Fallen Angel (13 page)

19.

Sarah thought for a moment. "So . . . what
is
my destiny?"

"No one knows. That's what makes it so hard. Well,
God
knows, but he's not telling. I'm not running around like some superhero trying to save the world, but I do believe that if I see something that I have the power to change, then I
am
a part of that person's destiny."

"So how many times have you done this?" she asked.

"Well . . ." He turned his face away from her. "This is the first."

She laughed. "What? You've never done this before?" She ran around him so that she could look into his face. "I'm your guinea pig? Your test subject? That's just great!"

She walked off from him, her arms folded, looking out over the ocean. "Sarah," he called after her, "It's not like that!"

"Okay," she said. "So then what
is
it like?"

She almost felt sorry for him, he looked so unhappy, but this was her
life
he was messing with. What if he
was
changing her destiny? What if he had
already
changed it? What if . . . what if he'd been messing with her life for
years
?

"I work in the library. I'm a librarian, for God's sake." He stopped. "Ha! 'For God's sake!' That's funny. And true, come to think of it." She pulled at his sleeve.

"Continue!"

"Right. Well, I'm a librarian. Can you imagine how boring that can be? I love books, and I love history and, of course, memory, but there's not a lot of excitement. Not that I really
want
excitement, per se, but . . . No, it's not excitement that I wanted, but the chance to make a difference in someone's life. I had the idea of the Dead Letter Office, and that really didn't work out very well. I kept reading your letters and worrying that instead of making things better, I was making you feel worse, but I couldn't figure out a way to fix it."

"So you came down to try."

"So I came down to try." He looked at her. "I'm sorry, Sarah."

He looked so sad. "No, don't be sorry. It's okay. It just takes some getting used to." Her forehead creased as she thought. "Is it . . . is destiny like those time travel stories? Where somebody goes back in time and steps out of the time machine and falls off the path and steps on a butterfly? And the butterfly was, I don't know, destined to be supper for some lizard, and the lizard was--" He opened his mouth to interrupt her, but she held out her hand. "Let me finish, okay? I want to think about this."

They were passing the stone benches at the edge of the public beach, and she dropped onto one of them and squeezed her head between her hands. "It makes my brain hurt!" she said.

She continued. "Okay, so the lizard that would have eaten the butterfly was destined to be eaten by . . . I don't know. Something bigger than a lizard. I know--a monkey! Oh! So the butterfly would have been eaten by the lizard and the lizard would have been eaten by the monkey, and the monkey would have, what, evolved into my grandfather or something? And then I would never have been born." She grinned up at him. "I guess not, huh?"

"No," he laughed, "You can't go back in time and change things. You can't go back in time,
period
. Or forward, for that matter."

"Oh, so time travel is impossible, but it's okay for angels to come down from Heaven and have dinner with me?"

"What's wrong with that?"

"Ooooh, nothing." She shook her head. "Talk to me some more about destiny. Was it James' destiny to die in that accident? And Gabrielle's destiny to die before she was born?"

"Whatever your destiny is," he said, "you fulfill it. That's the point."

"So . . ." She was squeezing her head again. "So,
is
it pre-written, is it destined, or do we have free will to make things happen?"

"Both, I think."

"Both? How can it be both?"

"Well, look at it this way. You do have the power to do whatever you want to do, right? You can go to school and learn a trade, you can sit down and write a book, you can train yourself to run a marathon. You can be driving down the street and see a car coming, and rather than step off the sidewalk, you wait until the car drives past. If you
do
step off the sidewalk and get run over by the car before you get the book written, or before you run the marathon, then
that
--getting run over--was your destiny, rather than what you had planned on doing."

"But--"

"Don't you see what I mean?" He knelt down in front of her. "If, say, you're destined to write the Great American Novel, but all you do is sit in front of the television set drinking beer and eating potato chips . . . ah. Well, yes, I see what you're asking. If that--writing the book--was your destiny, it doesn't get fulfilled, is that what you mean? That if you're destined to write the book, but step off the curb too soon, then your destiny didn't get fulfilled. Right?"

"Right! Or maybe your destiny
was
to step off the curb and get run over so that you
didn't
write the Great American Novel, leaving that slot for someone else who hasn't been born yet."

"Yes, maybe so." He stood up and took her hand and they started walking again.

She looked up at him. "Do you think it was my destiny to meet you?"

"It would have to be, wouldn't it?"

"Do you
swear
you've never done this before? That I'm the first?"

"I swear."

* * *

They walked to Sarah's house, went inside and fed Dinah and petted her, then took Sarah's car and drove to one of her favorite restaurants, a seafood place on the bay. The tables were wooden picnic tables with paper towel holders bolted to the ends--those were the napkins--and several of the entrées were presented in galvanized steel tubs. They chose things that came on plates, though, and sat outside on the deck, where they watched several boats glide quietly in and pick up to-go orders directly off the dock.

Sarah sat and looked up at the Christmas lights twinkling around the restaurant's windows. She was full of wonderful seafood and slightly tipsy, not only from the Margarita she'd had with dinner, but from the conversation and from being with Zach. She thought this might have been close to a perfect day. Well, she thought suddenly, apart from nearly being choked to death by suggestion this morning. If you discounted
that
, it had been a wonderful day.

