who any of us are beside Gabe. No one is trying something with Gabe, considering he can just whip out the trumpet and the Heavenly Host will just come down from Heaven and smite whoever tries something. Grace or no grace, he’s dangerous.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Not more dangerous than you, though.”
I made a sound at the back of my throat.
“That was a reminder, Raphael. None of that thing you do.”
“I know,” I said.
“Good,” he said, standing. “I’m going to go set up an appointment for my wife now. You just take your time getting ready.”
“Why am I taking my time?” I asked.
“Gives Michael time to man up before we have to do something like separate them and perform an old-fashioned exorcism or something. How do you separate an angel who is possessing a human?”
I considered, but nothing came to me. It wasn’t like it had come up before. Thinking about it, really thinking about it, the only solution I could come up with was the same one we used for fallen angels who had taken on human form.
“Burn them with fire,” I said.
“No, really.”
“I’m not joking,” I said. “You have to burn them with fire until nothing is left but ashes. Just to be safe, you then separate the ashes into six piles and take them to the edges of the earth and dump them into volcanoes. Not water, water connects back to itself too quickly.”
“That might scare him off ever having sex again.”
“I know that,” I said. “I would also prefer not to do that to Sera. I like her.”
Sam arched an eyebrow at me.
“Not because she’s Michael’s grace incarnate,” I said. “I like her because she’s a good person. She’s fun to be around, and I quite like her kinks.”
“Tell yourself what you’d like,” Sam said. “There’ll be a person just like Grace and Sera, but for you instead. Maybe a man, you’d like that. Maybe that’s even why you want to change to a woman because you know your grace has been reborn in the form of a man.”
“Thanks for trying, I guess,” I said.
“Trying is half the issue,” Sam said. “Oh, I’ve decided that if you choose to become a woman, so will Michael. Not permanently, I haven’t settled on how long he has to be a woman. But, if we’re working under the assumption that Sera is his grace, how do you think she’d take to being with a woman for a little bit, rather than a man?”
“I think she’d slap on a strap on and have some fun,” I said.
“I think she might invite you to do the same,” Sam said with a little smile. “I like that you have never allowed the look of your flesh to dictate who or what you are. Except as a mildly Irish, well-educated man to turn the humans on and make your job easier. You’re still the same as you were when we were in Heaven, and you haven’t allowed the humans to destroy your innocence.”
“Thank you?”
I had to pose the words as a question because I wasn’t sure it was a compliment.
Sam made a sound and took his leave.
I sat on the bed for a little while longer, doing nothing in particular. When I finally got out, I went straight to the shower. I washed the scent of the bathtub off of me. I readied myself to go out, dressing in a worn out t-shirt, ripped jeans, and a scarf despite the weather.
I looked like a particular type. Like the type that would sit in a coffee bar and talk about how capitalism was ruining the world while my father paid my rent and for the most up to date technology and toys. Which was the exact look I was going for. I wanted to be able to act like a dumbass and to have them act like I was one.
The stupider I acted, the less likely they were to notice that I was an angel.
It’d be fun.
Once dressed, I went down to the kitchen and found Grace sitting at the little table with her head in her hands. She looked absolutely miserable.
“Eating is a necessity,” I said. “You will not feel better until you eat.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“What you’re experiencing is technically a sudden drop in blood sugar level because your body is redirecting its reserves to other places. Until you eat, you will feel sick, and I know it feels like the end of the world, but you’ll be fine.”
“I didn’t drink that much,” she groaned.
“I talked with Sam, he’s going to set up a doctor’s appointment,” I said as I grabbed an apple. “Make sure nothing is really wrong.”
“Why is he taking me to the doctor?” Grace asked.
“Last night I yelled at you to get out of the tub?” I asked.
“Yes, yes you did.”
“That’s why. It’s a weird thing for me to do,” I said. “There are a couple of reasons I threw you out, including a heart condition or two whose symptoms might present as nausea even though it’s really pain.”
“Oh shit, that would suck,” she said.
“Relax, if it’s life-threatening, given your age, I’ll just fix you up,” I said with a little nod. “Can’t make you immortal, that wasn’t our doing with Mary.”
“Yeah, she told me the story,” Grace said as she wrapped her hands around her coffee mug.
“You should cut back on that too,” I said, motioning to the mug with the apple. “Preferably none at all, but you should probably just ease it off until you almost want to stab me in the face for drinking coffee myself.”
Grace frowned at the mug. Her eyes moved off to the side, her head doing little motions and lips moving as if she were saying something, though she wasn’t speaking out loud.
“Raphael, how would you feel if I ate raw fish?”
“Pass it by me first, want to make sure the mercury isn’t high enough to hurt you,” I said, biting into the apple.
I chewed for a while, nodding gently as it seemed to dawn on me. Pausing as I chewed, I frowned at Grace, whose eyebrows rose. Then I shook my head. She did the same.
“That’s not possible,” I said.
“I’ve only slept with him,” she said.
“That’s why it’s not possible,” I said. “I know you wouldn’t cheat.”
“But… what if…”
“Don’t say it, it’s not possible and not good to get your hopes up.”
“I’m pregnant?”