The Sinner by Emma Scott

Sixteen

Casziel didn’t come back.

He wasn’t there as I got ready for work Wednesday morning, which was bustling due to Kimberly’s upcoming honeymoon and the disaster in Sri Lanka. Guy was busy making his own departure plans, and Abby hinted more than once that he might ask me to go along with him.

“And you’ll say yes, of course. You and Guy…close quarters in a foreign land. Perfect, right?”

Just a short week ago it would have been perfect. My favorite romantic fantasy come to life. Instead, all I could think about was Casziel. Something had happened after we left karaoke, but I couldn’t remember. Just like everything else with him, it danced at the edges of my awareness. He lived at the edges of my awareness like an unspoken promise. But it seemed every time I tried to grasp the truth of it, it slipped away.

I dragged myself through the workday, then rushed to get home. My place was empty. I wondered if Cas was in trouble with that terrible Ashtaroth. God, even the name sounded monstrous and evil. Or maybe he went back to the Other Side. Except he had eleven days here, which was sort of random, when I thought about it.

He’s not coming back, Deber offered. He grew bored with you—Silly Lucy and her silly, uneventful little life.

My apartment’s silence became deafening. Twilight became full dark, no stars, and still, Cas didn’t return. I heated some leftover casserole, changed into my sleep shorts and T-shirt. I checked and double-checked that my window was open, then went to bed to read. But for the first time, the romance couldn’t hold me or make me fall in.

I shut off the light and lay in the dark, trying to remember what happened after karaoke night. My thoughts began to scatter, turn slippery and indistinct…except for the woman at the warrior’s homecoming. She appeared, and I teetered on the edge of sleep, watching as she

 

waits for him on the upper floor. She has already greeted him properly with the family, and now her heartbeat is a drum when his heavy footfalls enter the room. She can hardly see his face; the lone candle’s light is low and the night, thick. But she can feel how his eyes burn with want. She rushes into his arms. He’s real and solid, after living in her dreams for years. He smells of ale and sweat, of cloves and honey. His mouth captures hers in a brutal kiss.

“Too long,” he moans, his hands roaming her back, his fingers sinking into her thick black hair. “It’s been too long. You’re so much a woman now. Gods, a treasure…”

His words make her heart sing as her body aches for his. Four years of war has brought him new scars, new strength. He is a stone monument, hard and strong, when he was already both. She kisses him ferociously, bites at his lips, presses herself against him.

“Li’ili,” he grits out, and she feels his stiffness between them.

“Father says we’ll be wed within the moon’s turn,” she says, her hands slipping down to the rigid length of him in his trousers. She strokes him and kisses him with increasing urgency. “But I ache for you now…”

He grunts and takes one full breast in his large hand, squeezing. “Did you wait for me, Li’ili?”

“I would wait for you until the sun goes black and the stars fall, beloved.”

The sound he makes is part emotion, part dire need. She gasps as his hand slips under her dress. His fingers tease her opening that is wet and ready for him.

“Are you still mine?” he breathes hotly against her neck.

“Always…ki-áñg ngu.” She presses against his touch, wishing he’d plunge his fingers inside and take her. “My beloved.”

“We must wait,” he says, reading her thoughts as usual. He uses her arousal so that his calloused touch glides over her nub of pleasure, rough but slick. “I’m going to make you my wife and then I’m going to take what’s mine.”

“Yes,” she hisses, taking his lower lip in her teeth and sucking. Her grip on his cock tightens. “And this.” She meets his eye with her own heated gaze. “Mine.”

He chuckles, though it’s quickly burned up in the fire of lust. “Fierce woman. Yes, yours.” He grips her hips, hauling her against him. “I dreamed of you while at war. Every night.”

“Because you love me,” she says, pushing him down into the wooden chair carved with ravens and straddling him.

“Because I love you,” he replies, his voice soft.

He kisses her gently. Deeply. Then harder. His fingers are between her legs again, stroking her. She cries out and rides his hand while palming the thickness in his pants.

They strive to bring each other to release—there are many clothes separating them. But the eyes of the gods are watching and will withhold their blessings until the wedding. That night, they will be together. Joined. Complete.

And whole at last…

I blinked awake Thursday morning, an old—ancient?—longing alive in my heart and a fierce orgasm throbbing between my legs.

“Oh my God.” I squeezed my thighs together, as if I could capture it and hold on. Not just the physical pleasure but the love I’d witnessed. Raw and all-consuming. The dream was like the others I’d told Cas about but a hundred times more potent and even earlier than Japan.

Like, Sumerian-earlier?

I sat up, the dream and the pleasure both ebbing away. My thoughts swirled with possibilities, each more overwhelming and unimaginable than the last.

“It’s what he said. His existence seeping into mine. That’s all.”

