And I was pretty sure he'd mastered it. Sure, he still had an accent, but the fact that he was wearing jeans and a maroon-colored t-shirt meant he'd changed clothes at some point. I was also pretty sure he'd gotten a haircut. His skin on this plane was that of a black man, and his hair matched. The tight curls of it had been styled, twisted on top to look like a normal college guy. The sides were cut in a fade that worked really well for him. Well enough that a pair of girls leaving the store couldn't help but giggle as they tried to sneak a peek.
"You've put in some effort," I said, hoping it sounded casual.
He grinned, never bothering to look at me. "She finds me attractive."
"Most people find you attractive," I pointed out.
He didn't reply as we passed through the first set of sliding doors, but as he angled his feet toward the carts, he said, "She will need things, right?"
I could only nod, pausing for a second to look at the assortment of fliers taped to the wall over the carts. A lot of them seemed to be for missing teens and college students. It made me wonder if this side of town was urbanizing faster than I thought, increasing the crime rate along with it. Or maybe our quiet college town had simply grown more than I realized, and the problems along with it.
"She'll need a few things," I agreed. "We'll need some supplies for the bathroom, too. Like a trash can."
"Housewares," he said, aiming the cart for the main aisle of the store like he was a natural.
I waited until we were past the main group of people at the front, then asked, "How many times have you been to Wal-Mart?"
"A lot," he admitted. "I have a house now, and it needs things. Nick helped me hire someone for the furniture, but I do not have spatulas or napkins. I want it to look nice when she sees it."
"You know how much you have in the bank?"
He looked over. "Three hundred."
"Million?" I breathed.
He just nodded. "I had no houses to drain it, Luke. No maids to pay. No servants - " He paused, his brow creasing. "Staff," he decided instead, "to pay. Clauneck kept a line of ancestry for me, to explain any inheritance, and he invested as he thought best. Two thousand years is a lot of time to make money."
"Good point," I admitted, just as we turned into the bathroom decor area. "She'll want a can with a closing lid, so no one can see the trash. If we can find a little cabinet, that would be nice. Someplace for her to store her feminine things."
"Have you trained her how to shift items between planes?" he asked, reaching up for a rather attractive white, marble-looking trash can that would match the Tyrnigg bathroom.
"To a point," I admitted. "She hasn't really needed to worry about it. Why?"
He picked up a small box from beside where he'd found the can. It appeared to be garbage bags to fit. "Because if she does not know, then she will not worry about taking out the bag. We can. These things match." And he picked up a toothbrush holder. "Should we replace the old?"
"Yes," I decided without hesitation. "Most of that was Firiel's. I think it's time for her to be put to rest."
Bel just reached for a soap dispenser next. "Can we take down her picture now? Let Sia paint all of us together instead?"
I moved to the side, finding a set of prepackaged towels in black. "I would actually like that. I just needed time, Bel."
"I know," he assured me. "So did Nick. When you love someone so much, it is hard to let them go." Then he glanced over. "But you could feel that way again."
I just shook my head. "I made a promise."
Bel tossed the soap dispenser into the cart as he stormed the three steps into my face. "That," he growled, keeping his voice down, "is shit. Nick does not want your promise. We do not want it. Ronwe hurts because of it. He feels like you are abandoning him each time you hold yourself away from us. Sia?" And he scoffed. "Even when she could not accept that it was allowed, she still fell into your arms. And now, it's Nick."
I just reached up, pressing my hand into the middle of his chest to ease him back. "Nick and I are figuring things out. Ron is happy about that. Lay off, Bel."
"You do not get to love me, get me drained for two millennia, and then pull away," he said. "We do not deserve that. I know she's moving too fast. We all do, but it's her pace, and she's the only one who can set it. She knows how strong she is, so we need to trust her. That includes you."
"How many times does she need to end up in Heaven before you all figure out that she's off the rails?" I asked.
Bel grabbed the towels from my hand and tossed them in with the rest. "She is not. She is too strong to be just a Muse, but we do not have a better word. She's not God, because this all existed before her, but she's almost as powerful. She made life, Luke."
"Yeah, I was there," I reminded him, pointing to the aisle we needed next. "And her mother named her Ayala. Do you know what that means?"
"The angels' all-plane monster?" he asked.
I nodded slowly. "Yeah. I haven't exactly told her about that theory, because I'm not sure how she'd take it. I mean, the chances of a child being bred from all five planes? Astronomical."
"It was bound to happen eventually," Bel pointed out.
"Four realms, sure," I countered. "But someone with both demonic and angelic ancestry?" I just shook my head. "And yet here she is. Of course she's a Muse. She'd have to be. Eons ago, angels predicted that the Ayala would have control over aether like nothing we've ever seen. Tell me that doesn't describe Sia."
He just shrugged as if it didn't matter. "They also said she would be evil." And he grinned.
"Yeah, but..." And I could only huff out a heavy sigh. "Ok, fair enough. Demons are evil, so by that standard, she is evil."
Bel looked at me. "What did you think it meant?"
"That she'd destroy worlds with her power."
"Angels are doing that now. How could she be worse?" And he grabbed a box from the shelf, carefully reading the information on the back.
What bothered me was that Bel was right. I'd always had this idea in my head of what it meant to be evil. Back when I'd first heard the theories of the Ayala, I'd assumed it was a horror story, spread around for a little excitement. Sure, the scientific theory had merit, but not enough to worry about. After all, the chances of a person being born from enemies? We all watched our immediate children too closely for that to happen.
But evil. There was that word again. It bothered Sia. It meant something completely different to me than it did to Bel. I had a feeling all of the guys would have a slightly different take on it. When broken down to its purest form, most people conceptualized it as nothing more than something bad. The problem was that good and bad depended on who defined the terms.
Sia loved multiple men. Her foster parents would've considered that "bad." She lived with demons - also bad. She was kind, considerate, charming, and beautiful. All of those were words used to describe me, often as a warning that I was temptation, and temptation was bad. Although, when people wanted the temptation, it was always labeled as good. Thus, it truly depended upon the perspective of the person judging.