Angel's Mark

Twenty-five

For some reason I remembered where Alan's house was. Remembered the caramel-colored stucco and the vines and the black shutters, like something out of Europe. Once I was there, though, I faced the task of scaling the house's front gate, then creeping around the edge of the property until I found the basement window.

I knelt in the grass and peered in. The room within was too dark to see much other than Alan's shadow, the frizzed curls on his head giving him away. I knocked on the glass with my knuckle, saw him turn.

He crossed the floor and opened the window, squinting the sunlight from his eyes. It took me a second to realize it, but there was a pair of round wire frame glasses balanced upon his freckled nose, gold and black. It changed his face in a way I didn't know it could be changed: made his hazel eyes seem larger, his cheekbones sharper. I looked away, towards the rather hideous sweatshirt he was wearing instead. It was neon green. I'd never seen something so bright in my entire life.

"Oh, thank God," said Alan, then reached his arm up to me. When I eyed it warily, he added, "I'll pull you in, okay?"

"Okay."

His fingers grappled my wrist; he yanked me down into the house. My back met cool, polished concrete, and I rolled to my knees, letting out a groan as I rubbed the splinters of pain from my shoulders.

When I looked up, Alan was stretching to slam the window shut again. "You could have warned me just how high up that window is, you know," I chastised.

Alan spared me a grin. "No time," he said, pivoting and grabbing my hand. There was a pause in which both of us wondered if this hand-holding was necessary. In the end, though, neither one of us drew away. "Come on; he's this way."

The hallway felt like it went on for miles. Looking at it from the outside, I'd known the house was big, but not this big. It had so much space that it didn't even seem possible not to get lost. Yet Alan moved around the place like he knew it like the back of his hand.

His hand, which still held mine.

It's not a big deal. It's not a big deal.

It was a big deal.

Finally, Alan stopped at a large set of mahogany double doors, ornate, twining flowers carved into the wood. He pulled his hand free and set it on the door handle instead. "I didn't know where to put him, so I just—I don't know. The library seemed good enough."

"You have a library?"

Alan twisted the toe of his shoe into the floor, averting his eyes. "That's not the point."

"Al, whatever. Just open the door."

He hesitated at the same time that I hesitated because we both realized I'd never called him that before. I wondered if anyone had called him that before. I wondered why I'd even said it or why it even mattered.

Alan swallowed, then creaked the door open, beckoning me inside.

It was indeed a library if I'd ever seen one. Broad, rectangular windows. Ceiling-high bookshelves brimming with a thousand different stories. Writing desks and regular desks and a grand piano and freshly cleaned carpet. The room was alive with the scents of crisp paper and ink, that old book smell. It was all kinda charming. I'd been in here for approximately five seconds and I'd already decided I didn't want to leave.

Oh, and then there was the figure slumped against one of the desks, bound with tightly wound computer wire.

Computer wire.