by Ella Summers
“You dare touch me!” I magnified my voice until the walls shook, punctuating every syllable I spoke. “I, Pandora, Angel of Chaos, Angel of Purgatory and the Plains of Monsters! Chosen by the gods!”
They quivered, their absolute adoration now streaked with fear. The door to the bar swung open, and six Pilgrims filed inside. They’d probably been drawn here by my booming, magic-amplified voice.
“Do you think I overdid it a bit?” I asked Nero as the Pilgrims formed a human shield between us and the other people in the bar.
“If anything, you under-did it,” he replied.
I would have chuckled if I weren’t too busy maintaining my badass angel aura. Beyond the wall of dour-faced Pilgrims, the people in the bar were still watching us. Their eyes grew wide when I sipped from my glass of pineapple juice, as though it were the most amazing thing they’d ever seen. Their fear might have checked their barrage of questions—and their need to rub me for luck—but it had done nothing to dull their admiration.
“Well, this party is officially dead.” I set my glass down on the counter.
“The novelty of people hanging on your every word wears off very quickly,” Nero replied.
“That, plus the Pilgrims are a bit of a buzz kill.”
I hid my head beneath my hood once more. Then I took his hand, leading him toward the bar’s rear exit. The Pilgrims’ line parted to make way for us, and closed again to prevent anyone from following us. Nero and I slipped out the back.
I brought him to a quieter, less lively bar off the main road. In fact, the place resembled a coffee house as much as it did a bar. Soft guitar music played from white ceiling speakers. Behind the bar, two fluffy armchairs and a whole wall of books formed a cute little reading cove that stood in stark contrast to the dance floor and neat row of shot glasses laid out across the bar counter.
I pulled out my phone and typed a quick invitation to Calli, Gin, and Tessa to join us here. They hadn’t been allowed at my angel introduction ceremony, but I wasn’t going to let them miss the afterparty.
The bar was quiet tonight. Which was good. Fewer people meant less of a chance of being recognized. This time, our disguises worked better. No one seemed to recognize us, and I hoped our luck held. I was wearing street clothes under my hoodie, but Nero was not. Beneath his hoodie, he wore a black leather uniform. Luckily, the only leather anyone could see were his pants. I supposed people just thought he was a biker with a soft side.
I ordered myself a pineapple juice then headed straight for the target board on the wall. The aim of the game was to shoot tiny toy arrows with a tiny toy bow. Nero frowned when I handed him that bow.
“You look positively scandalized, General,” I teased him.
“I’ve been with you too long to be scandalized by anything, Pandora.”
He leaned in to nip me on the lip. As he pulled away, his tongue darted out and slid languidly across his lower lip, licking off the crimson drop of my blood. For not the first time tonight, I found myself wishing the two of us were alone.
I was planning the path to make that wish a reality when my little sisters walked into the bar. Tessa and Gin spotted me immediately and rushed forward to trap me in a double hug.
“Leda, this is so exciting!” Tessa was practically bursting at the seams. “Remember our lovely conversation with Nero and Damiel last year? I just knew I’d soon be planning a Legion wedding!”
“Wait a minute. Since when are you planning the wedding? The Legion has regulations about how an angel wedding should go.”
“Tessa paid the First Angel a visit,” Gin told me.
I gaped at Tessa in shock. “You paid a visit to Nyx, the First Angel of the Legion of Angels?”
“Yes, I did,” confirmed Tessa. “And she has really cool hair, by the way. In any case, she agreed to let me plan your wedding, embellishing as much as I want as long as I stay within the Legion’s guidelines.”
“How did you convince her of that?”
She smiled. “I can be very convincing.”
I gave her my best don’t-bullshit-me look.
“Ok, fine. It wasn’t my charms that convinced her,” she admitted. “It’s you, Leda. The First Angel really likes you. I can tell. So she gave me enough leeway to create a wedding that would make you happy.”
“Just try to keep the dancing acrobats to a minimum, Tessa. I don’t want them losing their juggling balls inside the cake.”
Tessa giggled. She’d had a hard time lately, discovering the dark horrors of her forgotten past, but planning my wedding had filled her with happiness once more. It had given her back her spark.
“Gin is creating the wedding sculptures,” Tessa told me.
“Sculptures?” I asked. “As in more than one?”
“They are angel sculptures,” said Gin. “And they move.”
“They also smell like strawberries and cream,” Tessa added.
“Just how many sculptures are there?” I asked them.
Gin shrugged. “Over twenty.”
“Over twenty?” I turned to Tessa. “Exactly when did you speak to Nyx?”
“Just this morning, shortly after you all arrived in town. There was no missing that mass procession of Legion trucks. I took it upon myself to investigate, being that my own sister didn’t give me a heads up as to what was going on in her life.”
Oops. I’d been so caught up in my own issues that I’d forgotten to share them with my family.
I offered my sisters a guilty look. “Sorry.”
“You can make it up to me by endorsing my wedding planning business.”
“You have a wedding planning business?” I asked Tessa in surprise.
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“Since now. I predict a surge in population—and weddings—in Purgatory now that we’re under the protection of the great Pandora, Angel of Chaos. I need to be positioned to take advantage of that. Wedding planning is just one component of that multi-tiered business plan.”
