All That Falls (19 page)

She rolled her eyes. “Poor you. You were trying to turn people off with your scars and it didn’t work. You think it’s tough being gorgeous? Try not being gorgeous sometime. That’s what’s tough.”

“How would you know?”

“I was an ugly kid.”

His gaze slid to her. “Truly?”

She nodded. “By conventional standards of beauty, absolutely.”

“And it was difficult?”

“Alissa was freakishly beautiful from birth. I learned very early on that no matter what I did or how much I primped, in any comparison to her, I would always lose. You see it all the time in famous families. The good-looking kids get all the media attention. They’re perceived as more interesting and talented. It’s the way things work. At a photo shoot when I was twelve, I overheard the stylist and photographer discussing a long list of my physical flaws. It was like having birds pick the flesh from my bones. Thank God for dancing. It was the one thing that gave me confidence.”

“It must have been a relief when you became beautiful.”

“I’m still not beautiful, but I don’t mind if you think so,” she said with a sly smile. “The thing that was a relief was growing up and showing myself the important things I could do with the incredible gift I’d been given. Crowds of thousands upon thousands hold their breath when my athletes perform and when my musicians rock a stadium. The thunder of the applause is deafening. The spectators cheer and sob and clutch the people around them; that tide of human emotion is unstoppable. Whenever I see and feel it, I know I have something more powerful than beauty. It probably also helps that I’m not modeling side by side with Alissa anymore,” she said wryly.

“Alissa’s kind, and at moments, I see evidence of her power. She can certainly slay Merrick with a word or a look, which is no easy feat. But I can’t imagine how she could’ve ever overshadowed someone like you.”

“Come on. You can’t deny she’s stunning.”

“She has a lovely face,” Lysander conceded. “But she’s slight. To me, she looks fragile. A blown-glass ornament for the shelf. I don’t know how Merrick doesn’t shatter her with one rough kiss.”

Cerise laughed, but shook her head. “Alissa’s perfect. If you didn’t have freakishly huge archangel proportions she wouldn’t seem small at all.”

“She could never have bloodied my lip with her forehead. She couldn’t even have reached it.”

“I probably couldn’t have busted your lip, either, if I hadn’t launched myself.”

The corner of his mouth curved up. “Exactly. You’ve got long powerful legs and a will to match. No matter how rough the kiss, you wouldn’t shatter.”

“The funny thing is how you think that’s a compliment,” she said, amused. “‘That Cerise, she’s built like a prized bull with a temper to match.’ Just what any woman longs to hear.”

They rounded the corner of a tall building, and he dragged her with him into the shadows and pushed her against the bricks. His mouth came down against hers without warning, cool and demanding. He bruised her lips, and she shoved her fingers into his hair, pulling. He pinned her against the wall, his knee pressing between her thighs, causing a stab of lust where he touched. She bit his tongue and his lower lip. As the kiss roughened, they ground their lower bodies together until she throbbed and longed for him to thrust inside her.

The noise of shuffling feet stirred her, and she dug her nails into his back over the site of his wounded wing. He drew back, his mouth coming away on a gasp.

“We have to break this up. Someone’s coming. It could be ES,” she rasped and panted to catch her breath.

He still crowded her against the wall, and light danced dangerously in his wild, tawny eyes.
He gifted us with what He gave the lions,
he’d said. Yes, she could see that. Her heart pounded and her body still thrummed with wanting more of him.

Lysander licked the swollen corner of his mouth where she’d bitten him hard enough to draw blood. “That you can’t be broken with a kiss suits me. That you’re human and almost a match for me makes you remarkable. Never doubt that.”

“Or you’ll be forced to prove it by shoving me against a wall?”

“Did you like being shoved against the wall?” he asked in a low voice, deep and sexy.

“No,” she lied.

He flashed her a smile and stepped back. “Yeah, I felt how
much you hated it. Come, let’s go before you provoke me into seeing what else you’d hate for me to do to you against a wall.”

The shuffling footsteps drew closer, and Cerise spotted a pair of teenage boys. They whispered to each other and approached.

“Hey, Cerise,” the taller boy in the Hollister jacket said.

