Lucan hummed thoughtfully before he rose and walked to Shen's side. “There is a reason you feel that way, Shen. You’re no more a monster than I am. I want Jinni dead, too. We all do. We’ve both been hurt by her and believe she should pay.”
“How do you know her name?” Shen hissed as he turned around. “And how has Jinni hurt any of you?”
“You are dense, so incredibly dense that you can’t connect the dots even when they are blinking and screaming in your face. Who do you think I’m talking about? Why do you think that woman seemed familiar to you?”
“What woman…” he parroted sharply until his memory of the woman on the hill came to mind. “That woman? What does she have to do with Jinni?”
“That woman went by many names. The Pedagogue. Sekhmet Reborn. The Lioness. She earned every last one of them. She was smart and cunning, deadly with a sword. Do you know why she seemed familiar to you?”
“No! I don’t!” The muscles in Shen’s face tightened with anger. “Why do you keep asking me that question when you know I don’t know the answer?”
Lucan circled him like a shark. “She also went by another name, Shen. That name? Aria Jinni of Kokabiel. The Former Leader of the Fallen after the war, and the woman who is currently living in present time as one Jin Amaris. The woman you failed to kill. The woman who killed my father.”
Shen narrowed his eyes as they raked over Lucan. “Who are you?”
Lucan smiled as Shen apparently, finally, asked the correct question. “My name is Azreal. The son of Azeal and Cairenn of Caeli.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
“Welcome to the Suzy’s Diner!” Jerome shouted over the buzz. He glanced at the clock as he slid his spatula under a burger and flipped it. Between the hours of eleven and when the diner closed at two was always a weird time. Not because he was counting the hours till he could leave, no, it was more the sort of patron that found Suzy’s around this time. There were always the loud ones, often in groups, who came because they were bored and hungry. And then there were the loners who usually found a corner and ate their food quietly. Jerome preferred the loners.
He adjusted the small toque covering his closely shaven, black hair and scanned the diner, the iris of one eye glinting hazel gold and the other a pale green. He enjoyed working at the diner, even if cooking wasn’t a natural talent of his. The last guy, Wakeem, got tired of him poking his head over the stove, so he taught him. Eventually, Jerome got good at it, and now he was head cook. The diner was a popular spot in the East Village, and at any given time there were always enough customers for it to stay busy. Busy body, busy mind.
The busier, the better. And Jerome definitely didn’t feel like dealing with his mind tonight. To be honest, he didn’t feel like it yesterday and he wouldn’t feel like it tomorrow.
Jerome’s other talent was evasion, and unlike cooking, it was as natural to him as breathing. Whenever he felt that tingling in the back of his mind that whispered names and dates, invoked a recall of faces and voices, he’d sidestep it, scramble back out of its grasp, and escape it. But there were times when he wasn’t quick enough, where the breeze would lift the curtain and he could no longer hide behind it. It didn't happen often, but he was too tired of being regretful.
He tapped the bell, the tinny note ringing as he slid the plate of pasta onto the long metal serving counter for a waitress to pick up and deliver.
Amanda smacked her lips as she slipped into place, her jaw working some pale, pink bubblegum as she spun the plate and skimmed the brim with her thumb to test the temperature. “This is with turkey sausage, right?”
Jerome snorted. “Yeah, but someone needs to remind Daddy Warbucks that this isn’t a five-star restaurant. It’s a shit-hole dive, and I’m not running out to get him his precious turkey sausage every time he shows up, regular or not.”
Amanda smirked as she picked up the plate. “I told him that last week and the week before that and the week before that and look at you, making him spaghetti with his precious turkey sausage. Again.” She turned toward the table where an older man sat, his features pinched and expectant.
Jerome enjoyed working at the diner, although in the beginning, it only served to supplement any funds he received as Rabbit’s errand boy. The man—the one eying Amanda with disinterest as she slid his meal in front of him—had shown up one random Thursday night and made enough outrageous demands to drive Jerome insane.
