by Hannah Jayne
Vlad’s eyebrows went up, but I stopped him before he could comment. “Yes. But this is just business—another case. So, can you wrap it up?”
“Geez,” Vlad said with an eye roll. “I can’t wait until I get my own place.”
“Not until you’re two hundred,” I muttered parentally as I followed him back into the apartment.
I set my bag down and nodded—graciously, though nervously—to Vlad’s vampire friends as they gathered up their trash and filed out the front door, Vlad in tow. I gave them a polite finger wave and then raced to the bathroom, telling myself that I was freshening up as a polite hostess and nothing more as I dabbed on a drywall layer of deodorant and slapped on some Siena Sunset lip stain. I undid the bun on the top of my head and my hair fell in soft, curled tendrils that swooped romantically around my face and stuck up like wheat grass in the back. I spent the next eight minutes pleading with said wheat-grass hair and finally finagled it in a downward direction with a handful of centuries-old Dippity-do that I found in the back of the medicine cabinet.
Deeming myself cosmetically presentable, I went back to the kitchen and unloaded the armful of takeout containers onto the dining room table, trying to arrange them artfully. If I couldn’t cook, the least I could do was arrange takeout beautifully. I finished off my Hang chow bounty with a meager-looking daisy stuck in a water glass. Not exactly The Slanted Door, but it would do.
I sucked in an anxious breath when I heard the lock tumble on the front door. My heart gave a little pitter of warmth that dropped down into my nether regions and I imagined myself gripping Alex by the lapels and dragging him into the living room, lip to passionate lip. Instead, I crossed my legs and forced myself to look nonchalant.
“Oh,” I sighed when I opened the door. “It’s you.”
Nina gave me a sour look. “Nice way to greet your roommate.”
I wrung my hands. “It’s just that I was expecting Alex.”
Nina gaped. “Don’t tell me you gave him a key now, too!”
I wagged my head and Nina arched an eyebrow. “I thought you weren’t sure you were interested in getting involved with him again.”
“What are you talking about? We’re just two old friends meeting for dinner.”
Nina sniffed at the air. “Hang chow?” She sniffed again. “And you sprang for the prawns chow fun.”
“I like prawns.”
Nina squinted and pointed at my pursed lips. “And that’s Siena Sunset. That’s name-brand product. You don’t shell out for shrimp and name-brand product for someone you’re not getting involved with. I bet you even shaved your legs.”
I bit my lip—whoops.
I sighed, a meager attempt to center myself. “I’m not exactly getting involved. I’m helping him with a case.” And possibly out of his clothes.... I put my hands on my hips. “And I thought you were anti-Alex.”
“I’m not anti-Alex. I’m pro-love. You’d be surprised how pro-love one becomes when they’re not getting enough blood to their personal parts.”
“So love is all about what gets to your personal parts?”
Nina licked her lips and winked. “Honey, love can be about anything having to do with the personal parts.”
“Silly me. I thought it was about the heart and all that malarkey.”
Nina waved a dismissive hand, twisting her glossy dark hair around her finger. “Eh, it’s all the same after a while.” She yanked open the fridge door and rooted around for a blood bag, then pulled herself up onto the kitchen counter and kicked off her shoes, aiming them into the dining room.
“So”—she took a long sip that crumpled her blood bag—“back to you and Alex.”
“A case,” I reiterated. “That’s all this is about. Shrimp chow fun, name-brand lip gloss—which was a free sample by the way—and that’s it. Just a case.” I was talking so loudly I was beginning to convince myself. “He’s coming over so we can discuss the particulars.”
“Discuss the particulars?” Nina’s lips went into a sleazy half-grin. “Something tells me I know the particulars you’re interested in... .”
“Uh, hello?”
Alex was standing in the open doorway, head cocked, eyebrows raised. I sucked in a traumatic breath, my body not knowing whether to die of embarrassment or of sheer desire.
Tonight, Alex Grace looked good enough to eat.
