Cian

There was a reason I was numb.

Besides the fact that Lucie's kiss had shattered my senses and dumbed down any feeling in my bones, the Order had also pumped me full of drugs to lessen the pain. In the end, I was sluggish and exhausted and my words were slurring, so I fell asleep.

It was the kind of sleep so deep that it was just a black void of time between when eyes were closed and when eyes were open—no dreams, no thoughts, just nothing. Because of this profoundness, when I was awoken violently by a pillow hitting me in the face, I screamed like a small child, eyes flying open and meeting Vinny's.

He was laughing at me.

Laughing a lot.

"Shut up! I hate you!" I yelped, and rashly tore the pillow from beneath my head to chuck it at my brother, which proved useless for two reasons. One, the pillow flew directly through Vinny and hit the ground behind him, and two, the sharp movement of my shoulders initiated a wave of pain through my back.

I fell back down on the bed, groaning. "What are you waking me up for?"

"Lucie's back," replied Vinny, and my spirits lifted a little, as she had left to attend whatever classes that remained for the day shortly before I'd fallen asleep. Lucie was the type of person who felt guilty for skipping school for no reason, so there was no arguing with her.

I sat up, slowly, and blinked, my brain clearing. I squinted in my brother's direction. "Wait...how did you chuck that pillow at me?"

He cocked his head. The lights went out, then came back on again. Downstairs somewhere, Mom yelped. "How do you think?"

I pointed a trembling finger at him, everything in me still jumpy from the drugs. "You've got to stop doing things like that."

"Oh, for crying out loud," muttered a familiar female voice as she came into the room, smiling at me from the foot of the bed. She was still dressed in her black athletic shorts and bright windbreaker, her hair piled on top of her head in a way that was both messy and attractive at once. There was a playful smirk on her face. "The boy is dead. Let him have some fun for once."

"As his elder brother, I can attest that chucking pillows at people without the use of one's hands is creepy and far from fun," I said, sticking out my tongue at the both of them. "So, what are you doing here, muffin?"

For once, her face didn't even change at the nickname, with the exception of her smile, which broadened even further. My heart skipped a beat. "Well, we're going to Whole Foods."

"Whole Foods?" Vinny and I questioned at the same time.

"Aye," Lucie replied with a nod. "Whole Foods, friends. In order to ensure you undergo a healthy and successful recovery, you must eat well. I'm taking you both to Whole Foods. We're also doing this because I'm bored and Cian's been in bed all day."

"Nuh-uh," Vinny countered, shaking his head. Lucie shot him a quizzical look. "Me and public places don't mix. People are going to think you're both crazy."

"Like I care, Vinny," Lucie responded, already turning for the door. "For all I know, I am crazy. Now, come on. Are we going or not?"

So, we went to Whole Foods.

The whole place was buzzing with moms clad in clingy yoga pants. Muscular dudes with calves the size of melons were buying gargantuan jars of protein powder, as if they needed anymore of the stuff. Everything on the shelf was "organic" or "all natural" or "gluten free." In all, with its lofty ceilings and artsy chalkboard signs and bright overhead lights, the whole place was a bit intimidating.

Lucie, however, looked as if she was born in the place. She pranced through the produce section, which was filled to the brim with pesticide-free fruits and vegetables imported from places like Peru and Spain. One of the store's smaller baskets hung off her elbow.

I was examining something that looked oddly enough like an orange lemon. Vinny peered over my shoulder. "Is that an orange lemon?"

I shrugged, turning it over in my hands. "Maybe?"

"I didn't know lemons came in shades of orange."

"Me neither."

At that moment, something hit me in the back of the head. It took me a moment to realize it was Lucie, and she had just struck me with a seemingly innocent bag of avocados. "Ouch," I hissed.

She rolled her eyes and pointed to the sign above the orange lemons, which advertised that they were imported from China. "Can you not read, you bozos? Those are kumquats. You guys are supposed to be the rich ones, you know."

"I don't see the connection between our monetary status and kumquashes, or whatever they're called," Vinny said, blinking at Lucie bemusedly.

"Kumquats," Lucie corrected, "and if anything, Whole Foods attracts a flock of customers who get paid. I'm lucky to be in the upper middle class-ish. You guys, though, are like, practically royals."

I scoffed, setting the little orange lemon down. Calling it an orange lemon was easier than calling it a kumquash—or kumquat, or whatever the heck it was. "Ha."