He’d rebelled by slamming pots and pans up against the wall every time a plate was sent back with a correction. “He’s doing this shit on purpose to get a rise out of me,” Jerome shouted from the kitchen. “Well, I ain’t rising!”
Not deterred, the man continued showing up every Thursday, always with a demand of a meal and always with a complaint.
It wasn’t often that Jerome’s temper got the best of him. That’s what Rabbit said he liked about him. As he reached into the cooler for a tray of meat, he realized he hadn’t heard from Rabbit in a few days, but to be fair, he hadn’t expected to.
When Rabbit went to jail, Jerome’s life changed. Months before the trial, Rabbit went through the act of sending his closest people away, scattering them all over the globe so that they would be protected. Jerome ended up in Manhattan with Charlie, joining Zicon who’d lived there for years. He knew of a few others on the West Coast, and one guy, some big-shot enforcer, situated himself quite nicely in Puerto Rico. There were stories of his own small syndicate raising hell in a coastal town in Arecibo.
The relocation to America was easier than he expected. The language barrier didn’t exist for him, and the streets of Brooklyn weren’t too different from Itaewon. For the first few months his job was helping Zicon with the tire warehouse. A halfway house for goons was what Zicon would call it when he’d open his doors to a new refugee.
And that’s what Jerome did—transitioned to a simpler life. And he loved it, treasured it. So when Zicon, now with thick ropes of auburn hair hanging from his scalp, showed up on Jerome’s doorstep on Horatio Street with a scowl and instructions from Rabbit, Jerome was more than disappointed.
His job would be simple—he was a lookout. Watch Jin Amaris’s apartment and report anything strange. There was a wide gap between what Jerome considered strange and what everyone else thought, but there wasn’t a natural way to explain so he kept quiet. The night of, he was to stand downwind of the action and at the first sign of trouble send up a warning flare—a mass text—a bright flash and some smoke.
Standing on the corner a block from the apartment building he was set to watch, Jerome ran into a small problem. He realized—like someone had flipped a switch and light flooded his mind—that he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to do any of this. All he’d done was swap one set of orders with another. He was a hypocrite. He was better than some errand boy and he was smarter, kinder, and held to a stricter moral code that surpassed any supposed loyalty he had to a maniac.
Amanda popped up out of nowhere, distracting him from his tangled thoughts when she slid the plate back onto the counter.
“What now?” he barked as he eyed the plate of untouched food. “How can he complain about food he hasn’t even tried?”
“He wants to speak to you.”
Jerome pulled up short. That was new.
He slid the open tickets to the line cook and yanked off his apron, hanging it with the others. As he walked into the cooler air of the dining room, he tried to adopt a smile or maybe anything that wasn’t a frown. It didn’t work.
The man graced Jerome with a tilt of his head. He wore a houndstooth, tweed-wool newsboy hat, the brim sitting low on his forehead as if he were trying to hide. That didn’t make any sense, Jerome thought, since he was the one who called me over.
His hair was dark, but on closer inspection under the scrutiny of the fluorescent lights, it was a brassy burgundy, as if he’d tried dying his hair with minimal luck. He had on a tan, pinstriped suit that looked tailor-made, so Jerome knew the man wasn’t hard up f
or cash. Why he would eat in a diner like this, Jerome would never know, especially considering how much the guy complained about it.
“Good evening, I’m Jerome, the head cook. I heard that you wanted to—”
The older man held his hand up. “I know who you are,” he said as he took a sip of his tea. “I just wanted a closer look at the man who’s been butchering the food around here.”
Jerome was unimpressed with the insult. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard such descriptive praise from this guy, but just because he was accustomed to it didn’t mean he was about to stand there and waste his time listening. “Well now you’ve seen me, lucky you. Is there anything else you need?”
“No. Not really.” The man had an airy lilt to his voice, delicate, like a breeze flowing through your hair. “I would have more to say if they weren’t watching you.”
