“So you did know.” She shook her head. “Wait. You said not all me. That wasn’t any of me.”
His concern grew. “I don’t—are you sure?” Her aura was there, spiking and dancing with its neighbor. Her unique taste still lingered on his lips.
Never pulling away from the wall, she worked her wrist free and glided her fingertips along the back of his hand before sliding her fingers between his to lace them together. At least she still trusted him. He wasn’t sure he’d earned that, but he appreciated it.
She inhaled in a shaky-sounding breath. “When we… When we kiss, it’s incredible. The problem is, I don’t know if it’s me feeling it. That’s why I stopped. I don’t know if these are my emotions.”
“Did you enjoy it?” It wasn’t fair of him to ask, but he despised the thought he’d just taken advantage of her.
“Yes.” The single word, a drawn out hiss.
“I won’t try and pretend I know what that’s like. I don’t know if this helps, but I see you here.”
“But you see her too.”
“I’m not kissing her.” The explanation sounded weak even before he said it, but he needed to try. “The power flowing through you? The energy that belongs to you when you’re not hiding from it, it’s more than just a feeling, or a pretty glow around you. It radiates from you in every way. Cool heat when I touch you, spring rain when we kiss. That’s you. She’s scorching chaos mixed with pepper.”
“Even if those aren’t just a bunch of poetic words—and they’re pretty endearing—what if that’s a mistake? You compared my situation to someone hosting a cherub. What if I’m not even a demon? I’m just a vessel for an angel who wants another chance?” She finished with a noisy exhale.
He rolled his head to the side to see her better and traced his gaze over her. Not her body, but the light flickering around her. “You’re a demon, I promise you.”
She stepped in front him, never letting go of his hand. “How do you?”
“I know. I can see it. Whatever else is going on, I know that, as distinctly as I know any agent when I see one. It’s part of who I am.” A part of himself he only called on when he absolutely had to. Being back at Ubiquity, working within their mess of an infrastructure, he remembered it wasn’t such a bad thing to own what He created him for.
She smiled. “Because you’re the great and mighty Michael?”
“Something like that.” He didn’t know any other way to make her understand. Everyone around them was keeping secrets, spinning tales, and he wasn’t interested in it.
“Even if you’re so certain, I don’t know if what’s going on in my head—or heart—is mine.” She searched his face. “If it’s really her, she loved you so very much it almost knocks me over, and I don’t know if anything I experience when I’m with you is my own. She feels everything with an intensity I think most people would kill for a taste of. Love. Vengeance. I lose myself in her emotions.”
He knew that kind of desire. It was the exact thing he wanted to avoid a second time around. So far he was doing a poor job.
She didn’t need that burden though. He squeezed her fingers. “I don’t think that’s true. The things you feel and think and see. The passion you have for the world around you? That’s all you. You radiate intensity, and I see it in your aura. Your light flares when you talk about something you love. When I say I want to be here with you, I know who I’m talking about.”
Which was why he needed to be more careful around her.
“So how do we get her separate from me?”
That was far more important than a crush he shouldn’t have and needed to move past. “We’ll figure it out.”
She pursed her lips. “I’ve heard that before. No offense. But at least this time I actually think you mean it.”
“No.” He corrected her. “Not I’ll figure it out, or maybe it’ll happen eventually on its own. We’ll figure it out. We’ll dig and scrape until it all starts to make sense.”
“I still don’t think it’ll do any good, but thank you.”
“Get to work. We’ll meet up after.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. He wanted more, but even this pushed the boundaries of what he should allow himself. The simple contact spread through him, carried on the wave of cool she radiated, and seeped into every inch of his being.
They had to make this right. She deserved that.
Chapter Nineteen
Michael paced his office, irritation and fury crawling under his skin. He spent all morning digging through the Ubiquity computers. He had more information now. For instance, a portion of their development was outsourced, the top performers in the company were all from heaven, and they blew everyone else away by leaps and bounds.
Too bad he didn’t know what to do with the data. It shouldn’t be his concern. Angels and demons had rules to follow. Orders that, if they disobeyed, cost them immortality. It happened for a variety of reasons: greed, lust, ego, or just the desire to live a different life that wasn’t eons old. Technically, the Ubiquity situation didn’t break the rules.
But he couldn’t ignore the crumbling structure. What should be a joint venture between heaven and hell was turning into the same underhanded backstabbing it was created to eliminate.
While Michael’s job wasn’t justice, he did know His will, and that wasn’t the kind of growth He wanted for his children.
Michael snarled at the empty room. Did Gabriel and Lucifer know these details? He wanted to believe not. Something like this would detract from any other projects they worked on. But they both knew what was going on with Ronnie.
She was a problem all her own. Unpredictable, unreadable, and two separate entities.
He turned for another circuit around the room and halted. Lucifer sat in the chair across from his desk. Michael let the irritation and sarcasm flavor in his tone. “To what do I owe the honor?”
Lucifer lounged, one ankle over the opposite knee. “Do yourself a favor and walk away now.” There was no threat or malice in his words.