His pale grey T-shirt looked soft and was fraying a little at the collar. It stretched across his broad shoulders and the short sleeves were pulled taut against his thick, ropey muscles. His arms were crossed and the bottom edge of his tattoo—a single angel’s wing—poked out from underneath the fabric covering his left bicep. I worked hard to keep my eyes welcoming and friendly, but they kept slipping to Alex’s slim waist, to the way his well-worn jeans hung on him, and visions of him stepping out of those jeans clouded my “friendly” stance.
Alex held up a six-pack of beer and stepped into the apartment, kicking the door shut behind him. The click of the door and the clink of the beer bottles shook me out of my revelry.
“Hi. Nina and I, we were just ...”
There was a playful look of knowing in Alex’s eyes and I felt the heat of embarrassment wash over me. I looked down and went to work opening the beer, certain that my face was flushed as red as a midlife-crisis Corvette.
“So,” Nina began, “Sophie tells me there’s another mystery to be solved. Count me in.”
“Great.” Alex walloped the backpack I didn’t realize he was carrying onto the dining-room table, making the Chinese food and my pitiful flower jump.
I handed Alex his beer, our fingertips brushing in the exchange. My stomach did a little butterfly flutter and I took a quick pull from my beer, gulping a mouthful of foam.
“Is that mu shu?” Alex asked, sniffing at the air.
“Yes,” I said. Then I pointed at the backpack. “Is that your homework?”
Alex took a pair of chopsticks and the takeout box of mu shu. “I guess it’s our homework.”
Nina frowned. “There’s going to be reading in this one? I don’t know if I want to play anymore.” She pierced her blood bag with a single angled fang, sucked earnestly on what remained and then looked up, her full lips stained a deep red. “What are we after, anyway?”
“The Vessel of Souls,” Alex said in between bites.
I took my own takeout box and chopsticks and dug into some Kung Pao. “Hey, how do we even know the Vessel is here anyway? Shouldn’t it be like, in Europe—like Vatican City or something?”
Nina looked up from her second blood bag, eyebrows raised. “Rome? Okay, I’m back in.”
“The Vessel is definitely here. I’m sure of it.”
“Is your angel sense tingling?” I asked.
A flash of darkness skittered across Alex’s cobalt eyes and his smile dropped. “I know it’s here because Ophelia is here.”
I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. Alex and I weren’t exclusive or even dating, really—and I had no idea where he went when he wasn’t stretched out drinking a beer on my couch or eating day-old donuts at the police station—but I still felt a sudden, illogical pang of jealousy.
“Who’s Ophelia?” Please say your mother, please say your mother, please say your mother, I silently prayed.
“Ophelia is a fallen angel.”
“Like you,” Nina said.
“No.” Alex shook his head, holding a piece of mu shu pork between poised chopsticks. “Not like me at all. She’s currently the head of the fallen and she’s very bad news. Evil bad.”
I had a faint sliver of hope that her being the head of the fallen meant she was horned or cross-eyed or wore gaucho pants.
“The head of the baddies?” Nina looked impressed. “Who do you have to kill to get that gig?”
Alex looked away. “Ophelia was why I left here—why I left San Francisco—the first time.”
I swallowed, not tasting my food. Instead I imagined Alex and his fallen-angel friend Ophelia frolic
king on clouds and harmoniously strumming harps while I had spent those solitary six months after he disappeared in elastic-waist pants trolling the ice cream aisle at Cala Foods.
“Oh.” My voice came out a choked whisper.
“No—it wasn’t—wasn’t like that. The word got out that she was looking for me. So I decided I’d better find her first.”
“And did you find her?” Nina asked, toes tapping angrily, eyes narrowed in the ultra-protective best-friend mode.
“No.”
I felt remotely better. “So why is she here? And why does that mean the Vessel is, too?”
“Ophelia has been tracking the Vessel ever since—” Alex looked down at his hands, ashamed. “Ever since I lost it. She wants it for herself. She’s desperate for it—has been the whole time I’ve known her. Ophelia is the kind of woman who gets off on power. Lots of power.” Alex looked at Nina and me. “She’ll kill for it. And if she’s here, then the Vessel can’t be far off.”
I felt a breeze—like icy breath—creep up the back of my neck and I shivered. Hollow laughter rang out in my ear and I frowned, going to the kitchen window and scanning for errant, laughing kids. There was nothing but darkness and the occasional sound of horns honking so I slammed the window shut. The breeze went away, but the chill and the sound of laughter hung in my head for another few seconds.