Jerome swept his gaze through the diner. No haunting creature in the corner, no man in a trench coat looking over his shoulder, no one with a camera or a pen and pad or a gun or even a suspicious cell phone. Matter of fact, no one was looking at them at all.
“Look,” Jerome said, setting his jaw in a way that he hoped would discourage any further conversation. “I don’t really have any time for this.”
The man laughed into his hand before leaning across the table with a pointed look. “Oh, that’s funny. Time has never been a fleeting commodity for people like us, now has it?”
Jerome’s eyes narrowed for a breath before he recovered. “What do you know about time?”
“I know plenty. I know about duty and I know about regret.” He pulled a card from his breast pocket and slid it across the table. “When you get a chance, we should talk. If not, it’s better to do a good deed near home than go far away to burn incense.”
Jerome barely hesitated before snatching the card up and stuffing it in his back pocket without looking at it. “Yeah, sure.”
The man cleared his throat—or it could have been a chuckle, Jerome wasn’t sure—and Jerome told himself he didn’t care which as he went back into the kitchen.
Hours later, after the diner closed, Amanda was perched on the counter flipping through greasy bills and sticky change as she tallied up her tips. She squeaked as she fingered a receipt with words scribbled across the back.
“Jerome!” Amanda sang as she inspected the crumpled receipt. “Your favorite customer in the whole wide world left you a little looooove note!”
He dropped the scrub brush he was using to clean the grill and wiped his hands on his apron before walking through the swinging kitchen doors and out to the counter. He snatched the flimsy slip of paper out of her hands, ignoring her playful smirk.
Jerome squinted at the words. “Ebenezer Scrooge,” he read cautiously.
“Well, you are a jerk,” she jested as she hopped down from the counter. “It’s the frown.”
He threw a dish rag at her but she moved out of the way, laughing the whole time. He looked at the receipt again. Only one thing came to mind.
Ghosts.
It was pretty balmy for late fall, so Jerome popped a few buttons on his jacket as he roamed the streets, wending his way over to his apartment. On the way he passed Dolce Confections. There was a whimsical painting of a playful looking phoenix on the front window.
He knew who the bakery owner was, but not much about her other than she was Zicon’s girl. She was beautiful and friendly in a way that made him feel welcome whenever she was around. He hated the phoenix symbol on her window, though, but he’d never tell her that.
What Jerome called home was a shoebox with a single window that faced a building that always had an advertisement anchored to it. This month it was for athletic gear. Last month it had been an underwear model. The only source of direct sunlight was from a single skylight, so he spent a lot of time underneath it, thinking. He had an old futon he’d snatched up from a swap meet, his kitchen table was a discarded piece of Plexiglas on a tall crate, and he’d created a coffee table out of pallets he’d nailed together. The most expensive thing in the entire apartment was his stereo, and that didn’t work.
His apartment was small, but it felt cozy enough to make Jerome forget that he could take a piss from the living room and make it to the toilet. Because he didn’t want to feel too cramped or too uncomfortable, he kept strict order in the apartment. His home was familiar, looked familiar, and smelled familiar.
So when he opened the door and a subtle hint of foreign familiarity carried over his skin, he knew.
Mint. Lavender. Tree Bark.
The sort of familiarity that was the precursor of change.
Three silent figures waited for him, shrouded in the darkness of his living room.
Ebenezer Scrooge and the ghost of his past. He would laugh if it wasn’t so depressing.
A lone shadow stood with his back to Jerome, over by the window, trails of cigar smoke wisping above his head as he took another drag.
Another squatted with his shoes digging deep into the futon—the beige futon— and the tallest of them leaned against the wall with a hat pulled down over his eyes.
Three shadows with very three familiar spirit essences that pricked along his scalp and resonated in the bottom of his soul.
“How did you find me?”
The shadow by the window chuckled harshly, a good indicator of his lack of patience and humor. “Did you think I wasn’t going to? To believe that you’d have to be the dumbest fuck alive. I do have a nose. If you were smart, you would have grabbed a clog.”
Jerome shrugged. “I did. It broke.”