“Hello,” she returned.

“New aspirant?” Hollister asked, and both teens turned their heads to study Lysander.

It was always big news when a muse took on an aspirant, and Cerise hadn’t chosen anyone new to inspire in more than a year. She would’ve enjoyed the distraction of engaging someone fresh, but her powers…Although her ability to persuade had emerged, her power to inspire hadn’t. She couldn’t feel the internal spark she needed to light a fire in someone’s soul. Her mind hopped to Griffin’s songbook. She’d had so many dreams about that book and had felt so compelled to find it. Would reading his journal help her recover her magic as she’d believed? Or was there another very different key? She glanced at the angel standing silently at her side.

The boys still waited for an answer about whether Lysander was a new aspirant. That was better than the alternative explanation she decided. Anything was better than admitting that she’d taken up with a fallen angel.

“We’ll see,” she said.

“Basketball player?” the smaller boy with inky hair asked.

She shook her head. “Gladiator. We’re thinking of building a new coliseum over at Park Casabel.”

They laughed. “So there’ll be job openings? I could use some part-time work.”

“Sure. Someone’s going to have to clean out the lions’ cages.”

Inky continued grinning. “Really though, what kind of athlete?”

“He’s a musician,” she said. “A violinist.”

“C’mon,” Hollister said, waving off her answer.

“How long have you guys been going out?” Inky asked.

So they’d seen the kiss. Cerise shook her head. “Just friends.”

“I’d like to be one of your ‘just friends,’” Inky said with a
wink. He looked at Lysander to see if he’d have a reaction. Lysander was an oak. “Doesn’t speak English? Figured as much. The hair was a dead giveaway that he’s not American.”

“Where’s he from? The Netherlands? Germany?” Hollister asked.

In perfect German, Lysander said, “Are you going to spend the night conversing with children? Or can we go and investigate how a demon infiltrated your walled city?”

“Told ya,” Hollister said and bumped fists with his friend.

“Good night,” Cerise said to the boys, whose smiles slipped a bit. To their credit, they didn’t stall. They simply nodded and shuffled away.

“Terrific,” Cerise murmured when they were out of earshot. “By morning the whole Etherlin will be abuzz with the fact that Cerise Xenakis was making out behind a building with some long-haired giant dressed in a stolen coat.”

He glanced down at the sleeves that stopped several inches shy of his wrists and he strained against the fabric, which tried to constrict the movement of his shoulders and back. “It’s too small, but that doesn’t automatically make it stolen. Richard would certainly have loaned it to me if I’d had the opportunity to ask him for it.”

“Well, it’s certainly yours now that you’ve ripped the seams of the right shoulder.”

He smiled. “You felt that? You don’t miss much. Another admirable quality.”

They crossed the street.

“My hair makes me look foreign?”

“Usually it makes you look disheveled.”

“You dislike it?” he asked. “It has grown wild. I don’t pay attention, but I do cut it when I can’t pull a comb through it after a fight.”

“You cut it yourself?”

He nodded.

“That explains a lot. Like the fact that it’s uneven. What do you use on it? A weed-whacker?”

“You can cut it when we return to Richard’s.”

“
I
can? I’m a muse, not a hairdresser. What makes you think I can cut hair?”

“Faith.” Then he grinned and shrugged. “It’s only hair.”

Her smile echoed his. “Maybe I’ll buzz it all off.”

“As you like,” he said.

She quirked a brow, but the fact that he offered to let her do whatever she wanted was charming. “You don’t go to a hairdresser because you avoid people?”

He nodded.

“You do realize that I’m a world-famous muse who never met a crowd she didn’t like?”

“Then being with me will be an interesting change for you.”

“Likewise,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t intend to go into hiding.”

“Archangels don’t hide.”

“Well, whatever you call your life of solitude. It’s not how I live,” she said, her voice full of challenge.

He glanced at her and paused before answering. “I can suffer a crowd for you, Cerise, if you need them.”

Her muscles relaxed. She couldn’t imagine that he compromised much in his life. “Thanks.”

“Here,” Lysander said as they rounded another corner. Her heart nearly stopped. Lysander walked to the doorway where she and Hayden had done CPR on Jersey.

