by C. G. Blaine
The sirens grow closer, and I check on Hannah.
She’s not where I left her. I suffer a flashback to the nursery debacle and am about to panic when I notice her off to the side of us. She’s sitting cross-legged in the grass with the BOSG in her lap. Her lips are moving and then—
“Whoa.” Chaz throws his arms out to catch his balance. “What the fuck?”
Rosdan stretches out his fingers. “Powering down.”
I feel it, too. Not a complete loss, but very little light other than what I’m getting from Hannah’s lingering adrenaline.
She stops reading and looks up. “Did it work? Is it closed?”
Chaz drops and is back in a few seconds. “Nothing but a big-ass crater in there, Kelley.”
Proud of herself for bailing our asses out, she stand up with the book already fading back to shadows. I tip my head to Ros when Hannah holds it out, and he reluctantly takes it.
“What am I supposed to do with it?” he asks.
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Should one of us check up on Donny to see if he got the blade?” Chaz asks.
“Go for it.” I tug Hannah toward me and ask, “You ready to go home?”
A smile answers me, and she relaxes against my side.
I plan to lock her away and not share her with anyone as long as she’ll let me. Longer if I can’t find her ring.
“Wait a minute.” Chaz holds up his hands, shaking his head. “You and your Nephilim can’t just make a mess and leave us with the cleanup. Back me up here, Ros.”
Rosdan wipes a hand over his mouth, hiding a smile and not offering any reinforcements.
“Oh, come on,” Chaz says. “This is bullshit.”
I secure my arm around Hannah while he continues complaining, and because I’ve never given a shit about his whining, we drop.
It takes three days for Hannah to convince me to leave the apartment. Honestly, if it wasn’t for my bike still being at the bar where I left it to go save her ass, it would probably take longer. I put her off until late afternoon before she sets her jaw and slips on her shoes.
Since my powers have returned to only when needed, I drag her onto my lap, ready to get her heart pumping the best way I know how. We’re really getting somewhere until someone knocks.
She tries to get up, and I say, “Leave it.”
I can already sense my least favorite unsolicited visitor on the other side of the door. But after a second round of knocking, Hannah shimmies her way off me. She answers, and a familiar light enters my chest. The one brought on by anything female sniffing around me.
I cross the living room to the door, so Lydia can scowl at me from the hallway.
I sling my arm over Hannah’s shoulders. “Sorry, we were just on our way out.”
Lydia crosses her arms and tips her head to the side. “So, you don’t want to know what happened to Samyaza?”
“What about him?” I ask, feigning a vague disinterest, as always.
Lydia looks between Hannah and me, still not sure how much she knows.
Hannah puts her out of her eye-bouncing misery. “I’ll let you two talk.”
She disappears into the hall, where she’ll listen to everything.
I prop my shoulder against the doorframe, and Lydia waits for the decoy click of the bedroom latch before she straightens her jacket.
“I’ll assume you already know that Samyaza lost his final charge and has been mortal for over a year,” she says, tugging at the hem.
It’s not a question, so I don’t answer, but she takes my silence as one.
“Look”—she brings out her disappointed-soccer-mom tone—“I’m not here to reprimand you. I wanted you to know he’s returned to Heaven.”
“A rather misleading statement,” I say, not hiding my irritation as well as I’d like. “Why don’t you call it like it is and say he started his sentence outside the gates?”
“Because he’s not. He passed judgment and entered as a mortal soul.” The what the fuck must flash in neon on my face because her expression softens enough to count as friendly. “I don’t know how, but there must have been a loophole. Something he did while mortal that was so worthy of redemption—”
“Self-sacrifice.”
The ultimate act of love.
Samy gave up his life to save Hannah. To save me from losing her like he had Chloe.
Lydia perks up at my comment, so I clear my throat and straighten.
“I mean, if I had to guess,” I say dismissively.
“Right…” And with that, she slides into suspicious and accusatory. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the rumors going around about the Book of—”
“Really, Lydia, it’s been great catching up. Let’s do it again in seventy years.”
The door shuts before she can even spit out one shrill Tamiel.
I smile on my way to the hallway, and around the corner, a grinning Hannah jumps into my arms.
“You’d make a terrible spy,” I tell her.
She beams even bigger. “Samy’s in Heaven with Chloe.”
I nod. “And the first thing I’m doing when I see him again is kicking his ass for hitting on you.”
She laughs, but it’s true, and I’d bet my existence Samy knows it’s coming.
In case Lydia plans the same pop-by for the other two, I give them a heads-up, and then I drop us to the bar restroom. I raise an eyebrow at Hannah when we land, and she rolls her eyes, reaching for the door handle.
“You and public restrooms.”
The place is empty, except for the bartender playing with his phone at a booth. He doesn’t notice us slip out the front even though we never walked in.
I hook my arm around Hannah as we walk down the sidewalk to my bike. She doesn’t know it yet, but we have a stop to make before we go home. I stole a page out of Lydia’s book and tracked down a storage locker Samy was renting in the city. I have a hunch about something that might be in there. Something I want ahead of her returning to the classes that I doubt she’ll agree to skip much longer.
