by Stacia Kane
She glanced back in time to see Elizabeth Reid exiting the lobby. Somehow she didn’t think that boded well.
Greyson sighed and leaned back with his eyes closed. His hand found hers, held it tight. A shiver of fear danced up her spine. What could be so bad that he didn’t want to tell her? The last time he’d been this reluctant to give her information, she’d been up against an actual Legion of Hell. She could only hope that whatever the problem was this time wouldn’t be as dangerous, but somehow she suspected her hope was in vain.
“Just tell me,” she managed. “Whatever it is.”
His lips tightened, as if they wanted to smile but couldn’t summon the strength; his voice was barely audible. “I never thought I’d actually see one. I didn’t even think they still existed.”
“One what?”
“Lord Dante, I’m sorry. I never meant for him to grab me, I din’t. I just couldn’t ’elp but laugh, seein’ as ’ow they was being so silly and all, an’ then he—”
“Never mind, Maleficarum. It doesn’t matter.” Greyson cleared his throat, lifted his head. “We have a bigger problem.”
He hadn’t let go of Megan’s hand. She pulled both into her lap and turned to face him. “What?”
He hesitated. For a second she thought he wasn’t going to tell her, that he wanted to think about it first to be certain. He didn’t like to say anything until he was absolutely sure he was right, she knew; she would have believed it was something he’d learned in law school if she didn’t suspect he’d been that way all his life. He didn’t like to be wrong.
Finally he spoke. “It’s an angel.”
“Don’t be silly, Grey,” Tera started, from the seat behind them. “Angels don’t—”
“They do exist, Tera. We were just in the presence of one. Although why . . . well, who the hell knows why they do the things they do.”
Megan licked her lips. “Seeing as how it tried to kill me last night, I’m guessing this isn’t the angels-bless-and-guide-you type of angel.”
“No angel is that type of angel. They’re all complete bastards. Dangerous ones. Fuck!”
Tera’s hand pulled at the seat as she leaned forward. “There’s no evidence in Vergardering’s files that angels actually exist. None. Our records go back to ancient Rome, and in all that time there hasn’t been a single confirmed angel sighting.”
“Of course there hasn’t.” He glared at her. “They don’t generally announce themselves. And they are rare.”
“It felt like a demon,” Megan said.
“Angels is real, all right.” Malleus looked pale beneath the black brim of his hat. “Seen one before. Musta been a hundred years back at least. Yeh, it were, ’cause Victoria were on the throne. Seen it at a party, a gathering like our one now. Scared the life out of me, it did.”
“So you should be able to see them,” Tera said. “But you didn’t see this one.”
“Weren’t lookin’. If Lord Dante says it’s an angel, it’s an angel, Miss Tera.”
They’d pulled into the long drive of the Bellreive; trees lined the edges and cut the bright sun. It made the SUV’s interior feel icy, or perhaps it was simply what the men were saying. Megan shivered. It didn’t seem possible. Not that angels existed but that they were the bad guys. She supposed it made sense that demons would see angels that way, but she wasn’t a demon.
Greyson had told her once that God had nothing to do with demons, that he had very little to do with anything, in fact. The afterlife was the afterlife, and people went where they thought they were going, and there were hundreds, if not thousands, of gods. He wouldn’t lie about such a thing.
But even if he had, which she didn’t believe, she wasn’t a demon. If angels and demons were locked in some sort of battle—again, which she didn’t believe, and she was pretty sure she would have seen evidence of it by now if it were true—why would an angel be after her, when she was human? What possible reason would an angel have to want to kill her?
It was the most important question and the one she most didn’t want to ask. The one she feared asking.
But she feared a lot of things. And part of her job was encouraging her patients to face their fears. She didn’t always succeed at it, and she didn’t always do it herself; being a psychological counselor didn’t make her any less susceptible to normal foibles and fears, just more aware of when she was succumbing to them.