Griffin’s apartment building.

“What are we doing here?” she asked, her voice tight with emotion.

“The artwork I want to show you is on this roof.” He tried the door handle, which was locked. He raised his elbow, poised to break in.

“It’s not necessary to bust the lock. I have a key.”

“Why?” he asked. “This isn’t where you live.”

She didn’t bother to ask how he knew that. “I used to stay here a lot.”

“Why?”

Raw emotions threatened to engulf her, making questions unwelcome, but he’d been willing to tell her about his past, so she felt obliged to reciprocate. “This is where Griffin lived.”

Lysander glanced up at the building, frowning. “I won’t ask you to go inside if it would be painful for you.”

She closed her eyes and ran a hand through her waves, pushing them back so she could feel the cool air on her face. She inhaled deeply and blew out the breath, her lids rising slowly.
“He died almost a year ago. It’s been long enough.” She swallowed and stole a glance at Lysander.

He didn’t move or encourage her; he simply waited with the patience of someone who’d lived lifetimes. His consideration of her feelings made it hard to believe that he was a ruthless nearly damned creature. It might have been an act, but the sweetness rang true. It struck a metaphysical chord in her muse sense and the power lit through her, stronger than it had been in so many months. It felt amazing.

After a moment, she realized that Lysander was still waiting for her to open the door. She glanced around, then extracted her keys and stepped forward. Forcing the key into the hole, she clenched it and her jaw, bracing herself for the memories.

Lysander’s hand, heavy and reassuring, rested on her left shoulder and his right hand slid along her forearm and closed around her fist.

“I’ve got it,” she said.

“I know,” he said, but the hand on her shoulder kneaded the knotted muscles. She exhaled, resisting the urge to lean back against him. It would be easy to do, but she didn’t.

They turned the knob together and pushed the door open. Entering, she smelled the familiar amber and vanilla scent. She raised the lights and glanced around the lobby. Rose paint, honey-colored wood, and a large stone fireplace. The plush seating arrangements conjured memories of nights when she and Griffin and the band had come back from a gig or a club, shared a bottle of wine or something stronger, and Hayden played acoustic guitar until dawn. She could almost see the others: Griffin next to her on the couch across from the fireplace, his long fingers tapping the cushion and surreptitiously trailing across the back of her neck. She shivered.

“Your mother’s been away for quite a while?”

She blinked and turned her head to look at Lysander. “What?”

“It seems that your mother’s been away for a long time. Why is that?” he asked, ushering her to the elevator.

She realized that he was trying to distract her from her memories of Griffin. It was a strange change of topic. “She has. She’s making a statement.”

“What statement?” he asked.

“Why do you ask about her?”

“The music center where I found Griffin’s songbook is named for her, isn’t it? I overheard someone talking about how hard she worked to see it completed after the first builder embezzled the funds.”

“Yes. The council didn’t want to fund its completion, and she had to fight to see it done.”

“It’s a wonderful place. Worth the fight.”

“The muses founded the Etherlin as a place for them to pool their power and use it to the maximal effect. Over the years, they became more and more focused on using their gifts and let others take control of their money, their schedules, the running of the community. It started out well because the muses couldn’t do everything themselves, but later several of them came to regret how things evolved. My mom is dead set against the council selecting which muse gets the Wreath. She feels that decision should be left for the most powerful muses to decide, even though it’s created conflict in the past. She thinks it’s our responsibility to choose a leader and to settle our differences. She left in protest of the competition the council puts us through. The council felt it was the most fair and systematic approach to choosing the Wreath Muse, and they fought to keep control. It’s a big source of conflict between my parents—my mother the dissenting muse, my father the Etherlin Council president.”

“Whose side do you take in the debate?”

“Hers. Because she’s right. And for…other reasons.” She scowled. Another bleak topic.

Lysander raised his brows in question.

“My dad and I don’t have the best relationship.”

“Why not?”

She sighed. “Because when I was growing up, he always made me feel like I wasn’t enough.”

“Enough what?”

She shook her head, dismissing the topic. “I thought you changed the subject to make me feel better.”