While I Was Away(22)

When Adele finally reached the ground floor, she was immediately swept up in a sea of gray. It should've been impressive, every guest adhering so strictly to a dress code, but there was something strange happening.

Normally, everyone's face was a blur, but these people ... she could swear she could almost see them. A smile here, a blue eye there. Nothing recognizable, and a second glance just showed a blur, but there was definitely something brewing.

“It's rude to stare,” Jones was suddenly whispering in her ear. Startled, she whirled around to face him.

“It's just ... can you see their faces? Sometimes I think I almost can,” she said.

“I can always see them.”

“But I can't, so what does this mean for me?”

“I think it means you're getting used to this place,” he said, his voice low and slightly ominous sounding. She frowned and glanced around again.

“I should think so, I've been here for ... forever,” she mumbled, trying to think back to the beginning and guesstimate how much time had actually passed. One millennia? Two? Or maybe just a couple hours? It all blended together in her brain and became a soupy mess of time and memories.

“Hopefully you won't be here quite that long. Care to dance?” he asked, but he didn't wait for an answer, just started gently urging her across the room. He seemed to be in a somewhat serious, somber mood, so Adele decided to change the subject to something lighter.

“I've never been in this place. Those stairs! They should invest in an elevator,” she joked.

“Why?”

“Because it's a long way down. I don't even want to think about climbing them at the end of the night,” she groaned. Suddenly, he was warm against her back, and she could feel his breath on the side of her neck, just below her ear.

“Why bother with the stairs at all?”

“Because I ...”

Adele's voice trailed off as she realized what Jones was talking about. She tilted her head to look up, then watched as a man on the stairs simply leapt off. She stifled a shriek as she watched, thinking maybe he would just disappear, and hoping she wasn't about to watch someone die.

Instead of doing either, he flung his arms out to his sides and great, big, gray feathers fanned out behind him. His “wings” allowed him to coast in a wide, lazy circle, slowly dropping him into the party. When he finally landed, the feathers all fell off the arms of his suit. He straightened his tie and headed towards the bar, but not before winking at Adele.

“Awfully bold,” Jones snorted.

“He winked at me!” she exclaimed. “I actually saw it! And did he just fly down here? Could I have done that?”

She looked up again to see more people doing it. Men and women jumping off the stairs, sprouting wings, and gliding in circles around the edges of the room.

“You're shocked? You jumped off a cliff, remember? Jumping off some stairs should pale in comparison. C'mon, dance with me.”

He led her into the thick of the crowd and placed his hands on her hips. It wasn't like the times before in the grand ballroom, where they'd danced in a more traditional manner. Adele was glad, she felt more comfortable in this setting, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.

“This is nice,” she sighed, resting her cheek against his lapel. She realized she could hear his heart – it was so loud, like she was using a stethoscope. A strong and steady beat, thumping in time to their dance.

“Adele, you know this isn't real, right?”

“It feels real.”

“Only because you make it that way. It doesn't have to be.”

More nonsense. He wouldn't answer her questions, and then when she finally stopped asking them, he wanted to tell her things. Maybe that had been the point, the whole time?

Silly. This place is so silly. I don't even care anymore. I just want to be silly, too.

“Jones,” she breathed, looking up at him. “I asked you the other day – if I ever go home, will I see you again?”

His lips formed a hard line as he stared down at her. He looked ... pained. Not a good sign. She braced herself for his answer.

“I have a job to do here, and when it's over, you'll be gone. You most likely won't remember any of this,” he told her.

Adele was shocked.

“I don't want -”

“You do. You want to forget everything. Remember how scared you were in your parents' house? Remember how you felt when you thought I was gone? Think of those things. Think of how dark it is in Old Town – do you really want to live like that? No, Adele. You want to be in the sunshine,” he assured her.

“But there is sunshine here, we could stay at the beach. Or even in the poppy field. I love it there,” she insisted.

“You don't. You don't understand, I don't want you to -” he tried to argue, but she abruptly stopped moving, bringing their dance to a halt.

“I don't want to go home if you're not there.”

There was a lengthy pause, and she stared up into his green eyes the whole time, daring him to argue with her.

“Adele, you don't mean that.”

“I do. I want to be here. I want to be with you.”

“You can't possibly understand what you're-”

No more talking in circles.