Under Wraps tudac-1
Page 27
“Oh,” I said instead, “administrative. But you’re a doctor—that sounds way more interesting. Tell me about that.”
I listened to Eric describe his medical career all the way to the restaurant, and pasted on a smile as he continued while the maitre d’ showed us to our table. I tried to keep my eyes focused on Eric’s shiny, disheveled hair while a guy, who looked very much like Alex Grace, bussed the table over Eric’s left shoulder.
“Could you excuse me for a moment?” I asked Eric, breaking into his breathtaking description of the cyst he had lacerated yesterday.
When Eric nodded, I crumpled my napkin and hurried to the women’s restroom, my stomach in knots, my palms sweating as I rubbed them against the Banana Republic sheath dress I had borrowed from Nina.
“You’re not here, you’re not here, you’re not here,” I muttered as I sank down on the toilet seat, my index fingers making manic circles against my temples. “You’re a figment of my undersexed imagination.” I clamped my eyes shut. “Figment of my imagination …”
“Are you through?”
I opened one eye, and my heart dropped to my knees as figment-Alex, now in the women’s restroom stall with me, raised an eyebrow.
“What?” I stood up, the backs of my calves ramming against the cold toilet, the automatic flusher going crazy. “You’re not here,” I tried, jabbing a shaking finger at figment-Alex. “You’re not here….”
Figment-Alex grinned and took my index finger in his hand, kissing the tip. His lips were warm, moist, and they felt very real.
“Alex?” I asked, my heart starting to thump.
“Hi, Sophie.”
“What are you doing here?” I rose up on tiptoes in a halfhearted effort to look over the stall wall. “You shouldn’t be here. And you really shouldn’t be here, here.”
Alex looked unfazed.
“I have a date out there,” I hissed.
Alex shrugged, looked nonchalantly over his shoulder. “Shall I tell him you’ve been detained?”
“No! No! You can’t tell a guy that I went to the bathroom and never came back. He’ll think I have explosive diarrhea or something.”
Alex leaned an elbow against the stall door. “So tell him you have to end your date because you ran into an ex-boyfriend.”
I could feel my eyes bulge, feel the color rising in my cheeks. “Ex-boyfriend? Look, buddy, you were not my ex-boyfriend, let alone any kind of ex—”
“Buddy,” Alex chuckled, stepping closer to me.
“Boyfriends do not poof! Disappear. And they do not return again in a public restroom. Especially not in the ladies’ room.” I dropped my voice. “What are you doing here anyway?”
“This was the only place I could get your undivided attention.”
I blew out an annoyed sigh. “Not here, here.” I spread out my arms, my fingers banging the stall walls. “Here. In San Francisco. On Earth.”
Alex looked around, the corner of his mouth pushing up in that deliciously annoying half smile of his. I hadn’t realized how much I missed it.
I unlocked the stall door, steadied my hands on Alex’s chest, and pushed him out. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Oh!” A woman pushed through the bathroom door and gaped at Alex and me. “You people are disgusting!” She turned on her heel and sped out of the bathroom, clucking the whole way.
I pointed to the bathroom door as it clapped shut after the disgusted woman. “Isn’t it things like that that are going to keep you out of heaven? Or, wherever it is you’re headed?”
“Sophie, I need your help.”
I glanced at myself in the mirror, frowned at the bright-red blush of my cheeks as the blood surged through. “You know what? I don’t care. I don’t want to hear it. You disappeared. Gone—without a trace. Or a phone number.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving the way that I did. I just didn’t think you’d understand. I thought it would be easier if I just … wasn’t there.”
I put both my hands on my hips. “I work in the demon realm. I live in San Francisco. There are very few things that I don’t understand. But, ironically, you disappearing was something that I didn’t understand.”
“I have a chance to go back. To restore my grace.”
“To go back to heaven?”
Alex nodded slowly.
“Heaven?” I said again, one eyebrow raised.
“Can we talk about this, please? Maybe somewhere that isn’t”—Alex looked around the she-she pink powder room—“here?”
I tried my best to stay solid, not to lose myself in the cobalt blue of his eyes, in the firm set of his jaw. “Meet me back at my apartment in about an hour,” I muttered.