With a full body orgasm on the side?

I rubbed my eyes, feeling as if I’d come to the end of my suspension of disbelief. There had to be a plausible, scientific explanation for all of this, and if I didn’t talk to someone and get out of my head, I was going to go insane.

“That’s the most plausible explanation of all.”

It was a little after seven a.m., around noon in London. Cole was likely in class or working on one of his masterpieces. I hated to bother him with my crap, but when he moved to the UK, he told me again and again to never hesitate to call.

I grabbed my phone.

“Three times in one week,” Cole answered with a tired grin. “I don’t have my sketch pad ready. What’s up, Luce? Everything okay?”

“I was going to ask the same of you. Rough night?”

My friend was a night owl but mostly because he didn’t sleep well. Sometimes not at all.

Cole ran a hand through his shaggy light brown hair. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Isn’t that how that morbid motto goes?”

You won’t do much sleeping then, either.

“I wish your insomnia would give you a break.”

“You and me both, but it’s actually useful now. The deadline for the June issue of Art for Life is racing at me like a runaway train.”

Cole was editor-in-chief of his university’s student-produced visual arts magazine—a huge honor for a second-year post-grad.

“I’ll let you go if you’re busy.”

“Nope, I need the break. Plus, I always want to talk to you, Luce.”

Love for my friend flooded me. He never complained, was always kind.

If someone deserves all-consuming love, it’s this boy.

“Well, you’re the smartest person I know, and I have a question. It’s silly, really.”

Silly. God, I was getting tired of that word.

“Shoot,” Cole said.

“Do you believe in reincarnation?”

“Haven’t thought about it.”

“You’ve never been curious?”

He shrugged. “I figure there’s no way to know what happens when we pass on, so there’s no point in serious speculation.”

“But lots of people believe in it, right? There are stories of kids who can speak languages they can’t possibly know. Or people having vivid, detailed memories of past lives, from different eras in history that come to them, maybe…in dreams?”

“I guess. But there’re also stories of white lights and ancestors gathering to welcome them on to…wherever. Like I said, no one knows for sure. It’s not like there’s anyone around to ask.”

Yes and no…

“Right. Okay, one more question. Is there something special about the number eleven? Like, in an occult kind of way?”

“Occult kind of way? What does that mean?”

I shrugged one shoulder. “I just meant, do you know if eleven holds some special meaning. Seven is lucky, thirteen is unlucky and eleven is…?”

“A character in Stranger Things? Cute kid. Bad haircut.”

I snorted a laugh. “I’m being serious.”

“So am I,” Cole said, the silvery-blue of his laptop reflecting in his black, square-rimmed glasses. “But while we’re chatting, this numerology article is telling me that the number eleven represents intuition.” He read from the screen in front of him. “It asks us to look beyond our senses and be receptive to hidden meanings. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, a lot. Actually.”

He read on. “Eleven may also indicate transgressions, indiscretions, and sins.”

“Sins? It says that?”

“Yes, and it talks about being drawn to something unknown. Something unresolved.”

That was the perfect phrase to describe that strange, déjà vu feeling I got when I was around Casziel: something unresolved.

“What are you doing over there, Luce?” Cole asked, shutting his laptop. “Having seances? Playing with a Ouija board?”

“Not…lately.”

“Don’t. It’s not safe.”

“I didn’t know you were a believer in that stuff.”

“I’m not. Not really. But there are energies out there and it’s not smart to poke at stuff we don’t understand. Who knows what you might wake up?”

“That is very good advice,” I said. That I could’ve used a week ago.

“But Luce, you’re a researcher. You could have looked it up yourself.”

“You mean, you don’t like being my personal Google?”

“I know your face, and you’ve got something on your mind. How are things with you and Cas? Or is it you and Guy?”

“Not sure yet,” I said. “My boss’s wedding is on Saturday, and I have a feeling a lot of unresolved somethings will be figured out then.”

“Is Cas your plus-one?”

“I think so. Maybe. But as friends.”

A lie. Cas would come as a decoy. As the escort Abby thinks he is. But not as a friend. Casziel Abisare wasn’t a friend.

He’s so much more that all of those things. If only I knew what.

“I take it Operation Get the Guy is still in effect?”

I forced a laugh. “Guy asked me to save a dance for him. I think something might be happening.” Cole frowned but I cut him off at the pass. “What about you? How’s your love life going?”

“Me? My love life is represented by the number zero, which indicates there will be no indiscretions or sins any time soon. But that’s by choice. I’ve sworn off men.”

“Noooo, you can’t. You need to share your awesomeness with at least one other person.”

