"You suspect your wisdom is greater? Why don't I find that surprising, my lord?"
His eyes glinted at her teasing, but he responded with a shrug. "I'm not sure it's that my wisdom is greater, little one. It's just She created us with minds and wills of our own, and there was a wisdom to that as well, one not lightly abandoned."
"So when you were hurt and fell into the ocean, you could have called to them for aid. But you didn't."
"I didn't. Perhaps I should have, if for no other reason than to keep a mermaid out of trouble." He flicked at her clipped-back hair, and she pulled it out of his reach, frowning at him.
"I, too, prefer to make my own choices regarding you, my lord. As I've said before, and maybe for the same reasons. I'm not entirely sure you're best suited to determine what's in your best interest."
"Oh, really?"
She gave a shriek as he lunged for her. While he managed to snag an elbow, she darted under his arm so he was forced to let go. Summoning a guise of energy she didn't feel, she jumped on his back, wrapping her legs around his waist and locking her arms around his neck and shoulders. Oh, Goddess. His flesh was blessedly cool.
"I have you well and truly pinned, my lord," she managed. "You must concede."
"If I throw myself backward, I can crush you like a bug." But instead of doing that, he put his arms around her calves, holding her in place. "Stay there." He freed a hand to pass it over the tips of the greasewood shrub that brushed her head. Above, white clouds floated lazily against the blue sky.
"What might you be doing on a day like today?" She made her voice a quiet whisper against his temple. "If you were in the sky."
"Planning the next battle. Training."
She tugged his hair. "For leisure. Other than seeking out angel bordellos."
He smiled. "What better leisure activity is there?" He spun on his heel, turning her in circles, and she tightened her arms around his neck. It was a blissful relief to be carried. The weariness had been closing in and she wasn't sure how much longer she could keep it from him. Or maybe that's why he was carrying her. She knew he was far more sharp-sighted than was comfortable. She didn't put it past him to have teased her into getting onto his back.
"Studying," he said at last. "When we're not planning for battle or engaged in it, we do help with other areas. Some of the angels I command are healers, watchers. Messengers, couriers. Magic creators, through music or voice."
"What do you do?"
"A variety of things. Actually, not much other than the fighting anymore," he admitted. "The planning and doing, training, recovery and planning again became more of a full-time job as I was assigned more and more angels. My legion has over ten thousand, with a generous handful of captains for the different battalions, but I personally oversee the training of each and every angel, testing them frequently, drilling them. To make sure they're ready as they can be."
So they would live for another battle, another risk. But rather than voice that sobering thought, she tugged on his hair. "Ten thousand angels. Do they salute you? Call you sir?"
"At the moment I suspect my captains are calling me a variety of names, none of them respectful." A shadow crossed his gaze. Then he pinched her leg. "But you're being impudent now."
"I like to see you smile, and that seems to make you smile. Maybe I should suggest that to your men."
"I don't think that would be wise."
"Look." She pointed. "Is that . . . a cabin?"
Jonah squinted. In the distance, one of the craggy rock formations with its colorful layers of sandstone did in fact seem to include a rock cabin built into the side. As they drew closer, Anna was amazed to see that was what it was, with a small door to a cellar to the right of the cabin, possibly a way to keep things cooler by putting them in a storeroom belowground.
"An old miner's cabin," Jonah mused, examining it as he let her down. "Could be well over a hundred years old. We've probably passed by other ones that look just like part of the rock face, because all that's left of them are ruins. There are whole ghost towns in Nevada, from the mining days."
The door to the cabin was gone, though some stray threads suggested it had been used recently by someone who'd employed a blanket curtain against the nighttime desert chill. Anna glanced in and saw a dirty floor, the remains of campers who'd not observed the expected courtesy of "without a trace." The room was also hot, facing into the late afternoon sun, and she found herself drawn to exploring the cellar room. Besides which, based on their previous night's experience, going somewhere they could not be seen seemed a welcome idea.
"Should we stay here for the night?" Jonah asked, apparently reading her thoughts.
She nodded, turning to find him sitting on the slope outside and removing his shoes. He curled his toes, wiggled them, bemused. "Strange. I suppose it makes sense, the way people wear shoes, but I've never done it."
"Some human women have dozens. Three-and four-inch heels that make their legs look like egrets, all sleek and graceful." She lifted one foot by example in her hot pink sneaker, and humor flashed through his gaze as she rotated her foot. "It's good that the spell on those clothes make them fit the wearer, though. Otherwise your new shoes, walking this long in them, would have caused you blisters."
