"Fuck fate," he said, and his voice was hard to hear because he was speaking so quietly. I stared at him in amazement, but he wasn't looking at me. He was looking down at his lap. "Your number was up the first time I met you."
I felt a spasm of fear in his words, and a spasm of tickle in my groin, and the abrupt memory of his violent black glare that first day... but the overwhelming sense of safety I felt in his presence stifled it. By the time he looked up to read my eyes, there was no trace of fear in them. If he was going to kill me or rape me, I remembered, he would have had plenty of opportunities to do these things earlier.
"You remember?" he asked, his angel's face grave.
"Yes." I was calm, cool, collected.
"And yet here you sit." There was a trace of disbelief in his voice; he raised one alabaster eyebrow.
"Yes, here I sit... because of you." I paused.
"And I sit here because of you." He added.
"If you hadn't known where to find me today, I'd probably be sitting in a dumpster somewhere."
He pressed his lips together, staring at me through narrowed eyes, deciding again. His eyes flashed down to my raviolio and fiddlesticks, and then back to me.
"You focus on your fiddlesticks. I'll talk." He bargained.
I quickly scooped up another raviolio and popped it in my mouth199 before he could go back on his offer.
"It's harder than it should be," he began.
Finished with the first ravilio, I picked up a fiddlestick, smeared it around in the raviolio sauce for awhile, and then ate it very slowly.
"It's harder than it should be," he continued, "keeping track of you. Usually I can find someone very easily, once I've read their mind before." He looked at me anxiously, and I realized I had frozen. I made myself swallow,200 then stabbed another raviolio and tossed it in. It hit the back of my throat and I gagged for a second but then managed to spit it back into the front of my mouth and everything was okay.
"I was keeping tabs on Jessica, not carefully—like I said, only you could find trouble in Fort Angles—and at first I didn't notice when you took off on your own. Then, when I realized that you weren't with her anymore, I
199. The Cream Team!
200. Part deux!!