“How do you know she’s back here? Have you”—I paused, tasting the bitterness of my words—“seen her?”
Alex wagged his head again, his dark curls bobbing. “No, thank God. But I’ve heard things. I know she’s here.”
I swallowed, waiting for the feeling of relief to wash over me. It didn’t.
Alex placed a thick file folder flat on the table and pushed it toward me. I glanced down. “Something tells me this isn’t the complete files of the Lolcats.”
I opened the file and the front page of a week-old San Francisco Chronicle was folded neatly on top. The headline blared HUNGARIAN DIPLOMAT AMONG CESSNA DEATHS. There was a full-color picture of the wreckage of the small plane in a shallow section of the bay; someone had drawn a red circle around a smudge of black on the wing of the plane. “Did you circle this?” I pointed to the smudge and Alex nodded.
“What is it?”
Alex took the file from me and rummaged past a few pages, then pulled out a tattered-looking Ziploc bag with a single black feather locked inside. I raised my eyebrows, squinted back at the circled smudge.
“That is that?” I asked skeptically.
“No. This”—Alex dangled the bag—“is from a different crime scene.” He pulled a sheaf of papers from the folder and dropped them in front of me. “But that,” he said, gesturing toward the circled smudge, “is also a black feather.”
Nina stood up. “Are you saying that both of these murders were committed by crows?” She slammed her fist into her palm. “Damn birds!”
I continued looking through the file. “Homicide,” I read, flipping through a thin file with another Ziploced black feather enclosed. “Accidental drowning ... victim was recovered on shore near Crissy Field, DOA, five-inch black feather was—ugh”—I shuddered—“recovered from victim’s throat. Murder-suicide in Por-tola Valley, one dead in fiery crash on Devil’s Canyon Slide.” I scanned the last article. “Brendan Joel found dead when his car went off the road.... Three-to-four-inch black crow feather found in the victim’s right hand.” I shook my head. “I don’t get it. What’s with the black feather?”
I held up my hand to silence Nina before she could answer.
“It’s like a sign. Every time the angelic plane crosses the human plane—”
Nina crossed her arms in front of her chest. “In non-Heaven speak, please.”
“Every time an angel touches a human, something is left behind.”
“I don’t remember any black feathers,” I said.
“I don’t have my wings, remember?”
“Well, if Ophelia is a fallen angel, too, how come she’s got hers to toss around all crazy?”
Alex’s eyes were downcast. “She’s embraced the darkness.”
“You mean she’s playing on Team Satan, right?” Nina asked.
“We try not to mention it.”
“So bad-good angels, like you, don’t leave anything behind?” I shrugged. “I guess that’s good.”
Alex took my hand, turned my wrist so it faced upward. There was a tiny red dot—as though from a ballpoint pen—on the pale flesh of my wrist. He smiled; I gawked.
“That’s from you?”
He dropped my hand. “You don’t have to look entirely disgusted.”
“I’m not, it’s just—”
“You were expecting a halo burn?”
I put my hands on my hips, tapped my foot angrily on the floor. “No, you make it hard to forget you’re a fallen angel.”
“Just be glad you’re not covered with those stupid crow feathers.” Nina shuddered. “Birds totally freak me out.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t vampire trump fowl?”
“It was a pre-vamp thing,” I said, using my hand to partially cover my mouth. “She’s still not over it. So, this?” I brushed my index finger over the tiny strawberry-colored spot.
Alex shrugged, suddenly looking slightly bashful. “Yeah, sorry.”
“No, it’s ... kind of nice.” I felt the blush creep over my cheeks. “Anyway, back to the crime scene.”
“And the Vessel.”
“And the crow queen.”
Alex and I both swung to face Nina, who held her hands palm up and hunched her shoulders. “Sorry, sorry—just trying to help.”
I tapped my index finger against my chin. “So, Ophelia comes into town and just starts randomly killing people and that means the Vessel is here? That’s weird.”
Alex wagged his head. “I don’t think they’re random.”
