Free Shadow WIngs (Skeleton Key) by Skeleton Key, JC Andrijeski

opposite hers.
    “Sit,” she said. “Please.”
    He walked over, stepping carefully. She watched him evaluate the space around him with every move he made, as if he thought his body took up about five times the space it actually did.
    Pulling the chair out gingerly with one muscular hand, he sat in it equally carefully, as if afraid it wouldn’t hold his weight.
    He picked up the cup of coffee with a precision that made her smile.
    “Who are you, comrade?” she said, watching him smell and then sip the strong coffee cautiously. He grimaced openly at the taste, which made her fight not to smile wider. “Who are you, really? Is this an act, this thing you are doing?”
    He glanced up. “What thing?”
    Still smiling, she shook her head, puzzled. “This.” She waved a hand at him, as if his very presence should be obvious enough. “You. What is this? Is this a joke on me?”
    He studied her face for a few seconds more, then let out a kind of grunt. “Is it the name again? You people are very hung up on the names of things.” Thinking, he took another sip of the coffee. He grimaced less that time, but still seemed shocked at the strong taste. Staring out over her kitchen, he subdued his voice. “I suppose my people are concerned with what to call things, as well. Names are important where I am from, too.”
    “‘Your people?’ ‘My people’?” She frowned, but still more in puzzlement and frustration than anger. She picked up her own coffee, blowing steam off the surface. She did make it strong. It was how she liked it.
    “If you’re going to constantly reference being from elsewhere,” she said. “You are going to have to tell me where it is you are from. You have no accent. Can you explain this to me?”
    “You would not believe me if I told you,” he said.
    She stared at him, believing him for some reason about that, too. Well, she believed that he believed it––well enough that she wondered if that wasn’t the best place to start.
    “What do you know about Golunsky?” She leaned back in her chair, her voice more official, cop-like. “You say you can help me with this case? How?”
    Those stunning gray eyes focused on her, and she swore she saw clouds in them, like they were alive as separate beings, different somehow from the rest of him.
    He seemed to come to a decision as she watched.
    “He is one of The Fallen,” he said.
    She stared at him. “The Fallen?”
    “Yes.”
    The name meant nothing to her. Even so, something in how he said it, or perhaps what she felt behind his words, hit at her in a way she couldn’t articulate––just like when he’d spoken Golunsky’s name in that jail cell. Just like how his eyes hit at her now and that strangeness about him and the overly calm expression on his face.
    Forcing herself to smile, she shook her head minutely as she sipped her coffee.
    “What does that mean, Raguel?” she said.
    “It means a lot of things, Ilana.” He leaned his muscular arms on the table. He gave her another of those bottomless stares. “But right now, more than anything, it means it is absolutely imperative that you not let him die, whether by his own hand or another’s.”
    When she only sat there, staring in puzzlement, Raguel leaned closer. Reaching out cautiously, he rested a heavy hand on her arm, closing his fingers around her skin. The contact caused her to flinch, but she didn’t pull away and he didn’t let go.
    He studied her gaze, his gray eyes serious. “I’ll never find him again, not in this form. And without him, I doubt I will ever again be what I was. Not until this body dies, at least.” He made his words more deliberate. “If that happens, then whatever this is, Ilana, whatever he is doing or about to do... I won’t be able to stop it. And neither will you.”

ANGELS AND DEMONS

    MOST OF WHAT he said after that made little sense.
    He told her he was an angel.
    An Archangel, by the name of Raguel.
    He told her Golunsky had once been an