The next two weeks were the happiest of my existence, and I've had a long existence.
I worked the breakfast shift and helped Hollis with the crossword. I learned to make pie crust from Manny, badly, and then less badly. Sari taught me to drive her Civic in the empty church parking lot on Saturday mornings, screaming every time I touched the brake. Clay let me count the register, which Sari said was the Clay Owens equivalent of being knighted.
And every evening, when the diner closed, Kade's black truck was waiting at the curb.
We went to the lake on a Sunday, and I put my feet in the water, and it was so cold it made me shriek, and he laughed so hard he fell over in the gravel. We sat on his tailgate at the garage and he taught me the names of the stars, the human names, and I told him the ones I knew, and some of them were the same. We ate chili and pancakes in his little apartment above the office while Lug Nut begged under the table, and he showed me his dad's old toolbox, every wrench polished and laid in its place. One night we fell asleep on his couch with the television on, my head on his shoulder, and I woke up at three in the morning with his arm around me and his breath warm in my hair, and I lay there in the blue light and didn't move for an hour because I didn't want it to end.
I didn't heal anyone. Not once. I didn't need to. For two weeks, nothing broke.
That should have told me something.
* * *
They came on a Thursday, after closing.
Kade was sitting at the counter eating a slice of the huckleberry pie I'd made, the one with the crust that was almost good, and telling me with total seriousness that it was the best pie in Montana. Sari had gone. Manny had gone. Clay was in the back.
And then the clock above the register stopped.
I noticed it because the second hand had been ticking, and then it wasn't. It hung there between the six and the seven, quivering. Outside the window, a car on Main Street had stopped in the middle of the intersection, its headlights frozen in two long white beams. Rain hung in the air like strings of glass beads, perfectly still.
Kade's fork was halfway to his mouth. He set it down slowly.
"Eva," he said. "Why is the rain not falling?"
The bell above the door didn't ring. The door didn't even open. They were just there, standing on the black-and-white tiles between one moment and the next, as if they'd always been standing there and I simply hadn't noticed.
Two of them.
They were tall, much taller than any human, and their wings were folded down their backs in long, gray, dove-colored sweeps that brushed the floor. Their robes were the color of fog. Their faces were beautiful the way glaciers are beautiful: smooth and pale and utterly without warmth. One had eyes the color of slate. The other's were nearly white.
I knew them. Every angel knows the Watchers. They don't heal and they don't fight and they don't carry messages. They watch. They record. They remember everything, and they judge nothing until they're asked.
Someone had asked.
"Evanthe," said the slate-eyed one. His voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. It filled the diner the way water fills a glass. "Of the Order of Healers."
I came out from behind the counter. My legs were shaking. I stood between them and Kade anyway.
"Orin," I said. "Vesse."
The pale-eyed one, Vesse, inclined her head a fraction of an inch. "You remember us."
"Everyone remembers you," I said.
Orin's slate eyes moved past me to Kade, still sitting frozen on his stool. Not frozen like the rain. He could move. He just wasn't. He was watching them with his hands flat on the counter, the way you'd watch a bear in your kitchen.
"The human can see us," Orin observed.
"We allowed it," Vesse said. "He is part of the record now. He should hear it."
"Hear what?" Kade asked. His voice was steady. I don't know how.
Vesse turned her pale eyes on me.
* * *
They told me.
They stood in the middle of the Broken Antler with the rain hanging motionless outside the window and the clock frozen above the register, and they told me every thread I had pulled.
Gary Pell. The woman in the minivan, whose name was Amanda Ricci, who had been on her way to drop her children at her mother's house so she could go to a job interview. Her son, who was four, and who would grow up with a scar on his chin from the glass and no memory of her face. Her daughter, who was seven, and who would remember everything.
Ray Tolliver. Christine Harlan, and her geraniums. Her sister in Oregon, who had flown out to bury her and found a list on the motel office counter in Christine's handwriting, of things to plant next spring.
I made myself stand there. I made myself listen to every word.