So he was onto something. Michael’s phone chimed, and he ignored it. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“It’s a pretty open-ended suggestion. Go back to helping the underdog or find a church in the middle of nowhere. Find yourself.”
“Did you put her up to this?”
“The little scene outside my office? No. I don’t know what she was trying to do. You, on the other hand, I have a pretty good idea. I should have said this the day you showed up in mud-caked shoes, and I hope it’s not too late now. Walk away. Don’t stick your nose in this.”
So this really was about Ronnie. Michael dropped into his chair and leaned forward, arms resting on his desk. “Who is she?”
“She’s not Metatron.”
Not quite a direct answer, but more of one than he expected. “They’ve got a lot in common. Did you know she hears a voice who calls herself that?”
Lucifer’s long exhale stretched on for several seconds before he replied. “Uriel’s a cherub who used to work for me directly. She was good, she was loyal, and I liked her. So I named her.”
“Did you just admit to having a sentimental motivation for something?”
Lucifer snorted. “Don’t try and read between the lines, it doesn’t suit you. She earned the job, so I made her a demon.”
“Sounds status quo.” Michael’s phone chimed again. Irritating thing.
Lucifer raised his brows. “Except she doesn’t remember who she is. I need a drink. Are you thirsty? Let’s go somewhere else.”
“I’m fine.” There was more information here than Michael expected to find in weeks of digging. Except he still couldn’t make the pieces fit. “So she’s telling the truth about her memory.” Part of him hoped she wasn’t. Finding out she lied would make it easier to keep his interest professional. “How does a demon get amnesia?”
“I wish I knew. I’d fix her in a heartbeat. And I can’t even admit it to her. I don’t know why, but I can’t find it in me
to tell her I can’t make this better.” Lucifer raked his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know what to do.”
Michael kept his shock to himself. It was true—whoever this was, Lucifer actually seemed to care about her.
Lucifer shook his head, expression returning to impassive. “But I need to tell her the truth. That I don’t know how to help her.”
Not a tangent Michael expected to linger on. “So what are you doing here?”
“I told you. It’s friendly advice. And something made me think you needed to hear it before she did.”
“You don’t tell me anything out of the goodness of your heart.”
“And I’m not this time either. I’m not here for you, I’m here because I don’t like Gabriel.”
Michael struggled to draw a connection and failed. It was the obvious statement of history, after what Gabriel did to Metatron. “And?”
“And nothing. I tell you to leave, my odds are better if for some reason this comes down to taking sides.” Lucifer stood. “This is a bad place for you to be.”
The shift in subject was so rapid it almost gave Michael whiplash. “What are you up to?” He felt like a broken record, but each new poke seemed to chip Lucifer’s armor further.
“Stay out of this. It’s up to me to make this right for my baby sister.”
Shock coursed through Michael at the nickname. Like Ronnie—a name reserved for Metatron, until now. “What did you say?”
Lucifer stared back, expression impassive. “I have to figure out what to do about Uriel. I can’t have a demon running around with a voice in her head.”
Michael watched him vanish from the room, replaying snippets of the conversation in his head. Damn it. He slammed his fist into his desk. For a minute, he almost believed everything Lucifer told him. Had there been any truth in the conversation at all?
Michael’s phone chimed again. “What?” he yelled at the empty room. He clenched his jaw and took a few deep breaths. Temper under control, he grabbed the device and pulled up the series of text messages. More of his foul mood evaporated when he saw they were from Izrafel.
Back in town.
You wanted to talk?
Stop by anytime.
He pocketed the phone, sent Ronnie a quick email, and made his way to the elevator.
Moments later, Michael stood in front of the apartment above the church. The door swung open the moment he knocked.
Izrafel grinned and stepped aside. “This must be important.”
“Most likely. More so now than it was a week or two ago.” No reason to be rude, though. “How was Fiji?”
Izrafel laughed and flopped into an easy chair, gesturing to the sofa across from him. Overflowing bookcases covered the surrounding walls and more books—both ancient and new—littered the coffee table between them. A laptop sat open on the orange carpet, and two tablets were plugged into the wall next to it. “Incredible. Did you know they have a tribe there who believes as long as they leave every second coconut on the ground, they incur His favor? I’ve been trying to trace back the origins of that since I returned to civilization.”
“How do they know they’re leaving behind every second and not every first and third?”
“Faith.”
Michael smiled at that. The banter was familiar and friendly, but they both knew the meeting held a deeper purpose. “Did you get my email?”
Izrafel nudged an open book across the table with his sock-covered foot. “You’ve met her, then. Angels coming back from the dead, possession, and falling but not losing power. Do you have any idea how many variations there are on that theme across the world and centuries?”
“I have a little idea. But I was hoping your knowledge might make it easier to find the common elements and extract the reality.”
“Oddly enough, this is a difficult one to pin down.” Izrafel leaned over and pointed to highlighted paragraphs in the book. It was fairly new—pages still white, and cover, a glossy, full-color paper. “This sums it up most succinctly, but it’s still vague.” He grabbed another book from a tumbling stack, cradling the yellowed pages. “But this one backs up the claims.” He reached for a third and added it to the stack. “And this one—”
“Can you summarize for me?” Michael knew this could go on for days if he let it. Sometimes he did. Today it didn’t feel as if there was time.
