Fate's Demand (Twisted Fate, Book 3)

Chapter Five

"Don't you have, like, duties or something?" I asked and looked at Gabe, Mike, and Raffy. Under any other circumstance, I may have felt special to have the three of them break into my bedroom, but not today. Not when I knew what the topic they wanted to discuss was. "Just because you came out about being angels doesn't mean you can't ring the doorbell."

What if I was changing my clothes?

"Raffy said you refused his offer." Mike always got right to the point.

He was good-looking—they all were. Each had dark hair and blue eyes, staggering height, and tans that weren't humanly possible at the start of summer. I guess when you live in Heaven it was always tanning weather. Maybe going would do me some good after all. I could get rid of some of my Casper.

"Then maybe he shouldn't have tried demanding me around and tried something civilized, like asking." I shrugged and sat in my chair, resting my feet on the bed to form a bridge with my legs. I didn't want to let them feel welcome, so they didn't need a place to sit. They wouldn't be here long.

They looked at each other and ignored me like I was a petulant child they wanted to punish, if for no other reason than for a moment of quiet. It was funny that, with all the duties of angels, Mike, Gabe, and Raffy couldn't figure out how to deal with one girl. It kind of made me proud.

"This isn't a joke, Aly," Raffy said.

"Says the boy who thought it would be fun to try phone sex with me—or was that sexting?" I leaned back and grinned.

"I was acting a part." He rolled his eyes at Gabe and Mike, who were both looking at him like he'd taken things too far. It was the kind of look I got right before I smacked someone in the back of their head.

"Do angels bruise?" I tilted my head to the side and crossed my arms. My smile grew wider.

"Aly—" Gabe began and then coughed into his hand.

"What? I want to know!"

"When we want to," Mike said, nodding first to Gabe and then to Raffy. Looking back to me, he added, "If we are passing ourselves off as being human and need to blend in. We can't get punched in the face and show up without a mark."

"Or," Raffy said, spreading his arms out to his sides. "You can make the human forget they hit you and stay pretty."

"You do not do that?" Mike asked, though I was sure it was like when my mom asks me if I shouldn't do something that she knows I have.

You can't lie and say no, so you just get set up to admit it. I deflected those kinds of questions by using sarcasm. You could avoid almost anything with sarcasm because, even if you tell the truth, the person you're talking to won't take you seriously. It wasn't a learned art; either you could do it or you couldn't. Like singing or being an artist. Training made you better, but the quality was innate, built up to extraordinary from raw talent.

"Only once," Raffy said with a low voice.

I started laughing. Listening to them now, I couldn't believe I had ever missed it. There was no way they were easy-going high school guys. Or, in Mike's case, a college boy. Whatever. They were too uptight. Raffy had put on a good face, sure—even now he wasn't completely dull. But still. Gabe wouldn't use phones for how long?

"Do you even own Tucker's or did you brainwash some family to say you were their kids?" Two families—Raffy had been their cousin. "Are you actually related?"

"Yeah, in a way." Gabe looked to Raffy and Mike and sighed when they both shrugged without a word. Turning back to me, he said, "We don't brainwash people, Alyssa."