I fanned out the photographs and newspaper clippings in front of me on the table. “A diplomat, a couple, a teacher ... some of these are outright murders, some of these look like accidents. I don’t get it; what’s the connection ?”
Alex sank onto one of the dining room chairs and began stacking the photos. “I think they were all guardians.”
Nina raised her black brows. “Of who?”
“Not who, what.” Alex looked at me. “The Vessel has seven guardians.”
“And there are six incidents with Ophelia’s trademark,” I said.
“She’s picking off the guardians?”
I eyed the fat stack. “Apparently, she’s pretty good at it. So, where’s the last guardian?”
“Lucky number seven?” Alex shrugged. “Don’t know. But I plan on finding him before Ophelia does.”
“And finding the Vessel.”
Nina came and sat at the table with us, leaning closer. “So back to this Ophelia chick. How do you know all this stuff about her?”
I saw the muscle twitch in Alex’s jaw. “Ophelia and I had a history.”
“Define history,” Nina said, one black eyebrow arched.
“Nina!” I hissed, secretly thankful for my best friend’s reliable nosiness.
“I’m asking because ‘history’ could mean a lot of things to people like us.” Nina gestured to herself and to Alex. “Like, we used to hit the movies together, or we assisted in overthrowing the Soviet power structure together.”
Alex looked at Nina, alarmed.
“She’s always had a thing for Russians,” I explained. “So, just for clarity’s sake, which was it? Dating or ... history?”
Alex suddenly became very interested in spearing his next bite of dinner. “The first one,” he finally murmured.
I swallowed, suddenly very aware of my stomach, of the mu shu pork that sat like a steel fist at the bottom of my gut. I forced a wan smile anyway. “How nice” was all I could muster.
Nina sat back in her chair. “So, this seems pretty cut and dry to me. Ophelia follows the Vessel, we follow Ophelia, nick the Vessel from her, and, bada-bing
, bada-bang”—Nina slapped her hands together—“we hightail it to Rome to do some shoe shopping.”
“It’s not that easy. We need to find the Vessel before Ophelia does. That’s the bottom line. Once it’s in her hands, this world is as good as over.”
“Dramatic.”
I glared at Nina and let Alex continue.
“I figure I can hold off Ophelia while you go after the Vessel.”
Nina crossed her arms, shaking her head decidedly. “We don’t do minion work.”
Alex’s eyes were set hard as he glanced at Nina and me. “You need to stay away from Ophelia. She’s—she’s not like anything you’ve ever seen at the UDA.” I opened my mouth to protest, but Alex held up a silencing hand. “She’s evil incarnate.”
“But you don’t need to stay away from her?” I asked.
“She’s not going to expect me coming after her when the Vessel is near. I think she’ll assume I’m after the Vessel, too. Again.”
Nina arched an eyebrow. “Again?”
“Alex, um, was responsible ...”
Alex shrugged. “I lost the Vessel the first time. I went after it, found it, and then lost it.”
“How do you lose an ancient artifact stuffed with human souls? Did you leave it at the donut shop? Maybe trade it for a couple of maple glazed?”
I watched Alex’s jaw tighten. The taking—and losing—of the Vessel of Souls was a sore subject for him. I cleared my throat and tried to give Nina the look of death—loosely translated as “shut up already”—but she persisted.
“I mean, if I’m going to risk my afterlife to help you ...”
“You don’t have to risk anything. I asked for Sophie’s help.”
“Okay, if my best friend is going to risk her first life to help you ...”
“When Alex was in favor—” I started.
“I got duped, okay?” Alex said. “I heard about the Vessel, I lusted for it, I stole it, and then someone stole it from me.”
Nina sat back, impressed. “Way to get your wings cut off, lust monster.”
The look of sadness in Alex’s eyes stung. I wanted to slip my arms around him, to brush the clutch of curls that lolled over his forehead, but the air suddenly seemed heavy and charged. Somehow, a heartfelt “there, there” didn’t seem to suffice for someone who had stolen the Vessel that could change the fate of the world, had been thrown out of Heaven for it, and was now relegated to a life of day-old donuts and subpar mu shu in the earthly realm.