But she tried. It was all she could do. So she took a deep breath. “Why would an angel want to kill me?”
“It’s possible someone paid him to,” Greyson said. “That when the litobora attack didn’t work, they hired an angel to finish the job.”
She digested that while Spud braked just beyond the valet stand, waiting for the okay to pull up and surrender the vehicle. She appreciated him not interrupting the conversation but found herself wishing that just once he wouldn’t be so polite; she could have used a few minutes’ distraction. Pretending everything was okay often led to feeling as though everything was okay, and while it would be fleeting and illusory, it would have been nice to feel okay. As opposed to terrified, hunted, and sick.
Then Nick spoke, and everything got so much worse. “You’re assuming the angel attack is related to the litobora. It might not be.”
“Jesus, Nick, thanks for the cheer.” She turned to look at him. “How many people do you think have reasons to kill me?”
“I’m not saying it’s definitely more than one, just that we can’t assume anything.”
He was right, and she knew it. She hated it when that happened.
“I still think you guys are crazy to say it’s an angel,” Tera said.
“And I say I’m not,” Greyson replied. “Do you have a better theory? Any theory at all? Or do you just enjoy contradicting mine?”
Tera folded her arms over her chest and glared at him. “No.”
“Good.” Greyson nodded toward the windshield; through it Megan saw one of the valets coming for them. A car had just swerved around them as they idled like a barnacle in the drive. “Go on, Spud. We’ll talk more upstairs.”
Chapter 17
Lots of things did not appeal to Megan. Skydiving, for example. Root canals. Lamb chops. Things she simply avoided.
Way up at the top of that list she would have to put “Making a list of people who might want me dead and why.”
It wasn’t the making of the list that was so awful, although—actually, yes, making the list was really fucking awful. Watching the list grow longer and, worse, realizing that she could provide legitimate reasons why any one of the people on it might want to see her dead . . . it felt as if she’d swallowed an anvil.
Oh, no, wait. The best part of all was getting to see how fucking enthusiastic her supposed friends were.
“Don’t forget any of the patients of that Fearbuddies group or whatever it was called.” Tera popped a tortilla chip into her mouth. “They might be pissed that you killed their therapist.”
Roc plucked a chip from the bag too. “Wouldn’t they have come after Megan sooner?”
“Not necessarily. Maybe they’ve been saving up the money, just plotting and planning all these months, obsessing over her—”
“Hey, do you think whoever it is has pictures of her all over his house?” Roc’s beady little eyes lit up. “Like, they’ve drawn big black X’s over her face and written ‘Die Megan Die’ on their walls, or—”
“That’s enough, Roc,” Greyson said.
“I’m just wondering, I mean, someone who’s been planning and waiting that long must really hate Megan, right, so—”
“Cut it out, Roc,” Megan said, and not a moment too soon; she thought Greyson was going to leap off the couch and throw Roc out the window. Not that she would mind. And not that it would hurt Roc. Because of what he was, he could simply dematerialize before he hit the ground. But—
“Hey!” She sat up, Roc forgotten. “The angel. He could fly. I mean, he could materialize and dematerialize. Just like Yezer.
Right?”
“Apparently,” Greyson said.
“So can the Yezer follow him wherever it is he’s going? If we tell them all to look for him, maybe they can find out where he’s staying.”
Roc nodded. “We’re already on it. But don’t forget, he can hide himself from us too, so I don’t know how effective that will be.”
She slumped. “Shit, I had forgotten.”
Roc had reported to her in the morning the results of his conversations with the Yezer who’d been guarding the door the night before. Unfortunately, none of them had seen anyone except Elizabeth Reid, so there wasn’t anything to go on with that.
“It’s something to start with, though.” Greyson patted her thigh, a second’s touch that made her feel a little better, while he spoke to Roc. “It’s very possible you guys will be able to see him if he dematerializes. Certainly if he wanders into the psychic plane, you might be able to feel him, if you’re paying attention.”
