Lucie

I was beginning to experience the effects of sleep deprivation, which I guess I technically asked for by staying awake the whole night. My eyelids were heavy, my body fatigued and sore, and I was even slightly dizzy. I was—very attractively—sucking down mug after mug of coffee to keep myself awake, so much so that the waitress wouldn't even ask if I wanted a refill, just swing by, take up my empty mug, and return with a filled one.

I sat in an old booth at a diner, Cian across from me. He had removed his hoodie and draped it across the empty space beside him, and was neatly slicing his stack of blueberry pancakes into eight vestigial triangles. We had gotten a window seat, and were front row to witness the waking up of the rest of the world, lights flicking on in beach houses, surfers cleaning their elaborately designed surfboards, cars sleepily withdrawing from driveways. Lights switched from green to yellow to red and back again, directing the steady ebb and flow of traffic. Car horns beeped and waves crashed and people chattered. Most of all it felt like home.

Inside the diner, the air was scented sickly sweet by syrup and butter. Voices shouted distantly from the kitchen.

I watched Cian remove one of his triangles from the rest of the herd and devour it. Seven vestigial triangles left. "I thought I'd bring you somewhere peaceful," he murmured, gripping the syrup dispenser. He held his fork in his teeth while he went to work drowning his plate in sugar. "No one wants to hear about death, but I figure it's better to hear about it over pancakes, and, in your case, infinite mugs of coffee."

I made a face to demonstrate my disdain for his judgement."I'm trying to stay awake."

"You should have slept in the car."

"And leave you by yourself?" I countered, and saw him raise his eyebrows at me. "Nah. I trust you, but not that much."

He laughed again: that short, guttural sound, a cough just tinted with humor. I liked, however, the way it changed his face: unconsciously lifting a side of his mouth, revealing a line of straight, white teeth, splitting the scar across his lips in half. It crinkled his eyes at the sides, brought color across his sharp cheekbones. It transformed him from the Cian who was still afraid of himself to the Cian who had all he needed. "What else must I do, muffin? You've seen me in my natural habitat, have been inside both my house and my car. You know me better than my parents do."

I pointed at him accusingly, stirring spoon still in my hand. "That concerns me. And I told you not to call me muffin."

"Biscuit, then?"

"No."
"Cupcake?"

"Cian, no."

He twisted his mouth to the side and removed another triangle. Six vestigial triangles. "How about cookie? Brownie? Rice krispie treat!"

I didn't have to say anything. He read the sullen look on my face and forked a piece of his pancake with a grunt. "You're no fun, muffin."

I no longer had the energy to fight him. Anything was better than "rice krispie treat."

The waitress came by with a new mug of coffee for me, and the surfer outside finished cleaning his board and shoved it in the back of his truck. Cian said, "I suppose I should start talking now."

This is the part where I was supposed to say You know what, I don't need to know, or It's okay if you don't want to tell me. This is the part where I was supposed to look into his eyes and notice how sorrowful he was and feel bad for prying.

The thing is, though, I'd always hated cliches.

So I just said, "If you're ready."

And he said, "Vinny drowned."

I'd guessed that already, but didn't say so. I sat back in my seat and innocently sipped my coffee, watched traffic slow to a stop as the light switched to red. Then I realized I'd forgotten to add cream and sugar to my coffee, so scowled and set it back down. There was just the slightest of amused expressions on Cian's face.

He sighed. Five vestigial pancake triangles left. "I knew this girl when I was in high school, and we'd known each other since seventh grade, so we were pretty close. From being with me, she grew to know Vinny pretty well, too. The three of us were virtually inseparable. We were always together."

The smile on his face was slowly sinking away, becoming less and less of a joyous gesture and more and more of something rueful, sorrowful. It was devastating to watch; so were his eyes, which held oceans of guilt and lost hope and disappointment. "My seventeenth birthday was coming up, and since that was the age my parents were letting me get my boat license, I wanted to test my skills. The...the girl and I hatched a plan to sneak out and take the Horne family boat out precisely at midnight, so I could turn seventeen in the place I loved the most: the bay. It seemed like a good plan, so we talked Vinny in to going with us."

Four vestigial triangles. He set these triangles away, however, dropped his fork and didn't touch them. "We were young and dumb, and when the night came, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have my headlights on. We collided with someone else; a yacht, I think."

Cian's shoulders began to buckle and he hid his face in one of his hands. I could tell he wasn't over it yet, that he still felt as if this was all his fault. What hurt more was that I couldn't say anything to convince him otherwise. I just had to sit here and watch him crumble, all his grief slipping right through my fingers like sand.