“How many tiers are we talking about? And how many businesses?”
“Many.”
“It seems you’ve been busy.”
“A busy body quells a busy mind,” Tessa told me.
It sounded like something our foster mother Calli would say. I could imagine that lately Tessa had been pretty eager to quell her busy mind.
“You’ve been busy too,” I said to Gin. “How did you manage to construct over twenty mechanical angel sculptures in under a day?”
“Actually, I’ve been building them for over a year.”
“But why?”
“For your wedding, of course, silly.” Tessa’s brows drew together in an obvious show of sisterly concern. “You need to relax, Leda. Kick up your feet and let me take care of everything. The wedding stress is clearly getting to you.”
“There’s no wedding stress, and it’s not getting to me. I’m only baffled by why you began creating angel sculptures for my wedding a year before anyone knew I was getting married.”
“Your family knew,” replied Tessa. “I told you the first time I met Nero that you’d marry him—and that I was going to plan your wedding.”
“Angels’ marriages are arranged. You couldn’t have known that Nero and I are magically compatible.”
“Well, of course you’re magically compatible.” She rolled her eyes at me. “It’s completely obvious.”
I cast a look at Nero. As usual, he looked pretty damn sure of himself. When he’d dramatically swept in to rescue me from marrying any other angel, he’d also told me he knew our magic was compatible.
“The wedding of two angels! This is historic!” Tessa exclaimed, a bit too loudly. She was drawing the attention of the bar’s other customers. “You two are on the cover of literally every magazine right now.”
“How do I look in the pictures?”
I hated photos of myself. I always looked sort of lopsided.
“You looked hot, Leda. That whole angelic halo has done
wonders for your complexion, sooo much better than any makeup.” Her forehead crinkled. “Which is good for you because you always forget to put on any makeup.”
“I don’t forget to put on makeup,” I told her. “I just get distracted doing more important things.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know, like saving the world.”
“There will be no saving the world on my watch, Ms. Angel of Chaos,” said Tessa. “Not on your wedding day anyway. I forbid it. Nyx has put me in charge of your wedding, and I’m not going to allow monsters or villains to stand in the way of perfection.” She glanced at Nero. “Speaking of perfection, Gin and I need to go over a few Legion procedures with you. The Legion rulebook is a rather meandering and long-winded read.”
Tessa and Gin ushered Nero off to the cozy reading corner.
“Fancy a game of pool?”
I turned around to find Calli standing behind me. “Where did you come from?”
“The door, of course.” She hugged me tightly. “Not all of us can materialize out of thin air.”
“I can’t do that either.” I motioned for her to follow me to the pool table. “I’m just surprised that an old lady like you could sneak up on me,” I teased her.
She teased me back. “Get your head out of the clouds, angel, and you might just notice what’s happening here on the ground.” Her voice grew more serious. “How are you doing, Leda? Really?”
“I’m all right, all things considered.” I set up our game on the pool table. “I feel like I’m trapped in a whirlwind of madness, Calli. Becoming an angel. Being assigned a territory. The Fever. The wedding. I’m caught up in the gods’ games, and I don’t even know which way to turn.”
She watched me closely. “But you’re happy.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “I really am.”
“There’s something else troubling you.”
“Yes. My origin.”
Calli nodded. “Bella told us when she visited town last weekend.”
I’d confided in Bella after waking up as an angel. The truth about my origin was too dangerous to leave to a phone call or text message. It had to be shared in person. In private.
“I’m caught in the middle of a tempest, of an immortal war that has been raging since long before I was born,” I said. “And I can’t help but fear that I ended up on Earth for a reason. I just don’t know what that reason is.”
“I’ve looked into the woman who cared for you when you were a baby,” Calli told me. “There isn’t much information. She went by many names. Once, she was a Legion soldier, before she disappeared. But I can’t figure out how she got you, or why she died.”
Her death had left me on the streets, up until Calli had found me and taken me in. That also seemed to have happened for a reason.
“What happened to your friend?” I asked Calli. “The one who led you to us all?”
“I haven’t seen him in years, not since the mission that led me to you. He vanished without a trace.”
“I feel like he has the answers I need.”
“I won’t stop looking,” she promised me. “I won’t give up.”
“Of course you won’t. You never give up.”
“But maybe you should give up on this game,” Calli commented with a crooked smile as I missed a shot. “Leda, with your supernatural hand-eye coordination, you should be able to crush me.”
“You’re the best shot I know, Calli. And becoming an angel has boosted everything. Honestly, I’m having a bit of trouble controlling my own strength. Now if you would just let me use magic, I could nudge that ball into the pocket. In fact, I could nudge them all in, all at once.”
“No magic.” She said it in the same stern way she used to tell me I couldn’t eat dessert before dinner. “It’s cheating.”
“You only say that because you don’t have any,” I laughed. “But you possess a special kind of magic of your own: your deadly accuracy. If I can’t use telekinesis, you can’t use your special powers either.”
Calli clicked her tongue. “Still trying to get away with breaking the rules on account of a technicality, Leda?”
