Nathaniel’s blond hair stuck straight up in front and had been blackened by soot. So had his face and his formerly pristine shirt front. As I sniggered into my palm, a couple of blackened feathers fell from his wings onto the floor.
He raised an eyebrow at me and I schooled my face into seriousness. Then he wordlessly thrust a piece of paper into my hand.
I turned the paper over and saw that there was a message printed on one side. It said, simply, “I KNOW WHERE THEY ARE KEEPING HIM.”
I flipped the paper again, looking for further information. There was nothing but the message.
“Well, that’s really freaking helpful,” I muttered. “You’d think they’d have included a map or some flying directions or something.”
I looked back up at Nathaniel, who appeared to be gathering the shredded remains of his dignity around him. “What happened when you brought the ball outside?”
“It exploded before I managed to get it to the rain barrel,” he said tightly.
“I didn’t hear anything,” I said.
“It was a small explosion, and I held the bomb close to my chest so as not to cause property damage.” He looked as though he were regretting this act of charity.
“Well, thanks,” I said, touched by his thoughtfulness, however grudgingly given. “And where was the message?”
“Inside the bomb.”
I rubbed my fingers on the paper. It felt like perfectly normal standard bond notepaper. “How did the paper survive the explosion?”
“Perhaps there was an enchantment on the paper,” Nathaniel replied, shrugging.
He didn’t seem as interested in the mechanics of the message-delivery system as he was in straightening and dusting the cuffs of his shirt. I, however, was very interested. An enchantment could only mean that the message had been delivered by a magical practitioner. Okay, fine. Most things that go bump in the night have some kind of magic. Not all of them had the kind of fine abilities that would allow them to keep a piece of paper safe inside an incendiary device.
So that narrowed things down to a witch or a faerie. Probably. There was still a lot I didn’t know about the world, as I was discovering every day. But it seemed that your average Agent, demon, angel, vampire, et cetera, probably couldn’t have performed this kind of spell.
Of course, one had to wonder why a witch or a faerie would send this completely unhelpful message inside a bomb. Was the being that sent the message a friend? And if so, was it their idea of a funny joke to send it in a way that could have potentially blown off a limb?
“Did you get a look at whoever lobbed this thing through the window?” I asked Nathaniel. “You were facing that way.”
He shook his head. “I only saw the bomb approaching.”
I frowned. “So whoever threw it could have flown past very quickly. Or thrown it from a great distance. Or possibly levitated it from the ground. Oh, hell. Maybe Beezle saw something.”
“Where is your gargoyle?” Nathaniel asked. “Surely this commotion should have attracted his attention.”
“You’re right,” I said, turning and hurrying toward the front of the house. Beezle kept his nest underneath the picture window, on the front porch roof. This ensured that he would not only see anything approaching the front door, but also that he could spy on anything that was going on in the street. Beezle is about as nosy as it gets.
“Beezle!” I shouted, throwing up the screen and leaning out until I could see his nest. The nest was a jumble of sticks, leaves, newspapers and the small piece of plaid wool that Beezle used to wrap around his ears. “Beezle!”
He didn’t answer, and I felt a little ping of anxiety. Whoever had lobbed that bomb at my window could have hurt Beezle. I leaned farther, my hips balancing precariously over the sill, my skin coming out in goose bumps in the chilly November air.
“Beezle!” I shouted. “You answer me right now!”
Some neighbors walking by on the street below looked up in puzzlement and then quickly looked away when they saw me hanging out of the window and shouting like a lunatic.
“Beezle!” I repeated, my eyes searching every tree branch and every roof shingle in sight. No sign of my cranky gargoyle.
“Beezle!” I said again, and I felt myself overbalancing, my nose tilting toward the roof, and I had a second to wonder if I should call up my wings, when I felt Nathaniel’s arm around my waist, pulling me back inside.
I slapped at his arm, struggled against him. “Let me go! I have to find Beezle!”
