Trapped in the middle of my room?" "The light was on, I thought you were working." "Who's this?" She poked her head around my side of the desk. "Hannah, Caleb, and Sasha." "Hello!" "And it's nice to meet you." The three shook hands with Caleb, then Caleb shook my hand. I smiled at him. He grinned. I turned to my computer. "So, um, what did I do now?" "Oh!" Hannah said. "Sorry, I thought you saw someone else." I was not one to read much into coincidence, and after all, at the end of the day they lived in a glass house, but I hoped that she wouldn't be doing it again for the rest of the night. "Yeah." "We have to go to class in a couple of minutes. I'll be back in a second, though, and we'll hang out." "Can you bring the books up from my car? Caleb doesn't have them," I said, and hoped they understood. Hannah nodded. "Sure. Meet you at the beach in an hour or so?" "Yep. Thanks." They got up and left the room, and Caleb sat down again. "You didn't tell me she was blonde." "I was going to mention it at some point." Caleb was silent. "Or I would have said something if she'd been red-haired." "Are you going to make a big deal out of this?" "No, why would I do that?" "She's an angel." "Oh." "And my little angel is a blonde." He shook his head, which I understood meant that he was not joking. I laughed. "I don't know what to say to that." "Me neither. You know, I was joking before. Are you telling me she's not?" "She is. At least as far as I can tell. She's still, you know, an angel, but she's human, and I think she's, um, attractive." "I wish I could have seen you." "I bet you've seen me plenty of times." "Not like that." "Caleb, what's going on here? And why can't you keep your tongue off her? That's why you're in her bed at night." "Okay, you got me. Maybe I'm a guy." "And maybe you're the Prince of Light," I said. "You know what I think is going on?" "What?" "She wants me to talk to you about the fact that you should be with her." "You mean that she's using you to get to me?" "I'd say that would be a safe bet." "I should kill her," Caleb said. I laughed. "No, you don't understand, I think she's right, sort of. I've talked to her, and she seems to know things about us. I don't know what she really thinks about us dating, but I think she wants you to find a love worthy of you." "I think you might be on to something," Caleb said. "But I don't know how to explain it to you, and I can't believe we're talking about this. Isn't it amazing?" "Yeah, kind of." "What's amazing is that it feels like you know her as well as you know me. Like she's been in your mind every time you've talked about her. I can't imagine feeling the same way about anybody, and for some reason it makes me want to talk to you all the time. I get the same feeling when I talk to you, but it doesn't make me want to think about her. I can't imagine what I'd be like if you wanted to talk about me all the time, because I'm not very interesting." "I don't think I ever have." "Okay, then what I want to talk about is the fact that I want to date a girl who doesn't want to control me with her magic. I thought being like an angel meant that I would get my way." "If you were a real angel, you'd only get your way if you'd earned it. If you were really a true Prince of the Light, then maybe you'd get what you want. Then maybe she'd only want to be with you for her soul and not her body. That would be a very bad thing." "It would be bad because I'd never get my way if I had to earn it. It would be bad if you were right and she was like me, but I want her. If she ever does that for me, then she can go fuck herself." I was glad he didn't want to do that. We were going to get nowhere if we fought. "I think she doesn't want to control you, but she does want you. But she'll never be able to do it, and she can't change who you are. No matter how much she loves you, she won't be able to control your heart. I think she loves you enough to want that, too." "So do I control my heart?" Caleb asked. "Or is my heart still an organ that can change its master? And what is a life worth if it doesn't have any control? If the angels are going to destroy humanity, then I don't know how I can let that happen." "I don't know the answer to any of those questions. All I know is that what she's doing isn't fair to either of you, and you don't have to let it continue." "Do you think if I try to let it continue that it'll make me a bad person?" "No. But I think if you try to let it happen, you'll still be human. She'll be an angel, and you'll be as confused as I am about her not wanting you to have free will. But if she really loved you, she wouldn't want to take that away from you." "And I don't think you're taking her side." "I'm not taking anybody's side. I have no opinion of what should happen here. I'm just looking at the situation and letting you know what I see. If she decides to try to use your heart, it's not up to me to stop her. I won't have it happen on my watch." "But if it happens here, on your watch, then she'll just have won," Caleb said. "If I let it happen, she wins. If I try to fight, I'm stuck feeling like a loser. If I fight and lose, then I have to deal with the guilt of fighting and making myself less of a person. What's better, taking the heart of the person I love or going without?" "I don't know," I said, and stood up. "It depends on how big you think your heart is." "How big is big?" he asked. "Enormous," I said. "How enormous?" "It won't fit in a box." "It has to be about a foot across," he said. "And I'm glad you've never met her, because I don't know what kind of a person you would think I was if you knew the truth about me. You wouldn't understand at all, because I don't know what kind of a person I would be if you knew the truth about me." "You don't have to be a saint, Caleb. You can be a decent person, and a loving person, and people who really care for you." "Not the love she wanted." I was right, he couldn't help who he loved. He couldn't really stop it, either. And who knows, he might find out that he was worthy of her. "You could still love her, you could still care about her. I know I couldn't stop myself." "What if I didn't want to? What if I didn't want to care about her? How would she do that? There's a word for people like that: sociopaths. And she's not one of them. She's a murderer." "So are you." "Yeah, but you know that you'll always forgive me, and you don't know if I can say that about her. No matter how big a mess she made, you don't know that I'm not in love with her. If you're saying that I could love her and not want to be with her because I might find somebody better, then you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know me well enough to say that." "You didn't kill anybody." "But it's the same principle. I don't know if I'll ever love anybody that way, and if I do, it won't be for a very long time." I couldn't argue with that. I'd been with girls, but it hadn't been real love, and for some reason I didn't think that I would ever really care about somebody that much. "Did you and Hannah talk about whether or not