Finally, he said, “I am who and what I am, Sofia. For thousands of years now, actually.
It’s not that interesting, and telling you all about it is just wasting time that
could be better spent otherwise. I’m not an angel, no. But it’s not like you have
to worry about taking me home to your parents.”
She looked at him long and hard, as though she were searching for something. Phenex
forced himself to be still under the scrutiny. She would relent. No matter his interest
in her, she was still a human, even more guided by her desires than he was. The way
she’d kissed him, moved against him, left no doubt that he would have her. And right
now, he wanted nothing more than to lose himself in Sofia for a while. It would be
worth it. She’d see.
But when Sofia spoke, she did what humans almost never managed to do.
She surprised him.
“It might not be interesting to you, but your life
is
interesting to me. I guess I’ll have to think about it, Phenex. For right now, there’s
TV and the Chinese I ordered. Which should be here any time, actually, so when you
feel like bodyguarding again, come on down.”
Without another word, and only a brief flicker of a smile, Sofia turned and walked
back toward the stairwell, leaving a dumbfounded Phenex staring after her.
“
Maybe?
” he asked incredulously.
But she was already gone, taking her audacity back to her apartment with her. What
did she think he was? Phenex wondered, as his jaw muscle began to twitch. He was ancient,
powerful, immortal! He offered her the kind of pleasure most humans would only ever
dream of! And she wanted…
conversation
? She needed to
think about it
. Really? He didn’t need to be here. He could find about a million better things to
do. Things where people actually preferred he kept his mouth shut. He could…he could…
He could quit bitching and start thinking, because whether she understood it or not,
Sofia had just thrown down the gauntlet. And if anything, he was only more determined
to have her. Clever little witch. Stupid, stupid demon. And knowing it didn’t change
a damned thing.
“Hellfire.”
After a few minutes of muttered curses, Phenex stood, slung his guitar over his shoulder,
and stomped downstairs.
Chapter Eleven
The next morning, Sofia immediately knew something was up.
Part of it was that Phenex cooked her breakfast again, this time adding pancakes and
eggs to the ridiculous amount of bacon he seemed to find necessary. If he stayed much
longer, Sofia thought, she was going to have to start using the gym membership she’d
studiously ignored for the past three months.
The other, bigger clue was the question he asked as soon as she sat down with the
plate he’d piled with food. That, and how uncomfortable he looked asking it.
“So what kinds of things do humans, you know…
do
together?”
Sofia paused with a forkful of food halfway to her mouth. She waited a moment to see
if he was messing with her, but since he looked a little like he wanted to crawl out
of his own skin immediately after asking, it made her think otherwise. Slowly, she
put the fork down.
“You mean, what do they do if they want to just hang out?”
“Yeah, sure. That works.”
Sofia tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and considered him. There was something
just a little bit human in the way he hunched, slightly defensively, over his own
breakfast. She didn’t want to find it endearing—it just made the situation that much
more frustrating—but it was impossible not to. If he’d been the sort of distant sex
god that his friend Gadreel seemed to be, it would have been a lot easier to write
him off. But something about Phenex pulled at her, despite the fact that the more
she thought about getting involved with him, the more certain she was that it was
a terrible idea. After what had happened in the parking lot the other night, she wasn’t
ready to jettison the bodyguard thing entirely, no matter how awkward it was, but
taking on some kind of supernatural creature as a temporary lover would be adding
problems she didn’t need.
Too bad she couldn’t just say no and let it be. Instead, she’d baited him last night,
telling him she needed something that she was almost positive he wouldn’t be willing
or able to give—not just sex, but intimacy.
The last thing she’d expected was that Phenex would actually
take
the bait.
“Well,” she said, propping her chin on her fist as she thought about it. “This is
DC. There’s a ton of stuff to do.”
“Like?”
Sofia frowned at what seemed to be his genuine lack of knowledge. “Don’t you live
here?”
“Sort of,” he replied, an edge in his voice. “I’m mostly at Amphora. I don’t pay a
lot of attention to what humans do up—I mean, around here.”
“Okay,” she replied, deciding not to push it. She’d already gotten the feeling that
he lived in a place that wasn’t exactly out in the open. “Well, people go out to eat,
they go see movies. And in DC you can do the touristy thing, see the monuments, the
museums. There’s a bunch of amazing stuff, if you like art or history or science.”
“What do you like?”
“Um,” Sofia said, still waiting for the catch. There didn’t seem to be one, though.
He just looked deadly serious. When he stayed expectantly silent, she decided he actually
wanted to know. She wasn’t sure whether to feel vindicated or nervous. He seemed to
have taken her insistence that he get to know her to heart.
