by RJ Blain
“Richmond, Virginia. It had the nearest courthouse to the state line serving nocturnals.”
I really needed to hunt Quinn down and figure out why we couldn’t have gotten the preliminary documentation from a New York courthouse. Why would anyone, including the police commissioner, suggest Virginia or Ohio? “Why are we here again?”
Next time, I needed to ask more questions before I got into an SUV with anyone. How had I ended up so far from home? What had I been thinking? Oh, right. I hadn’t been thinking. I’d been too tired to think.
“Why are you asking me?”
“Because I have no idea what’s going on. I haven’t had enough coffee yet.” To demonstrate the truth of my words, I took another sip of coffee. Then another. I guzzled it down and set the empty cup in the holder. “I haven’t had enough coffee yet,” I repeated.
Snickering, Perky opened the door and untangled me from Quinn’s blanket. “You’re still tired, aren’t you? Poor girl. You’ve had a tough week.”
“I will kill you, Perky. I will smile while I do it.”
“No, you won’t. You like me too much to kill me.”
I sighed because it was true. “How much dust did you give him?”
“The last I saw him, he was smiling ear to ear. I may have heard him giggle.”
“God. You got him that high? He only needs a light dose. I’m surrounded by idiots!”
Perky laughed. “You better go rescue him, then.”
“I really will kill you, Perky, and I really will smile while I do it. Why the hell did you drive us all the way here? We could have gotten a stupid bogus license anywhere, even in New York. Damn it!”
“You were so much nicer after Chief Quinn tucked you in and you were sleeping like a little baby. Well, except for when you had that nightmare, screamed, and startled me so much I may have driven the SUV right off the road into a ditch. Fortunately, it was a shallow ditch. My SUV didn’t mind too much.”
“You drove your car off the road.”
“You slept right through it, too. Fortunately, you only screamed once and whimpered a few times before settling down.”
Great. Now everyone would be questioning my sanity. “You’d have nightmares, too, if you had the week I’ve had.”
“Gardener, I’d be dead.”
I grimaced. “While that might be true, you didn’t have to say it.”
“If you say no, he’ll cry.”
Full stop. Startled, I stared at him. If I said no? If I said no to what? To who? “What?”
“If you say no, Chief Quinn will cry.”
With one mystery solved, I tried to deduce what I might say no about. Sex? There was no way in hell I could see myself saying no to sex with him. Well, unless I was dying of the plague or something. That would make some sense. Or in public. I couldn’t imagine Quinn wanting to have sex in public. He seemed like the type to enjoy his privacy. “Say that again. Slowly, just to make certain I heard you correctly.”
“If you say no, Chief Quinn will cry.”
Did anyone think I’d say no to a marriage license so no one would bother me about being a surrogate? I’d enjoy my claim to Quinn for the next six months. “Explain it in smaller words I can understand.”
“Wow, Gardener. I used monosyllabic words. How the hell am I supposed to use smaller words? Most of them max out at three letters. You know what? Forget I said anything. I’ll just sit back and enjoy the show.”
What show? All I needed was a stupid piece of paper proving the existence of a man idiotic enough to marry me. What did Perky think was going to happen?
Crazy cops.
“I need more coffee for this.”
“Fortunately for you, Chief Quinn anticipated your special needs and bought you a second one.” Perky pointed at a cup in the front seat holders. “Take it for the road.”
Miracles could happen. I grabbed the cup and slid out of the SUV, stifling a yawn. “Thank you, coffee gods.”
“You’re welcome.”
The problem with going to a courthouse in the middle of the night involved the nocturnals the system served. Every city had at least one courthouse open from dusk to dawn with full judicial services catering to those unable to venture out into the sunlight. Vampires and the various incorporeal supernatural came to mind, but a lot of people took advantage of the late hours to take care of paperwork.
To make matters worse, vampires often served as the late-night staff, allowing them to participate in bloodless hunts. Without fail, they’d have at least one vampire and an entire coven of lawyers waiting to prey on hapless idiots expecting the night court to be simpler than the day court.
