Page 75 of Even Angels fall
Oh, shoot. I shouldn’t say that. At least I didn’t say it out loud.
He’s one of them, after all. So is Angélique. But she’s so different, and he looks so lost.
I just want to take his hand, hug him, and promise him everything is going to be okay.
But is it really going to be okay?
I don’t get to leave him, though, because Angélique is coming this way, and she crashes with her arms around him.
“I got your message,” I hear her mutter against his neck as she holds him like her life depends on it.
“He died two days ago.”
His answer is muffled, but I hear him all the same. No wonder he looked so lost. His father died just before his best friend got married, and from the look of it, he hasn’t been sleeping for longer than that. Even his clothes look like they were slept in, and who would fault him? He’s still here, functioning the best he can, even as his world is falling apart.
I want to hug him even more now. I want to soothe him. I want to help him get to a better place, but I don’t know how to do that without being awkward, so I just stay there on the side while I cry inside for that man who looks like he went to hell and came back.
Angélique finally releases him and looks him in the eye, with her hands on his shoulders.
“I need to know what he did to you,” she says softly.
What? There’s more? For freaking sake, how much can a man withstand before he breaks altogether?
Léandre doesn’t answer immediately, but then he pushes his golden brown hair from behind his ear, and there we can all see what looks like a small capsule under his skin.
“What does it do?” I ask before Angélique can do it.
Léandre looks at me, and I see all the turmoil boiling inside of him with that single glance.
He hasn’t said a word yet, and I already know I’m going to hate it.
“It’s a neurotransmitter. If Michaël presses the button on his holo, all I’ve ever known will be wiped from my memory. All my life will disappear in smoke.”
“Can’t we remove it?” Angélique asks.
I’m so glad she asked because I feel like my tongue has turned to lead, and I’m not sure I could talk right in this instant. Something inside my chest squeezes, and I’m seconds away from reaching for Angélique or Léandre, but I stay where I am, my emotions overflowing at their best.
“The person who installed it said it would detonate if we remove it before it’s activated,” Léandre says in a small voice. “I didn’t have someone to double check, so I didn’t touch it.”
How long has he been wearing this? I wouldn’t sleep, either, if I knew that my brain could go boom if I scratched that little capsule in my sleep.
I don’t want to ask, and it feels like Angélique doesn’t, either, but Léandre gives us the answer, anyway.
“He had it installed the day you left. I already had it when I told you goodbye. We might have to meet in the next life we’ve talked about so often,” he says with a chuckle, but it has no warmth in it and feels empty.
I don’t know what he means until I hear Angélique answer him, and then my heart breaks altogether.
“In this life or the next,” she says as she bends his head to touch their foreheads.
I don’t know this man, but I’m already crying.
48
Angélique
There has to be another solution. It can’t be a dead end.
I don’t know if someone called for Elhyor, or if he saw the state we were all in over here, but I feel his warmth at my back once again, and I know it should be weird, and I shouldn’t feel like this, but with him next to me, I don’t feel so alone anymore.