“You are not going to find him by shouting out the window. If the gargoyle were there, he would have come at your call,” he said reasonably.
I breathed long through my nose in counts of three, and then did the same for the exhalation. I had to calm down. I had to think. Beezle was missing. He could be lying hurt somewhere out of sight.
“Okay,” I said, tapping at Nathaniel’s arm and looking up at his stony face. He was probably pissed that my behavior had reflected poorly on him—again. “Okay. You can let me go now.”
“You are not going to do anything foolish?” he asked.
“Define ‘foolish,’” I said, and then shook my head at his look of puzzlement. “Sarcasm. Obviously not something you are familiar with. Anyway, no, I am not going to hang out the window and shout like the neighborhood crazy anymore.”
He released me slowly, like he wasn’t sure whether or not to believe me. I turned around and faced him.
“I need to find Beezle,” I said. I tried not to think of how alone I felt at this moment, with no Beezle and no Gabriel, because if I thought of that, I might cry, and the last thing I wanted to do was cry in front of Nathaniel. “You can head back to court.”
He raised his eyebrow, an expression that I realized I would probably be seeing often since it obviously meant he was annoyed with me. “So I am dismissed, then, Princess?”
I felt the blood rise in my cheeks. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so high-handed. But I have to go now. Beezle might be hurt.”
“I will assist you,” he said.
I tried not to look completely astonished but I am sure that I failed. Nathaniel was never going to be my first choice for company, but it would be good to have an extra pair of hands around in case whatever threw the bomb was still hanging around. “Um, okay. Let me grab some sneakers and a coat and we can head outside. Can you, um, hide yourself when your wings are out?”
“One of the first things an angel learns is how to disguise his nature from mortals,” he said in an arrogant tone.
That snide remark made me feel more at ease. I could go back to disliking him and not have to struggle with the weird feeling of being grateful to him for healing me, and for helping me find Beezle.
I ran to my room, pulled on an overcoat and my black Converse sneakers, and then met Nathaniel by the front door. He was fixing his hair in the small mirror that hung over the table where I dumped my keys and spare cell phones.
“Come on, beautiful,” I said, rolling my eyes. “We have work to do.”
I let my wings out and winked out of sight. Nathaniel disappeared a moment later. Mortal eyes would not be able to see us, but to anything supernatural we would appear see-through, like ghosts.
We headed out the front window and started from the roof of the house down. I carefully checked every eave, every nook, every windowsill. I practically pinned my nose to the ground and crawled all around the front and back yards, calling down rabbit holes and peeking behind bushes. Nothing.
No sign of Beezle. No evidence of my attacker. Nothing.
I tried not to panic. Losing Gabriel was one thing. I had confusing, lusty feelings for him and didn’t want to see him hurt. But losing Beezle was devastating. I had never, never been without him in my whole life. He had always been there—irascible, sometimes annoying, but he was mine. He’d been like a parent to me when I was young and alone and afraid, and a constant companion as I grew older. I could not even contemplate a future without Beezle in it.
I stood in the gangway between my house and my neighbor’s and leaned against the outer wall of the building, rough brick against my check, my eyes closed. My stomach churned with anxiety. What had happened to Beezle? Who had taken him, and why? Were they hurting him? Would they ransom him?
I felt the brush of soft linen against my cheeks, and looked up to see Nathaniel standing before me. He tucked his handkerchief back in his pocket as I straightened.
“I wasn’t crying,” I said.
“Of course not,” he replied.
“I’m just worried about Beezle,” I said.
“Naturally,” he said.
There was an awkward silence, and it only highlighted the nearly impossible distance between us. Gabriel would have comforted me, and I would have welcomed his comfort. Nathaniel didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t know if I wanted him to do anything anyway. And thinking these kinds of thoughts only made me feel more alone.
“I have arranged for repairmen to come and fix your back door and your broken window,” Nathaniel said.
