⚜Guardian⚜

Chapter Seven

"Hey, I really need to talk to you." he asked, searching her eyes. Lacey's heart fluttered at the words. She wanted nothing more than to sit with him, Lacey's subconscious screamed at her to do otherwise, but she shoved those thoughts out of her mind. Despite her better judgment, Asher was like an addiction.

"Um, sure," Lacey said shakily. Asher began walking towards a table in the back corner of the dining hall, and she followed after a moment.

"What did you need to talk about?" Lacey asked, her voice carefully casual. She took a seat on the opposite side of the table from him, taking a long swig from her water bottle.

"I wanted to apologize for the other day. I'm really sorry about what Theo did to you, and what I did," Asher exclaimed delicately. Lacey swallowed, shutting her eyes. She didn't to relive Theo's possession of her body. Just thinking about it made her lips tremble and her hands shake. She placed her water down slowly, not wanting to spill anything.

"Are you okay?" Asher inquired, his eyes squinting slightly.

"It's okay," Lacey whispered. "I'm okay." Asher didn't seem convinced, but didn't push the subject. He muttered something about humans under his breath. She inhaled a large breath, concentrating on her breathing. She gathered all the courage she could muster, summoning it in a large burst of emotion.

"What are you?" Lacey asked, her words tumbling into one another as she rushed to get the words out. He ran one hand through his hair, and she telepathically cursed Kaylie to giving her this advice. Still, she did want to know.

"What do you mean?" Asher asked, cocking his head to the side infinitesimally. Someone walked by their table then, to get to the garbage. Lacey waited until they passed before speaking again.

"If Theo is...a fallen angel, and you two are related..." she trailed off, hoping he would get the gist. It was easier than she had thought, to converse with him. It was a little unsettling, though. Like talking to a supermodel.

"Oh," he said, realizing what she was trying to say.

"We aren't actually related. It's just vessels we took," Asher said easily. Lacey stopped breathing then, remembering what she had read. When possessed, the human brain still functions as normal. It can still see and feel everything, but is powerless to do anything. "You mean... you're possessing someone right now?" Lacey choked out. She gripped her water bottle so tightly she thought I would burst.

"No, it's not like that! Theo takes some poor, unsuspecting human. I wouldn't do that," Asher promised. His tone was quick yet reassuring.

"So what do you do?" Lacey asked quietly, taking a small bite of her pizza. Her stomach coiled in response, but she knew she would be hungry later. She tried to focus her thoughts on the pizza, but she found her eyes almost always moved back to Asher's face, like a rubber band that continually kept recoiling.

"This vessel was on the brink of death, so as soon as the soul left the body, I inhibited it." Asher explained, resting his elbows on the table, his eyes beseeching. A large part of her desperately wished for him to touch her, but she quelled her emotions. She loved the planes of his face made him appear older and dangerous, yet her heart felt as if she had known him for her entire life.

"That must have been a shocker for the family," Lacey exclaimed, attempting humor. Asher's lips tugged up into a small smile. The sight tugged at her heart strings.

"Yeah, I made sure that they didn't remember me reanimating the body. I didn't want to leave them with any more distraught feelings," Asher said. She winced involuntarily at his words. He could make people forget things? What kinds of things? Could he wipe people's memories? She couldn't muster up the courage to say anything, so she took another bite of her pizza, mulling this over. She supposed it wasn't half as bad as what Theo did, but she still didn't know what Asher was.

"What are you thinking?" Asher questioned, jolting her out of her thoughts. Lacey's head snapped up, and her cheeks burned as if he could read her thoughts.

"I was thinking that I'm still really confused. You can wipe people's memories?" Lacey asked. She decided she would treat this like a game- as if none of it was actually real.

"Selectively. It's actually extremely difficult to wipe memories, as each memory is entangled with another thought, which leads to another memory, and without practice, you could accidentally wipe too much," Asher said, gesturing with his hands. She swallowed, nodding easily. She realized it was getting less difficult to cope with this new knowledge.

"Okay. How did it go with your...ah...your vessel's family?" she wondered aloud, finishing her pizza. She slid a napkin across her face and placed it on her empty plate, taking another swig from her water bottle.

"Fairly well, if I do say so myself. It was a short memory though, which is kind of like an elementary level skill," Asher declared, placing his hands on the table and rocking back in his chair. The move was so human that it struck her as odd and relatively amusing.

"You act differently than from the time I first met you," She realized then, thinking aloud.

"How so?" She thought about how angry he was, how close their bodies had been....

"You're less angry," she said bluntly. His answering laugh was musical, filling her ears and heart with an odd pleasantness.

"I'm typically more angry when I'm around Theo," Asher answered a bit wistfully. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw some people exiting the cafeteria. She looked around, realizing that lunch was already over, and that almost everyone was gone.

"Crap!" Lacey cussed, jumping to her feet and piling her garbage onto her plate and jogging to the trashcan.

"I have to go- I'm late. Sorry!" she spluttered, pushing out the door and running across the Square at full speed. She yanked the door open to the athletics building, ready to apologize, but the lobby was empty.

"Guys?" Lacey called. When no one answered, she moved into the building, figuring they had gone ahead without her. She checked the climbing room, the pool, even the machinery room, but there were no signs of her friends. She had just made it back to the lobby and was ready to give up when a something materialized in front of her. She gasped, moving backwards and nearly tripping. She saw something, or rather someone, that made her blood stop beating in her chest.