When Cass stopped blocking his sight, the gray angel came back into focus, only for one second he wavered a bit, like a mirage in the desert, and Cass swore he was wearing a knit white scarf, but then he blinked and the vision was gone.
Huh. Weird. A premonition of a white scarf didn’t give Cass much to go on.
The angel opened the door and came in, and Cass straightened up.
“What can I help you with, beautiful?” he asked.
The angel did a bit of a double take at the nickname, but Cass didn’t take it back. Hewasbeautiful. As he drew closer, Cass saw the glow within him. His skin was gray, but it was like all the glow that angels usually had on the outside had retreated to his inner being. His soul shone so brightly that Cass had a hard time not seeing it.
He tried not to see people’s souls, and since that took extra effort (squinting in a different way, if Cass had to explain it), it wasn’t hard to not see them. Looking felt invasive, like he was spying on someone in their underwear when they didn’t know they’d left their curtains open.
But this angel’s soul was a beacon underneath his gray skin, and little tendrils of golden light shimmered around it, like threads were reaching out and searching for something.
Cass cleared his throat, blinked, and made the effort to lock down his sight. He wasn’t going to go ogling some angel’s soul, no matter how beautiful it was.
“I’ll take a black coffee,” the angel replied.
“Name?” Cass asked.
“Kushiel,” the gray angel replied. Then he turned a bit, like he didn’t expect to chat.
“I’m Cassius. Most people call me Cass,” Cass responded.
Kushiel looked at him and nodded, then turned his attention to the pastry case.
Okey-dokey then. Coffee first.
Cass poured a black coffee and brought it over, placing it on the counter. “What else can I help you with?” Cass asked.
“That’ll be all,” Kushiel replied.
Huh. “Are you sure?” Cass asked. This was the angel he was supposed to help, wasn’t it?
“Yes, thank you,” he replied, pulling a wallet out of thin air and removing a card to swipe. Cass knew that everyone else would have seen him get it from his pocket, but Cass wasn’t everyone else.
He leaned on the counter. “Coffee is on the house. I think I can be of assistance with some other matters, however, angel,” Cass responded. He knew he was grinning a little stupidly at the angel, but he was so darn sexy and shone so brightly that Cass couldn’t help it.
Kushiel looked momentarily surprised, then an easy smile fell over his face. “Yeah?” he asked.
“Of course. I strive to be helpful, and I think you might need my kind of help,” Cass replied, leaning forward a little more. Something smelled divine, and Cass thought maybe it was Kushiel.
The angel laughed, however, and took his cup off the counter. “Thanks for the offer, but you’re not what I’m looking for,” he replied, turning to walk out the door.
“I’m exactly who you’re looking for!” Cass called out as the angel walked out the door, but he just turned, smiled, and let the door close behind him.
“He’ll be back,” Cass muttered, a little disgruntled at that turn of events. Surely there wasn’t more than one gray angel out there?
“That has to be the worst pick up you’ve ever attempted,” Steph said, carrying a tray of donuts in from the back.
“What?” Cass asked, surprised. “What are you talking about?”
“I mean, I was kind of waiting for some awful pickup line about him falling from heaven when you called him angel,” she said, arranging the donuts in the case while Cass gaped at her. “Then when you were all like ‘you might need my kind of help’ I almost dropped my tray,” Steph said, imitating his voice on the quote. “He was definitely hot, but you’re usually much more smooth than that. It was almost painful watching you crash and burn.”
“I wasn’t trying—” Cass started, but then he cut off.
He replayed the whole conversation in his head. Add his goofy grin. Add his stupidsniffingof the guy.
Fuck.