"The boy with the wrist," Orin went on, in the same flat, even voice. "He returned to his baseball team two weeks early. The pitcher who would have taken his place on the roster did not."
"Is that bad?" I asked. My voice cracked.
"It is a change," Vesse said. "We record changes. We do not grade them."
"The woman with the cane," Orin said. "Lily, the child with the fever. Manny Reyes. The man named Kade Wilton." His eyes went to Kade and back. "Every thread you pulled has moved the cloth. Some movements are small. Some are not. Some are still moving, and we cannot yet see where they will settle."
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.
"Because you asked," Vesse said.
I stared at her.
"At the Garden of Stillness. Before you fell. You asked Ithra to let you see the cloth." Something moved behind Vesse's pale eyes. It might have been pity. With Watchers, you can never tell. "This is the cloth, Evanthe. This is what it looks like. You wanted to see. Now you have seen."
* * *
I couldn't speak. I stood there in my apron with my hands shaking at my sides, and I couldn't make my mouth work.
Behind me, Kade's stool scraped on the tile.
"Can I say something?" Kade asked.
Both Watchers turned to look at him. It was like being looked at by two snowfields.
"You may speak," Orin said. "It will be recorded."
"Great. Good. Record this." Kade came around to stand beside me, not in front, just beside, close enough that his shoulder touched mine. He was pale. His hands were in fists. But his voice didn't shake. "You're only telling her about the broken parts."
"We are telling her about the changes," Orin said.
"No. You're telling her about the battery that died. You're not telling her about the alternator that got fixed." He looked from one to the other. "Manny Reyes has three kids and no health insurance. If he'd lost the use of that hand for a month, he'd have lost his job. Did you record that?"
A pause. "We recorded it," Orin said.
"Lily Haugen's mom was about to miss her third shift that month because Lily was sick. She'd have been fired. They'd have lost their apartment. Did you record that?" Kade asked.
"Mrs. Kowalski's been housebound for six years because of that hip. Now she goes to church. She goes to the grocery store. She's in this diner every Tuesday eating pie with her friends. Did you record that?" Kade asked.
Orin's slate eyes narrowed slightly. "We record everything, human."
"Then why are you only reading her the bad half?" Kade asked.
The diner was very quiet.
"My dad used to say a car's not a bunch of parts," Kade said. "It's a system. You fix one thing, you change the load on everything else, you stick around, and you deal with what comes next." He took a breath. "She's sticking around. She's dealing with it. She hasn't healed anybody in two weeks because she's so scared of hurting someone. So if you came all the way down here just to make her feel like a monster, you can go back up and record that you did it."
Vesse looked at him curiously.
Then, very slightly, the corner of her mouth moved. It might have been a smile. With Watchers, you can never tell.
"He is not wrong," she said to Orin.
"He is not complete," Orin said.
"Neither are we," Vesse said.
Orin was silent. Then he turned back to me, and his voice was, if not warmer, then less cold.
"We are not here to condemn you, Healer. That is not our office. We are here to give you the record, because you asked for it. And to carry a message," Orin said.
"From who?" I asked.
"From the Host," Orin said.
Every part of me went cold.
"Heaven's patience is not endless," Orin said. "You have stayed below too long. You have rung the bell too many times. An archangel will come for your answer."
"When?" I asked.
"Soon," Vesse said. "When you are ready to give it. Or when you are not."
The clock above the register ticked.
The rain fell.
The car in the intersection rolled forward with a hiss of tires, and the Watchers were gone, and there was only Kade and me standing in the middle of the empty diner with a half-eaten slice of pie on the counter, and Clay's voice from the back calling, "You kids want coffee?"
I sat down on the floor right there on the black-and-white tile.
Kade sat down next to me. He didn't say anything. He just put his arm around me, and I leaned against him, and we sat there while the rain came down outside. Clay came out with two mugs, stopped, and looked at us. He set the mugs down quietly on the counter and went back to the office without a word.
"Thank you," I whispered.
"For what?" Kade asked.
"For reading them the other half," I said.
He pressed his lips to the top of my head and held them there. "Somebody had to," he said.