"You have sand on your floor from the beach, and I healed your pain. The answer is obviously not scientific. Next."

“How old are you?”

“Six hundred and forty-three.” He responded quickly and efficiently. I liked that.

“How many families like mine have you worked with?”

“Not many. It doesn’t happen often. I’ve never kept track, but I would say a few hundred at the most?”

“Where do you live in your off time?”

“I don’t know. I just roam until I’m called. Sometimes I chill with friends.”

“Is there a Heaven where you go when you’re not looking after a family?”

“I don’t know anything about Heaven, personally. I’ve been cursed to be what I am since my death. I, like you, have heard there is a Heaven. I have met people who have been there. I, myself, have never.”

"Were you ever a human?” I turned to face him.

He flinched, ever so slightly, at the question. “Yes.” He didn’t go into any other detail, but I could see the rigidity wash over him.

“When?”

His look told me to drop it. “Six hundred and twenty years ago.”

“You’re twenty-three?”

He nodded.

I felt my eyes get heavy as my head started to hurt again. “Did you see my mom die?”

“No, I came afterwards.”

“What killed her?”

“A shape shifter.” His voice never cracked or wavered as he said it.

My head instantly translated as I felt myself drift off into a painful sleep. A werewolf or something that belonged on an HBO show killed my mom.

Chapter Nine

Is there Philly cream cheese in Heaven?

I dreamed things that made no sense to me. I felt lost and confused. My mom was falling and then she turned into an angel and flew back up into the sky. She never came back down from the sky. She also didn’t seem too concerned that I was standing on the road watching her fly away. She didn’t wave to me.

I woke to find Aleks sleeping beside me on my bed, his warm body nearly burning me as I touched him. I still felt frozen but touching him seemed to take it away.

A million questions were stuck in my mind. They had nowhere to go. My head was swelling with them.

Aleks stirred, turning on his side and wrapped his leg around me. He pulled me into him. I let his lips drag up my throat. I giggled until he whispered a word, “Nora.”

I froze, not sure what to think. I stayed very still, until he started to wake up and opened his eyes to me. I assumed Nora must have been a woman he loved before he met me. The immature side of me seeped out into my mind and started making a mountain out of the molehill. I tried to fight against it, but it made sense to me. I reminded myself about Shane, and then the jealousy fizzled out.

He looked at me, confused, watching the wheels turning. He smiled. “You have more questions now?”

“Who’s Nora?” I blurted out.

He winced in pain at the sound of the name. He pulled away from me, not sure what to do with the question. Finally, after a moment of thought he whispered, “My wife.”

My heart stopped and I felt a shiver tremble through my whole body. “Wife,” I stated it matter-of-factly.

He nodded. “Yes. We were married when I was eighteen. She was the only woman I ever loved in my whole life, until now.” His eyes screamed a pain, where his lips tried to calm with a soothing smile.

I was awash with sadness, even though the greatest moment of my life had just happened. He told me he loved me. “What happened to her?”

He looked down at the sheets, breaking the eye contact, as if ashamed. “She remarried and moved on after I died.”

“Did you watch her?” I asked.

He nodded. “Every day I could. I watched her fall out of love with me and in love with him. The sweet soft girl I had married became a hardened woman. It was a tough time and she had a hard go.”

I blinked away a tear. “You still love her.” It was a statement not a question.

“Yes, of course. She was my first true love, and I never got closure.”

“Where were you from?” I asked, kissing the tip of his nose. I could see him putting up a wall, like I did. I backed off a little.

He smiled brightly. “I’m from Norway. Aurland; it's on the Nærøyfjord. My family had a farm. My surname was Jonson because my dad's name was Jon—that’s how it was done. So my sisters were Jonsdoter. Our mom was captured from somewhere near the Greek islands in a raid. So she named me Aleksander. It was a Greek name but it sounded Norwegian. Well, it did to her. I was made fun of a lot for my name. Everyone thought it was a girl's name. Education wasn’t as important back then. Not like it is now, where everyone knows about Aleksander the great.” He beamed at me.

I rolled my eyes. “So, can you still speak Norwegian?” I asked, not thinking about it.

“Ja jeg kan.” He smiled, laughing. “So, shall we get to the rest of your questions? I know you have million.”

