Mika’el’s lips thinned. The only mortals who didn’t have Guardians were those who had turned their backs on them, who had chosen be influenced by the Fallen Ones that tried to corrupt humankind, to continue what the Grigori had started six millennia before. If the One’s missing daughter had made her life among such mortals, it didn’t bode well for Heaven’s search. Or for her willingness to return to her realm.
“Well, then? What do you suggest we do?” he asked. “I’m assuming you’re here because you have an idea.”
“We ask for help.”
Mika’el tossed the black steel quisse onto the table and reached for the greave protecting his shin. “From whom? If Heaven can’t find her—” He stopped. “The humans? How in all of Creation can they help?”
“Not just any human. The Naphil woman.”
“Alex?” Mika’el added the greave to the pile of armor.
“I don’t understand. How could she possibly find what we cannot?”
“As a police officer, she has a potential network that spans the globe. Her connections will be invaluable in detecting one who has disappeared into the unguarded.”
“Assuming Emmanuelle has any kind of human record.”
“In humanity’s current digital age, it would be almost impossible for her not to have. Not without using her powers to avoid it.”
“And we would notice if she did.”
“Exactly.”
Mika’el rolled the argument over in his mind. Then he shook his head. “Even so, it’s virtually impossible that Alex will be able to find her.”
“Virtually. Not completely.”
“There are seven billion souls on that planet, Verchiel. There is no way—”
“There has to be a way.”
It wasn’t the interruption that stopped him. It was the quiet desperation underlying the Highest’s voice. The thread of despair.
The utter desolation.
In silence, he stripped the remaining armor from his other leg. Verchiel’s pain hung between them, heavy in the air, heavier yet across his shoulders. Damn it to Hell and back. Damn Lucifer, damn Samael, damn the Nephilim, damn the—
Mika’el whirled and pitched the quisse he held at the door. It burst through the four-inch-thick oak and clattered against the stone wall of the corridor beyond. The building shuddered beneath the violence. Verchiel flinched, but didn’t move from her place. No one came to investigate. In all likelihood, no one had been near enough to hear, because they were all assigned to the front, fighting to save their realm, themselves, the seven billion souls the One had left to their stewardship.
He closed his eyes. Tipped back his head. Sighed.
“Fine,” he growled. “Locate Alex. I’ll speak with her.”
*
Grocery bag in hand, Emmanuelle paused on the wooden steps of the beach house, staring at the nearly leafless climbing rose bush beside the door with its single pink blossom waving in the breeze. She scowled at it. Three times she’d dug that damned bush out of the ground over the last ten years, and three times it had come back—and now it had started blooming in the middle of November?
If she didn’t know better, she’d think she’d conjured the thing up, given how much of her thoughts had been preoccupied with past events lately. Ever since—
She broke the thought off with another scowl.
She’d promised herself she wasn’t going there again today, and she knew damned well she hadn’t caused the rose to bloom. She’d made it such a habit over the last five millennia not to conjure anything, she sometimes wondered whether she’d even remember how.
But if it hadn’t been her—
She sent the pink bloom a last baleful look. If the damned thing wasn’t so close to the house, she’d pour gasoline on it and set fire to it.
She wrenched open the door and stomped inside.
“I thought I heard you,” said a bleached platinum blond, coming into the kitchen. “Good ride?”
“Cold,” Emmanuelle said. “But yes, it was still good.”
She shrugged out of her leather jacket and hung it on a hook by the door as Jezebel took the groceries from the bag. Coffee, bacon, eggs, salted caramel ice cream, and two bottles of Jack Daniels. Jezebel shot her a look.
“Interesting selection.”
“I forgot to take a list with me.”
“So you thought you’d just pick up the staples?”
Emmanuelle sent the groceries a dour look. Then she sighed. “They were all I could think of while I was in town.”
Lips pursed, Jezebel put the ice cream in the freezer, then leaned against the counter.
“Manny, what’s going on? You haven’t been yourself in weeks. Even Spider has noticed, and you know how observant he is.”
