“It’s not like I’m suggesting that you pull off a toenail.”
“Ew,” I muttered as he swept a wing forward.
Laughing softly, he ran his fingers through the underside of his wing. “Just one?”
I nodded. “Make it a small one.”
He shot me a grin as he curled a finger around a feather. “You may want to look away.”
Not even bothering to pretend like I could stomach it, I focused on the somewhat decluttered kitchen counter. “You know when we were in the pool and I went to touch your wings? You didn’t seem to like it then.”
“That’s a random question.”
“Yeah, well, I’m trying to not focus—” There was a soft snapping sound and I flinched. “On that.”
“Barely even hurt,” he replied. “You can look now.”
Peeking over at him, I saw that his wings were folded back. He held a feather the size of his palm in his hand. Could’ve just been my eyes, but the feather appeared to glow faintly.
“The reason why I stopped you in the pool had nothing to do with my feathers,” he told me, drawing my gaze to his. “Grab a ziplock baggie for the feather.”
“There’s something extremely wrong with putting a feather in a ziplock baggie.” Pivoting, I walked over to the small pantry built into the cabinets. “So why did you stop me, then?”
“When I was with you, in the pool? For a few minutes, I didn’t feel...exposed to all that hate and bitterness. All I felt were my own emotions. I was quiet. Calm,” he explained. “But then I started to feel those things again. It was insidious, like a snake slithering through my veins, and I didn’t want to hurt you.”
My heart twisted as I opened the pantry door and grabbed a baggie out of the box. I turned to him. “Do you feel that now? The hate and bitterness?”
“Not like that since I came to after you used the Sword of Michael. But I can still feel others’...intent. Their darkest secrets. But it’s controllable.”
“What do you mean?” I walked the baggie over to him.
“It’s hard to explain.” He took it from me. “But it kind of reminds me of what Layla can do with seeing auras—the color of people’s souls. It’s like that, but I just feel their intent if I want to.”
My brows lifted. “Like how? You just look at them, and bam, you know if they’re good or bad or something in between?”
“I just have to focus on them—I have to want to know.” He slipped the luminous feather into the baggie, then sealed the top. “One of the angels explained that I would be able to feel the true intentions of mortals. That all angels can. I guess that is a part of the reason that when an angel Falls, that sense is overwhelmed. It wasn’t until we were in the Uber with the driver that I even remembered. And that was because I realized I wasn’t feeling his intentions when before I felt everything without even trying.”
“That had to be...God, that had to be overwhelming.”
“It was, but with the driver, I wasn’t being bombarded, and that’s when I remembered what the angel told me,” he explained. “So I tried it out and he was right. I just had to want to know and focus.”
“So, what did you find out?” Curiosity got the best of me.
“The driver was a good man.”
“Happy to hear that since he was all about clutching the cross when we left the car.” I glanced at his wings, but resisted the urge to reach out and stroke one. “So, what you really mean when you say you feel their intentions is that you’re feeling their souls.”
His wings tucked back and then disappeared as he handed the baggie to me. “It just...feels weird to say that.”
I took the bag, trying not to cringe. “You have two swords and can tell if a person is a good or bad dude. Why do you have to be so special?”
That got a smile out of him before he turned to pick up the shirt he’d draped over the couch. My gaze fixed on the raised imprint of his wings, and I thought about what Layla had said when she saw my aura. It was both pure white and pure black.
Good and...what? Bad? Layla had said that the darker the shade of the aura meant more sin, but she’d never seen a human with a black aura.
Holding the bagged feather, which felt like I was holding a finger or something, I watched him pull the shirt on and tug it into place. When he faced me, I opened my mouth and the question sort of spewed out of me. “What do you feel when you focus on me? What is my intention?”
“Other than to drive me crazy?” he asked, tucking the sides of his hair back.
I nodded. “Other than that.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t tried to find out. Not on you or the others when they were here. It doesn’t seem right to do so for no reason.”
I stared at him and then sighed.
“What?”
“Why do you have to be so good? I would be peeking at everyone’s soul every chance I got.”
He chuckled as he dipped his head and kissed me. “Let’s head out and take care of this feather thing.”
Lips tingling from the brief contact, I trailed after him. He picked up his keys from the island, where he’d last dropped them, and stopped. No one had touched them since then. Holding them in his palm, he stared down at them.
“Are you okay?” I touched his arm.
Clearing his throat, he glanced over at me. “Yeah. I am.” His fingers curled around the keys. “Have you seen my phone, by the way?”
I shook my head. “It was...it was on you that night. I haven’t seen it since.”
“I bet Nic or Dez has it, then. They would’ve been the ones to gather up my...personal belongings. I guess they didn’t think of bringing it with them when they came by. Probably because they...”
I knew where he was going with that. They probably feared Zayne hadn’t returned to them and bringing his belongings would somehow jinx everything. Clutching the baggie to my chest, I asked, “Does it feel weird? Thinking about having died? Okay. That’s a lame question. Obviously it has to feel weird.”
“It does.” He took my hand in his. “Especially when I think about the fact my body would’ve done the whole dust thing and yet I’m here.”
I shivered. “Same. That messes with my head and it’s not even my body.”
“So, let’s not dwell on that, okay?”
“I can do that.” I squeezed his hand as we stepped into the elevator.