The Given

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Kit wasn’t sure what woke her, and for a moment she couldn’t even care. She was in her favorite spot in the world, head burrowed into the dip of Grif’s left shoulder, his arm draped over her naked back like a protective shield. Their legs were entwined, heavy with heat, and her inner thighs were satisfyingly sore. She wished she could stay here forever.

Instead she went to the bathroom to fill her now-empty tumbler with water, and leaned over the basin to touch her head to the mirror, letting the cold water run over her wrists. The chill shocked the sleep from her, but that was what she wanted. Grif was back in her bed. She could sleep when she was dead.

Yet for some reason tears began to well. She should be happy. She and Grif were together, he’d lived again in her body, but something was wrong. There’d been desperation to their lovemaking, a longing to his touch even though she was right there, and it felt too much like he expected her to disappear.

And, of course, he had sat in the corner of her living room, intending to say good-bye.

Don’t worry about that now, she told herself again. He’d had his reasons, and even might try to do so again, but if she were to think about that, to anticipate his absence, she’d miss his very presence.

Living in the future like that, Kit thought, putting the water glass to her lips, was just as bad as living ever in the past.

She caught her reflection at the exact moment that she took a sip. Stiffening, she gasped, and the glass shattered on the marble countertop, yet she didn’t look away. Her image was an opaque outline at best, the mirror steamed like when she took a too-hot shower, yet obscured and glowing with gray-blue pearlescent fog. It roiled on the other side, trapped there like a silent storm, but then thinned enough to reveal another head exactly where her own reflection was supposed to be.

Kit did not scream or growl or rant; she recognized that unworldly, churning gaze.

“Am I dreaming?” she asked Sarge.

“Technically? You’re sleepwalking,” Sarge answered, his features growing sharper, forming like clay, then hardening like he was standing in a kiln. He waited for her to finish studying him, and Kit took her time.

He looked nothing like what she expected. Grif had described him as being large and dark and intimidating, and while this being did have the wings of a Pure, the soaring arches were bald in spots, black feathers clinging to sinew as if for dear life. He had long troughs carved from his eyes to nose, and again to his mouth, and they slipped down his jaw and disappeared beneath his chin. His skin was ashy—though it could just be the mist—and the outline of his collarbones protruded in slashes from beneath the white robe. Though clearly otherworldly, he looked beaten down and diminished, at least to her untutored gaze.

“And what are you doing?” she asked him, because she knew the Pure hated visiting the Surface in any form.

“Something even God Himself would find shocking,” he admitted. He inclined his head. “I am apologizing.”

Kit was shocked, too, but she didn’t ask what he was apologizing for. A better question would’ve been where he intended to start. This being had manipulated her with almost cruel indifference. Nicole had said that Sarge knew Kit had suffered, but he couldn’t possibly know the extent of it . . . or the fear that his appearance in her home, coinciding with that of Grif in her bed, struck through her now.

She wouldn’t say it though, she thought, crossing her arms and leaning against the wall. She wouldn’t give him any more ammunition to use against her.

“I harmed you. I didn’t mean to,” he said, then stopped himself with a slow shake of his head. “No, that’s not right. I didn’t even care that I was harming you, because I knew that what I was doing was right. God’s will was, and remains, for Griffin Shaw to heal enough to move safely into His presence, forever wrapped in His glory and light.”

“Yeah, I wish those things for Grif as well.” She narrowed her eyes and had to force her jaw to unclench. “But I would have gone about it differently.”

“I thought you were what was keeping him from returning to the Everlast,” the angel explained, his ruined face moving in strange directions, stretching so that he grimaced in pain. “I was wrong and I was punished for it.”

“How?”

“I was forced to feel every pang in your heart. Every tear that you shed. Every emotion normally denied a Pure. I know your sorrow, Katherine Craig.”

Good. The thought came before Kit could stop it.

“I felt that, too.” A corner of Sarge’s mouth lifted wryly, and Kit felt shamed, but Sarge held up a hand in the mirror. His overly long fingers were white-tipped where they pressed against the glass. Leaving them there, he looked at her, and after another moment, Kit placed her hand against the glass so that they were palm-to-palm.