Emmanuelle opened her mouth to deliver an outright denial, but she couldn’t quite utter it. Neither could she tell the truth, however, and so she settled for shaking her head.
“I’m just feeling restless, I guess. Must be the time of year. You know how I get in winter, when I can’t get out onto the road as much.”
Jezebel crossed her arms. “Actually, I don’t know, because in the ten years we’ve been here, I’ve never seen you like this.”
Emmanuelle sighed. Creation save her from too-perceptive friends. “It’s nothing, Jez, really. Family stuff. Old memories. I’ll get over it.”
“Would it help to talk?”
She shook her head. She’d made it five thousand years without having a shoulder to unload on. She didn’t need to start now. “Thank you, but I’m fine.”
Jezebel watched her for another few seconds, then shrugged. “Well, I’m here if you change your mind. In the meantime, how about breakfast, seeing as how we have all the necessary ingredients now?”
“That would be great, thanks,” Emmanuelle agreed. “I’ll change and then come give you a hand.”
She pushed through the swinging door that led to the rest of the house. Breakfast first, then she’d find the shovel and take care of that damned rosebush once and for all, even if she had to dig up half the house’s foundation.
CHAPTER 7
ALEX GLANCED AT THE clock over the main door. Twenty past eight. An entire day and most of the evening gone. Those most likely to notice one small, pregnant girl on the streets of Toronto wouldn’t be out there much longer in this cold. If she didn’t leave soon, she’d miss the chance to talk to them, to ask the questions that might lead her to Nina again.
And yet, she hesitated.
As much as she ached to continue the search, the looks of utter relief on her colleagues’ faces when she’d sat down at her desk had been hard to mistake. They’d never been stretched this thin before, and it was only going to get worse. Especially if she bailed on them again. So. Stay and help her colleagues, her city? Or go, because Nina had only six days left, and even if she couldn’t survive, she shouldn’t have to die alone?
Choices.
“Is the going rate still a penny?”
Alex jolted in her seat and blinked at Tim Abrams, who had somehow managed to cross the office and settle onto the desk beside her without her noticing. “What?”
“For your thoughts. You know, a penny for them?”
She gave a snort. “Hell, I’d pay you to take them, if I could.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he said. “That was a hell of a thing you and Joly had last night. You holding up okay?”
She tipped her head toward the boards lining the office. “About as well as all of us, I suspect.”
“You should be at home.”
Alex slanted a suspicious look in the direction of Roberts’s office. It was empty, and she remembered that their staff inspector had left a couple of hours ago. But Abrams’s next words confirmed her suspicion that Roberts had called and asked him to talk to her.
“He’s worried about you. We’re all worried about you. When’s the last time you even slept?”
“What are you, my nanny?” Before he could retort—or
worse, press for an answer—she waved at the case boards. “One of you should have called me. Told me what was going on.”
“And what, you would have waved your magic wand and solved them for us?” Abrams shook his head. “You had stuff of your own to worry about. We’re coping.”
“Fifteen open cases in the last two weeks? That’s not coping, Abrams, that’s failing to notice you’re going under for the third time. You should have called me.”
“Because you’re so good at keeping your head above water right now?” He rested a hand on her shoulder and repeated, “You had stuff.”
It was his second use of the past tense. Had, not have. Alex scooped back the hair from her forehead and settled an elbow on the desk beside Abrams. She stared at the boards. Thought of Nina.
Choices.
“Hey.” Abrams’s voice was gruff. “Just because the brass shut down the search doesn’t mean we stop looking for her.”
The memory of four dead officers swamped a surge of gratitude. Alex shuddered, swallowed hard, shook her head.
“No. Don’t. If anything happens to—”
“We won’t do anything stupid,” Abrams promised. “Not after yesterday. We’re just keeping eyes open and ears to the ground. Any one of us hears something, we’ll let you know. You have my word. Besides, we’ve already decided, so there’s no point in arguing. She’s your niece, and we look out for our own. You’d do the same for us.”
