The Sinner

I pushed aside hangers and then grief punched me in the stomach, hard and fast, knocking everything else out.

Dad’s trench coat.

He liked to say the coat was a little old school but that it made him feel like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. He’d always wear it when we went to the Old Vic movie house to watch a classic matinee on Sundays, back in Milford.

I laid the cuff to my cheek and inhaled. He’d been gone for six months but his scent—Old Spice cologne and pipe smoke—was still strong.

This would fit Casziel.

The thought was satisfying and horrifying at the same time.

“No way,” I said through gritted teeth. “Absolutely not.”

I imagined I heard Dad’s voice in my head.

I don’t need it anymore, pumpkin. And neither do you. You’ll always have me.

“You’ll always have me” was one of the last things Dad said to me before the cancer took him.

I had obeyed his last wish and sold most of his things and our house in Connecticut to give me a nest egg after graduating NYU with a bachelor’s in bioengineering. But instead of joining a lab or research project for removing plastic particles from the ocean, I took an entry-level job with a nonprofit where no one expected much from the shy girl in the corner who was good with spreadsheets.

“I can’t, Daddy,” I murmured into the sleeve. “I can’t give your coat to some stranger.”

But I was doing it again. Playing it safe. Doing what was expected of me: nothing.

I took the coat down from the hanger, buried my face in it one last time, and went back out.

Casziel was where I’d left him, looking weak and helpless.

He’s neither weak nor helpless…and you know it.

Except I didn’t know what he was. I wouldn’t let my imagination go there. I inhaled, ready to scream bloody murder if Casziel planned…well…my bloody murder.

“That should do,” he said, eyeing the coat bunched in my hand.

He climbed to his feet, moving stiffly and stumbling. Keeping my eyes averted, I handed over my father’s coat, then quickly stepped away. Casziel turned, and I caught a glimpse of more scars slashed across his back. He pulled the coat over his shoulders. It was a tad too tight but covered him well enough.

“Okay, so…I guess that’s it. Good luck—”

“Lucy, wait…”

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Casziel swayed, his hand outstretched, grabbing at air. Instinctively—and like a crazy person—I rushed toward him instead of away. I gave him my arm to prop him up and almost buckled at his heaviness. Hints of smoke and heated metal filled my nose and a strange scent I couldn’t place.

I looked up at Casziel and he looked down at me. His eyes appeared as if a fire burned behind them. Thousands of sunrises and sunsets, rising and falling over thousands of years. They drew me in until I could hear screams…

“What is happening?” I breathed.

“My time grows short, Lucy Dennings,” Casziel said, his voice like smoke. “I need your help. In eleven days, it’s all over. For better or for worse. Improbable as it seems, I’m aiming for better.”

“Better?”

“It might be too late; my sins are many. Countless. But I want to try. I need you to show me how.”

My heart was bursting out of my chest, and I should’ve run but I didn’t. “S-show you how to do what?”

“Find my way back into the light.”