Angel Tormented (The Louisiangel Series Book 3)

by C. L. Coffey

  Drumming up every bit of acting skill I had in me, I forced myself to remain poker-faced. I glanced at Leon, trying to look like I was paying attention to what he was saying about the Fallen being more powerful than he thought – he didn’t seem to have picked up on what I had, but he hadn’t met Mama Laveau and witnessed her reaction. I casually looked to Joshua. As far as I could tell, he hadn’t worked it out either, and then he met my eyes. His expression didn’t change but I knew he had.

  Quickly, I looked away. “What is the importance of Alexander?” I asked, interrupting the conversation Henry and Leon were having. “I know you said he’s nephilim, but is that it? You seemed surprised when I said his father was Valac, so I assume there’s more to him?”

  The men looked at the body in question. “Of course!” Henry exclaimed. If he had picked up on anything, I couldn’t tell. “Though, not to Mr. Ramsey here.” He hurried over to a table and grabbed a folder off it. “This is from a case that one of your colleagues is working on,” he said, handing the file over to Leon. “Mr. Ramsey is not the first nephilim to cross my table, nor will he be the last. He is, however, the second in as many days, and that is unusual.” He gestured to the body that was still open on the table further from us.

  I glanced over, unable to stop myself, but my eyes landed on the victim’s face. He looked familiar. “You think someone is killing nephilim?” I surmised, suddenly working out why that body looked so familiar: it was Ty’s friend, Zeke.

  “Surely that isn’t a bad thing?” Leon asked, his words stopping me from trying to understand what that meant. Leon’s attention was on Alexander’s body, so he missed the anger that flashed through Henry’s eyes. It was time to get out of here.

  “Serial killer,” I said, quickly. “And it looks like there’s that Motus thing.”

  “Modus,” Joshua quietly corrected me. “Modus operandi, but it’s the signature, not the M.O.” I shrugged, not really caring at that point. “However, it’s a good lead. Henry, is there anything else?”

  Henry shook his head. “You can keep that copy. I’ll email you when I’m done with Mr. Ramsey.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Requesting Reinforcements

  “Do we need to be worried about Henry too?” Joshua asked me when we were again in the safety of his car. We were still parked in front of the morgue, waiting for Leon to come out as he had some questions about another case.

  I sat chewing at my lip, but shook my head. “I don’t think everything is black and white with them. I think they see the gray,” I said, slowly. “I don’t think we need to worry about him.” Yet, I added, silently.

  Finally, Leon exited the building. “Do we tell Leon?” he asked me.

  I quickly shook my head. I didn’t really think Henry would do anything to hurt anyone, but I wasn’t going to risk it after Mama Laveau’s reaction. “No, but I think I need to head back to the convent. I probably should have a conversation with Cupid at some point too.”

  “Didn’t you make a promise to Mama Laveau that you wouldn’t say anything?”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Actually, I made a vow to God I wouldn’t, which essentially means if I say anything, I’m going to fall,” I reluctantly admitted. “I just won’t mention her.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t mention it at all,” Joshua suggested, his eyes wide.

  “I don’t think it’s our most pressing concern, but I think it’s something he should know,” I sighed, knowing I did need to tell him. “I might as well head back there,” I said, reaching for the door handle.

  “Now?”

  I gave Joshua a smile. “Yes. I’m sure this is the point where you need to head back to the precinct and do some detective work, and work out who killed Alexander. All things considered, I should probably not do that with you.”

  “You still think it’s a coincidence?” Joshua asked, surprised. “The son of a fallen angel killed not long after his father, who worked at the same shipping company?”

  “Yes,” I agreed, earning myself a disbelieving look. “I was the one who killed Valac. We don’t know for certain that Alexander was involved in what his father was.” That earned me a snort. “Okay, fine, it’s quite likely that he was involved, but then that makes less sense. Valac is gone, so someone is going to need to carry on with whatever was going on at that company. If someone was going to go out and kill him, your suspect should be me. Only I didn’t kill him.”

  “So who do you think did?” Joshua asked.

  I shrugged. “Hell if I know. You’re the detective,” I grinned, cheekily. “Now go detect.”

  The morgue was only a few blocks over from the convent and I left Joshua there, opting to walk back. I made the mistake of not thinking about the route I was taking until I was close to St. Mary’s Church. I stopped, ready to turn and go the long way round, but it was too late.

  “Praise Heaven, it’s her! The angel!” someone screamed in excitement.

  “Oh crap,” I muttered under my breath, wondering what the best way to get out of this was.

  My brain didn’t put a plan together quick enough, and before I could get out of there, I was swarmed by the four people who had been waiting outside the small church. “I need your help,” one of the crowd, a middle-aged woman, pleaded. “I need him to love me.”

  “God already loves you,” I responded automatically, not knowing what to do as she latched onto my arm.

  “Not Him, Malcolm. I need him to love me and not Brianna,” she said. “It’s time he left her.”

  “I’m not sure you have the right person,” I said trying to extract my arm from her grip, while trying to duck my head away from the other woman who was stroking my hair.