Which meant that he must really, really want to get her naked. Her chest suddenly
felt very tight, and it was difficult to breathe. Whatever his reasons, having Phenex’s
undivided attention was heady stuff. She was going to have to watch it or she’d decide
that crawling up the front of him before they went anywhere was an acceptable plan.
She needed to refocus before she did something she knew she’d regret.
Sofia thought quickly about the things she’d geeked out over when she’d first moved
to DC and chose one of her favorites. If Phenex didn’t like it, he couldn’t say he
hadn’t asked for it.
“Museum of Natural History,” Sofia said, and then grinned. “They have dinosaur bones
and an IMAX. And there’s a great sushi place nearby. They make a mountain roll that’s
to die for.”
Phenex listened while he devoured his pancakes, his expression almost comically serious.
And when she’d finished, he nodded slowly. “Dino bones and raw fish. Okay. We’ll do
that.”
Her brows lifted. “Really?”
“Sure. Works for me.”
Sofia stared at him for a moment while he ate. He looked as innocent as she figured
it was possible for him to look, which wasn’t very. She wasn’t fooled at all.
“That’s really all it takes to get an angel to go on a date? The possibility of sex?”
“I’m not an angel. And it’s not a date,” Phenex said quickly.
“Then what is it?” She took a sip of coffee, trying to fight back the smile that wanted
to surface. He looked like he was about to choke on his eggs.
“A fact-finding mission.”
Sofia only barely managed to swallow her coffee before she burst out laughing. “You
sound like you’re going to present your findings to the UN afterward.”
His smile was reluctant, but it was there, making the deep blue of his eyes glitter.
Sofia had a feeling she’d fall in if she wasn’t careful. Still, she found that she
was actually excited at the prospect of showing Phenex some of the city today. Apart
from the disaster of the other night, it had been a while since she’d done anything
outside of the usual routine of work, eat, work, sleep, work, go out. And her dating
life had been a bust for longer than she liked to think about. This actually sounded…
fun
. Which wasn’t the sort of thing she expected to be having with a guy who insisted
he’d been a demon for a really long time.
Still, she managed to put aside her misgivings and go with it.
“This is a great idea. I think you’ll like it,” Sofia said, hoping to set him a little
more at ease. Instead, he just lifted an eyebrow at her.
“We’ll see.”
She pressed her lips together. “That positive attitude’s really going to set the tone.
What do immortals do for fun?”
The look he gave her had her out of her chair and backing away before he could act
on what she saw written so clearly across his face. Without a word, he’d circled them
right back around to where they’d started last night. Her own cheeks were hot, her
feet clumsy. But damn it, she wasn’t just going to throw herself at him. She had a
feeling he was used to that. He seemed to have a low enough opinion of humans without
her doing exactly what he expected.
“Never mind. It’s about time you saw how the other half lives anyway,” she said.
“I doubt it’s changed much,” Phenex said, his voice a low purr. “I saw a little too
much of humanity a long time ago. But maybe you’ll show me something new.”
He sounded utterly unconvinced. Sofia stuck her hands on her hips and glared at him
and his casual challenge.
“With your expectations so low, you should be easy to impress,” she said, and then
grabbed her plate to go clean it off. As she walked away, his voice followed her.
“My expectations are low for a reason. Humans live short, violent, pointless lives.
They waste the spark that my kind lacks. They take beauty and twist it into pain,
fear, loathing, or they break it just because they can. For a while I thought it was
sad. Then I thought it was interesting, in a pathetic sort of way. Now I just ignore
it.”
Sofia put the dish in the dishwasher and slowly came around the breakfast bar to look
at Phenex, whose beautiful face had turned to stone. He wasn’t talking about going
to the museum anymore. This, she realized, went far deeper. It was a glimpse at what
had turned him dark in the first place. His words, and what they revealed, twisted
like a sharp little blade deep in her chest.
“What happened to you?”
Phenex looked startled at her question, and Sofia saw a flash of what might have been
regret across his face, though it quickly vanished behind a hard mask that didn’t
betray any emotion at all.
“Nothing. I just got real,” he said, and pushed back from the table, grabbing his
own empty plate. He didn’t bother looking at her when he changed the subject.
“Let me know when you want to go. I’m ready whenever,” Phenex said, brushing past
her and then busying himself cleaning up the pans he’d used. Sofia leaned against
the post at the end of the breakfast bar for a moment, watching him as he neatly shut
her out. He was such an odd mix of traits so far—unexpectedly thoughtful, frighteningly
determined, fierce, moody…and sometimes, like now, a snotty pain in the ass.