She supposed she should call Cate and be sure that everything went okay at the store, be sure she had made the bank deposit and locked up and fed Sophie, but she was sure she had. Sarah wasn't worried about it. She wasn't worried about much of anything right now, she was feeling very warm and happy and dreamy . . .

She sat up with a start. She had been running her finger around the top of her glass, making it squeak, and smiling across the table at Zach. He was talking about destiny again, but she wasn't really listening to the words, just watching his lips move and enjoying the timbre of his voice. But she thought she saw . . .

Yes! The "windows" of the restaurant didn't actually have glass in them--there were shutters to pull down when the weather was bad or when the restaurant was closed--but they did have screens, so it was a little difficult to see inside. But she was sure that the man striding through the restaurant toward them was the same man who had threatened her at the store this morning.

"Zach!" She reached across the table and caught his wrist. "It's the guy from the store," she said, just as the blond man walked through the door onto the deck.

He didn't say anything, but simply stood over them, oozing menace.
Oh, shit
, Sarah thought,
please, God, don't let anything happen to Zach. Not now.

Zach pushed his chair back and stood. "Yurkemi. I thought it might be you."

Yurkemi, if that was his name, ignored Zach and stared at Sarah. "Your friend at the bookshop said I might find you here."

Sarah's blood went cold. "Did you hurt her?"

"Of course not!" he said, and smiled. "But I did have to get her attention."

This guy might have seen a few too many gangster movies, but he definitely had the menace part down pat. He put his hand on Sarah's shoulder and she cringed away from his touch.

"Yurkemi," Zach said, and Sarah was surprised at the coldness of his voice. "Don't touch her."

"Why not, Zachriel? Is she yours?" Yurkemi smiled, and as he did, he squeezed her shoulder until she cried out in pain, then he lifted his hand, spreading his arms as if in surrender. "Fine, fine, whatever you say!"

The bartender had called over someone who must have been the restaurant manager, and Sarah could see them conferring over the bar. The manager turned and came out to the deck. "Is there a problem here?"

Zach answered him, "No, no problem. This gentleman just came in to say hello, and he's leaving now."

Yurkemi gave them that slow smile again, and Sarah shivered. "Yes, I was just leaving. I'll see you outside, Zachriel." He turned and walked away, and the manager turned to Zach. "Everything okay?" "Yes," Zach answered. "Everything's just fine, thank you."

"Zach!" After the manager walked away, Sarah leaned across the table to Zach and whispered, albeit a stage whisper. "What are we going to
do
?"

Zachriel gazed out the window toward the parking lot, where Yurkemi was now standing, his hands in his overcoat pockets, staring back at them. "I don't know. I guess I go out there and find out what he has in mind."

"You can't!"

"Sarah, I can't
not
. It's like, I don't know, your boss saying he wants to have a meeting with you. You can only avoid it so long."

"Well then, let's avoid it for awhile anyway."

He barked a short laugh. "How?"

"Well, he obviously had to have help to find us, right? He said he found out where we were from Cate, who knew this was one of my favorite restaurants. How come he can't just find you, like you found me?"

"I don't know for sure, but I think it must have to do with the emotional bond--I felt like I knew you before I came, I'd been thinking about you a lot . . . I'm not sure Yurkemi is
capable
of that kind of emotional bond. Anyway, down here he's just like anyone else. He has to use
persuasion
to get what he wants, he can't just find me by some kind of mental telepathy."

"Then let's hide from him. Please, Zach."

"But how? We can't exactly just walk away, and he'll see us when we walk to your car."

"I know somebody that works here. I haven't seen her tonight, but she might be here--if she is, maybe she'd let me borrow her car. Let me try, okay?" She was pleading, she knew, but she had a bad feeling about Yurkemi. If they walked out in plain site, who knew what he would do? She didn't think she could bear to lose Zach now, when she had just found him. Well, she supposed
he
had found
her
, but the result was the same. She was growing attached to him. Well, worse than that--she supposed she was falling in love with him.

"Sure, give it a try." Zach slumped back in his chair, still looking out the window at Yurkemi in the parking lot.

Sarah got up and walked over to the bartender. "Is Rosemary working tonight?" she asked.

"She's working the late shift. I think she just came in." He inclined his head toward the kitchen.

"Thanks!" she said, and walked through the kitchen door.

She spotted Rosemary, a tall brunette, instantly. She was standing just inside the door, stuffing her order pad into her back jeans pocket. "Sarah! Hey, how are you?"

"Good. Listen, Rose, I really hate this, but a friend and I are in kind of a jam. Could I ask you an
enormous
favor?"

"Sure, kiddo. What do you need?" Sarah and Rosemary had met soon after Sarah moved to Sarasota. Trying to meet a few people and establish herself in town, Sarah had taken a ceramics class at the local college, a "community education" class, not for college credit--which turned out to be a good thing, since Sarah was abysmally bad at it. Rosemary, however, was good. So good, in fact, that she had sold a few pieces. She didn't sell enough to support herself yet, though, hence the waitress job.

"I need your car."

Rosemary raised her eyebrows.