I shrugged. “You taught me well. Fight dirty and fight smart.”
Calli laughed. “If you fight dirty and smart in your new role, you might just succeed. Rumor has it you will single-handedly banish all the monsters from this Earth.”
“Yeah, using only my pinkie finger.” I snorted. “It’s not that easy. We’re going to try to reclaim some territory from the monsters, piece by piece. But it won’t happen overnight. And I can’t do it alone.”
“I see the Legion is taking over the district lords’ old buildings.”
“It seemed like the best use of them.”
“Oh, it is,” she agreed. “I’m glad you’re here, Leda, and not just because our town needs an angel with a heart. I’m glad you’re here because it means I get to see you more often.”
My throat was tight, my eyes wet. “That’s the best part about my new position. I got to come home.”
Calli wiped the tear from my cheek. “But with the Legion taking over here, you’re going to put me out of business. The big, flashy Legion buildings and the terrifying angel reigning over Purgatory will keep the criminal element away. And if they don’t come here, I can’t snatch them and turn them in for a nice bounty. I’ll have to open a bakery or a bookshop or something people do in civilized cities.”
“I’m sure we can find a better use for your talents,” I laughed. “How do you feel about contract work?”
“What kind of contract work?”
“I haven’t figured it out yet, but I’m sure I’ll think of some use for your extensive talents.”
A calculating smile twisted her lips. “Extensive, huh?” She took a pretzel from the snack bowl and popped it into her mouth. “You must want something if you’re flattering me like that.”
“I do want something, in fact.” I held out my hand. “Do you mind passing the bowl of pretzels?”
Chuckling, she handed me the bowl.
I took a pretzel. “How are Tessa and Gin doing?”
“They’re getting better. Slowly healing.”
I looked across the room, to the reading corner, where Tessa and Gin were enthusiastically chatting up Nero. “They’re going to be all right.”
Calli watched them too. “Yeah, they are. I’m glad you’re back, Leda. We all do better when we’re together.”
I thought of my brother Zane, whose disappearance had set me down this path. I was going to get him back. Our family would be complete once more.
“I’m glad to be back too,” I told Calli.
Nero closed in by my side. He dipped his head to Calli, his face serious. “I need to borrow Leda.”
“Well, I suppose that’s ok. You eventually brought her home, even though it took nearly two years.” A touch of reproval flickered in her amused eyes.
Nero set his hand on my back, moving quickly as he led me toward the back door.
“What’s the rush?” I asked him.
“We need to escape before your sisters return from the bar.”
“Why are we running from my sisters?”
“Not we,” he said. “I.”
“Are their wedding preparations too much for a great warrior angel like you?” I laughed.
“It’s not the preparations. It’s the talking without interruption, a continuous, full-throttle logorrhea. They don’t even come up for air.”
“Nyx put them in charge of planning our wedding, and they have only three days left,” I reminded him.
“I wish the First Angel had found a more humane way to kill me.”
My laughter trailed us out the back exit. I looked around at the tiny, enclosed back alley, hardly large enough for the three garbage dumpsters.
“You know, this is the first place they’ll look,” I told Nero.
“You’re right.” His eyes panned up the chain-link fence that surrounded the alley; he looked lik
e he was preparing to scale it. “Let’s put some distance between us and the battlefield.”
I was laughing so hard that my chest hurt.
“Do be serious, Leda. This situation is hardly funny.”
“Sure it is. You—General Windstriker, Legion archangel, second only to the First Angel—can’t handle a pair of eighteen-year-olds. I find that very funny.”
He glanced back over his shoulder at me. “You’re wearing a tiara at the wedding, you know,” he said in a silky voice.
“A…what?” I stuttered.
“A tiara,” he told me. “It’s a kind of crown.”
“I know what a tiara is. What I don’t understand is why I will be wearing it.”
“You’ll have to ask Tessa. She decided for you.”
“She decided? She decided what an angel will wear?” My voice crackled and boomed, rattling the metal fence. “You know what? I think I’ll go demand an explanation.”
He caught my arm. “You don’t want to go back in there.”
“No, you don’t want to go back in there,” I shot back. “I am perfectly happy to demand an explanation from Tessa.”
“You’re worked up.”
“You bet I’m worked up. I don’t want to wear a tiara. And I’m pretty sure the Legion doesn’t want me to wear a tiara either. It doesn’t exactly evoke fear in the hearts of our enemies.”
Fire flashed in his eyes. “You’re thinking like an angel.”
“Damn right I am.”
A smile twisted his lips, slow and sexy. “And you’re reacting like one too. Angels are territorial, and they can’t stand people telling them what to do.” His hands settled on my shoulders.
“That’s me. Check and check.”
“But you’re not just any angel,” he said, holding me as I tried to turn back toward the door. “You’re different. Your heart is different. You feel—and you can regret. If you fight with your sisters over a tiara, you will regret it later.”
I shook the fluff from my mind. “You’re right. All this new magic and the Fever—it’s messing with my head.” I took a deep, calming breath. “Ok, I’m better now.”
“Even so, you’re not ready to go back inside.”
“Neither are you,” I laughed.