  “You’re her, aren’t you,” the third, and only male, member of the group said. He was younger than the women – maybe my age. He was also busy pulling out his phone. “I found you!”

  The second he wrapped his arm around my shoulder and tried to take a selfie with me, I twisted out of the way and gently pushed the fourth woman at him. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not her.” I searched blindly down the street, wondering where I could go: heading to the convent, convenient as it was, would be a mistake. If I went in there, they would never leave the street.

  “But you’re the angel,” the final woman cried – literally cried. “I have been waiting to see you all my life.”

  “I’m not an angel,” I lied.

  “No, you flew,” she continued, as I tried to hide behind one of the others so the guy couldn’t get the picture he was desperately trying to take.

  I was about to tell her that was Veronica but I realized that wasn’t the right thing to do. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tried again.

  “No, wait!” the guy cried, excitedly. “You’re the girl behind it all. The one that was all over the news.”

  Whatever the right thing was to do, the wrong thing was staying where I was. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to end up drawing a crowd. “I still don’t know what you mean,” I responded. “But I need to go,” I said, over my shoulder as I hurried across the street.

  “Wait!” one of them yelled.

  I didn’t turn to see who it was. Instead I broke into a run – at a ‘normal’ human pace. I ran straight past the convent and followed Chartres Street to Jackson Square, taking advantage of the busy Black Friday foot traffic in an attempt to lose them.

  Although I didn’t want the unusually hot weather to linger, today I was glad of it, even if I did look odd running around in jeans and boots. Rather quickly, the small crowd following me started to thin out, unable to cope with moving as fast in the heat as I could. I wasn’t willing to take a chance and slow down until I hit Canal Street. This was ridiculous¸ but I finally understood why Michael had insisted I tell no one what I was. Aside from the guy who was treating me like a celebrity (and that alone was uncomfortable), having people ask me for things I couldn’t give was not nice. I headed towards Decatur, the s
treet which ran parallel to Chartres, so I could return to the convent. I frowned: was one of those women really asking me to get God to break up a relationship?

  People were bizarre.

  I took my time walking back. Aside from needing to keep an eye out for the people who had chased after me, it was nice to just enjoy being in the city, watching the tourists. In no time at all, I was at the turning which would take me back to the convent. Instead, I continued on: the route I was heading ran past the market and I always liked to peer at stalls. I stopped at one, buying an “I Heart New Orleans’ cap to hide my hair under. As I went to pay, I realized this store was selling Luke Goddard’s album as well. I stared at the half-dressed man on the front of the CD. He wasn’t my type, but I wasn’t going to deny he was good looking. The more I stared at him, the more difficult I found it to believe that he could be Lucifer. Lucifer, the teenage pop star? Yet he’d called the album ‘Abandoned by the Angels’… I don’t know what compelled me to buy it, but I did. Maybe there would be a clue in one of the songs.

  The CD wasn’t the only thing I found there. I was walking past the Farmers Market, open especially for the holiday, and spotted a familiar head examining an enormous selection of chilies. “Eugene!” I exclaimed. Eugene’s back went rigid as a board and he sent several chilies scattering all over the ground. I hurried over to help him pick them up. “Nyle has been looking for you. You’ve been gone hours,” I told him.

  “Did you know how many vegetables there are,” he said. “I mean, I knew they existed but I have never seen this many,” he added, his dark eyes wide with wonder.

  “Do you want those,” the stall owner asked, eyeing us suspiciously.

  “I most definitely do,” Eugene told him, enthusiastically. He took the paper bag the man was offering. “You said the lemon drops were a good choice, right?” he asked, holding up the handful of yellow chilies for the man to see.

  I waited while he bagged up a rather large amount of the fruit then paid. “Have you been here the whole time?” I asked him as we walked back towards the convent.

  “Yes,” Eugene admitted, scuffing his feet along the floor.

  “I’m not telling you off,” I quickly told him. He looked like a small child who had been found guilty of doing something he hadn’t. “Nyle was worried.”

  “Sarah said we were making sweet chili chicken and I wanted to get it right,” he said.

  I glanced down at the number of bags in his hands. There weren’t that many there. “Nyle came looking for you hours ago,” I said.

  “The first store didn’t have any, so I went to one of the bigger ones, and the humans were acting all kinds of crazy, so I left and went to the next one. This one had some, but there was a lady in there who said to try the market. It’s been really busy here today with humans buying all sorts of things and pushing each other out of the way,” he explained, looking thoroughly perplexed. At that moment, we had to move out of the way (or be mowed down) by a man carrying a forty-inch flat screen. “See,” he gestured back towards the man.

  “Black Friday has been known to turn even the sanest of people rabid at the sight of a price reduction,” I shrugged.

  Eugene looked up at the sky, then around at our surroundings. “There is nothing black about this day,” he responded, puzzled.

  “It’s just the name of the day.” I smiled, shaking my head. “I don’t think you being gone so long is a problem, but you should probably let someone know where you’re going and give them a rough time you’re going to be back: it will stop them worrying” I told him, then frowned. “I sound like my aunt,” I pursed my lips, recalling the many times she’d had this conversation with me.

  “Normally we go out to deliver our messages and can be gone for hours at a time. Nobody has been concerned previously,” Eugene said.