I nodded. “I’m sorry about your wife—that’s really sad. What did she look like?”

His eyes slanted. “Not letting this one go, huh? Fine. She was tall, very tall. Almost as tall as I am. She had long, blonde hair to her waist; it was thick and almost white. Like yours, but thicker. Her skin tanned, even though she was fair. Her eyes were blue like mine—very intensely blue. She had a pretty face with beautiful features. She was thick, not fat, but strong. She could pull a cart and carry kids around all day. She was an amazing woman. Are you happy you know that now? Shall we talk about your past boyfriends?”

I bit my lip. “I don’t have any past anyone’s. I had never been kissed in my life, before these last few weeks.”

His face grew reddened and angry looking. “The guy who was here last night, making out with you on the front porch? He doesn’t count?”

I nodded frowning at him. “Yeah, but you're still a criminal to society and before you were always vanishing on me. I thought you were a ghost for a while. Kissing Shane still seems like a better idea than kissing you.”

He growled. “I’m not going to comment.”

I blushed, sensing his annoyance on the subject. “I know I have to end things with Shane; this is what I want…me and you.” I smirked at him. The statement felt true, except for the small niggling twinge in my belly that hurt when I thought about breaking things off with Shane.

He tilted his head. "You know, I haven’t felt this protective and possessive in a long time. It’s going to take me a while to learn to control my emotions.”

I looked up at the ceiling as I thought for a minute on how to ask the question I had been wondering about from the moment he started this conversation. “How did you die and become an immortal?”

He nodded. “There it is—the right question.” He ran his right hand through his short hair and looked down at the bed. His eyelids lifted without moving his head and he watched me through his lashes again. “Same as your mom. A shape shifter killed me. I was attacked and left in the woods to die. Next question—” He shut it down before it could start.

I interrupted. “But you didn’t turn into a werewolf from the bite?”

He laughed. “Hollywood made that up in the thirties with The Wolfman. No, a man must be cursed by a special and rare person to become a lycanthrope. The bite does nothing but infect the person if the wound is not taken care of. Rarely is a person bitten though. Most of them hunt animals in the forests, not people. We don’t taste very good. True shifters are Fae.” His smile was haunted.

I felt my brow knit together. "Fae?"

"A discussion for another time."

“But how did you become this? How did you learn all your magical powers?” I could see him backing away emotionally from the conversation.

He shook his head. “Let’s focus on right now. We have a problem. I don’t know how to stop my curse from pulling me to the next place.”

I nodded and got the message loud and clear. I tried to think about questions I had that weren’t part of the things he wouldn’t want to talk about, his wife, his family, his home land, his turning into whatever he was, and definitely no discussing his death. That left me with very little.

“How did you know to come here when my mom died? How do you know where to go next?” I hoped he would at least answer this, and I could possibly hypothesize on my own from the breadcrumbs he left me.

“I just know; I get a feeling. Like when you have a dream, I see what happens in flashes or pieces, I guess. I just know that I need to go right or left.”

I felt disappointment rolling over me in waves. Asking him questions was making my head want to explode.

“I kind of saw it more as you fly up to the pearly gates and someone gives you a clipboard with a name on it. You then ask questions around the Philly cream cheese snack bar and figure out how you’re going to crack this tough case.”

He burst into laughter. “Oh God, I wish it was that easy. I’m not a real angel. I’m cursed.” He moved a strand of hair from my face and smiled. “I think you should go and eat.”

I nodded, feeling frustrated.

I felt a little dizzy again but I knew now to wait it out. The stars always cleared after a moment or so. Aleks stood holding a hand out for me to take.

I reached for it, letting him pull me off the bed. My legs wanted to buckle. I could tell from his worried expression that he was thinking about taking me back to the hospital. I knew all I needed was more sleep, so I stood my ground and walked out of my room. My dad wasn’t downstairs.

“Do you get hungry?” I asked as I walked slowly down the stairs.

“Yes and no. I am an immortal now. I’m not like an angel in that I can make myself vanish and become air. I have a sort of magic now. I can cloak myself around people who haven’t been to the in-between obviously. Even cloaked, you’ve seen me, so you’re not a normal person anymore. I need food and drink to live, but I won’t die without it. I will get tired and weak after a long time.”