Sofia considered telling him to shove it, then discarded the idea. It wouldn’t make
any difference to him, and he’d made his disinterest in leaving very clear, though
given what he’d just said about humans, she was even more curious about why he was
bothering with her. He was beautiful. He could have sex with almost any woman he chose,
she was sure, so she didn’t see how it could just be that. What was his deal? She
was pretty, but no supermodel. Just a working-class daughter of immigrants, busting
her ass to be financially secure someday in the distant future.
She was a garden variety human. But here he was, washing her dishes with that mulish
expression on his face, even after telling her how little he thought of her kind in
general.
And that, Sofia thought, was why she couldn’t just throw up her hands and ignore him
until he found some other job to do. Her life had been mostly pleasant, mostly ordinary.
Phenex was neither. And she couldn’t get him out of her head. She wanted to prove
him wrong. She wanted to see him smile.
She wanted him to let her get to know him, even though she knew she couldn’t lose
sight of the fact that whatever they were doing here, it would be over before long.
Sofia gave Phenex’s rigid back one more lingering look, then went to get her things.
…
Finding out that Sofia liked dinosaurs wasn’t a huge shock. She was a nurse, liked
science, dinos were a bunch of bones, whatever. It made sense. What he hadn’t expected
was that going to a museum full of rocks, bones, and a vast collection of dead, stuffed
animals would turn her into a five-year-old on crack.
“Look!” she said, dragging him to a display that was centered on a model of an enormous
snake. “Titanoboa! I read about this! This is a full-scale model of the largest snake
in history!”
Phenex allowed himself to be pulled along, bemused as he watched Sofia do everything
but press her nose against the glass while she devoured every scrap of information
offered about what was, from what he could see, a snake from the Paleocene that was
almost, but not quite, as large as Gadreel’s better-looking form.
Sofia watched a snippet of a Discovery Channel documentary. Phenex watched her. That
seemed to be the story of the day so far, and he found he didn’t mind at all.
“Can you imagine?” she asked him, eyes wide as she examined the enormous fake snake.
“I don’t think I’d want to share space with something like this.”
“Then don’t let Gadreel back in your apartment,” Phenex replied. “Though you’ve probably
guessed that’s easier said than done.”
She laughed, a sweet sound that had him smiling for what felt like the hundredth time
today. His face was starting to hurt. Good humor wasn’t normally his thing, but it
was surprisingly hard to avoid around Sofia.
“You’re making me think of Hell as some kind of fiery version of
Wild Kingdom
. Snakes, birds...did you live in a house or a tree?”
“A house. A manor.” He hesitated, then added, “I was a composer for a long time. Even...in
the beginning.”
Phenex didn’t know why he said it. He should have no need to impress her, this little
human who had devoted her life to helping instead of harming, a foolish and futile
pursuit. And yet he couldn’t help himself. He needed her to know that he, too, had
been devoted to something once. He’d had a purpose, a meaning. And even he had been
able to create rather than destroy.
Sofia stopped, tilting her head, watching him as though she’d just seen something
new and fascinating. Phenex found himself holding his breath, waiting for her response.
Would she ridicule him?
Finally, she said, “A composer. I can see that. Your music is beautiful. The most
beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”
Her honesty, so easily given, left him with a strange and somehow pleasurable ache
deep in his chest. He hadn’t wanted to speak about his work in a very long time. Once
his ability to compose had gone, even thinking too deeply about it had brought on
either blind rage or black despair. Why didn’t it hurt to talk about it with Sofia?
“I was the Angel of Song,” he said, testing his own reaction as much as hers. And
still, he felt none of the searing pain he expected. Sofia only smiled, gently.
“I’m not surprised,” was all she said. Despite the curiosity in her eyes, she didn’t
press further, and he appreciated it. He had said enough for today. Enough for centuries,
probably. They walked away from the snake exhibit in a silence that was warm and comfortable.
Sofia’s presence seemed to be a balm to all the darkness that roiled inside of him.
Phenex knew he’d be up puzzling over it later, but for now, he tried to just accept
it.
“You’re awfully interested in that snake for somebody who doesn’t like them,” he said.
They walked a bit more slowly than they had been. Even for an immortal, Phenex decided,
two hours with an excited tour guide was tiring. They’d seen the Hope Diamond and
woolly mammoths, fossils, and insects. None of it would have been anything more than
mildly interesting to him but for Sofia’s reactions.
“Well, I don’t mind snakes, as long as they’re not in my apartment and I’m not in
danger of being eaten by one. I like animals in general. Birds, things with fur, things
with fins…I probably should have been a zookeeper, not a nurse. But I like people
pretty well, too, and I wanted to make sure I could get a job right out of college,
so nursing it was. I get my fix this way, or I watch the Discovery Channel. It works.”