The door. I’d mostly forgotten about it. Gabriel and I had pushed it back into the frame as best we could and nailed it shut yesterday morning—was it only yesterday? Why did it seem like ever since I’d discovered I was Azazel’s daughter I had more and more days like this, days that seemed like lifetimes?
“How did you get out the back door when the bomb was in your hand? The door was nailed shut.”
Nathaniel shrugged. “I tore it out of the frame.”
“Ah. But it’s going to be fixed now.”
“Yes. I would not wish to take any chances with your safety.”
He said this in a way that made me look up at him, and I thought maybe there was something like tenderness in his eyes. Maybe he meant it. Maybe he really did want to keep me safe. That didn’t mean he cared about the person I really was as opposed to the person he wanted me to be. And no amount of tenderness would help me find Beezle or Gabriel. But I needed him to cooperate with me, in at least one way.
“Listen, Nathaniel,” I said. “I really do need you to keep this business about Gabriel from Azazel.”
He frowned. “Are you asking me to lie to my lord? Because the penalty for such a thing would be fierce.”
As much I didn’t like Nathaniel, I didn’t want him to be punished. And I was sure that he wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice his beautiful face for my sake. I’d have to play this carefully.
“I think that you would agree that something strange is going on here,” I said.
He said nothing, only nodded so that I would continue.
“But I would not want to alarm my father unnecessarily.”
“Surely in an event like this you would wish him to know? What if you incurred bodily injury while the . . . Gabriel was missing?”
“Well, in point of fact, I already have incurred bodily injury. And I’m okay, thanks to you.”
“And what of the regular reports that Gabriel makes to Lord Azazel?”
I had thought this one through already, and I was pretty sure that I’d come up with a good solution. “What if you made the reports for a few days?”
Nathaniel’s frown deepened. “You want me to deceive my lord by pretending to be the thrall?”
I decided to overlook his reference to Gabriel’s status just this once. This part was going to be tricky.
“No, I just want you to call in to Azazel every day like Gabriel would. But I want you to edit your reports. Edit,” I repeated, when he looked like he was going to argue. “Not lie. Just fail to mention certain information. And if Azazel is hearing from you, then surely he won’t mind if he doesn’t hear from Gabriel.”
“But in order for me to report to Lord Azazel I would have to have daily knowledge of your activities and whereabouts,” he said.
I nodded. This was the part that I really did not like. “Right, well, you would stay here for a few days.”
He looked speculatively at me. “With you?”
“In Gabriel’s apartment,” I corrected.
Nathaniel appeared to be thinking it over. I found myself unconsciously holding my breath as I waited for his decision. There was no reason for him to help me, and really no reason for him to potentially put himself on the line for Gabriel. But this was the best solution I could come up with. My hope was that Azazel would be so happy that I wanted Nathaniel to stay nearby that he wouldn’t wonder about Gabriel’s radio silence.
What are the chances of that? I thought to myself, and the voice in my head sounded a lot like Beezle’s. Azazel didn’t strike me as stupid, but I was hoping that I could pull a little sleight of hand. Maybe he wouldn’t notice what I was doing with my left hand because he was watching my right.
“Your plan is not without risk,” Nathaniel said.
I nodded.
“There is a strong possibility that my lord is already aware that the thrall is missing.”
Beezle had mentioned this, too, but as I’d thought about it, I realized that it couldn’t be true. “Wouldn’t he have contacted me, then, to make other arrangements for my safety?”
Nathaniel thought about it for a moment. “Possibly. Or possibly he is waiting to see if you will call him. It is impossible to divine my lord’s intentions.”
Great. “Well, everyone keeps telling me that I am more important than anything else to Azazel, so I am going to assume that he would have gotten me another bodyguard by now. Surely my welfare would rank above any mind games.”
“That would seem to be so, but it is not safe to assume anything with the Grigori.”
I was getting impatient with Nathaniel’s dithering. “Look, can we just assume that Azazel doesn’t know, and that if we pull this off, he will never know? Are you going to help me out or what?”