"No, really," Lucie said. Her dark eyebrows were arched as she regarded the two of us, swinging her bag of avocados mindlessly. "Look me in the eye and tell me you've never eaten caviar—I'm talking Russian caviar—and don't lie."

I said nothing.

Lucie rolled her eyes and made a tsk sound with her teeth.

"It was just once," I said, "at a birthday party."

"At a birthday party? Who the heck eats caviar at a birthday party?" she shook her head and grabbed my hand, pulling me away from the fruits. "That's it. File in, Vinny. We're going to the yogurt aisle."

"Watch the shoulders," I scolded, groaning as the fresh scars in my back throbbed painfully in protest. I still couldn't move very sharply, yet Lucie ignored my order and kept tugging. "Shi— crap! I still can't curse!"

Vinny was laughing at me again.

There was no other time that I wanted to kick him in the shins more than I did then.

In the end, our party of three (though to outsiders, it looked as though there were only two of us) scooted into a booth beside the humongous floor-to-ceiling windows with Lucie's avocados, an apple, a whole lot of yogurt, a cereal that looked like nothing but dried oats, and two separately packaged Caesar salads.

Lucie shoved a salad in my direction, along with a cup of unpromising vanilla Greek yogurt. To Vinny, she gave the apple, and when he tried to protest, told him to imagine eating it. She dutifully ignored the dubious looks Vinny was giving the red fruit.

Popping the plastic lid off her salad and drenching it in ranch, she announced, "Now dig in. It's good for you. It'll make your shoulders feel good as new, Cian."

"Heh," I murmured, staring down at the salad below me. It was not sugary enough for someone like me, who had developed a sweet tooth early on. All I saw was green, a splash of red tomatoes, and croutons that looked soggy and unappetizing. "Not sure about that."

I stabbed a tomato and watched the juice and seeds ooze out, sighing. The solitary feather, the only thing I had left of my wings, was in the pocket of my hoodie. I reached a hand down, feeling the individual barbs between my finger pads, soft and thin like downy fluff. Just that one insignificant thing—this one, singular part of something that would never be whole again—was all I had left of my life before. Now I was faced with the eternal struggle of settling back in to normality.

My parents didn't know yet.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to tell them.

I would have to ponder that later, however. I had other things to think about—like the fact I'd seen that demon before, at least that type, and I knew what kind of business they meddled with.

I looked up at Lucie, who was pleasantly sticking a piece of lettuce in her mouth. There was a smile on her face, her eyes glittering like jewels. I kept hearing her voice in my ear: I love you, Cian.

How could I tell her what I knew? I couldn't stand to break her heart another time.

Vinny was glaring at his apple now. I rolled it away from him. "I'm going to tell you something."

Both Vinny and Lucie glanced at me, then at each other, then at me. "Okay..." they said in unison. The relationship between the two was strange to watch; a few weeks ago, the very presence of Vinny would scare the crap out of Lucie, but now they acted as if they'd been at each other's side for years. A smile tickled my lips without my consent.

"It's about Caprice," I said, and saw both sets of eyebrows go up. I spun the apple by its stem, sighing. "I may have said that the night I met her, she almost killed me. Remember that?"

Vinny nodded. "You can imagine our hesitance to call her when you were sick. Let alone leave her alone with you."

I shrugged. "She can be bi—agh—"

"Bitchy," Lucie said.

I gasped. "Language!"

She rolled her eyes and forked a crouton. It fell apart on her utensil, orange-brown crumbs sprinkling across the remainder of the salad, which wasn't a lot. She was scarfing the whole thing down as if tomorrow no longer existed. "Anyway. She nearly killed you..."

"Yeah. I was in her sector of the city, the corner in which all the souls are hers to take care of, and I didn't know it. Whilst doing my job, or at least what I thought was my job at the time, this demon came out of nowhere, caught me totally off guard—and Caprice literally shoved me in its way. Her justification was that I was in her quote-on-quote 'territory,'" I finished. The stem of Vinny's apple broke. Sheepishly I pushed it back to him. He continued glaring at it.

"Yeah," Lucie responded. "Bitchy."

A corner of my lip snaked up at one side. "For lack of a better term, yes: it was a not-so-nice gesture. So that's how she nearly killed me...but the demon, guys. It was identical to the one who tainted my wings."

Vinny was quizzical. "And?"

"And I know what those types of demons do. Where they come from."

