Angel's Mark

Fifteen

Brains would be better if they worked like televisions. If, when a thought bothered you, when a thought was irrelevant, when a thought was beginning to consume every fiber of your being, the channel could simply be flipped. If I could press a button and think about butterflies or slinky toys or literally anything else other than Samuel, dead on the rocks. But brains didn't work like televisions. They were more like the Internet. Once it was there, it was always there. What a gift forgetting was when it was possible.

"We're screwed," muttered Cian for the five-hundredth time since Caprice had dropped us back home. Zev had went back into the arena, probably to continue stabbing Carlisle. He didn't seem to be in the best of moods. Cian and I, on the other hand, were currently holed up in his bedroom. The window was half-open, but the room was all shadow. Cian's glass of pomegranate juice was blood in his palm.

He sipped it glumly. "We're so screwed."

I pointed towards his juice. "But antioxidants."

"No amount of antioxidants is going to make anyone invulnerable to demons, Vinny," he countered, folding his legs underneath him. His toes made wrinkles in his bedsheets, the overhead fan blowing fuzz across the dark wood floors. "No amount of antioxidants is going to unscrew all this up."

"I think you're being a little melodramatic." I added the a little so he wouldn't throw something at me. He still looked at me like he wanted to.

"I don't think I can be melodramatic about this," Cian said. "An angel was murdered. Not just any angel, either. Samuel. One of the most well-known members of the Order. He took away my wings. He gave you yours. This guy—God, Vinny. He's like the Justin Bieber of the Order—you don't have to like him, but everyone knows who he is—and now he's dead."

I blinked. I wasn't sure if my confusion stemmed from the fact he was right or that he'd said it all so strangely.

Cian said again, dismally, like the word was a curse: "Just—dead."

"You don't miss him, do you? You're talking about him like you miss him."

Cian exhaled as loudly as a deflating balloon, collapsing against his bed like one. The mattress bounced underneath his weight. "I don't think I do. I didn't know him personally. I'm just put off by the whole thing."

I raised an eyebrow. "You don't have to tell me that twice."

"Am I really overthinking it?" my brother asked. "I mean, aren't you thinking about it as much as I'm thinking about it?"

The answer was yes. A definitive yes. But dignity and a fair amount of sibling rivalry made me say, "No, I'm not."

Cian sighed again. He stretched, placing his arms underneath his head, his eyes watching the ceiling. I sat on his desk and fiddled with a red ink pen he'd recently used to doodle a flower on a notepad he'd stolen from a Marriott. We were still and we were quiet, which, when you had a brain that didn't work like a television, were both very dangerous things to be.

The sun was setting outside the window. Cian's white desk was pink and purple and orange and all the colors in between. Fall was more than a breeze ruffling the dying leaves outside, more than a season. It was a taste in my mouth. Like mawkish apples and dewy grass and unspoken words.

Cian said, "Come over here, Vince."

When I glanced up from the red ink pen, he'd lifted a slender, barely bronzed arm. He beckoned me forward.

I scooted the desk chair out of the way and ambled to the bedside, my eyebrow still risen. He gestured again, and I put a knee on the bed. This time he yanked my arm; I fell face down beside him as the mattress squealed.