The Sinner

“Why would you say that?” I asked, feeling a little slapped by his sudden derision.

“I hear their chatter. Silly Lucy and her silly little life?”

I hunched my shoulders, letting my hair fall over my face. “You shouldn’t be eavesdropping.”

“My fate lies in your hands, Lucy Dennings. If you’ve ever had ‘big ideas,’ I see no evidence that you took them to fruition.”

“I do have big ideas,” I said. “Notebooks full of them. But I’m already up to my eyeballs in student loan debt—”

“And Deb and K have convinced you it’s a waste of time anyway. That you’re not good enough. That someone else will do it better…”

I hugged my elbows, wishing I could fold into myself. Or run back home, curl up in bed and dive into a book.

Be brave.

“You know, it’s not cool to take someone’s worst insecurities and fling them in my—their face.”

Casziel shrugged. “Deb and K—”

“I don’t care what you call them. That whispering doesn’t sound like demons. It sounds like sneering inner voices I’ve been hearing my whole life.”

“That’s why we’re successful,” Casziel said. “Most humans let their brains chatter away all day, every day. A symphony of garbage into which we lace our insinuations so that they become indistinguishable.”

I frowned. “It’s not just chatter. We all have thoughts—”

“There is thinking and then there are thoughts,” he said. “Deciding what to eat for dinner or working out a mathematical equation is thinking. Most thoughts are just noise and generally useless.”

“So how does someone get rid of their demons?”

Casziel glanced down at me, his gaze suddenly intense. His tone commanding. “Stop listening to them, Lucy. Starve them with inattention.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Deb hungers for your shame. K is ravenous for your fear. They feed on it.”

I glanced up at him. “And what do you feed on?”

He looked away. “The pain of having something precious ripped from you. Rage at the injustice of it. Grief for what has been lost.”

The hurt weighed his voice down and I again recalled the vision of the temple and the deep, black chasm of anguish that had seemed ready to swallow me whole. A strong urge to take Casziel’s hand in mine came over me. I even let the back of my hand brush his, a small, soft touch. Letting him know it was there if he wanted to take hold…

He flinched and shoved his hands into the pockets of his borrowed jeans.

“To the present matter,” he said brusquely. “Any plan for my salvation needs to be a good one, Lucy Dennings. Nothing ‘little’ about it.”

He doesn’t want your comfort, Silly Lucy. He’s here for him. Not you.

God, I was tired of how small those voices made me feel. I swallowed down my anxiety and steeled my courage to do what Casziel suggested—stop feeding my demons.

“If we’re going to have a partnership, or whatever this is, then you need to act like a partner,” I blurted, as we took a right from 49th Street to 7th Avenue. A few blocks away, the bells of St Patrick’s Cathedral tolled noon.

“Partner,” Casziel said. “Is that what I am?”

“Not if you keep talking like Deb and K. Not if you keep telling me I hole up in my place too much or that I substitute romance novels for living.”

“Don’t you?”

“No. I don’t go out a lot because I’m introverted,” I said. “Which isn’t a crime, last I checked. And there is nothing wrong with enjoying those books. They’re about love, which is the strongest force on earth. In them, you can experience different kinds of romance: enemies to lovers, second chances… And the men—the heroes—might be billionaires, mafia mobsters, or motorcycle club members, but they all have one thing in common. They would die for their woman.”