“You gave me new knowledge. You made me see that mankind’s love for one another is the same as your love for Him. That no matter what form it takes, love is the very essence of God. It is what makes you so very like Him.”

He heaved a sigh, then dropped his head and hand. Kit’s fingertips tingled where they’d been touching the glass, and she pulled away, holding it with the other, close to her chest.

“I didn’t know that before, not in any way that mattered.” He shook his head, and Kit winced at the sound of cutting glass. “Outside of worshipping God, I could not fathom any sort of emotion that could make you aware of both everything and nothing at the same time.”

The Pure’s voice cracked then, and a tear appeared at the corner of one eye. He winced when he saw that Kit had noticed, but didn’t try to hide it or blink it away. Instead he stared at her with an almost blazing defiance. And vulnerability, Kit saw. She knew what that felt like, but his was so raw it was almost perverse.

Kit stared back, some old warning about looking directly into the faces of angels chiming through her head, yet she couldn’t look away. Tears rose and swam against his opaque irises, then shimmered there, like a heat wave against the road. The liquid pooled to take on a hard edge, sliding to the corners of his eyes. Then his tears began to glow green as they fell, and Kit watched with growing horror as malachite carved an even deeper furrow into those dark, lined cheeks. The grooves were already well established, and a scraping sound cut through the room as sorrow etched his face. A milky-white foam was left in the wake of the tears, some universal matter similar to blood, though Kit didn’t know what it was.

“Tears are filled with emotion,” Sarge explained, watching her watch him. “Emotion is your link with His power, but for a Pure? A being that was created, not birthed? Emotion is poison.”

And one of the sharp stone tears tipped off Sarge’s dented chin, fell to the floor, and shattered with the sound of breaking glass.

“I didn’t know how much pain I caused you,” he said, emeralds now forming in his eyes.

But he knew now.

“Please,” Kit whispered, as her own eyes filled with tears. She could taste his pain now, because it was shared. Because it was her own. “Please stop.”

“But this is my punishment for the sorrow I have caused, and for the sorrow yet to come.” Kit froze, fear flooding her in one great rush. She knew it. There was more to come. That’s why he was here. A Pure wouldn’t deign to appear on the Surface unless there was something in it for him, after all. And Grif’s previous hesitancy still nagged at her mind.

Kit surprised herself by sounding so calm. “Just tell me.”

And, without preamble, he did. “Griffin Shaw is dying.”

Kit just stared before shaking her head. “No. No, he—”

“It is fated, and has been since the beginning of time.” This time, crystalline tears shattered against the floor, and the Pure shuddered like he was trying to escape his own body. Kit couldn’t blame him. Three more edged teardrops ripped through his face in quick succession, the white blood welling to flood the crevices of his face. “In just over twenty-four hours, he will be dead.”

“So stop it.” Stop the tears, stop the pain. Stop the very wheels of fate.

“I can’t. I—”

“You owe me,” she finished for him, voice rasping harshly.

“In a fair world, I would owe you.”

Kit closed her eyes. But life wasn’t fair, everyone knew that. Life was a place where angels stood by and watched people use free will to destroy each other. Kit shook her head side to side now, almost violently. “No—”

“You’ll have to be strong, Katherine,” he said softly.

“No!” She screamed it now, pounding the counter. “Don’t you just tell me this and then leave. You fix it!”

“I cannot involve myself . . .”

In human affairs, he was going to say. In their lives. In fate’s plan. Yeah, she knew that. And she didn’t care.

“Fix it!” she screamed, and she punched the mirror so hard that a web splintered from its center. Her hand exploded in pain, knuckles ripped apart, wrist jarred.

Sarge reached out, through the mirror, which rippled like water, to try to touch her. Kit jerked away.

“Let me heal it,” he pleaded, and attempted to wrap his overly long fingers around her knuckles.

“I’m fine,” Kit said through gritted teeth. “It’s only a dream, right? I’m sleepwalking?”

“Please,” Sarge said, and this time she only stared. “Let me at least do what I can.”

He held out his hand, unnaturally long fingers splayed palm-up. Breath harsh, Kit finally reached out as well, and while she saw the instant their fingertips connected, she couldn’t feel it. And suddenly the mirror separated them again, and she was healed.

