“With Angela. You’re a couple of geniuses, you two,” he says. “What do you plan to study?”
“I don’t have a plan, exactly. I guess I’m hoping that I’ll try out a bunch of stuff and find something I like.”
“Do you have any hobbies? Talents?” he asks.
Suddenly I feel like I’m at a job interview.
“Uh—” I don’t know what to say. I used to be a ballet dancer, but that feels like a million years ago. I’m not into sports like Jeffrey, or poetry like Angela, or music like Christian. Fishing, maybe? I like fishing. But fishing was all about Tucker. Hiking, boating, swimming in rivers, white-water rafting—I can’t separate any of those things from Tucker.
I need a hobby.
“Clara’s an empath,” Angela supplies for me.
I half choke on my bite of meat.
“Interesting,” Phen says as I cough like crazy. Finally my lungs calm down a bit. I take a drink of wine and wish it were water.
“What’s your story, Phen? Angela really hasn’t told me very much about you,” I say, eager to change the subject. “You’re an Intangere?”
“Yes, I think we’ve established that,” he says wryly.
“And what do you do?”
“Are you asking if I flit around from cloud to cloud, sing in a heavenly choir?”
I take a bite, chew for a minute, shrug. “I guess I don’t know what it is that angels actually do.”
He takes a long drink of his wine. “You’re direct,” he says. “I like that.”
I smile and wait for him to answer my question.
“We do angel business,” he says after a minute. Smirks. “You mere mortals wouldn’t understand.”
“Angel business, like helping the souls of the dead find their way to heaven or hell?” I glance over at Angela, who gives me a warning look. She’s been superquiet this entire time. For once I’m the one asking all the questions.
“Yes, some angels handle the souls of the dead,” he says.
I remember my mother telling me once that more than a hundred people on this planet die every minute. That’s a lot of angels. “So is that what you do? Look after the dead, guide them toward the light, that kind of thing?”
“No,” he says. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m what you would call a muse.”
Angela looks surprised. “A muse?”
“I inspire people,” he says, like it’s something ordinary people do as a vocation: professional inspirer.
“You never told me that,” she says. “Have you ever inspired me?”
He raises his eyebrows, laughs when she gasps.
“I thought I was your muse,” she says with a flicker of disappointment. “Can you put an idea directly into my head?”
“I can give you an image, a line of music, a word, anything I want. But most of the time I don’t have to. I simply provide a brief moment of clarity. You fill in the rest.”
“That’s amazing,” she says, and I can almost see her mentally going over the stuff she’s done around him, the poems she’s written or the music she’s played on her violin for him, trying to understand how he might have inspired her.
“Yeah,” I agree, if only to be agreeable. “It is. Very cool.” Truthfully, though, the idea of an angel who’s able to plant ideas in my head without me knowing about it doesn’t sound like good news to me. Who knows what else he could plant there? It’s a little bit Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in my opinion. I make a silent note to keep my mental barrier up around him, the way my mom taught me, so he won’t be able to read my mind. Or stick stuff in it.
“It’s a small gift, compared to what others can do,” he says modestly, but I can tell he’s flattered. I guess he doesn’t get to take credit for what he does that often. And I don’t for a second believe that being a muse is all this guy can do.
“So give us an example,” Angela says. “Something you inspired.”
“Oh, I don’t know. ‘Once upon a time,’” he says. “I came up with that.”
Angela’s eyes widen. “You came up with the phrase ‘once upon a time’?”
“It was a long time ago.” He eats a bite of food while we stare at him. “Humans are brilliant in their own right. And quick to learn, I’ve found.”
“So you’re a teacher? Officially, I mean?” she asks, her voice a little more high-pitched than normal, maybe because she wants him to teach her more “officially.”
“It was my duty, once upon a time, to teach humans,” he says.
“What did you teach them?” I ask.
“How to write. Some have argued that was a bad thing, giving them the written word.” He smirks. “Leads to all kinds of trouble. But that was my job.”
I have a sudden flash of this guy scratching out the ABCs on a cave wall for a group of awestruck Neanderthals. Then it occurs to me. He’s an angel, but he doesn’t give off an angel vibe. No sorrow. No joy. Which means that I don’t know what side he’s on.
Which means I can’t trust him.
Once again I get the distinct feeling that something bad is going to happen, that someone’s-dancing-on-my-grave sensation.
“So you were a Watcher,” I say slowly, trying to keep my voice casual.
His eyes flash at the word.
“Clara,” Angela mutters. “Enough with the Spanish Inquisition.”
I meet Phen’s dark eyes, hold his gaze.
“What do you know about Watchers?” he asks.
“I’ve read The Book of Enoch.”
He sighs. “Inaccurate.”
“Okay, set the record straight. You were there, right?”
Silence. I wonder if I’ve gone too far, if I’ve foolishly cheesed off somebody who’s going to turn out to be a Black Wing and squish me like a grape.
“Originally it wasn’t a bad thing, to be a Watcher,” he says. “All the term means is that we were sent to watch over the humans, teach them. Some of us did more than watch, obviously.” He looks away. “Some of us fell in love with them.”
Angela shoots me a glare that would melt steel. I ignore her. “So you’re not evil, is that what you’re saying?”
He meets my eyes again. “I’m ambivalent. I refuse to fight on either side.”
“You’re neutral,” Angela pipes up. “Like Switzerland.”