He laughed. “I see what you did there. Nah, guys are too much drama.” He glanced at his watch. “Shit, break time’s up. But before I go, let me ask you a question. You’re at your boss’s wedding. Cas and Guy are both standing across the room—”

“No rooms. It’s at the Loeb Boathouse in Central Park.”

“Okay, the Boat—wait, really? Nice. So Cas and Guy are standing on the other side of Bow Bridge. One of them crosses to you, sweeps you into his arms, and dances with you until the sun comes up. Which one is it?”

My cheeks warmed. “Jeez, Cole. For someone who’s sworn off men, you’re quite the romantic.”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“It’s more complicated than what I want.” I plucked at my ratty couch cushion. “Someday I’ll explain it all to you. When it all seems less crazy.”

“Fine, you’re off the hook. Because this magazine no one reads isn’t going to edit itself. Love you.”

“Love you.”

I blew him a kiss and ended the FaceTime, then got ready for work, feeling better after the injection of real life from talking to Cole. I grabbed the Macy’s bag with the dress I’d bought for Kimberly’s wedding. Abby said it wouldn’t be alluring enough for Guy, so I was going to take it back on my lunchbreak and get something better.

Do I care if Guy likes my dress?

I had to care. For Casziel’s sake. Our grand plan’s success was necessary for his redemption. But…

“If a Guy falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it…?”

I snorted a laugh; my dork game was strong, but the dream clung to me, whispering possibilities.

Impossibilities, I insisted. He’s a demon and I’m…

I didn’t know what I was. Someone who was holding a tiny flickering candle in a vast, dark cavern—I could see only bits and pieces, but the darkness hinted at something so much larger and deeper. My aching sense of loss. My endless search for love in books.

Scientists search for the truth but what if the truth was too incredible to believe?

The office was a bustling hive of activity. Before nine, I had a pile of papers on my desk, logistics to be worked out. Guy Baker came by with a manifest for his upcoming trip to Sri Lanka. His smile was as warm as ever, but he didn’t linger to chat. It was as if his drunken serenade hadn’t happened.

He probably wishes it hadn’t.

Jana leaned over from her cubicle after he’d left. “What are you doing for lunch?”

I nudged the Macy’s bag at my foot. “Returning this dress and getting a new one. As per Ms. Taylor’s orders.”

Jana pursed her lips. “Want some company?”

“Um…sure. If you want.”

“I want.”

At noon, we headed to the department store, but Jana steered me into a Greek deli on the way.

“Let’s eat first,” Jana said. “I’m starved, as usual. Don’t believe them when they say you can eat whatever you want while breastfeeding and not gain weight. Lies, all lies.”

I managed a smile and waited for the anxiety to grip my stomach. The kind that usually came at the prospect of sitting in front of someone—eating in front of someone—and having to barrel through a conversation without making a fool of myself.

But instead of a squeezing fist, the anxiety was a pinch. I’d survived dinner with Guy and Abby, and I supposed having a demon as an on-again off-again roommate had a way of making lunch with a coworker look like child’s play.

We ordered our food at the counter, the deli smelling of freshly baked phyllo—the owner made his own right there on site—and took our number to a table near a window.

“So,” Jana said, her blue gaze direct but warm. “We’ve worked together for two years, and this is the first time we’ve hung out, Abby’s makeover notwithstanding.”

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

“I’m not trying to put you on the spot. I’m just as guilty—”

“No, you’re not,” I said. “You’ve asked me to lunch or coffee a bunch of times, but I’ve been too shy to say yes.”

She smiled. “I’m glad you said yes. But I don’t want to make you uncomfortable or self-conscious for being shy. Or is it introverted? Or both? I don’t know that there’s a difference.”

“There is,” I said. “Introverted people don’t hate socializing but draw more energy from being alone. I used to be able to go to parties and talk and have fun, but they’d leave me mentally exhausted.”

A waiter brought our food and departed.

“And shy?” Jana said, taking a bite of one of the dolmas we ordered to share.

“Shy is more like fear. Or self-consciousness. It comes from…” Demons. “Negative self-talk, I guess. I’ve made peace with my introversion, but the shyness has been isolating.”

I poked at my salad and years of that isolation were suddenly right in front of me, so I could feel every second of it.

“Sometimes the loneliness is so much, and the silence is so loud, I read romance novels until my head aches, and I think until it feels like I’m drilling into myself. Like excavation. As if I’m mining for memories I don’t have, certain that there is more to me than this. There has to be. But I can’t find it. Whatever it is, it’s always out of reach. I drop a stone into the well of my heart and I keep listening for it to hit something real. But it never does.”

I blinked out of my thoughts to see Jana watching me, her jaw slack.

“Oh my God, sorry,” I said, my cheeks heating. “I don’t know where that came from. I just…dumped all that in your lap.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s really okay. That’s real talk, Luce, not bullshit chitchat, which I hate. I’m sort of honored that you said that to me. I get the impression maybe you needed to get it out.”