“Then you are the dumbest fuck alive.”
Jerome ignored the insult. He’d known he’d be found one day. He reached for the light switch, bathing the room in warm light. In his mind he wanted them to hiss and shrink back, like vampires or something…except angels don’t do that. “Do you guys want something to drink?” Jerome asked as he walked to his tiny kitchen counter and dropped the bag of takeout he’d brought home from the diner on it. “I’ve got food—oh, and Spencer?” The one hunched on the futon raised his head. “Could you get your dirty shoes off my futon?”
Spencer grinned his ever-present gummy smile while flipping layers of pale brown hair off his forehead. “Figured you’d be mad about it. But I ain't forgot how you pitched my shoes over the side of a building on our last mission. I had to walk home barefoot.” He stood and frowned. “This is payback.”
Jerome pulled a face. “You held onto that grudge for over seventy years?”
Marcus tipped back the hat angled over his face. Spencer hadn’t moved, so Marcus kicked him hard in the thigh, laughing as he fell over. “You don’t know the half of it. He has a list of revenge pranks he’s planned for when we get you back to Caeli.”
“I don’t want to go back,” Jerome said, spooning out some of the vegetable soup into the bowls. “Do you think I would have ran if I wanted to stay?”
Hugo spun from his position facing the window, scratching at his scruffy beard. “Cobra is a team, and team members don’t just vanish in the middle of the night, so we’re going to sit here and talk this out real civilized-like. I had another alternative, but Marcus said he liked your face the way it is.”
Jerome rolled his eyes from behind the shield of a cabinet door, silently mimicking Hugo before pushing it closed. He picked up the tray of hot soup and walked it into the living room, watching Spencer lunge for the bowl with the most soup in it.
Hugo sat down stiffly, but his slim little fingers still reached for a bowl. Marcus passed Hugo a spoon, but didn’t take a bowl for himself. The food served as a momentary distraction but soon spoons were clinking against bowl rims and Hugo was staring at him expectantly.
Jerome leaned back against the futon. “I knew the man from mission number two-one-five-five-four-four-eight.”
“Two-one-five-five-four-four-eight?” Marcus spoke slowly, as if he were trying to stretch his memory over decades to the last time they stood side by side. The
memory pinged loudly and time snapped forward. “The clergyman from Al Wasl?”
Jerome answered with silence.
Marcus’s eyes widened. “Why…why didn’t you tell anyone?”
Jerome shrugged as he uncrossed his legs. The left one was falling asleep and reminded him of his attempt to nullify feelings in exchange for sanity once upon a time. “He was going to die anyway, right?” He shrugged again. “I was just tired. Of it all.” He stomped his foot in frustration as the biting tingles raced up and down his leg. “Do you know how many times I had to sink my knife into his back for him to stop fighting me? Five. He fought me for twenty minutes, and after it was done I didn’t want to do it anymore. I don’t even know why I killed him.”
“We never know why, Jerome. No different from any other assignment, but if we’d known you knew him—”
“He’d still be dead.”
Uncomfortable and tense silence stretched to the four walls of his apartment, and Jerome smiled at the quiet. Maybe it would be a segue to peace. Maybe he’d blink and they’d be gone. Maybe he could continue to be a normal person and not a Luminary trained to kill. But as he closed his eyes and opened them again, the members of his old team were still there. They’d always been there, it seemed.
“They need you back in Caeli,” Marcus said, breaking the silence. Regret wasn’t a look Jerome was used to seeing on Marcus’ face—the Marcus he knew was a playfully evil man who spent most of his time back-talking his superiors and slipping in backhanded compliments.
“I already told you I’m not going.”
Marcus regarded Jerome carefully before glancing at Hugo, who nodded his consent. “The Lioness has been reincarnated.”
Jerome narrowed his eyes, confused, before tipping his head back in laughter. “That’s impossible. I’d rather you knock me over the head and drag me back than to feed me bullshit.”
The Halo of Amaris Page 28