A man bumps into her shoulder and turns back. “Sorry,” he mumbles. When his gaze lands on me, he stops. “D-do I know you?”
I study him hard, not sure why the grimy man looks familiar. Then I imagine him under shitty lighting with his cheek flat against a bar top, softly snoring.
“Carl?”
“Oh my God,” he whispers. He brings his hands to my cheeks, poking and prodding with stubby fingers. “It’s you.” As soon as he says it, he pales, his eyes growing wide. “You’re the angel banished from Heaven. And time’s not real and you…” He glances at the bar door we came out of, then he’s back to me. “You vanished into thin air. I tried to tell them you were in front of me, and then, poof!”
Shit. Maybe he wasn’t as unconscious as I thought he was all those times.
Before he screams any more about angels in the middle of the goddamn street, I lunge at Hannah.
Of course, she flinches. “Really, Cass?”
Carl tries to back away, but I catch his face, and a dreamy look replaces the fear in his eyes.
“I’m not real,” I tell him, my voice calm. “You drink too much and imagined me. Stop hanging out in bars all day. Go to a meeting. Find a job that makes you happy.”
He nods, and I start to release him but pause. I’ve always been curious about something, and if I don’t ask, it will drive me crazy.
“What’s your name?”
“Jeremiah,” he says.
I make a face and let him go. He blinks a few times, coming out of the daze, and heads the way he came from, away from the bar and off to start a better life.
When I turn around, Hannah’s leaning against my bike, shaking her head.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she says. “That was just sweet of you.”
I look down the sidewalk after him and sigh. “Yeah, but I should have sugg
ested he change his name to Carl.”
After bidding farewell to the best bar buddy I’ve ever had, I inform Hannah about our pit stop. The drive doesn’t take long, and within a few minutes, I find what I’m looking for in the storage unit. The rest of the stuff is mostly scrolls and various magical elements I leave behind for Rosdan to deal with.
I slide the door down and turn around to Hannah and her narrowed eyes. She’s annoyed I wouldn’t tell her why I dragged her here.
“Calm down,” I tell her, backing her to the bike. “It was worth the trip.”
Once she cools it with the glare, I hold out my hand and open my fist.
“My ring,” she says, lighting up.
She picks the silver band from my palm and twists it to check the inscription. Once she’s verified it’s hers and not some knockoff I found and spelled, I take it back from her. She gives me her hand so that I can put it on for her, but I shake my head.
“I want the other hand.”
Her eyes flick up to mine. “What?”
“I said, I want this one.” I lift her left hand as the light floods in. “And I want your tomorrow and all the days after. I want every laugh and birthday and Christmas.” I kiss between her knuckles where I’m going to put this ring, and it’s never coming off. “I want you, Hannah Kelley. What do you want?”
She bites her lip and smiles. “I want big, bad, broody Cass to ask me to marry him.”
I arch an eyebrow and slide the ring down her finger. “Marry me.”
The light answers faster than she can, so she barely nods before I kiss her.
“Close enough,” she mumbles against my mouth.
She sighs and pulls me closer, and I should have waited to do this because I’m about to drop her ass back to the apartment to finish what she’s starting. To keep from abandoning my bike again, I force myself away from her.
“I get it now,” I say, pushing her hair back.
She tugs at the hem of my shirt, not making this any easier. “Get what?”
“The inscription. I understand why Brice promised Fiona a forever’s worth of forevers.”
“Why?” she asks.
I lower my forehead to hers and smile. “Because even forever with you won’t be enough for me.”
Her nose wrinkles, and she laughs as I kiss her once more and set her up on the seat.
I’m more than ready to take her home, and the way she runs her hands over me when I start the bike, so is she. But as I pull out of the parking lot, the sun is beginning to set.
I turn the opposite direction, heading away from it.
Hannah starts tugging on my shirt, probably wondering why, but I ignore her. I just asked the love of my existence to marry me and waxed poetic about wanting a forever of forevers. The last thing I’m about to do now is drive us off into the fucking sunset.
The gig of immortal being is supposed to be badass. Powers. Near impossible to kill. Savage good looks from here to eternity. The last one’s not a guarantee, but the point remains the same. Immortal equals badass.
So, why the fuck am I standing on a roof in Colorado, mid-July, with a handful of burned-out twinkly lights?
Hannah. Kelley.
She’s not even my charge. Yet here I am, stooped down to hook cords around nails put up by another mortal—also not my charge—all because my brother fell in love with a Nephilim who has a fetish with Christmas.
“You plan on finishing anytime soon?” Cass asks from the ground. “Or should we just skip Christmas in July and see if you’re done by December?” He cocks an eyebrow, not even trying to hide his smirk.
I twist in a new bulb, and the entire string illuminates.
“Hallelujah,” I deadpan.