"These pants and shirts could be somewhat looser."
"They aren't too tight. You're just used to your battle skirt being open and . . ." Her cheeks pinkened and she looked away, though she had the suspicion he muffled a chuckle, as if he'd been teasing her all along.
Jonah reflected that she had no sense of how innocently charming she was. When she wasn't worrying about him, taking his mind places it didn't want to go, being with her was like a breath of a world Jonah hadn't experienced in so long. He wasn't sure if it wasn't even altogether new, a place he'd never visited. Watching her take such simple pleasure in life, wonder at everything around her, ask him questions, drink in every bit of knowledge, it was ironic she didn't realize she was providing a similar experience for him.
Plus, she knew what tragedy and isolation were, so her innocence wasn't naive and wearing upon his soul. If anything, he felt as if she held the key to a secret he couldn't fathom. While he suspected he was long past having the state of mind to accept the knowledge if he ever learned it, as long as she was carrying it, he thought just being around her would let him draw some sense of peace from it. And that, more than a pointless quest, was likely what had kept him with her.
Squatting by the front of the cellar where she was in a square of shade provided by the cabin, she pulled out the gallon jug with the seawater, arranged her shells and then carefully baptized her feet, her hands. He noticed her deep sigh of relief as she leaned against the cellar door, closed her eyes and sat very still beneath the touch of the sea's blood. He also noticed the circles under her eyes seemed to get a little less shadowed. Perhaps his mermaid needed more sleep. He might be having her travel too much, too quickly.
The sun was starting to melt on the horizon. He removed the shirt just in time as his back arched, and he made the sudden lurch forward to his feet as the wings came back through.
Anna watched him out of the corner of her eye. She remembered the previous night, their exultant flight in the air, which had been one of the most amazing experiences of her life. But it also recalled the battle. Lucifer's frustrations, David's worry. While watching his wings return every night was a miraculous thing to witness, it was also the clear reminder that he didn't belong here, with her.
"Little one." He squatted outside the cellar door, close to her side. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing. I'm fine. I was just thinking about how different we are from one another."
"We're both lonely." His observation, the steady look from his dark eyes and the way he stretched out his wings now to provide her additional shade despite the sun's descent, almost pulled her composure from her like the mask it was.
"But you've seen so much I haven't seen," she said quickly. "Tell me something I don't know, somethin
g I can't possibly imagine ever having existed. I can imagine this cabin, because it would make sense. Tell me something totally unexpected, something that will make me smile, but will amaze me."
Stroke my mind, she thought. Soothe me.
"Hmm . . ." He stood and stepped behind her. As she looked up at him, he adjusted her so her back was against his denim-clad legs and he was looking down at her. "In medieval Europe, there used to be men in long black cloaks." He spread his arms, taking his wings out to a half span, giving her the impression of a cloak. "They wandered the city streets carrying a chamber pot."
"Oh, no. I'm not sure I'm going to like this story."
"Sshh," he admonished. "If you needed to relieve yourself when you were out doing your shopping, you could pay him a certain amount and he would set the pot on the ground, open up his cloak"--he spread his wings out further and then started to draw them around her--"and curtain it around you while you sat on the chamber pot, doing what you needed to do."
She'd wanted a story of something she couldn't ever have imagined, something that would touch and amaze her, and he'd done both. It didn't surprise her that he'd pulled the perfect thing out of his millennium of knowledge, but she was quietly delighted all the same. She stroked her hands over the feathers closed around her, thinking about it. A stranger who provided a service for a crude bodily function, yes. But it was also one person, intimately close to another, to provide an act of care . . . like this. As he tightened the enclosure around her, she rose, turned inside the folds, shivering when his hands found her upper arms. She simply couldn't think when he kissed her as he did now, deep and thorough, holding her close to him, those wings protecting her on all sides, bringing her coolness from the sun and reassurance.
"I'm sure the Privy Man didn't do much of that," she managed in a thick voice when Jonah raised his head. He smiled.
"Unless he was very clever. And handsome, like me."
"Modesty so becomes you, my lord." She chuckled and ducked out of his wingspan, trying to mask the stagger she decided to assume his dizzying kiss had caused. "Let's go look at the cellar. It might be the perfect place to spend the night."