Cian

I strongly disliked rain.

I would have said "hate," but I was an okay person and according to my mother hate was a bad person word, because such things existed. Upon her making that statement, I had argued that I was above such human commodities, but that comment had left her solemn and had made me feel like the worst son in existence, and we're going to leave it at that.

A light drizzle had begun to fall, and I murmured under my breath, drawing the hood of my sweatshirt up over my head and hurrying my pace. I could see the boy in front of me. I should've felt bad about how young he was, but after two years of this, I rarely felt anything anymore. He was a ginger, and he was also a stick, a limited amount of muscle, if any at all, clinging to his bones. He skittered along the streets, head ducked, breathing hard. The scent of death, which I knew so well, was undeniable. What brought you to this, kid?

Suicide. Must be it. I felt it in my bones.

He turned a corner onto a vacant back street, and a cat yowled as it jumped out of his way. I followed him, my blood humming, the blades of my shoulders tingling a bit unpleasantly. I gritted my teeth, aware of what was coming.

He stopped moving. The streetlight above him flickered a moment. Cursing under my breath, then feeling the all too familiar sizzling of my tongue from it, I slipped into the shadows, just as he turned to survey his surroundings. Peering around the corner of some long-closed pastel laundromat, I saw him start to climb the fire escape to the roof. I shook my head, wondering why he didn't go for something less painful, but then again, it wasn't my decision as to how someone died.

Maybe if it had been, I would have changed a lot of the things I've witnessed.

Keep moving, Cian.

I kept moving.

He was at the top of the roof, and I nearly was, when suddenly I got a rush of unseasonable cold. I exhaled in disdain. "Vincent. Sylvester. Horne. Why must you show up at the worst times?" I glanced once more at the boy at the top of the roof, who was staring down from it, his final moments of hesitation, retrospection, inquiry. I'd seen it all before, heard the questions they ask in my own head: Is this how it all ends? Is this going to hurt? Do I really, really, want to die? I whirled towards Vinny. "I'm busy—"

I cut off at the apprehension on his face. He was a ghost, yes, but he looked paler than usual, more translucent. That only happened when he was concerned. "Vinny?"

"Cian, sorry to interrupt you, I just—something happened."

I squinted at him, pulling my hood up further over my face with my scarred fingers. Whatever it was, it had to be serious. Vinny, not being one of the living anymore, didn't get worked up over much. I was the only one he really talked to, since only I could seem to make any sort of connection with him at all. I knew my brother. He went out into the world and he watched everything go on without him, like the reels of a film, and he never said anything.

Yet, suddenly he was saying something?

"Something happened?" I asked.

Vinny nodded, ethereal blond hair moving more like water than hair. He had Mom's hair, fair and thin, and I'd gotten Dad's, caught between blond and brown and annoyingly thick. "Something happened."

"Can it wait?" I asked him, looking again toward the roof. The boy was no longer there. "Dagnabbit, Vinny, I've missed his death already."

"Fine. Do your soul thingy, and then we have got to—I mean got to—talk." I agreed by waving him off, and he faded off into the air, like mist rapidly dissipating. Once, I'd tried to get him to teach me how to do that, but the sad thing was it appeared to be a skill exclusively for ghosts. Unfair.

I stepped foot onto the roof of the laundromat, inching towards the edge, and peering downwards. If I were anyone else, I would have winced at the boy's twisted body, arms and legs bent at angles they shouldn't be, the blood pooling underneath his stagnant chest. I would have mourned for another life taken so soon. But I was not anyone else. I was Cian Horne, and death was my old friend.

"So I'm dead."

I was unsurprised when the boy's spirit appeared next to me, as I felt the coldness of the air all souls brought with them. By now I was used to the sudden drop. "Yeah. What drove you to it, kid?"

"I felt worthless...I just...I couldn't do it any longer."

I glanced at him; his eyes were dark and restless, hair as red as a flame. Freckles splattered his face like paint. He had the same look of youth Vinny had had when he'd died, and for the first time in years, a death wrenched at my heart. For when I looked at this boy, I saw my younger brother, the brother I wished I could have saved. "And are you satisfied now, Caden?"