  “Maybe, but I would guess that Michael had told you where to go, and he would know when to expect you home,” I offered. “You weren’t out delivering messages.”

  “Sarah knew where I was going, and that would not have mattered. My intention was to visit one store, not three and a market. The time she would have expected me to be back has long since passed.”

  “Yes, but at least we would have known where to look,” I said.

  Eugene’s confusion remained. “But I did not know where I was going, so how would you know where to look?”

  “Okay, that’s a fair point,” I sighed. “Maybe we should look at getting you all cell phones.”

  “What is a cell phone?” I sucked in a deep breath and shook my head. Somehow I had ended up at the most technologically deficient House. “Besides,” Eugene continued. “Cupid knows where we are. He would be able to find me if you had gone to him.”

  I could sense there was no point in pressing this further with Eugene. We had turned onto Ursulines Avenue and were coming up on the convent. “We should go through the back gate,” I instructed him. “There was a crowd in front of St. Mary’s and I don’t need them to see me again.” Eugene did as he was told without question. It was when we entered the grounds and were walking towards the kitchen door that my phone bleeped at me. I pulled it out, saw Ty’s name, and sighed. “You go on.”

  I waited for Eugene to go inside before reading the message. A is here. He’s telling dad the last of the stuff is coming in tomorrow and they need to get it straight back out. Someone called Alex has turned up dead. Ty.

  I read the text a few times, wondering what was best to do. I decided that whatever I did, I wasn’t doing it alone. I went straight inside and to the office I shared with Cupid. He was in there, alone, writing a letter, but he didn’t look up until I was in front of his desk. “That cap does not match that outfit,” he informed me, bluntly.

  “The cap hides the hair and makes me less noticeable,” I said, sitting down. “Which is not me being paranoid: the crowd outside the church saw me to today, and it’s safe to say they haven’t forgotten anything. However, that’s the least of our problems.”

  Quickly, I recounted everything that had happened, leaving out only the trip to Mama Laveau, and where the cherubim were based. Cupid listened in silence, his face reacting to some of the things I said, but his mouth remained closed, even when I told him about Veronica and Garret.

  Even after I had finished, he continued to stare at me, twisting his lips. “I hate being in charge,” he finally muttered, rubbing at his temples. “So what do you think we should do?”

  “I think we should at least do some reconnaissance,” I suggested. “We should be there, but we shouldn’t be alone.”

  “Even if we had an eternity, we couldn’t train the angels,” Cupid sighed, wearily.

  “I wasn’t thinking of the angels,” I stated.

  Cupid’s fingers remained at his forehead, but he peered over at me. “You have a plan, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said, and proceeded to tell him.

  * * *

  I contemplated heading for the Plaza Tower, but decided against it. Doing so would have put the cherubim on the defensive. There was also something inside me which told me to keep hold of that card – that I might need it at a later date. I exited via the side gate, paused long enough that if someone was watching the convent (and I suspected that was the case), that they would see me, then headed slowly and deliberately to a nearby alley. “Well, whichever one of you is watching, make yourself known. I need to talk to Veronica.”

  Nothing happened.

  I stood, chewing at my lip, wondering if I’d made a mistake. Possibly. Equally, I wasn’t on the best of terms with the cherubim and it was also likely that they wanted to see what the catch was. So I waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  Eventually, when I figured that standing in an alley by myself was coming across as weird, I decided going directly to the Plaza was going to be the only way I could make contact. I took exactly four steps when something dropped in front of me, making me jump. This something was one of the cherubim �
� I think her name was Noelle. I glanced up – she had dropped gracefully from a two story building. “Hi, Angel. Veronica will see you now.” She reached out and took my hand, and the next thing I knew, I was standing in the Plaza Tower.

  Veronica and Garret (I refrained from returning the glower he was sending me) were both standing in front of me, arms folded. “What do you want?” Garret demanded.

  “I was hoping we could talk,” I said, exuding more patience and calm than I knew I had in me. “Without any fighting,” I added, giving Garret a pleasant smile. Shame I wasn’t able to throw grace into that mixture.

  “Can you manage that?” he shot at me.

  I took a deep breath. “I vow to God that I am not here to start fighting,” I told him.

  Veronica sighed wearily. “Let’s sit,” she said, indicating to the table.

  I followed her over, taking one of the mismatched chairs near one end. Garret chose to sit opposite me with Veronica taking the head of the table. Interesting. This whole time I had assumed Garret had been calling the shots, but now I wasn’t so sure.

  “So what do you want?” Garret asked, the scowl still etched into his face. I don’t think there was a teenager around who could be more sullen than this one. “Or have you finally gotten your priorities straight and realized that finding Lucifer is the single most important thing you can do?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No, the single most important thing I can do is keep my charge safe,” I corrected him. “That’s my priority.” I was quickly beginning to see why the cherubim were never given charges, but I wasn’t about to rock the very unstable boat. I really hadn’t come here to fight with them. “But my charge also happens to have a Prince of Darkness for a lieutenant and I’m sure we can all agree that removing him would also be considered an important thing to do, right?” I asked, calmly.