“Not a single documented case, or anything resembling one, of an angel who once was reappearing as someone else.”
Concern rolled into agitated illness in Michael’s midsection. That was what he was afraid of. “She’s got Metatron.”
Izrafel shuffled the books around, not meeting his gaze. “You’re sure?”
“Without a doubt.”
“Shit.” Izrafel jumped to his feet and strolled to one side of the room before whirling and storming back to the other. He muttered unintelligibly under his breath as he paced.
He finally stopped and looked at Michael again. “Can you bring her here? Soon?”
Michael had never seen the former angel so serious. Not in thousands of years. Any trace of levity was gone from his voice, and his posture was tight and coiled. How bad was this? Michael stood. “Yes.”
Chapter Twenty
Ronnie drummed her finger on the right mouse button as she sifted through the queue. Dud, dud, dud. What a surprise. Most of these didn’t even remotely look like they might be cherubs. Or maybe she wasn’t interested in finding them anymore. What gave her the right to take their lives from them?
The air shifted around her, and she flinched at the familiarity of it. Her eyes were drawn toward Michael’s office just in time to see the blinds flip shut. Lucifer.
“You know talking to him doesn’t really work for us these days.”
Ronnie gritted her teeth, hating to agree. But why was he talking to Michael? What happened to her and Michael doing this together?
“The whole of life doesn’t revolve around you. They had jobs before you, and they’ll continue to after. I should know.”
Ronnie slouched in her seat and forced her attention back to her work. Stupid, reasonable voice. Besides, she trusted Michael—at least as far as his not colluding with Lucifer to make her life worse.
“Nice qualifier.”
She had other things to worry about anyway. For instance, Ari still wasn’t at work. It was Tuesday, so she’d only been gone for two days. But the weekend felt like an eternity ago. Then there was that whole angels don’t get sick thing. If she was out on assignment, she would have shown up to retrieve the information, and she wasn’t on vacation, so where was she?
“She tried to steal my soul. Why do you care?”
She tried to help Ronnie. Now who was being egocentric and overreacting?
“Fuck you, too.”
Some of Ronnie’s tension evaporated when Lucifer’s power vanished from the office. The relief nudged a sadness inside she couldn’t quite place. It was true, Lucifer was good to her, but heavy disappointment filled her because they were barely on speaking terms. Why should it matter?
“None of your business.”
Great, more feelings that weren’t Ronnie’s.
A few minutes later, her email chimed with a message from Michael. Have to look into something. Meet me later this evening? She was pleased he seemed serious about what he said this morning, but at the same time, she was concerned about how much of her reaction to him was her own. His confidence there ran far deeper than hers.
It would give her time to check on Ari as soon as Ronnie was off the clock. Which, as the minutes continued to drag away in slow ticks of the clock, took forever. The moment the display clicked from 4:59 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., she logged off and grabbed her purse before transporting herself to Ari’s front landing.
Ronnie knocked. And waited. Was she not home? Maybe she was on assignment, and Ronnie didn’t know it. She should have called. As she was turning away, the door creaked.
Ari poked her head out. Her normally almost spri
ng-loaded curls hung limply around her face, dark shadows circled her eyes, and her aura was barely visible. A tiny smile forced some color into her cheeks when her gaze met Ronnie’s, and she opened the door wider. Her voice was quiet. “Hey, what are you doing here?”
“Worrying about you.” Ronnie stepped into small apartment. The studio looked a lot like hers: minimal furniture, tiny not-quite kitchen. But the closet was stuffed to spilling over with a rainbow of clothing, and she knew from past experience, at least half the contents of the fridge was butterscotch pudding.
Ari snorted. “After Saturday? You should be leaving me to rot. Did you see how furious Gabriel was?”
“Which I don’t get. You were just doing what I asked you to.”
More of the shadows faded from around Ari’s eyes. “You’re too sweet to be from hell.”
Ronnie didn’t know what to say to that. She did know what should lighten the mood, though. “We should go to dinner. Someplace nice. Blow any extra cash we have for the week.”
“Maybe we could just walk.”
That didn’t sound right. “Or we could go for coffee, if you’re worried about the money.”
“I don’t have ti—”
The shrillness in her voice caught Ronnie off guard.
Ari clenched her jaw. It took her a few seconds before her expression softened. “I don’t want good coffee to go to waste. I’ll explain, I promise. Let’s just walk.”
“I’d like to go on record as saying I don’t like this. I’d like to, but I know you won’t listen, so, meh.”
Ronnie attached the thought to her own misgivings. But she couldn’t find a source for the uneasiness sliding through her. Besides, she missed Ari. “A walk sounds good.”
Ari slipped on the pair of flip-flops by the door, and seconds later, they meandered down the sidewalk. Curiosity and concern grew under Ronnie’s skin when the silence stretched on.
Uriel's Descent (Ubiquity #1) Page 16