On a bad night, the place would be infested with incubi and succubi, vampires, ghouls, and other undead nasties needing to navigate the murky waters of government paperwork. On the really bad nights, hell broke loose on Earth in a very literal sense.
And then there were nights when my mother and father stood in the courthouse lobby and engaged in a glaring match with Quinn while an angel, an incubus, Nilman, several vampires, and an amused human couple watched. Hell no. Hell no.
No, no, no. Absolutely not.
Someone must have spiked my coffee with a hallucinogen. There was no other explanation.
“And we’re done here.” I almost managed to turn around to walk out, but Perky linked his arm with mine and dragged me deeper into the building. “Hey!”
My protest caught everyone’s attention, and Quinn’s cheek twitched. “Gardener, are you actually related to these people?”
I turned to Perky, casting a desperate look at the doors. “How long has he been in here?”
“Twenty minutes.”
I gulped. Had he been talking to my parents for the entire time? Why were they in Richmond? What had lured them out? How? Why? A thousand questions without a single nice answer hammered through my head. “If we could forget this ever happened, that’d be great. I think I left something in the car, Perky.”
Perky tightened his grip on my arm. “Drink your coffee. Everything’ll be fine.”
Drinking my coffee sounded like a good idea. Would I find a hidden stash of alcohol at the bottom of my cup? Miracles could happen. There was an angel in the room after all.
Quinn cleared his throat. “We need a copy of your birth certificate.”
“They try their best to forget I was born. You do realize I could have expedited one, right?” Did we need a copy of my birth certificate to get a bogus marriage license? Damn it. Stupid government bureaucracy. If my parents had brought the certificate with them, I had ways of getting it out of their hands. Beating them to death in a courthouse full of witnesses wouldn’t work. I would need something equally violent but more private.
Did Richmond have a river or lake? Maybe a deep pond? Drowning them seemed like a good idea.
Sighing, Quinn shook his head. “I thought it would be faster to check with the CDC’s HR department, get their number, and ask for it nicely. I’m sorry. I had no idea they were such—”
The angel clapped its hand over Quinn’s mouth. “You will be polite, little one. Those words you intend to speak are not polite.”
Okay. I could act like an adult, or I could get smacked down by an angel. I could act like an adult. I could speak to my parents without screaming, yelling, or breaking down into an anxious, crying mess. Holding out my hand, I said, “Birth certificate, please.”
Look at me, all sorts of polite.
Everyone stared at me like I had grown a second head. My mother scowled and turned away. My father also scowled, but at least he had the basic decency to look me in the eyes when he did it.
Okay, then. If asking nicely wasn’t going to work, I had a second plan, and all I had to do was dig the vial out of my bra to implement it. “I have enough pixie dust on me to turn this into a very public party you’ll never forget. I’m probably the only person in a hundred miles licensed to do this. If you don’t want my grandparents finding out you went on a pixie dust bend
er in a courthouse, I suggest you hand over my birth certificate. Please.”
I could be polite while issuing threats, too. I needed to give myself a gold star for my skills at being a real adult.
The angel’s laughter tinkled in my head. “How refreshing. She’s so serious.”
Stretching his velvety black wings, the incubus joined in, his chuckles making my toes curl in my shoes. I could threaten my parents while snuggling up to Quinn, couldn’t I?
The angel reached out and slapped the incubus upside his head. “No. You’re being bad.”
My desire to rub all over Quinn evaporated. Damn it. I couldn’t tell if I was disappointed or annoyed over the incubus manipulating me.
The incubus giggled. “Pixie dust benders are the best. Can you blame me? I’m allowed to do so much when everyone’s high. I even brought my camera.”
Sure enough, the incubus held a camera with his tail, and the red flashing light informed me he was already recording the scene. I spent several moments admiring his steady grip on the device.
One of the vampires cleared his throat. He wore the black robes of a state-licensed judge. “Miss, are you actually licensed for the handling and distribution of pixie dust?”
I gave Perky my coffee so I could dig out my CDC card for the judge to look over. He read over my long list of permit codes and chuckled. “Very nice, Miss Gardener. Should you decide to turn my courthouse into a rave, do handle your substances with the appropriate amount of caution—and send someone for me. Some things simply can’t be missed.”