"The girl and I were both in critical condition after getting crushed by wreckage," he went on, though he was grimacing, as if it hurt him to speak at all. "Vinny...he didn't make it. They found his body tangled in the chains of the anchor; he must have been tossed overboard and unable to free himself in time. He was supposed to move on, go to the afterlife, but he didn't. He learned what happened to me and he begged the angels of death to let him stay. I don't know why he did it."

I frowned at him, stirring my cream in. "He did it because he loves you, Cian. He didn't want you to be alone."

His hands were fisted, eyes focused out the window, on the bay in the distance. The bridge San Francisco was known for was a dark monolith against the sky, a gray and melancholy thing absorbed by clouds. Cian's eyes were the sky from which rain had begun to fall, gray-blue and mournful, filled with questions left long unanswered. "The accident was severe enough that it left my soul with one foot in the living world and one in the dead world, so to speak. It's called being Split, and it hadn't happened in centuries, it's so rare. The Order, God's board of most trusted angels, gave me wings and named me as an angel of death, since they didn't know what else to do with me. And Vinny. He was supposed to move on."

"Cian?"

"They let him stay. Linked him to me so that he won't move on until I'm dead. I age slower, but I'm mortal. The only mortal angel in existence. That's why all angels hate my guts."

"I'm sure they don't—"

"They hate my guts."

I left it at that. "And the girl?" I asked him, and he glanced at me, the smile that was there before long gone by now. Cian who had all he needed was gone, and the Cian who was afraid of himself was back, albeit a more dismal version. I bit my lip, plucking at a fray in my sweater. "What happened to her?"

"I don't know. She's alive, at least. I know that, but I haven't seen her since. I get the feeling her parents want nothing to do with us now. Smart of them."

I sighed again. So that's what all of this meant, then. When Cian said "the accident" was his fault, this is what he was speaking about. This is what he hadn't wanted to tell me at the coffee shop. This was why Vinny screamed at him earlier. "Cian," I said, because something had to be said, "I'm sorry this happened to you."

"Don't apologize for something stupid I did," he said. "It cost everyone. Myself, the girl, Vinny, my parents. The Hornes aren't the Hornes anymore. We're all fake. Everything's fake, and everyone's trying to act like it's all okay, like we're this picture perfect family and I'm still a saint. I'm not a saint. I went to hell a long time ago and I didn't come back, Lucie."

His pancakes were cold now, vestigial triangles untouched. I set my coffee down with a clink. The traffic light outside switched back to green, a lily pad in a sea of bleak monochrome. "Accidents happen," I told him. "The hardest part about them is that we have to give ourselves another chance afterwards. That's what Vinny did. He gave you another chance. You're not mad at him for that, are you?"

"No," he answered. "I'm not mad at him. I just wish he wasn't so selfless. I mean, I'm the older one, right? I'm supposed to take care of him, protect him, but he turned the tables when I wasn't ready. I'm getting older. I'm leaving him behind. We were two years apart back then, but now we're four. That's not how it's supposed to work."

I put my elbows on the table and looked up into his face; he scrutinized me, searched my expression for something faulty, for a lie, something hidden. He didn't find anything. "You shouldn't worry so much about things you can't change, angel boy. He's your brother and he wanted to make sure you weren't alone, and he still does. If that's not love, I don't know what is."

Steadily, red colored his cheeks. There was so much admiration in the way he looked at me then that I wasn't sure what to do. Did I scoot back? Lean forward? Stay still?

Cian pushed a hand up into his golden locks and sighed audibly, dropping his gaze. The rain was rhythmic outside the booth, a song on a piano both smooth and intense, a heart rate pulsing in someone's wrist. Cian's eyelashes twitched intermittently, casting shadows across his cheeks. He began cracking his knuckles, one at a time. "You're right," he said, voice soft. "You're always right, aren't you, muffin?"

I grinned at him, but he still wasn't looking at me. "I'm right when I say this, too: You'd better go home and talk to Vinny, alright? Make sure he's okay," I ordered, then gestured to distinguish the pancake triangles he had left. "Maybe bring him some pancakes as an apology."

He narrowed his eyes. "He can't eat."

"Oh. Right," I said with a frown, tugging the sleeve of my sweater back up. I sighed, sitting back against the seat and stretching my arms. "Thanks for telling me, Cian."

He put his hood back on and called for the check. There was a gruff undertone to his voice: "I just needed someone to listen for once."