burning. “Just… don’t.” I don’t want to hear this. I can’t hear this.
He ignores me, kissing me again. “I broke the rules, I think. I would come partway down, just so I could touch you, just so I could take some of your pain away. But it wasn’t enough. You were sinking further and further into the river, and I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let you drown. So I….”
Like you let my father drown? I think before I can stop myself.
I press my head against his chest. “So you what?” I say, my voice muffled. I’m trying to regain some of my composure, but it’s a losing battle.
“I don’t know,” he whispers. “It’s there, in the knot. I remember you calling for me, and not just the night I fell. Even before that, I could hear your aching, because it was too much like my own. I was lonely up there. I was lonely without you and I had to come down. You finally called for me. You screamed for me. I had to come. I… I just don’t remember how.”
“You bastard,” I mutter weakly. “You bastard.”
“I’m sorry, Benji. I don’t know… I don’t know what else there is.”
He looks miserable when I raise my head from his chest. I am angry, yes, but I don’t know if it’s at him. I’m trying to believe him about what he can and can’t remember, but it seems to be too much of a coincidence. The one person who can answer every question I’ve had about that day also happens to be the one person who can’t remember any of it?
“What about Griggs?” I push. “What about him? Or Mayor Walken? Or the smoker? The smoker who—” I stop. The name. What was his—
Memories, rising.
Walken: You seem to forget, Traynor, that you are operating in my town, with my permission, which makes me your boss.
The gunman: All I wanted was a fucking hit, man! Traynor told me I could get it, that fucking bastard!
“Traynor,” I whisper. Was it something as simple as that? Drugs? Was that a connection? A hit of what?
“Benji?” Cal asks me, looking worried.
“Do you know a man named Traynor?” I ask. “Do you recognize that name? Is he one of yours?” I hadn’t recognized his name or his voice, so he didn’t seem to be a townie.
Cal closes his eyes, and they move quickly behind his eyelids. “No,” he says after a moment. “I don’t know him. I don’t know that name. He’s not one of mine.”
“But you would have to know him if you saw him, right? If he’s in your jurisdiction?”
Cal shakes his head. “Only if something were to happen to him. Only if I could see his thread.”
I didn’t know where to find Traynor, much less cause something to happen to him so Cal could track him. “Why should I stay away from Griggs, Calliel? What are he and Walken doing? What is going on in this town?”
He squeezes his eyes shut. “I don’t know.”
I roll off him and he doesn’t try to stop me. I sit up on the side of the bed and put my feet to the floor, my back to Cal. “I think you do,” I say bitterly. “I think some part of you knows and you’re just not telling me. I think you know far more than you’re saying. I believe you when you say it’s tangled up in you, that you haven’t pulled it apart. But I don’t believe you can’t. I think you’re scared and you’re hiding behind it.”
Blue lights begin to flash in the dark.
“That’s not—”
“How did you come here? You said you were the first. You told me you fell because I called you. How did you do it, Calliel?”
“Oh, Benji,” he whispers. The blue lights are brighter.
I stand up and look down at him, scowling. “You said that angels are tested. That all of you are tested. Maybe this is your fucking test, Cal. Maybe you don’t remember because you’re being tested. Maybe that’s why you exist. Maybe that’s why God needs angels and that’s why you see the threads. Because it’s just some fucking game to him. His tests are nothing but games. You see patterns. You see designs. But you don’t see what’s right in front of you. You’re being played, Cal. God doesn’t give a damn about you. He doesn’t give a damn about me. It’s all a fucking game!”
Cal leaps up from the bed, the flashing lights following him