My mother whirled around and her eyes widened. “You wouldn’t dare!”
Damn, she had a piercing voice. I rubbed my ear against my shoulder while returning my identification card to my wallet. What had possessed me to call her when I had been ill?
Quinn grunted and shot the angel a glare. With a shake of its wings and shoulders, the angel made a disapproving clucking noise. “No, little one. That is not a polite thing to say. I’m sure this can be handled without Miss Gardener resorting to her secret stash of pixie dust, especially as I believe she has special plans for that vial. It would be a pity to ruin her plans, wouldn’t it?”
Crap. Angels were mind readers, and it must have been picking my brain when I had been outside. My entire body flushed. Tricky, sneaky angel.
The angel’s laughter sounded in my head, and I got the feeling I was the only one to hear its chiming amusement.
“Mr. Gardener, Mrs. Gardener. All they need is the birth certificate. It is in your possession. I can hear you thinking about it.”
“You filthy, headless blight,” my mother hissed through clenched teeth.
I took my coffee back from Perky, drank it down, and launched the empty cup in the direction of the nearest trash bin ten feet away. It bounced off the rim, teetered, and fell inside. With my hands free, I turned to Quinn’s officer and used his shoulder to hide my face. “She just called an angel a blight, Perky. We’re going to get smited.”
I didn’t want to be smited again. Smitings hurt.
“I think you mean smote.” Perky patted my back. “It’s okay, Gardener. Some people are just too stupid to live. We’re very grateful this pair lived long enough for you to be born.”
The angel’s amusement rang out, the sound so full of warmth and joy my entire body relaxed against Perky. Without his help, I would have melted to the floor and been happy about it. “No, little one. You can’t strangle your friend.” The angel turned to the human woman standing off to the side. “Darling, how ever did you manage to birth such a troublesome child?”
She laughed and flipped her dark hair over her shoulder with a smug smile. Yep. I’d seen that smug smile plenty of times on Quinn’s face. “Careful planning, Dad.”
Wait, what? Dad?
I stared at the angel. If angels had eyes, I’m certain it would have been staring back. Wait. Him? Did angels have gender? How could an it be a dad? How could a human have an angel for a dad?
Nothing made sense anymore.
“Please just give me my birth certificate.” There. I could become a bastion of sanity in a world gone mad.
“Wow, Gardener. You have really aced this being polite thing. Who are you? What have you done with my favorite coffee-making bitch?”
“Perky, I will kill you.”
The angel needed to stop laughing. It—his—laughter made me go all weak in the knees. “She loves you too much to kill you, Mr. Perkins, so don’t worry much. She’ll just make you suffer for a while.”
Damned angel, blabbing my darkest secrets. Perky wasn’t supposed to know I liked him too much to kill him. No wonder Quinn kept telling me angels were jerks.
“Yes,” the angel agreed.
My mother inhaled, and I closed my eyes, leaned against Perky, and braced for the worst. It came when she said, “And to think we were hoping you’d finally gone and gotten yourself killed. No. I don’t see why we should do anything for you. You caused this mess all on your own. Deal with your own problems.”
I’d heard variations of the same thing over and over again, but it still hurt. What had I done so wrong? Why were their shortcomings my fault?
The angel’s laughter stopped, and the world seemed an even darker place for its loss. Perky rubbed my back and whispered in my ear, “Please don’t cry. Chief Quinn loses his shit when you cry, and I don’t want to witness a murder today.”
The angel coughed, an accomplishment for an immortal lacking a throat. “Your Honor, fellow singers of the night, you might wish to turn around for a moment.”
I peeked through my lashes. The vampires cleared out so fast they forgot to take their clothes with them.
With another stretch of his black wings, the incubus chuckled. “This is so much fun.”
The angel smacked the incubus with a white, blue, and golden wing. “Mr. Gardener, Mrs. Gardener, let us try this one more time. You will give my future granddaughter-in-law her papers. You will do so now, without complaint. If you wish for me to be a blight on this Earth…”
I sucked in a breath, shoved away from Perky, and squealed, “Not the halo! Or the singing. Or the smiting. But please, please, not the halo!”
