A Touch of Shade

I don't know who owns the copyright on this,
but it reminds me of my dark angel so copyright be hanged

I still haven’t nailed a surname for Curtis, but I’m getting warmer. What I have nailed is my first deleted scene – five pages in and I’m already cutting up the content. This was actually the second scene, but after writing the fourth, I see that it doesn’t work given what happens later on. I like the piece, though, so I thought I’d put it up here as a bit of a teaser. Cristal is walking home after experiencing some powerful déjà vu and discovers that she has a shadow …

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Drawn off course, my eye caught a shadowy movement across the street. The misty twilight made it hard to identify features, but I recognized both his build and the contraction under my ribs. Seized by unaccountable elation, I streaked toward him.

He tensed as I left the curb. A car came from nowhere and would have—should have—hit me had I not veered back the way I’d come. I stood on the sidewalk with my heart pounding so hard that my vision shook. The near miss rattled me into shouting. “Are you following me?”

“Just making sure you get home okay,” he answered from his side of the street.

“Who are you?”

His grin glowed like a night-blooming flower. “Your guardian angel.”

“I don’t have an angel.”

“Looks like you could use one.”

“Are you applying?”

“What if I am?”

“You blew the interview when that car almost hit me.”

“It didn’t hit you, though, did it?”

I couldn’t believe it. I was arguing about angels with a stranger. “What do you want?”

“I’m just making sure you get home okay,” he repeated.

“I can make it from here.”

“You’re sure?”

I waved an ambiguous hand. “It’s not far.”

He nodded and rotated slowly on his heel. The movement was so powerful, so eloquently graceful, that imagining wings was easy. They’d be dark wings, I thought, and slender, black like his hair, with a sapphire sheen in the moonlight. I watched him walk away and felt myself begin to worry that he wasn’t joking.