She flexed her fingers, then looked up at him. She didn’t thank him. “Fine, if you’re not going to help Grif, I will.”

“What can you do?”

“I can close it all down. Bring his past to an end and ensure his future. If we solve the real mystery that brought him back to the Surface, if we find Evie Shaw, then his heart will finally have relief.”

“He’ll still have to move on.”

“Then at least he’ll do it in peace.” And, shooting Sarge one last hard look in the mirror, she whirled and headed back to the bed, where Grif still slumbered. She would face whatever the next twenty-four hours had to offer, because if her fate could be altered—if stars could attack her flesh like stinging bees and realign her destiny with their luminous sting—then so could Grif’s. Knowing that was possible was how she’d get to the other side of it, and Grif would, too. Even if she had to mow down angels. Even if she had to drag him there herself.

Grif woke expecting to feel different, maybe even be different, like an element—water shifting to vapor, there but gone. For a moment, warmed by Kit’s arms, he had felt normal and thought he’d done it. He’d fulfilled the prophecy.

Reunite with your true love before the anniversary of your death . . . or all is Lost.

Then he shifted and caught it purling out of the corner of his eye . . . tiny, just a wisp of silver, and one perceptible only to a Centurion. Yet Grif was hardly that anymore. If he were at full power, the winnowing thread of plasma would be shot through with light. Instead it was dull against the moonlit room, and Grif knew Sarge had been telling the truth at the tiki bar. He was losing his angelic nature. The prophecy was coming true.

Reunite with your true love before the anniversary of your death . . . or all is Lost.

Liars, Grif thought bitterly.

Shifting in bed, Grif reached over and realized Kit was no longer beside him. Shooting straight up, he was about to throw off the covers when he caught sight of her sitting bedside in her Barcelona chair, draped in a flowing white robe. The scent of coffee reached out, teasing him, and she stared at him from above the mug’s rim. She sipped without blinking. It made her look more otherworldly than him.

She tilted her head toward the door. “Is that plasma?”

“Yeah. It’s—” He stopped himself and did a double-take. Perhaps he was still dreaming. “Wait. You can see it?”

Kit cut her eyes left, where the plasma could still be seen spinning along the floor, low and sparking with silver. “Is it a mist that looks like it’s funneled into shape? As if it’s sentient and has somewhere to go?”

“Yes.”

“Then I can see it.”

But how? He was awake enough to know that something had happened in the hours since they made love, but too sleep-addled to know what. And Kit didn’t give him a chance to figure it out.

“Were you going to tell me, Grif?” she asked, mug cupped in both hands. “Or were you just going to disappear again?”

His heart sunk. So she knew. He saw the certainty in her dust-dry eyes. “Who was it? Sarge?”

She inclined her head.

“How? Did he come through me while I was sleeping?”

“He used my dreams,” she said, shaking her head. “Sleepwalking.”

Grif frowned and glanced back toward the doorway. And he’d reached her physically somehow, imbuing her with Divine Touch. That explained how she could see the plasma. Yet that meant he’d have ventured to the Surface, and the Pure angel, the Sarge that he knew, would never do that.

“I’m sorry. It’s because of me. This.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I was trying to say good-bye. It was incredible, you’re incredible, but this was—”

“Perfect. Overdue. And don’t you dare say a mistake.”

“I wasn’t going to. I was going to say that this”—he motioned around the bedroom—“was me trying to leave you.”

“Good job.”

He blinked at her sarcasm. “Thank you.”

Rolling her eyes, she rose, coffee mug in hand. “Hold on.”

She swept from the room, and a moment later Grif heard her moving around in the kitchen. He glanced at the clock. Five A.M. That’s why he was fully dressed again, from scuffed wingtips to the fedora he’d left lying on the pillow. As always.

And the next time 4:10 in the morning rolled around? He’d be dead.

Kit swept back into the bedroom then, her long robe flaring around her ankles in a silken swirl. She looked like a movie siren as she dropped down on the bed next to him and handed him his own steaming mug of joe. Her warmth, her nearness, the faint scent of her skin made his heart gave a giant thwack, but he refocused, accepting the cup.

“Now,” she said, when he’d taken that first steadying sip. “Tell me everything.”

