She’d barely had a chance to enjoy it, and the bliss fled, leaving a deep, gouging sense of loss in its place. No wait, it was confusion. No, hang on, now it was melancholy. Azrael was riding a super shitty rollercoaster, and he was on the Big Dipper, swan diving into a loneliness that dwarfed anything she’d ever felt. Kira wanted to let go. Hell, she wanted to run. Out the door into the sun. She really, really wanted that champagne part of the champagne breakfast. A bottle or two. Anything to block this out. But then he raised his head. Lifted up those drown-me-now green eyes. His hands slid over hers. The shift was subtle at first; the need to cry for a hundred years lingered, but the confusion lessened, unclogging itself from the part of her brain this whole thing was fucking with.
Kira didn’t move. They sat there, her knees aching, her throat tense with unshed tears. The room around her blurred, pretty colours bulging and contracting, catching her in a life-size kaleidoscope. She held on. Waiting. Sensing Azrael clawing his way back. As though she were some goddamn lighthouse in the darkness. The shadows fell behind, taking the bad stuff with them. And then he broke through, raising himself up out of the stinking, sickening darkness.
He breathed in and spoke softly on the exhale. ‘I know nothing. I don’t know who I am.’
His own words. Two full sentences. The sound of his voice broke the spell and reminded her she wasn’t actually on some weird trip. She was sitting on a purple rug in a hotel room. Body buzzing. And she wasn’t sad. For once, she wasn’t the lonely, sad, and desperate one. And damn it felt good. Good enough to make a promise she had no idea whether she could keep.
‘Then we will find out. I will find out,’ she said. ‘We’ll sort this. Blake will tell me – who you are, what you are. I promise you.’
The connection between them was fading, pulling away like the edges of a high. The withdrawal gained speed till it evaporated into nothing more than a sweet heat deep in her belly. But he was okay. He was back.
For now.
A knock at the door. Perfect timing. Like a The End to punctuate the whole thing. Kira got to her feet. Holy crap that champers was going to taste good. Her body was light and humming, and she felt like she needed to adjust her clothes before opening the door. A waiter wheeled in the silver cart and laid out the breakfast on the elaborate black resin coffee table. Azrael hunched forward, head in his hands, not once even glancing at the stranger in the room. Kira signed the bill and closed the door.
‘Okay, you know what, we need some of this.’
She pulled the Krug out of its ice bucket and uncorked it, sending the cork flying over somewhere near the massive floor-to-ceiling windows that ran the length of the suite. The view took in a football-pitch-size man-made lake. Four elaborate fountains were in the midst of hurling firework-like spurts of water into the air in time with coloured lights and music that barely penetrated the apartment. She handed Azrael a full glass. Whether he could drink or not she didn’t give a shit. This called for something. He stared at the glass in her hand before taking the offered one, moving it up close to his face, watching the streams of bubbles move through the caramel-gold liquid.
‘To you, zombie boy.’ Kira raised her glass. ‘To learning to talk. Glasses up.’
She encouraged Azrael with an exaggerated lift of her glass. He followed suit, too fast, and the contents of his glass sloshed out, raining down onto the dead-Muppet rug. Azrael shrank back into the couch. The expression on his face was pathetic. Kira burst out laughing, noticing him flinch but not giving a crap. She downed her glass in two sucking gulps, then refilled both their glasses.
‘It’s all good. Plenty more where that came from.’
The corners of his lips turned up and parted a little, and he did this squishy thing with his nose. In the end he managed to look more like he smelled a dead skunk, but she got the gist. It was an attempt at a smile.
‘We’ll work on that,’ Kira said. ‘But well done.’
‘Kira.’
That was it. Just one word, but she nearly lost her mouthful of champers all over the snow-white leather.
‘Yes.’ Hiccups followed the rapid swallow of bubbles. ‘That’s me. I’m Kira. That’s awesome. Say it again.’
He gave her a look, a furrowed brow that said in clear face-talk, Don’t treat me like a dickhead. And in that disapproving dip of his eyebrows, there was no more denial. What she thought she’d glimpsed before was now plain as the nose on his perfect face. Inside that suit of impossible abs and behind those eyes to die for, there was something alive. Zombie boy was most definitely not a zombie.
Non-zombie boy tipped the glass to his lips and sucked it back in one go.
Two hours later, and two more bottles of bubbles, the scrambled eggs were cold as ice, but Kira shoved them in her mouth regardless. She was drunk. Not unusual but very unintended. It was just after eleven in the morning, which would normally have been a great time to start drinking. Curling up in the enormous king-plus-size bed seemed a much better idea. Two hours of shut-eye on the plane hadn’t really cut it.
‘Are you feeling anything?’ Kira shoved the eggs against her cheek so she could talk. Champagne on an empty stomach
