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magister was taken so quickly from you, Nenita,” he said. “There was a lot he didn’t have time to teach you. But you can rest assured he was an angel. As is Fraciel. As am I. Behold.”
    The small hospital room suddenly flooded with light, and I glanced over my shoulder, already knowing what I’d see. An ethereal glow arched over Eli’s shoulders, down his back to his ankles. Translucent feathers shimmered within the golden light, barely there, more air than physical substance, the molecules constantly moving so the feathers seemed to flutter in an unfelt wind.
    Then he clasped his hands, lowered his chin, and slowly unfurled his wings. They were enormous, large enough to support his weight if he actually used them to fly. The tips stretched from wall to wall, filling the room, and my breath caught despite having seen it all before. I couldn’t help it. There was no preparing for it, no getting used to the sight.
    Eli peered up at me from beneath his wavy hair, a cocky half smile lifting one corner of his lips. As close as we’d grown over the last year, it was sometimes easy to forget who Eli was— what he was. But staring at him now, the curls of his blue-black hair rustling, his pale blue eyes bright with an unearthly inner glow, and his oh-so-male jaw brushed with a half-day’s growth of stubble, there was no mistaking.
    This man was an angel.
    My heart raced, desire stirring low inside me. The soothing, bright light didn’t produce heat, yet a comforting warmth spread over my skin and sank deep inside me to liquefy my bones. I wanted to play the jaded, too cool for school, experienced illorum for the younger girl. But my eyes closed of their own volition and before I could think to stop myself I relaxed into the warm honey embrace of that light.
    Then it was gone, and I resisted the urge to moan at the loss.
    “Are you all right?” Eli asked.
    I licked my lips and nodded, my brain still two beats behind. “Peachy,” I said.
    “What did you do?” Dan’s familiar voice suddenly echoed off the walls. Eli turned and I looked past him to the entrance where Dan stood holding the door, face a bristling mix of confusion and anger.
    A smile lifted across my lips at seeing him and my heart skipped. Like the sun burning away the gray clouds, just seeing him reminded me none of this—the forbidden, unearthly appeal of Eli, the bloody beaten girl in bed, the death and endless demonic attacks—was my real life.
    This was all temporary. As bizarre and terrifying and confusing as it was, it would all be over one day and I’d get my real life back. A human life—like his. “Dan.”
    “We’re trying to determine what the girl knows,” Eli said, his tone curt as though sensing the shift in my thoughts.
    “Are you torturing it out of her?” Dan let the door go and strode across the room toward us and Nenita’s bed.
    “She’s only been marked for a little more than a day. She’s freaked out. Mixed up about angels and fallen angels and demons,” I said as Dan stepped beside me.
    He flashed me a private smile, “Hi,” and pressed a quick kiss to my lips. “You okay?”
    I nodded, but unease rippled through my belly remembering the bloody scene in the alley and the pain Fred had lanced through my body. I wished my safety didn’t have to be his constant, legitimate concern.
    He looked to Eli. “And you figured what…you’d force her to confront another angel and make her trust that this one wasn’t out to kill her?”
    “No,” I said, defending Eli as well as myself. “I mean…well, yeah. I guess if you put it that way…”
    I looked at the girl. Her eyes had practically doubled in size, and she’d scooted to the far side of her bed. Her knees were tucked up to her chest as though she were trying to make herself smaller. Seeing Eli’s wings clearly hadn’t affected her the same way it had me.
    “I have to go,” Eli said. “Dan’s right; I’m not helping. Besides, something’s