—was nothing more than a figment of my attention-starved imagination, something my lonely mind created, someone big and solid who said he came here because I called him, because I drew him here. Things like that don’t happen, not in real life.
So why am I still listening for him?
I find my resolve buried deep. I stand, my knees popping. I glance at the clock. It’s almost noon. I reach for the doorknob, hesitating. Only the silence of Little House allows me to move forward. I open the door.
Calliel is splayed out on the floor in the hallway outside my bedroom door. He’s taken the comforter and a pillow off the bed in the spare room and dragged them into the hallway. The blanket has been kicked around in his slumber (I guess angels do sleep, I think). He’s found sweatpants to change into, from somewhere, and they’re a little too small for him, clinging tightly to his thighs. He’s not wearing a shirt, his biceps tight against the top of the comforter. He lies on his side, facing the door. I am mesmerized by the smattering of freckles scattered down his shoulders and his side, light brown and evenly spaced, as if they are forming a pattern. They disappear into the curls of his chest hair. I lose count of them once I reach thirty. I lift my gaze to his face and his dark eyes are open.
“Hello,” he says.
“Why are you on the floor?” I ask, though a billion other things are on my mind. “I told you that you could use the bed in there.”
He sits up and stretches, looking surprised when his back pops loudly. He stands, letting the blanket fall to the floor. I’m hyperaware of how close he is to me and take an involuntary step backward as I struggle to breathe. “I was doing my job,” he says, his voice pitched low, almost defiant.
“Guarding?” I ask.
He nods.
“I don’t need to be guarded.”
“You do,” Cal assures me.
“From what?”
He gives me that exasperated look I’m starting to recognize. It’s almost endearing now. “You know.”
The river. “You can’t read my thoughts but you can go into my dreams?”
He says nothing.
“Why won’t you let me…?”
His eyes harden. “It’s dangerous, Benji. You don’t know what you’re looking at.”
Truer words were never spoken, I think as I stare up at him. I need to change the subject. I can’t let him go on with this. It suddenly seems important, this dream. I’d gotten further into the river than I had last time, seen more—the tires spinning on the truck, the figure standing up on the road in the rain. I need to distract him somehow. An idea, something I’d considered as I fell asleep the night before. “What about the others?” I ask.
This confuses him. “What do you mean?”
“The other people of Roseland. You said you were the guardian angel to Roseland, right? How can you be protecting everyone if you’re here?”
He studies me before he speaks, as if gauging my sincerity. Somehow, I don’t think I’ve fooled him. He seems, at times, to have an almost simple demeanor. But other times, like now, the intelligence that flares behind his eyes is a breathtaking thing. He knows my game, but he’s letting it slide. For now.
“There are shapes,” he says. “Patterns to follow. Designs to read. It’s… hard to explain.”
I wait.
He sighs and steps back, leaning against the wall near the spare bedroom door. I try to focus on what he’s saying instead of looking at the muscles carved into his stomach, the lines of his hips, the white that is his skin. “I can’t tell the future,” he says, sounding almost frustrated, as if this fact is the bane of his existence. “I can’t speak to God’s plan. I don’t think anyone can, even the higher-ups, the archangels. Sometimes I wonder what exactly Michael knows, or what Raphael or Gabriel or David can see, but I don’t think even they know what the future will bring. Metatron may have known, but no one has seen him in generations, so I can’t say for sure.”
My head is starting to hurt again. “Metatron?” I mutter. “More than meets the eye?”
Apparently he doesn’t get my feeble attempt at a joke, the seriousness never leaving his face. “Metatron is the highest angel, supposedly the first. But he disappeared and no one knows where he went. He’s more legend now than fact.”