Nathaniel looked disapproving. “You are asking me to make a decision that may materially affect my well-being, for the sake of a half-blood thrall and a woman who does not particularly like me.”
I gritted my teeth. “It’s just possible that I might like you more if you help me out.”
“Very well. I will assist you. But I will want something in exchange from you at a later date.”
I looked at him warily. “Something? Could you be more specific about that something?”
“I do not know what I might need at a later date, so how can I specify?”
I thought about it for a minute. “All right. It’s a deal. But I have the right of refusal, same as you did. If I decide that the task isn’t something I want to do, then you can ask me for something else later.”
“It is a bargain, then,” he said, and he held out his hand to me.
I wondered if this was how Faust felt when Mephistopheles held out the contract. I was getting something I wanted, but what price would I pay?
I put my hand in his to shake, and instead he raised it to his lips. When his mouth touched my skin, I felt a little thrill of attraction deep in my belly, and again felt like I was somehow betraying Gabriel. I tried to pull away and his fingers tightened on mine.
“Remember, Madeline Black, you are my betrothed. There will come a day when you belong to me, body and soul. And then there will be no bargaining between us. I will be master in my own house.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and yanked my hand away, any hint of attraction doused by his attitude. “And you wonder why I dislike you.”
“You have lived too long on your own,” he said. “You will see my way is better, in time.”
I clenched my fists at my sides. I would not lose control and blast him back into the Old Testament, which was apparently where he had collected his notions of marriage. I needed him to help me now. If he wanted to believe that one day I would be a meek little miss who would cleave unto him without a word of protest, then he could have his fantasies. There was no guarantee that the marriage would actually happen in any case.
“Whatever. Listen, do you think that we could go back to the alley where Gabriel went missing and see
if you can pick up anything that I didn’t? It seems like everything bad started there.”
“And what of your gargoyle? Do you believe that he was taken by the same creature that took your bodyguard?”
“I have to believe it,” I said. “Otherwise I have too many enemies to contemplate.”
“I am sure that you do,” he said. “Your lineage practically dictates that it is so.”
“Way to comfort, Nathaniel.”
We took off for the alley near the grocery store, the site of the second wolf murder, Gabriel’s kidnapping and my strange attack from Samiel. I felt like I might be pressing my luck going back there, since an assortment of bad things had already occurred at that site. But it was the only lead that I had.
Late-afternoon traffic backed up on Ashland below us as we flew. The sky had a gray, wet look and the air was cold and damp. I shivered under my coat. I was still wearing only a T-shirt and sweatpants, since I hadn’t really thought about dressing for the weather when I ran outside to search for Beezle. I couldn’t be seen when my wings were out, but I could still experience the elements. I was invisible, not indestructible. Nathaniel, on the other hand, seemed perfectly comfortable despite his lack of gloves and hat. Yet another reason to dislike him.
We landed in the alley just as it began to drizzle.
“Wonderful,” I muttered. “It’s so great when the weather obscures every possible piece of evidence.”
“The type of evidence that we are searching for would not be visible to the human eye in any case,” Nathaniel said. “You are looking for traces of magic, or the evidence of a supernatural being.”
“I thought you said that you couldn’t trace a power signature?”
Nathaniel huffed, clearly annoyed that I had reminded him of a defect. “I cannot trace a power signature, but I can sense the evidence of magic. You would be able to as well, if only you would concentrate.”
“So you mean that I don’t need you at all?” I said, but softly enough that he couldn’t hear. I hoped.
As Nathaniel walked around the area, I tried to focus my magic, to send out my will and look for the traces of other kinds of power. This wasn’t like casting nightfire, or even the kind of magic that I used as an Agent to break a soul’s binding to its body. It wasn’t about destruction. It was a softer kind of magic, and soft magic was not my specialty. I could barely control my powers at the best of times. Fine control was pretty much beyond me.
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