“I’m making it look like I have wings on my back,” he says quietly. His words come out husky and velvety as if he’s saying something personal. As if he’s giving me a caressing compliment.

I bite my lip to focus on the fact that he’s actually just giving me a plain answer to my question. He can’t help it if his voice is mesmerizingly sexy.

“I can’t go where I need to go if they think I’m human.” He drops his gaze and cinches a strap around the base of one of his wings.

He puts the empty pack with the wings strapped to it onto his back. “Help me get the jacket on.”

He has sliced the back of the jacket with  parallel slashes to let the wings peek through.

Right. The jacket. The wings. “Should the wings be outside?” I ask.

“No, just make sure the straps and pack are covered.”

The wings look securely strapped to the pack. I gently arrange the contraption so that the outside feathers cover the straps. The feathers still feel vibrant and alive, although they seem a bit wilted compared to the way they were when I first touched them a couple of days ago. I resist the urge to stroke the feathers even though he won’t be able to feel it.

The wings lie molded to the empty backpack the way they would mold to his back. For such an enormous wingspan, it’s amazing how tightly they compress to his body when they're folded. I once saw a seven-foot down sleeping bag get compacted into a small cube and it wasn’t as impressive a change in volume as this.

I drape the jacket material between and on either side of the wings. The snowy wings peek out in two strips through the slits in the dark material with no sign of the pack and straps. The jacket is big enough that he only looks a little bulky. Not enough to bring attention to itself unless someone is very familiar with Raffe’s form.

He leans forward so he doesn’t crush his wings with the back of the seat.

“How does it look?” His beautifully wide shoulders and clean line of his back are now accented by the wings. Around his neck is a silver bowtie shot playfully with curls of red that match my dress. It also matches his cummerbund around his waist. Aside from a little smudge of dirt on his jaw, he looks like he just walked out of a Hollywood magazine.

The shape of his back looks about right for a jacket that’s not perfectly tailored for wings. I have a flash of the magnificence of his snowy wings spreading out behind him as he stood to face his enemies on top of that car the first time I saw him. I feel a little of what his loss must mean to him.

I nod. “It looks good. You look right.”