Cass steps back when I jump down, and we both check out my handiwork. The multicolored lights crowded onto the roof of Hannah’s parents’ old house spell out, Ain’t no Christmas like a Kelley Christmas ’cause a Kelley Christmas don’t stop. It’s impossible to read and most likely a significant fire hazard.
“You sure you want to encourage this?” I ask.
He shrugs, walking toward the house. “If it means she doesn’t give a shit about any other holidays, I’ll deal with this one twice a year.”
I follow him inside the poor two-story house with more decorations on the outside than siding. Hannah has crammed more ornaments on the entryway tree, which sags at the top from the weight. Rosdan ended up anchoring the one in the kitchen to a cupboard, so it wouldn’t fall over.
When I step into the living room behind Cass, Hannah brings me a giant glass of eggnog.
“You realize it’s ninety degrees outside.”
“It’s almost all whiskey,” she says, shoving it at me.
She goes to the couch, and Cass pulls her down onto his lap. It’s the first time they’ve been back since he suggested the previous occupants sell her parents’ house back to her, but they look at home. Which says something when talking about Cass. As much shit as I give him over falling for a mortal, Hannah’s good for him. He went from pissed off all the time to only mildly irritated most of the time.
Rosdan walks in with another box of decorations and a pair of antlers on his head. He settles in next to them, and he and Hannah start picking through it. Cass looks over and rolls his eyes.
Spending my day in a Christmas jumper might not be my cup of tea, but it would be nice if he and Hannah moved back after she finished school. With Ros in Washington, we’d all be on the same side of the continent again. A plus since I still have no idea if Abaddon weaseled his way into the Abyss and found the Dimming Blade before Hannah closed it.
“Chaz, you should bring your charges to dinner.”
“Yeah,” Cass says dryly.
“Sure, Kelley.” I sink into an oversize easy chair across the room from them. “I’ll drop them in and suggest they drove here to spend the evening with a bunch of strangers.”
She squints at me, and I grin, winking at her.
Her mention of my charges reminds me to text Kai about rafting in the morning. Kasdaye and I have always existed by the motto of the less interaction with our Nephilim, the better, but we’ve both relaxed that recently.
A few years ago, my charge, Kai, discovered he was an adrenaline junkie. The constant surges of light—while fucking awesome—drove me nuts. I never knew if he was in actual danger when they hit. Then, I realized if I bro’d out and went with him when he threw himself out of planes, I could enjoy the rush and not chance him dying and ruining the rest of my eternity.
Because when you’re only two Nephilim away from finally going home, shit gets serious.
K-bro, we hitting the rapids in the morning?
It doesn’t take him long to shoot back a response.
Before the sun? Make it interesting?
Junkie, through and through. Hell, I might have to worry about landing myself in a Cassannah situation if he were a woman. Or if his sister were anything like him, but Avery is quiet and shy. The most exhilarating thing she’s done in the past ten years was give a valedictorian speech at their high school graduation a few years ago.
Ten-four, I send.
New bar on Koenig Ave. We can go out tonight and 4G it.
I’m about to ask what the fuck he’s talking about when the answers vibrate in my palm.
Get drunk.
Get laid.
Get showered.
Go to the river.
I snort and look at Cass, Hannah, and Rosdan on the couch. Other than the redhead in the middle, I’ve spent most of my existence around them. What’s the harm in bailing on one family dinner in favor of a night of booze and a hot hook-up I never need to see again? I mean, one of us has already fallen in love with a mortal and almost started an apocalypse. It’s not like that’s going to happen again.
Chaz's story will continue in Book 2 of the When Watchers Fall series, coming 2020! Sign up for CG's newsletter and stay in the loop. You'll also s
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"When Doves Cry"—Prince
"Vicarious"—Tool
"The River"—Good Charlotte
"Headstrong"—Trapt
"Champagne Supernova"—Oasis
"I Will Survive"—Cake
"no tears left to cry"—Ariana Grande
"Comedown"—311
"Supermassive Black Hole"—Muse
"Heartbeats"—Jose Gonzalez
"I Like Me Better"—Lauv
"Castle on the Hill"—Ed Sheeran
"Miserable"—Lit
"Head Above Water"—Avril Lavigne
"Dancing Days"—Led Zeppelin
"Say It Ain't So"—Weezer
Joe, you truly deserve the first shout out this time. Thank you for the crazy idea that I should write a book about fallen angels. And thank you for then spending the next five hours plotting not only one book, but an entire series. I really do like you. Swear!
My beta readers. Sara, Callie, Dmitri, Amanda, Joe, and Lauren, your feedback was priceless and your encouragement irreplaceable. Thanks for tolerating my neurotic-ass.
Emmily, I’m glad Brad found you and brought you to me. You read all my words—ones from five minutes ago and ones you’ve memorized because it’s taken that long for me to get them just right. Cass loves you. (hey B-rad!)
To Madison and Jovana, my incredible editors. You help sculpt the details and push me to be a better writer. I learn from each book, and much of the credit goes to you ladies. And to Christina, but not Hannah's mom, Fiona.
Murphy Rae, you killed it as always. Thanks for turning my vision into art and saving us from those pants.