Alex grinned. “What about your date?”
“I’ll think of something,” I told him.
* * *
Eric was gnawing on a breadstick when I went back to the table.
“Everything okay?” he asked, his mouth full of bread.
“I’m sorry, Eric, but I’m just not feeling very well.”
Eric swallowed, his eyes sympathetic and locked on mine. “Oh.”
“I think I just need to lie down. I must have eaten something that didn’t agree with me.”
Eric stood up, flattened his palm against my belly. “It’s okay,” he said when I flinched. “I’m a doctor.”
“Oh, right.”
“Where does it hurt?”
Eric grinned down at me, and I thought momentarily about how nice it would be to date a doctor. Who breathed. Who came from a place with an actual postal code and who didn’t pouf! into thin air and who wouldn’t (theoretically) sprout wings when all was right with his world again.
“You know what?” I said, sinking down into my chair. “I think it passed. Why don’t we have a drink?”
Eric and I had had two rounds of cocktails and were sharing a crab appetizer when I felt my phone buzzing in my purse. I fished it out, glanced nonchalantly at the readout.
“I’m sorry. It’s my roommate. Do you mind if I grab this? It’ll just be a second.”
Eric wagged his head and I connected.
“Nina?”
“Sophie.”
I lowered my voice, hunching behind my arm. “What do you want? I’m on a date with Eric.”
“I know. Do you know where I am? At home. With an angel. Your angel.”
I dropped my voice. “He is not my angel.”
“Whatever. He’s on my couch. And he said you were coming home to talk to him.”
“I am. Eventually.”
Nina blew out a sigh. “Would eventually be before or after Glee? He might be an angel, but he’s a complete remote-control hog.”
I groaned. “I’ll be home in a few minutes.”
When I got back to my apartment, Nina, Vlad, and Alex were assembled around the kitchen table, staring at each other. I dumped my keys on the counter and walked in, hands on hips. “Okay, Alex, what is so important that you have to pop back into my life and interrupt me on a date?”
Nina swallowed hard, and I sank down into the only empty chair at the table, then slapped my palm against my forehead. “Oh, wait, let me guess—it’s Eric, right? He’s evil? He’s actually Satan or something? Of course. I meet a nice guy who seems to breathe, seems to have regular old blood coursing through his veins, and there is something paranormally wrong with him.”
“No,” Nina said, “he’s a breather.”
“And his blood is fine,” Vlad confirmed.
I grimaced. “Okay, then what is it?”
Alex’s eyes were hard. “It’s Sampson.”
“Pete?” I asked, my voice sounding small. I looked from Alex to Nina. “What about him? Have they found him? Is he okay?”
Nina hung her head, and I felt my lower lip start to quiver, felt the choking lump in my throat. “That’s what you came to tell me?” I whispered. “That Mr. Sampson is dead?”
“Sophie, I’m sorry.”
I stood up so quickly my cha
ir flopped onto the floor behind me. “I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true. I’m sorry. I hate to be the one to tell you this. You don’t understand how hard it is for me to see you hurt—to make you hurt—again. But I needed to be the one to give you the news.”
Vlad righted my chair, and I sunk down again. “Why? Why did it have to be you? In person?”
Alex opened his coat and pulled a long, thick envelope, folded lengthwise from his pocket. “Because Mr. Sampson wanted to be sure that you got these.” He pushed the envelope across the table toward me, and I just stared at it, until it swirled in front of me, lost in a rush of tears.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s an answer to most of your questions,” Alex said.
My eyes flashed. “So, you saw him? You saw him before he died? Was he okay? What happened to him?”
Alex looked at his lap and wagged his head. “I didn’t see him before he died. This was something I had promised to do long before any of this—even any of this with the chief—ever happened.”
I sniffed and nodded my head, then used my fists to wipe the tears from my cheeks.
“What’s in the envelope, Soph?” Nina asked.
I swallowed heavily, unhooked the latch, and peeled out a tri-folded stack of papers covered in very carefully handwritten script. “It’s from my grandmother,” I said, fingering the paper.
While Alex, Nina, and Vlad looked on, I smoothed the letter against the table, licked my lips, and learned the truth about my life.
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