He stood. “Now, I’m heading home, and you should, too. You’re not invincible, my friend, and you won’t do anyone any good if you drop from exhaustion.”
She didn’t bother correcting him as he gave her shoulder a final squeeze, lifted his coat from the back of a chair, and waved as he headed out the door. His words remained hanging in the silence he left behind: We look out for our own. You’d do the same.
Except she hadn’t, had she? Not lately. Hadn’t given any of her colleagues more than a passing thought for two solid weeks, never mind had their backs. Alex’s gaze traveled the white boards lining the room’s perimeter once more.
Choices.
She rose and, coffee in hand, wove her way through the clutter of desks. Greg Bastien, the sole remaining occupant in the room besides her, raised his head as she approached. Her steps slowed. She should ask about his wife, whose first pregnancy had been confirmed a scant few weeks before, just as the chaos of the Nephilim births had begun to consume the world. Should ask, but wasn’t sure she could.
Bastien’s cell phone rang, and he reached to pick it up. Alex breathed a sigh of relief and walked past.
She stopped in front of the board nearest Roberts’s office. She’d read the details a dozen times today, but not a single one had stuck. This time needed to be different. This time she needed to make a decision: stay on the job, or go after Nina? Her grip tightened on her cup. Reaching deep, she found the fragments of a focus that had once been second nature to her and turned her eyes to the case before her.
Janine Todd, age 23, 12 weeks pregnant, knifed in the subway on her way to work, suspect still at large. Board number two: Amala Prakash, age 28, 26 weeks pregnant, burned in her bed. Suspect, her brother, in custody. Board three: a list of seven names, all women, all pregnant, killed in the church basement bombing of a prenatal class a week before. Suspect, one of the husbands, dead by suicide.
Continuing her tour of the room, Alex skimmed the remaining boards. Of fifteen cases, two involved men. The remainder were women. Pregnant women.
The birth of Lucifer’s Nephilim army hadn’t changed a thing. People hadn’t even noticed that the bizarre pregnancies had ended. They were still terrified, and still reacting to that terror by lashing out at mothers-to-be. And the fear was spreading, because if all of this was happening here, in Toronto, it meant that things were much, much worse in other parts of the world.
Which meant whatever message governments were putting out wasn’t working. Roberts was right. The world needed her. It needed every rational head it could get.
Choices.
With careful deliberation, Alex set her coffee on a nearby desk and crossed her arms over the aching emptiness of her belly. From behind her came the murmur of Bastien’s voice, pitched low. A personal call, most likely. She closed out the sound and conjured an image of Nina, pale and limp in the Fallen One’s arms. Jen, silent and unresponsive in her hospital room. Both damaged not by human hands, but by the Fallen.
Closing her eyes, Alex breathed in the unending pain of utter powerlessness. Tentacles of grief wrapped around her core, squeezing out the last of the denial that had driven her for the past two weeks, leaving behind the despair of an admission she could no longer deny.
She couldn’t fix them.
She couldn’t make them better.
Nina would die giving birth to Lucifer’s child; Jen would remain inaccessible, her mind shattered by what had happened to her daughter; and Alex would live forever, unable to repair the damage inflicted by beings she could never hope to stop.
She opened her eyes again to the boards and the victims outlined there, the families they had almost certainly left behind. She couldn’t help them, either, but maybe she could help others. Maybe.
Choices.
Leaving her coffee where it was and files strewn across her desk, she picked up her jacket, returned Bastien’s farewell wave, and headed out of the office. Fuck it. She couldn’t think straight anymore. She needed to get away from those damned boards and the hideous cases that accompanied them and the impossible responsibility that pressed in on her. She needed to see her sister. She needed sleep.
And she definitely needed that drink or two Roberts had mentioned.
CHAPTER 8
“LET ME GET THIS straight,” the not-quite fallen Principality stared at Samael, his blue gaze flat and assessing. “I kill this Naphil woman for you, and you hand me my ticket back to Heaven.”