Quinn cracked up laughing, lifted his hand, and peeled the angel’s fingers away from his mouth. “Maybe you should step outside for this, Gardener. Perkins, why don’t you go with her and maybe cover her ears. If she faints, try to catch her, would you?”
“You just want to watch, don’t you?” Perky accused.
“Yes.”
By the book, I was supposed to walk away from dangerous individuals to avoid drawing unwanted attention. If the angel wanted to chase me, could I really get away in time anyway? I ran all the way to Perky’s SUV and hid under Quinn’s blanket so I wouldn’t have to witness when the angel smited my parents, no matter how much they deserved it.
Smote. Whatever.
Chapter Sixteen
The SUV’s door opened, and Quinn laughed, a soft, gentle sound. “You can come out now. The smiting is all over. I have your documents, and those devil spawn are gone. I’m really, really sorry. I meant to get rid of them before Perkins got you moving.”
I wrapped the blanket tighter around me. “You called my parents. Hadn’t I told you they were assholes?”
“You hadn’t. I’d heard rumors about them, but I had no idea they were anywhere near as bad as I’d been told. They’re the absolute worst. My parents are infinitely superior, and they want to meet you.” Quinn tugged at the blanket. “If you don’t come out, I just thought you should know I’m manly enough to carry you inside, blanket and all.”
“That woman called the angel her dad, Quinn. I didn’t think angels had gender.”
“If that bothers you, wait until she calls the incubus ‘Father.’”
“Wait. What? Both of them? Is she adopted or something?”
“No, she’s really their daughter. When an angel falls in love with a human enough to have children, they need to ask an incubus or su
ccubus for help. Since my grandfather loved my human grandmother, I ended up with an extra grandfather. Yes, it’s as weird as it sounds.”
“You’re part angel.”
“And part incubus, too.”
Well, that explained a few things. “But you look human.”
“On paper, I’m about as human as it gets, although I have a magic rating that exceeds the norms a little.”
Holy hell. Quinn really was my heaven and hell rolled together into one sexy package. “That couple in there. They’re your parents?”
“I’m so sorry. I wasn’t expecting them, either. I walked in and they were waiting for me, looking smug. They’re really, really good at that.”
The angel manifested in the seat beside me. “It really is safe to come out now.”
I screamed, launched out of the SUV, and ended up trapped in Quinn’s arms, half tangled in his blanket. “Y-y-you demonic angel! You did that on purpose.”
“Yes, I did. She is so much fun, little one.”
Quinn sighed and rested his forehead against me. “I told you angels were jerks.”
“I like her, little one. Marry her before she gets away. I didn’t go through so much trouble to watch you squander such a nice opportunity.” The angel disappeared in a column of golden light, and I clung to Quinn in case it—he—returned.
“Did he just say marry?”
“He may have.”
“Me, marry you?”
“You know, thinking about it, that would be nice. Then, if a gorgon even looks at you funny, I can assault him, too. No court would convict me for protecting my wife. I like it. Did you know that’s how gorgons solve disputes over lovers? With violence. Lots of violence. Lots of violence I’d be legally allowed to participate in. I like it.”
Had Quinn hit his head? Had the angel smited him, too? I worried. “Uh, Quinn?”
“What?”
“You’re supposed to hate me when we’re not busy having amazing sex. I’m pretty sure that’s our relationship. We hate each other with moments when we lose all reason and end up in bed together.”
Quinn sighed. “Okay. I see we’re going to have to address this. Yes, Bailey. I hate you so much I need to marry you so our mutual hatred can last the rest of our lives. I heard you, you know. I very clearly heard you. You said, ‘I just haven’t figured out how to get the bastard to marry me.’ I’m calling you out. This is how you get the bastard to marry you. You walk him into that courthouse—in handcuffs, if you really want—and march him in front of that vampire judge. Then the bastard is forced to marry you. If you really want, ask for a gun. I’m sure someone has one you can borrow for a few minutes. Then the bastard will be forced to marry you at gunpoint. Aren’t I helpful?”