“I’m dying, Kit.”

“I know.” Her voice was even, but even in the gray shadows of predawn, Grif saw her blanch. He reached out a hand to steady her, but it was Kit who gave him a reassuring squeeze instead, and then a short nod. “What else?”

Shifting, he sighed and laid it all out for her. “Basically, the Host has decided that my time is up. They gave me a prophecy, a timeline in which to complete a task, but it’s really an ultimatum. If I fail to fulfill its conditions, then I’ll die on the fifty-first anniversary of my death, and they’ll send me directly back to the Tube. But this time? They’re going to recycle my soul.”

She knew what that meant. He saw it in the way her gaze fell flat before she closed her eyes. His soul would have to forget this life—that he’d ever visited the Surface as a man named Griffin Shaw—and take on a new life entirely, from birth to death. She wavered slightly, shaking her head. “I hate them.”

“Don’t,” Grif said, scoffing. “It’s wasted on them.”

“So what’s the prophecy?”

Grif closed his eyes, and recited it by heart. He would tell her the truth—she both deserved and required it—but he didn’t want to look at her as he said it.

Reunite with your true love before the anniversary of your death . . . or all is Lost.

“So you need to find Evie,” she said after a long silence, and then looked away. Because if she were his true love, the plasma wouldn’t be lurking around the doorjamb. He wouldn’t be dying, headed back to incubation, or destined to leave her at all. All wouldn’t be lost.

Grif reached out again to take her hand, but this time she pulled away. Still not looking at him, she said, “I hate her sometimes, too, you know.”

Grif found he could say nothing to that.

Kit laughed without humor, and shook her head as she ran her fingertip along the edge of her coffee mug. “I’m jealous of a seventy-five-year-old woman whom I’ve never even met. Isn’t that awful?”

“There’s no reason for that, either,” Grif said softly. “I don’t belong with her anymore. Finding Evie or not . . . it’s not going to change that prophecy, because the Pures are right. My stint on this mudflat has come and gone. I feel it in my bones. It’s time for me to go.”

She shook her head. “Don’t say that.”

Lifting one hand, warmed from the mug, he cupped the side of her face and felt the wetness trailing there. “You have your own life to live, and it doesn’t include some wistful, broken old fogey like me hanging from your skirt hem. This . . . whatever it is, whatever happens next, it’s fated.”

“No.” She shook her head so hard that her curls whipped out at his face. “No, this is not fated. Because you are here! Right now! And that is not a mistake.”

“I’m here as a punishment, Kit. As a lesson.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“No.” He reached for her when she only huffed. “No, you’re here to experience love. God’s love made manifest in this world.”

Kit blinked at him, but said nothing, staring so long that she looked like a black-and-white movie still. He studied the smooth line of her cheek, allowing his gaze to fall to her shoulder before rising again to memorize the full moon of her face. He knew he was eventually going to have to forget all of this, but he’d try to hang on to this memory until the very last second.

“You’re right. You’re right about all of it except for one thing,” Kit finally said, nodding to herself. Then she reversed so that her hand was on his arm instead. “You and I were what was fated. You gave me my very best moments on this big, round mudflat, and it’s because of you that I believe in miracles. I mean, isn’t that what this is? You and me?”

“Yes, but—”

“And free will. We’ve got that, too, remember?” She was leaning in close now, imploring. “And love. The kind that makes angels weep.”

Grif just stared.

“So I believe we can still fulfill that prophecy. We’ll find Evie, and we’ll close down that old life. That will free you up to start a new one, in the present, with me. But, Grif, you have to believe it, too.” She squeezed his arm. “Will you do that? For me?”

Staring at her, pressed to his side like she would never leave, Grif realized he’d never believed in anything as much as he believed in her. In them. He also wondered how he could have ever thought that he still loved Evie.

And he wondered what his fate would have been if only he’d released the past sooner.

But there was nothing he could do about that now.

“Okay.” He finally nodded, then stood and held out his hand. “Okay, then . . . let’s go shut down the past.”

Kit blinked up at him in surprise. “What? Right now?”

“I’m already dressed,” Grif pointed out, then had to grin. “Besides, there’s no time like the present.”