It was hope again. He pushed his chair back from the bar, finally taking in his surroundings. Michael and Arioch were staring at him, both smiling slightly, which was disconcerting with the weight of the events that were unfolding. But he didn’t have time to worry about their silly grins. With that thought he closed his wings around himself, preparing to go topside. He heard a muttered “Showoff,” before he teleported out of Limbo.
It seemed he still had a job to do, and he would do it. It was all that was left for him.
Chapter 3
Cassius
Cass sighed dramatically.
“Don’t you make that noise at me, young man,” Aunt Ro demanded. “The spirits are restless, and you best pay heed.”
Cass finished at the espresso machine and walked right through Aunt Ro to get back to the counter. The unpleasant chill it gave him was worth it just to see her disgruntled face. She hated when her space was invaded.
She really knew better than to harass him while he was working though. Dire warnings and afterlife politics could wait until after the morning rush was over.
“It’s a matter of the very existence of the universe,” Aunt Ro complained, placing her hands on her hips in a way that accentuated the large begonias scattered over her dress.
He rolled his eyes and mumbled, “It always is.”
Steph gave him the side-eye, but she was used to him talking to himself and mostly ignored his quirks. It was why she still worked here and he paid her so well.
It wasn’t that he didn’t take his job outside the coffee shop seriously, because he did. It was just that there was alwayssomething.Since the archangel Gabriel had given him theprophecy, he had kept an eye out, but nothing out of the norm had happened.
Well, perhaps that was a bit of an understatement. Nothing out of the normfor his lifehad happened. He had talked to his cousin, which had gone about as well as you could expect when you had to tell someone their significant other was cheating. He had also dealt with a demonic possession. Sort of. And he’d helped Michael and Arioch a time or two again. And he’d dealt with a really grumpy murdered ghost. Then there was the hellhound incident, but the creature hadn’t killed anyone or set anything on fire when he came into the shop, so who was he to complain?
See, a perfectly normal week in Paradise Falls.
Aunt Ro slapped her hand on the counter in front of him, distracting him for a moment from the present customer. He rolled his eyes when he saw her bracelet with rhododendrons on it. His aunt really needed to stop pretending they were living in the Victorian era. She really didn’t need to communicate with hidden flower meanings when she was perfectly capable of harassing him verbally whenever she felt like it.
“Will that be all?” he asked the customer after ringing in their coffee. When they nodded, he replied, “Great! Coming right up! And no worries—I’ll proceed withcaution, because, you know, hot coffee can bedangerous.”
Aunt Ro hmphed at the words he stressed, but hopefully she understood that he got her message just fine. The customer looked at him like he was slightly insane, but he was used to that look.
Aunt Ro disappeared with another harumph, and when Steph found a begonia in the dessert case where one hadn’t been two minutes ago, she only blinked and stared for a moment before she handed it off to him and started on the next order.
Cass was never more thankful for her than in that moment.
By midafternoon,Cass was leaning against the counter and enjoying his own coffee and a moment of peace. He sipped at it, his phone and earbud at the ready just in case some wayward ghost needed his attention.
It had been a weirdly quiet few days though. He wondered if something really was upsetting the spirit world, and he sighed at the thought.
God, he wastired. Running a business full time, helping wayward spirits, and then also assisting the living when called on to do so—it was exhausting. He really needed to hire another Steph. She worked full time and knew all his quirks, and he had quickly promoted her to manager, but otherwise it was a revolving door of college students and teenagers who picked up hours here and there. He needed someone else full time. He had the distinct feeling that things were about to go sideways.
He sighed again, looking down and sipping at his coffee. At least the shop was blessedly empty for now, although he knew that would change after work hours were done.
When he looked up, his eyes were caught by the angel walking along the sidewalk outside the shop.
He was stunning. His wings flared out behind him, dark as midnight, glossy, and soft looking. He was wearing white pants with some kind of belt twisted around his waist, and his bare torso was drool-worthy. His eyes were a piercing blue that Cass could see even from here, and his hair fell in a dark, straight canopy over his shoulders.
And his skin was gray.
Cass shifted behind the counter, the arousal that burst through him not entirely welcome. Being turned on by the angel you were supposed to help wasn’t really… helpful.
He made the conscious effort to see what everyone else saw. Seeing the world without his sight wasn’t comfortable to do, and it inevitably gave him a migraine if he did it for too long. It was like squinting your eyes and looking through a really dirty window at the same time. Everything seemed duller and fuzzy, and it took effort.
For everyone else, the angel had perfectly normal skin, if it was a bit pale, and he wore jeans and a white sweater. His hair and eyes stayed the same. The wings were, of course, gone.
Cass liked to know what the angels and demons who he talked to expected him to see. He didn’t often share that he could see their true forms (including the clothing they wore while in the afterlife); it tended to freak them out. For being immortal beings, they were sometimes a bit weird about things.
