Angels who didn’t want to have sex with her, that is.
Ashur’s gaze soared out the window and across Central Park. She’d touched some part of him, and that surprised him more than it did her, she sus pected.
“Just dreams?” he asked.
“As I said, they started after my mother’s death.” She joined his side and said, “At first, I thought they were a message from her. But there were so many. I’d see a new one every night, it seemed. If I painted a different angel every day, I don’t think I’d ever put them all to canvas. They are innate to me, and yet, I can’t tell others about it if I want them to think I’m sane.”
“Mortals have a difficult time with the supernatural.”
“Yep. I started sketching in my teens, but I really became passionate about recreating my dreams after I found my first halo.”
Ashur’s eyes flashed. They were so colorful, fathomtess, with pinpoints of light centered in each. It was as if a piece of a Maxfield Parrish painting abided on his face.
“You found a halo?”
“Yes, an angel’s halo. You must be familiar with them.”
“I am,” he said cautiously, “but mortals are not. The only time the halo is separated from an angel is when they fall to earth. It falls away and is lost to the angel ever after. If they should ever find their original halo, it can be wielded as a weapon no man or demon can defeat.”
“Cool. I was never sure how the halo ended up here on earth.”
“It also holds their earthbound soul,” he said. “If an angel reunites with its halo it can take the soul and become human, but I can’t imagine a Fallen choosing to do so, to become merely human.”
“What about you? Would you take a soul?”
“You know nothing about me, mortal. Do not pretend you do.”
Duly chastised, Eden strode across the room to the freestanding coatrack that held three circular disks on its curved hooks. “I found the first one at a flea market my father took me to when I was twelve—that was two years after my mother’s death. Dug it out of a box full of scrap tin. I knew immediately what it was. It didn’t bother me the seller thought it was nothing. I knew.”
“More dreams?”
“No, just an innate knowing,” she offered casually.
She removed the first find from one of the coat hooks. It was dented and yes, it did look like tin, but she couldn’t bend it, nor had her father been able to. She displayed it to Ashur. “See?”
He took the circle. It was exactly a foot in diameter and the metal was two inches wide all around. It was thin as a CD and the center was an eight-inch void. Ashur inspected it briefly. “It is what you say it is.”
Given confirmation, Eden clutched her hands to her chest. She’d always known, but somehow it was more real when someone in the know confirmed it. All the years she had lived inside her head, fighting to keep her secrets. She was not crazy.
And who else would know such a thing but an—She wouldn’t say it out loud after he’d chastised her. Maybe he wasn’t allowed to reveal his origins to humans.
“And the others?” he asked.
“I have four,” she said proudly. “But I should be getting another in the mail any day now. I found one on a trip to Egypt with my father, and another in Spain. The one on its way, I won on eBay. Some sellers actually know what they are selling. The most I’ve ever paid is a couple hundred thousand for one.”
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