Lucie leaned her cheek into her hand, her curls spilling over her wrists, a pout on her lips. It was both a childish and annoyingly tantalizing expression, one that taunted my heart, tugged it this way and that. So there was one good thing that came out of this—I was a new person without my angel wings, yes, but this person was lucky enough to be in love with this girl, and that was everything. "You're not saying my brother's become a demon, are you?"

Her croutons were untouched, fork hovering above them.

I shook my head.

The tension in her loosened, I noticed, but did not release.

"They don't just roam the earth willy-nilly, those demons," I went on. "They're summoned from hell, you know, and by only two people: fallen angels and their servants."

The Whole Foods table went very quiet. Vinny was staring at me, and so was Lucie, and everything about us was frozen. We didn't move or speak for those few moments, which felt like year. We just stared at each other and let it sink in.

Lucie dropped her fork, squinting at me. "Cian," was all she said, but I heard what she meant: That doesn't make sense.

"Fallen angels are exiled from heaven as a punishment. Almost all of them become close friends with demons, wielding them as weapons. Sometimes they even take humans and use them as pawns, turning them into undead creatures they can also wield as weapons. In all, fallen angels are trouble makers and you don't want to mess with them. And, Lucie," I said, glancing at the moving crowd of soccer moms, yoga gurus, and musclemen, then back to her, "considering your brother couldn't have been an angel, they must have made him into one of their servants."

Another very long pause. Then Vinny asked: "And these 'servants'—they can summon demons, too?"

I nodded. "It's become obvious that Dempsey's using his new power as a way of getting revenge on those who hurt him in his life, and trying to get us off his trail. The question now is how we find him."

"Why him and not me?"

Both Vinny and I glanced at the girl across from us, her salad cold and undisturbed, her eyes burning into mine. She was biting mindlessly at her lip, her hair a wild halo around her face, her voice scraped hollow. She wore the face of a wanderer, someone tired of not knowing and guessing and someone begging for the security of certainty. This was the face of someone made weary.

"Lucie..."

"Why not both of us?" she pressed. "Why did they only take him?"

I exhaled, waiting for a moment to outline my response in my head before saying it. I slid the lid over my salad and snapped it shut. "Look, I've seen this done before: the...the making of these servants. It's easier for the fallen angels to do if the subject's closer to death. So, if anything, you were too close to life for them. Dark magic is their specialty, Lucie; it's just how they do things."

"And you?"

I blinked. "What?"

"You're not one of them? A fallen angel?"

I clicked my teeth, then straightened the scowl on my face, trying to hide my offense. She was not rude, but merely clueless. "Just because my wings are gone does not mean I'm one of them. By all means I'm still bound to heaven, especially considering I still can't even say a curse word."

Lucie dropped her gaze, finally. "That's good, then."

Another one of those painfully chilling moments of silence passed, in which no one knew what to say, or who to say it to.

Vinny broke it as he said, "I have an idea as to how we find him."

"Yeah?" I questioned, thankful for the introduction of any sort of sound at all. I glanced at Lucie, but she was still scrutinizing the table, not saying a thing. Something in my chest throbbed. "And what's that?"

"Well, you said Eden knew about him, right? About Dempsey?"

I rested my head on the table, its chilly wood pressing into my forehead. I knew my brother was right, as the dead often were wise for some reason, but I also knew that talking to that girl was the last thing I wanted to do. Lucie, however, said exactly what I was thinking: "The girl tried to have you exorcised, Vinny. Have you gone nuts?"

Vinny, as always, was reasonable. "She's also our only connection to him, even if she's shady as all get outs."

"You're right," I mumbled, shutting my eyes. "I hate it, but you're right."

"Oh, sit up and quit acting like a baby. Tomorrow's Friday, right? We should go see her then, after Lucie's classes are done. There. Problem solved," Vinny remarked.

I groaned again, striking the table with my forehead.

"Don't make me chuck my apple at you."

"Goodness' sake, Vince, you are not Magneto."

"If the apple was magnetic, I would be."

Lucie said, "Fruit Magneto's plan is a good one. Pick me up in your Cadillac and we'll go tomorrow. I'm finding Dempsey, even if I die trying."

No one argued with her. I sat up slowly, not wanting to risk Vinny's mental apple-throwing skills. Blinking in Lucie's direction, I did ask, however, "Fruit Magneto?"

Lucie looked to Vinny for approval.

Vinny shrugged. "If Lucie's a muffin, then I can be Fruit Magneto."