“He’ll feel like a demon, right?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Tera and Megan asked at the same time.
Greyson smiled, a thin smile that bore only a touch of humor. “They’re related to us. Not exactly the same but close enough.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Tera said.
“Yes. The only good thing Vergadering ever did was to wipe those psychos off the planet. Of course, they didn’t entirely succeed, obviously, but then you witches do tend to be overconfident.”
“Whatever.” Again with the tortilla chips. Tera’s eating habits never ceased to amaze Megan; she had a demon’s metabolism and a cast-iron stomach. “I told you, there is nothing in the files. No proof. No evidence. So I’m not sure how you think we warred with angels when as far as we’re concerned they don’t exist.”
“Yes, I know. But trust me, you did.”
Tera’s eyes narrowed. Her hand, full of tortilla, stopped halfway to her mouth. “Wait a minute. You said they’re related to you. Did we think they were you? Did you—you guys used us to beat them, didn’t you.”
Greyson shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I wasn’t even alive then.”
“And even if he was,” Nick cut in, “we would have done whatever we had to do. Just like you did. Do I need to remind you of Columbia? How about Oakton? Do you remember the demon children your soldiers murdered? The camps you sent innocent demons, demons who didn’t fight, into?”
“Okay, what the hell is your problem?” Tera actually dropped her chips. “You’ve been sniping at me all day. What did I ever do to you?”
“It’s what you witches did to me,” Nick snapped. “It’s your—”
“Nick.” Greyson’s head was turned away from Megan; she couldn’t see his face. But Nick could. He stopped, paled a little, and nodded.
The silence following was as awkward as any Megan had ever experienced, and her work certainly lent itself to uncomfortable moments. Her instincts at work led her to remain quiet herself while her patients worked through whatever they needed to, or at the very most to ask a quiet, unobtrusive question if the conversation seemed to have stalled completely.
But this wasn’t work. These were her friends, and somehow they’d hit a wall again, a wall that had something to do with Nick and whatever horrors his past contained. They’d brushed up against the subject before, but Megan had never actually spoken to him about it. It was private, and one thing she didn’t find at all disorienting about demon culture was how much they all valued their privacy.
So she reached for a chip herself and forced it down her throat. It tasted a bit like sawdust, but that wasn’t the chip’s fault, and she needed the delay more than she cared about how she took it. “So do you think the angel’s really after me, or does it just like hanging around Reverend Walther? Maybe it’s not what attacked me at all.”
“It had attached itself to that FBI agent,” Greyson said. “It attacked her before you, remember?”
“It was there last night.” The chip fell from her hands. “Right before it showed up today, it felt like everyone suddenly became unreadable. Just like those employees felt last night.”
Greyson nodded. “Doesn’t surprise me. I wouldn’t have seen him if he hadn’t been so absorbed in watching Maleficarum that he forgot to keep himself hidden. At least so I assume. I doubt he was deliberately unmasking himself.”
“Maybe he was.” Nick seemed to have regained his composure. “Maybe he was picking a fight. Taunting us.”
“Anything’s possible. I guess we—”
“Grey?” Carter appeared at the bedroom door; he’d been in there doing some work or whatever it was he did. Megan was never quite clear on the details, but she knew he was always available and always busy, just as Greyson had been for his boss Templeton Black.
Greyson had overthrown Templeton—protecting her, not to mention furthering his own interests—and had him sent to a Vergadering prison, where Templeton had died just before Christmas. An apparent suicide; they’d never discovered exactly how he’d done it, but he’d left a note.
Greyson was already up, walking across the room. “I’ll be right back.”
The others sat there, with Nick and Tera exchanging cautious looks and Roc cheerfully snacking. “So,” he said, after swallowing another enormous mouthful. “Do you think whoever it is who hates Megan had to pay a lot of money to have her killed?”
Three hours later Megan was sick of TV. Sick of the suite. Sick of the Bellreive.