He blinked at me, but the surprise in his face settled. "I don't know," he murmured, staring down at his body, left there in the flickering street light. "I don't know anything. I don't know where to go. I don't know what happens now—but you do, don't you? You can see me. You're talking to me."

"Check and check."

"What are you?"

"Why don't you answer that for yourself?" I replied, and Caden's eyes narrowed, then widened. I no longer denied the tingling in my shoulder blades, no longer fought down the urge. The feeling grew and grew like a benevolent tumor, until my wings burst from their flesh confines, their feathers black as the night around us, as luminous as the stars. I grinned at the surprise on the spirit boy's face. "Cian Horne," I said, "angel of death. At your service."

"I thought angels of death killed people."
"Not precisely. We prepare you for death, help your soul to move on afterward. I've had my eyes on you for a while, Caden Gibbs," I said. Then, I cocked my head, feeling the power my wings brought me, jolting through the blood in my veins, heating up with the excitement of a job almost done. "Now, I'm going to ask you again. Are you satisfied?"

He didn't answer, so I just chuckled, laying a hand on his shoulder as I brought my wings around us, creating a new world of safety in darkness. I whispered, "Well, I think you will be, sir." Then he vanished from underneath my hand, and I grinned again, knowing where he was going and that it would please him.

Vinny's voice interrupted the silence Caden's absence brought: "Okay, good. He's gone. Can we talk now?"

"Jesus Christ—ouch," I murmured, touching my tongue as it burned again, then apologizing begrudgingly to the Man Upstairs, who was quite adamant about making sure we angels were angelic. I turned toward Vinny, rubbing my shoulder blades as my wings disappeared back into their hiding places, humming just beneath my skin. "Fine, Vinny, fine. Talk to me."

"Someone saw me, Cian."

My eyes went a bit round. I hadn't been expecting something to such a degree. I shook my head in disbelief, taking a seat on the laundromat roof's edge. Vinny's frigidness brushed my shoulder as he glided down beside me. "That's not possible. Only I can see you, Vinny. The rest of the world's just not open enough."

"But she saw me. She was crying, and she saw me, and then she yelled at me."

I glanced sideways at him, an eyebrow risen. "Do you know where she is, Vinny?"

"No."

"Well," I said, hopping up to my feet and using the fire escape to trace my way down to the street. "Don't talk to me until you know where she is. If she really can see you, she may not be aware of her own power."

Though I'd just left Vinny behind on the roof, he suddenly appeared in front of me, blue-gold eyes wide as he stared at me. I was a bit stricken; his eyes were different now, faded, just as everything about him was. Whenever I looked at Vinny, I remembered what it had been like when he was alive, when I was human. I tried not to, but it was difficult. He was a memoriam, it seemed, an incessant reminder of the life we didn't have anymore, would never have again. No more days on the boat, no more school grades, no more visits to the park to shoot hoops.

No more normal.

"How am I supposed to track her down? I'm no FBI agent, Cian."

"I dunno, man; I'm not the ghost who can literally make himself appear anywhere he wants to."

"It takes a lot of energy, you know. It's difficult to even be standing here right now."
"Work harder," I said, noticing the tips of his fingers beginning to dim. "You're fading."

Vinny gritted his teeth. "I don't know what to do, Cian. This has never happened. Never."

"You don't think I know that?" I said, and sighed, because if there was any time I wanted to lay a hand on my little brother's shoulder and say It's okay, we'll figure it out together, it was now. But my hand would slip through him like through air. It always would. "Look, Vince. I don't know what to tell you. Pull some cool ghost stuff or something, and find this girl. If she saw you like you say she did—and I don't doubt you—then she may be dangerous to even herself, if she doesn't know what she's doing."

"But how?" whined my brother. "How could she see me? She couldn't be an angel, right?"

I knew all the angels, and all the angels knew Vinny and me. "Not likely."

"Ugh. Cian, I don't know what to do."

"Figure it out, Vinny," I said, stepping over Caden's body, then pulling my cell phone from my pocket. I dialed 911, feeling the air warm up around me as Vinny disappeared again. I was alone.

I sighed, trying to sound like a human in distress. "Hello? Yeah. I...I've just found a body."