I nodded. She was right; a week ago, I would’ve run out of the restaurant for baring myself like that.

“Thanks for not giving up on me.”

“Never.” Jana smiled gently. “Can I ask you a question? You said you used to be able to go to parties. When did that change? I know your father passed and I’m so sorry about that, Luce. I don’t know that I ever told you.”

“You told me.” I smiled back. “But no, it was earlier than that. It was…”

I searched my memory, trying to find a moment or incident that might’ve made me withdraw like the proverbial turtle into its shell. It was before Dad died. A much longer stretch of years. Centuries, even…

“It was gradual,” I said. “The negative voices in my head grew louder and I grew more tired, somehow.”

“Tired of what?”

Not having him.

The thought had risen up from the deepest recesses of my mind, like a flare, wanting to illuminate the empty spaces in me. The dream of the woman and her warrior rushed in after it, daring me to believe it was merely a remnant of Casziel’s life.

“The reason I ask…” Jana frowned. “You okay?”

“Oh, um…yes.”

“You look a little pale.”

“Fine. I promise.” I took a sip of water “What were you saying?”

“Okay, well…this might sound completely condescending so feel free to tell me to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge—but I feel sort of maternal toward you.” Jana laughed, looking a little sheepish. “It’s one hundred percent new baby hormones, I’m sure, but when you said you were going to present on Monday, I was bursting with pride. And I really, really want to see what you do, because I bet it’ll be amazing.”

The presentation. Monday, at work. That was real life.

“Thank you,” I said to Jana. “I don’t know if my idea will be any good. It feels like it’s missing something, but I’m going to go for it anyway.”

“Well? Let’s hear it,” she said and took a bite of her gyro. “I’ll be your dress rehearsal.”

“Okay. If you want…”

“I want.”

I told Jana about my shoe idea and her eyes got wider and wider as she chewed her food.

“Holy shit. Luce…”

“It’s not exactly new,” I said. “Other companies make sustainable apparel, but…”

Jana’s head was bobbing as she took a sip of water. “Bracelets and stuff but not actual shoes. Can it be done? As in, will the shoe hold together?”

I nodded. “I’ve done the research. Instead of using real rubber, plastic can also be used to create synthetic rubber polymers. No sense in robbing the forest to save the ocean.”

“I think it’s genius. But you’re right, it’s missing one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“A celebrity endorsement.” She leaned in confidentially. “My hubby plays golf at Douglaston. Since Wyatt was born, he’s been forbidden to play more than once a month. But do you know who his favorite golfing buddy is?”

“Couldn’t guess.”

“Jason Lemieux. He’s a hotshot sports agent. Has a huge roster of big-time clients under his belt. Clients like Kai Solomon.”

“Um…”

“The tennis star? Won the Australian Open and a bunch more tournaments after that.” She arched a brow. “You see where I’m going with this? I’ll force my hubs to force Jason to force his client to sign on to your shoe.”

“That’s a lot of forcing,” I said with a laugh.

“Think of the possibilities. The exposure. The more shoes we sell—”

“The more of that damn plastic gets repurposed. And every penny of profit goes right back into cleanup.” I shocked myself by offering my hand for a high five, which Jana obliged. “You have to present with me.”

She shook her head. “No, no. This is your baby. I won’t have Jason on board by Monday, anyway. It’s all you, girl.”

The thought should’ve given me hives, but the twinge of anxiety in my stomach had faded altogether.

Take that Deber and Keeb.

“Now can we talk about this?” Jana nudged the Macy’s bag under the table. “Is it really so frumpy?”

“Well…”

“Let me see.”

I wiped olive oil off my hands and held up the dress.

Jana pursed her lips and cocked her head in a mildly reproving way. “Luce, it’s gorgeous. Moreover, you love it, right?”

“I think it’s sort of perfect.”

Jana brushed her hands together. “Welp, seeing as we no longer have to wrestle with the returns line at Macy’s, we have time for dessert.”

I grinned. “Yeah, we do.”

After we finished strong Greek coffees and shared a slice of baklava, Jana gave me a hug. “Let’s do this again sometime. Please?”

“I’d like that.” I held up my bag. “We’re close to my place. I’m going to drop this off and hang it so it’s not bag-wrinkled for tomorrow.”

“An excellent idea. See you back at the office.”

We parted ways, and I went back to my apartment. I rounded the corner and stopped short. Casziel was sitting on the lowest rickety step of my staircase, his head bowed, his arms dangling off his knees.

The first emotion that swept through me was anguish because he looked like he was in terrible pain.

The second was an overwhelming, unwarranted rush of joy that he was still here.

With me.