Mary's upstairs neighbour is an angel. She discovered this a day before she'd met him.

It had been a shock, but not as much as she'd expected. She had always, after all, wanted to believe in something. Anything. Something larger, greater. A reason for all the pain to mean something. It was the timing that was odd; she'd gone to take the garbage out and had looked up to see if it would rain. There, hovering above the second floor, was a young man, hard to focus on properly - jeans, white-t-shirt, his sandy hair cut short to his head, his wings outspread.

He had looked at the apartment for some time before passing through the wall; she realized she could still see him. Realizing it left her with a headache, small but powerful, between her eyebrows, because it meant she wasn't actually *seeing* him - there were walls in the way, she obviously couldn't see him, but... there he was. Jeans. T-shirt. Sandy hair. Wings. From the movements he was making, it was as if he was exploring the place. It was for rent, she remembered, but -

He faded outward, upward, and she was still looking up when the first drops of rain fell on her cheeks, and she was still looking up when she realized, startled, that she was soaking wet and cold. Her imagination, she thought, pulling emotion back to her, forcing herself to rub her arms briskly, to push soaked hair out of her face. Her imagination.

Her imagination, she insisted, as she poured herself a bath and heated up some rose oil to make her place smell nice. She climbed into the bath and closed her eyes and saw nothing at all until the water got cold, and then she climbed out and toweled off and went to bed and dreamed of nothing at all.

The next day, he moved in. She stood on the landing and watched him and some people - friends, she supposed, angels themselves? - try to haul an ugly pink sofa up the stairwell. He was solid like he hadn't been yesterday, there. When they managed to disappear around the corner, she couldn't see him and she didn't get a headache from trying.

After some small consideration, she pushed her hair out of her face and knocked on the door of the apartment upstairs. He answered, his friends in the background, trying to get the ugly pink sofa set up under a window, the rest of the expanse of floor bare. "Hi," he said, cheerful.

She stared at him for a moment too long and then said, hearing her voice come out abrupt, "I thought I'd stop by and see if you needed anything."

The angel shook his head, smiling. "I want nothing," he said. And then he stopped, considered, and his smile widened into a grin. "But if you could make me some tea, I couldn't thank you enough."

Mary nodded, tried to make herself smile back, knew that she was staring. The time seemed to stretch forever between when she headed downstairs to her own apartment and finally returned with a pot on a tray and as many mugs as she could manage.

He had invited her in.

Mary's upstairs neighbour is a dancer. A dance teacher. He tore the wall down between the living room and bedroom in order to make a dance floor and ended up camping out on a small cot in the corner of the kitchen. He says his name is Josh Ellison. She has never got up the courage to ask him about whether what she believes is true.

Mary is a writer. She writes, or tries to. Sometimes the words won't come, won't be words. They're just thoughts that jerk back and forth in her mind. She used to write fantasy, but now that she believes angels are real, how can she continue? What if other things were real? What if she offended someone? She sits at her computer day after day and attempts to write real-world fiction, because she knows how to handle things if she offends real-world humans.

It is hard to concentrate, though. During the day, Josh teaches classes. During one of their weekly - Sundays, always Sundays - meetings to drink tea and chat, she asked him what kind of dance. Perhaps because she usually doesn't talk much, just sits and watches him (though he doesn't seem to mind this), he answers: Anything. He teaches ballet, he teaches jazz, he teaches tap, though he prefers to teach partner dancing. "I myself," he confided to her on that day, "like to perform modern dance. But I don't know if that can be taught. You just have to... I'm not sure. Be the music."

Looking into her teacup, she watched her own reflection shimmer on the surface. "I'd like to learn to dance," she said.

He quoted his fees to her and she shook her head at her teacup. She was a writer. It was too much.

A moment of silence hung in the air between him, and then he said, "Next sunday we'll begin."

It was too much, that free offer, and she shook her head again, but he insisted and she finally agreed. An angel, she told her imagination. She was sure of it.

He was always that kind, always friendly. She had only seen him less than perfectly cheerful once, after three men in suits had gone upstairs and talked to him. That Sunday, she'd asked him what they'd wanted. "They audited me," he said, and she was startled by the blackness in his gaze. Lawyers, she thought, and demons. If there were angels, there would be demons, and who but demons would audit an angel?

She doesn't sleep well at nights either. There was one night when she came back from doing her laundry - upstairs, God knows why this building had its laundry upstairs, God knows why she doesn't move; it hurts her knees to carry her laundry up three flights.

But she was coming back, knees protesting, and heard music from Josh's apartment. She thought that perhaps she might see him dancing and, heart thick in her throat, put her basket down, put her hand on the doorknob, turned it and leaned to peer at the crack. Nothing, she saw nothing for a moment - no Josh dancing, nothing. And then she saw him, winged, but not in his jeans or t-shirt this time, no. Bare-limbed and beautiful. Hard to see him at all, hard to see him through his wings, and there was something else with him, some snake with wings like fire arching around it, scales blue as sapphire. She caught a glimpse of a topaz eye and pressed back, left the door, scooped up her laundry and ran down the next flight to her own apartment. She could sense them - see them - like the walls, stairs, floors were nothing. When she was in her own apartment she put her laundry down and lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling and the two entwined figures she could see through it. They were dancing, of a sort, making love, gemstone coils wrapped around pale limbs, bodies practically melded together until it was all colour: blue, white, smearing together in the tears that ran down her face. She covered her mouth with her hand as if afraid they could hear the choking sobs that rose in her throat.

Every night since she stares upward and waits and tries to see, but the ceiling is just a ceiling and she can't see through it anymore. Sometimes, though, she does hear music, and the faint pounding of Josh's feet on the floor, dancing, and she chokes back pain and jealousy - if there's angels, there's demons, and she *won't* go to hell over this, she's decided that, she *won't* - but whatever she tries to make herself believe, the force of her own need presses down on her, thick, heavy. She cannot deny it, but she cannot give in to it.

She does not dare walk upstares and ask him to take her into his arms as he had that snake. She fears his kindness.

She fears that he would do it.