It wasn’t that she was having a bad time. Once Tera and Nick had decided to bury the hatchet—figuratively—they’d actually gotten along okay, and if conversation occasionally suffered an abrupt pause when one of them, usually Nick, bit their tongue, it flowed easily enough the rest of the time.
But she was sick of this. Sick of Roc’s gentle snores on the couch beside her. Sick of Malleus’s ceaseless wanderings through the rooms, checking all the closets on every pass. “Lord Dante said make sure you’re safe, m’lady, and I’ll keep you safe, you c’n Adam ’n’ Eve that.”
“I do,” she said, for what felt like the dozenth time and probably was. “You know I do. But you’re getting on my nerves.”
Malleus looked wounded. “You oughter have more care for yerself, you ought. Think what it might do to Lord Dante if something ’appened to you. Me an’ Lif an’ Spud, we fink you take too many risks, an’ it’s time you quit and settle down. No offense, m’lady, but Lord Dante needs—”
Nick leaped up. “What’s that, out the window?”
“What?” Malleus hurled himself across the room with the kind of speed that constantly surprised Megan; one didn’t expect to see a tank move that fast, but the brothers all did when they wanted to.
She caught Nick’s eye and smiled her thanks. Was it her imagination, or did his return smile look rather uneasy?
Well, so what if it did? There was plenty to be uneasy about. Attacks on her life and angels and the whole witch-demon thing and whatever it was Nick was carrying around with him.
“Nuffink ’ere,” Malleus called over his shoulder. “I’ll stay, though, an’ keep watch for a few minutes to make sure.”
“Thanks, Malleus.”
Someone knocked at the door, and Malleus once again zipped over before the knocks resolved themselves into the complex little passcode the brothers had devised. For a second Megan’s heart jumped in her chest, hoping it was Greyson back from whatever business had called him away, but he wouldn’t have knocked, and it wasn’t him. It was Carter returning just ahead of him.
He settled himself on the couch beside Nick. “You guys having fun?”
Megan rolled her eyes. “An absolute blast. I wish someone was trying to kill me every day.”
“Thanks a lot,” Tera said. “Here I’m sitting watching dumb TV instead of shopping, just to keep you company. The least you could do is appreciate it.”
“If you guys are talking about shopping, I’m going into the bedroom.” Nick smiled, but Megan couldn’t shake the
feeling that something was bothering him.
She couldn’t ask, though. Not then, in front of everyone. So instead she just smiled. “We’re going to talk about shoes for the next hour, Nick. Escape while you can.”
“If you put it that way.”
They all watched him go. That day he wore black jeans and a black T-shirt; Tera raised her eyebrows when he closed the bedroom door behind him. “He’s kind of a touchy asshole, but he’s awfully sexy.”
“Tell me about it,” Carter said.
Megan blinked; she had the horrifying suspicion her mouth had fallen open. It didn’t matter, not one damn bit; it was simply the fact that she’d known him for months now, and it had never even—it made her ashamed of herself. Why should she assume he was straight? What was the matter with her?
He caught her look. “You didn’t know?”
“I—no. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to—”
“Of course I’m gay.” He looked at her as if she had just grown an extra head. “Grey isn’t stupid.”
“Well, no, but I don’t—”
“Maybe we oughter check and see if Lord Dante’s coming back now.” Malleus rushed across the room again; watching him was like watching a very large black tennis ball in play. “I’ll just get th’ door open ’ere—”
“I won’t be having any children,” Carter explained. “At least not the kind I’d need to have. Right? You know this. So I can’t possibly overthrow him. Once he has a son, it won’t matter so much, and he’ll be more secure, but with how vulnerable he is already because you’re human, he really needs to get moving—”
“That’s enough, Carter.” Greyson stood in the doorway. Icy cold energy danced over Megan’s skin; his anger, the only emotion she could always feel from demons, translating as a frigid blast.