Samael uncorked the bottle of port he’d rescued from Seth’s cleanse of Lucifer’s office. The Appointed might not share his father’s taste in wines, but Samael was happy to be the recipient of the cast-offs. He poured a generous measure of the ruby liquid into a glass, then raised the bottle in Bethiel’s direction. The Principality shook his head, continuing his back-and-forth prowl, tattered gray wings folding and unfolding. He hadn’t stopped moving since he’d walked in, and his restless energy set Samael’s teeth on edge.
“That’s exactly my proposal,” he agreed, recorking the bottle.
Bethiel swiveled and retraced his steps yet again. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you care if I get back to Heaven?”
Samael chuckled. “You misunderstand me, Principality. I don’t give a good goddamn whether you get back to Heaven or not. That’s what you want. I want the Naphil.”
“Dead.”
“Yes.” He sipped the port, swirling it around his mouth, letting the rich, oak-y flavor settle over his palate. Lucifer may have had a lot of flaws, but his taste in wines had been impeccable.
Bethiel slid his hands into the pockets of the loose-fitting pants he wore beneath his tunic. “And what has this Naphil woman done to you to deserve such negative attention?”
Samael masked the tightening of his lips with another sip of wine. “The price I’m willing to pay you doesn’t include answering questions.”
“But the one you exact in return is about as steep as it gets. Murder, Samael?” Bethiel shook his head. “Proof of my former innocence might get me into Heaven, but I would never be allowed to remain if I killed a human, Naphil or otherwise. I would never pass Judgment.”
“You forget there is no Judgment anymore. The One is gone, Bethiel. No one need know of our bargain unless you choose to tell them. Show your proof at the gate, and they will have no choice but to admit you. You’ll be home.”
Bethiel regarded him, his expression neutral. “Tell me again how you came to be in possession of the evidence proving my innocence?”
“I didn’t t
ell you in the first place. And that’s another question.”
More pacing. Samael rolled his eyes and drained the glass of port, resisting the temptation to throw the glass at the Principality’s head. Bloody Heaven. What if Mittron was wrong, and Bethiel turned down the proposition? Samael couldn’t risk him going to Seth with—
“Is he still there?”
The hungry glint in the Principality’s eye belied the casual tone. Of course. Samael should have realized Mittron would be the carrot he needed to hold out. The Seraph himself had pointed out that nothing motivated quite like revenge. Samael damped down a surge of triumph. He needed to tread carefully here. Bethiel’s mind might be dulled by his years in Limbo, but Samael had no doubt the other would put the puzzle pieces together if he knew the so-called evidence had come from Mittron. Nor did Samael doubt what would happen if Bethiel knew Mittron was on Earth.
He pretended disinterest. “Is who still where?”
“Mittron. Is he still in Heaven?”
“I don’t know who remains.” Samael shrugged. “And frankly, I don’t care. Do we have a deal or not?”
Bethiel made two more circuits of the room, his steps jolting and uneven, fists inside his pockets tapping against his legs. His expression alternated between clear refusal of the idea and a kind of agonized longing that made Samael want to roll his eyes. He waited for the decision he knew to be inevitable. Sometimes others made it almost too easy for him.
Bethiel stopped. He turned to face Samael. Then he took a deep breath and handed over his soul on the proverbial silver platter.
“Where do I find her?” he asked.
*
Standing on the heavily salted sidewalk, fresh snowflakes drifting down around her, Alex stared up at the hospital windows glowing in the night. Was Jen sitting at hers now, looking down on her and wondering why she wasn’t coming inside to see her? Would any part of her be aware enough to care, or to even notice Alex’s presence?
Her cell phone trilled. She tugged it from her coat pocket, glanced at the name Elizabeth Riley on the display, and sighed. She’d been avoiding calls from Henderson all day. It just figured that he’d sic Riley on her instead. She hesitated. While she still didn’t want to talk to anyone, the calls wouldn’t stop until she did, and the Vancouver psychiatrist seemed the lesser of two evils at the moment. At least she could count on Riley’s acerbic manner to shore up her defenses, whereas she suspected she’d fold up on the spot if she heard Hugh’s gruff concern.
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