“Well, she was … nice.” I winced at that last word, trying not to sound nasty, but it was hard. I wanted to slap myself out of this funk. Maybe I was cranky because I was tired and a little hungry.

“Liar.”

I blinked in surprise. Either my disdain was painfully obvious or he just knew me that well. “She didn’t seem to like me.”

“She’s not the friendliest,” he admitted. “But I think you’ll at least respect her once you get to know her. I think tomorrow night will be good for you. You haven’t met many angelic reapers.”

“And it’ll be nice to spend time with Marcus again.”

He smiled. Anything that proved my amnesia was waning made him happy, and that made me try harder to remember things. “I agree,” he said. “It’s been a few years since I’ve seen him myself. We might end up needing his help. His and Ava’s.”

“Are they … together?” I asked.

“What?” He looked genuinely confused.

“I mean, are they dating?”

“What? No.”

“Did you ever date her?” There. I said it. I held my breath.

“What are you talking about?”

I regretted asking, but I had to know. “It’s just a question.”

“Why would you ask me that?”

“Curiosity.” He was six hundred years old. I shouldn’t have had to spell out my concern to him. He should be able to read girls by now, especially me.

“Well, it’s not what you think,” he said at last, his gaze lingering on me until he had to look back to the road. “We never … dated.”

My stomach turned over. His response was so dodgy that, no matter how desperately I wanted to believe his every word, something deep inside of me wasn’t so unquestioning. It was clear he didn’t want to talk about it anymore, and in truth, I didn’t either. I chewed on my lip, thinking about the nycterid who’d tried to fly off with me. I tried not to think about falling a thousand feet through the air, very nearly to my death. “Do you really think the reapers wanted to take me somewhere alive?”

“It’s a possibility,” he said. “But we don’t know enough to make serious assumptions. We’ll just carry on as usual. If we see the nycterids again, we’ll destroy the rest of them.”

A terrible thought clawed its way to the surface of my mind, and I shivered. “Do you think it has something to do with the Enshi?”

“It’s gone,” Will said with a sternness that made me flinch.

“But Michael said—”

“Michael was wrong. There’s no way Bastian could’ve dragged that sarcophagus up from the bottom of the ocean. The Enshi was destroyed.”

I exhaled, doubt pulsing through me. We’d managed to drop the sarcophagus containing the creature called the Enshi off a boat only miles from the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean, but the archangel Michael had appeared to me and warned me that Bastian would retrieve it and I was to prevent that.

Bastian was a demonic reaper of unimaginable strength, so powerful that even I couldn’t get anywhere near him. His power brushed me off as if I were a fly. I wouldn’t be excited to have to face him again, and I’d be even less excited if Michael ended up being right and Bastian managed to get the Enshi out of the ocean.

“Everything will be okay,” Will said in that way of his that turned my insides to jelly.

I forced a smile and paused to study his face. He was gorgeous, undoubtedly so, and as soon I acknowledged that, the memory of his lips on my skin made heat rush into my cheeks and spin through my insides. I zipped my head around to look out the passenger window because, thanks to my light complexion, my cheeks turned into tomatoes whenever I was embarrassed, and nothing was more certain to make me blush than thinking about being kissed by Will.

My heart sank as quickly as it had fluttered. It wasn’t like he’d ever kiss me again. Since he’d learned that I was an angel, a divine thing, he’d been distant in every way imaginable. He was still my infallible Guardian, but he wasn’t allowed to touch me that way because I was Gabriel, the archangel.

Centuries ago, my brother, the archangel Michael, gave Will his sword and the duty of being my Guardian. With that enormous responsibility, he was forbidden to be any more than that, and Will was not one to disobey. He could be my friend, but Michael believed it would be improper and dangerous for Will to become romantically involved with me. To angels, the reapers were nothing but instruments to be used up so Heaven’s forces wouldn’t have to get their wings bloody. If Michael thought Will wasn’t good enough for me, then he couldn’t be more wrong.

As much as I hated to admit it, it had been easier to be around him before he’d kissed me that first time. I was a seventeen-year-old girl. I wanted to be loved by a great boy, and I was, but I couldn’t have him. And it broke my heart.

“You’re very quiet.” His voice startled me.

“I’m just tired.” I rested my head against the cold window and closed my eyes, relaxed by the gentle hum of the moving car. I’d come so close to dying tonight, so, so close. More than anything, I wanted to curl into his arms and just be held. We were confronted by our mortality so often that it gave us an intimacy that few shared, even those in love. It was heart wrenching to have something so amazing just out of reach. It would be simpler if he was just there to protect me because it was his duty, and not because he was in love with me.