The Grimrose Path

Chapter 8

A repossessed house isn’t the same as a possessed house and shouldn’t be frightening, especially in Vegas where it’s all stucco, everything looks the same, and you could drive to five different houses before you ever recognized your own. There was no stereotypical haunted house “look.” Besides, a repossessed house, scary qualities aside, didn’t make a good spot to hide. Right now there were hundreds of them and if you threw a rock at two real estate agents, chances were fifty-fifty you’d hit a demon, but usually houses still were not a good place to hole up for a demon. Normally if they didn’t want their bad behavior noticed, they’d take it out of town to the desert where only the burros and jackrabbits were there to see . . . or to hear.

Which made it odd that if they’d set a trap for Griffin, they would bring him to a house within yards of other houses . . . except the entire neighborhood was abandoned. Half built on the edge of town, those few who’d lived there at its conception had lost it all when the housing market crashed. Apparently the developer had too. Skeletons of houses were slowly falling apart, dead before they were even fully born. No one was left to hear the screaming . . . and demons did love to make their victims scream—and beg and plead, but mostly scream. Sometimes for someone to save them . . . anyone . . . God, Jesus, Allah, Mommy. Usually no one did.

Life was like that. If there was a master plan in place, fairness didn’t seem to enter into it. And as much as my kind and I tried to make up for that . . . vengeance is never as good as remaining innocent and whole.

“I can’t hear him. I can’t hear him. I can’t hear him.” Zeke was in the front seat, a .480 Ruger in his hand. He was rocking slightly, back and forth. The chanting and rocking made him look like a lost child. The gun and murderous rage that made his face as blank as an executioner’s hood made him look anything but.

I’d taken over the driving. I wanted Griffin safe almost as much as Zeke did, but I didn’t want to plow over the top of some granny’s ecofriendly little hybrid to do it. Cute, save-the-planet green, and made for getting caught in the undercarriage of a bus driven by a hell-bent-for-leather man with tunnel vision for saving his partner. “If you don’t hear him, then he’s unconscious. He’s not in any pain. That’s good, right?” I stopped the bus on a road now covered with layers of dirt except for one clear set of tire tracks. Demons could pop in and out as they pleased, but they couldn’t do it with people. Either they had to have permission, like the old completely false myth of the vampire needing an invitation, or the person wouldn’t survive the trip. I didn’t know which it was and I didn’t care right now. All I cared about was Griffin and if they brought him here, they’d have to do it the mundane way—in a car. About two blocks away one house, a finished one that had once had landscaping that had since died, hosted a light—one light that flickered, in and out, like a campfire or like a tiny bit of Hell itself.

“I can’t hear him. How can that be good? How can that be any fucking good?” Zeke bolted to his feet and was through the door into the night and running before I had a chance to snatch at his shirt, an arm, anything at all. Desperation—where human speed ended and more-than-human began.

“Shit.” I was right behind him, or so I thought, as he began to pull away from me. Maybe Zeke always heard him, even when Griffin was asleep. There could be some internal hum all the time, ocean waves against a subconscious shore, a mental heartbeat. I’d thought Zeke would know if Griffin was alive or dead, but I might have been wrong. He could be running on nothing but hope or denial, and I couldn’t know for sure, because I couldn’t catch him to ask.

I pushed myself to go faster when I knew there was nothing left to give, but surprisingly I was wrong. Desperation worked for Zeke and it worked for me as well. I ran through the door of the house only seconds behind him to nearly crash into him. He was still, looking up, as stunned as someone watching the sky fall—the moon and stars, all coming down in an impossible crash and burn. The end of days. The end of life . . . the end of his life.

“Now, now, Tweetie. Don’t look so sad. He’s not dead. I keep my promises . . . well, almost never. But this time I made an exception.”

I ignored Eli’s voice as I followed Zeke’s unwavering focus to Griffin hanging above us. His wrists were tied together and that rope wrapped several times to the wrought-iron rail of the second-floor loft. His feet hung just inches over our heads. In the low light, candlelight, I recognized without thought, I could see the purpling bruise that covered one side of his face, from temple to jaw. His shirt was ripped and bloody, but not saturated. The slashes were superficial, but the head wound, that wasn’t. Eligos was telling the truth though. Griffin was still breathing. He was alive, but unconscious. That’s why Zeke couldn’t hear him now, but would hear him again.

Absolutely goddamn would.

Zeke was growling now. It wasn’t the sound a human would make, nor an angel or demon. It was the sound of fury incarnate and Eli was a trigger pull away from being a puddle incarnate dripping off the chair he was currently sitting in. I’d looked away from Griffin and there was my least favorite demon in all his glory through the arched doorway to the right . . . having takeout on the dining room table by candlelight, which I knew he thought brought out the highlights in his hair. I was not in the mood for that or any other of his vanities.

“It’s Thai.” He tilted the chair back and waved a fork spearing a piece of chicken. I could smell the coconut curry. “I didn’t think you were ever going to figure it out and get here. I would’ve eaten my compadres instead of wasting them to grout cleaner if I’d known you’d be so long.” That’s when I saw the pools of black on the tile floor surrounding the table—enough to have been at least ten demons.

“So who told you?” he added as he leaned back farther and forked the chicken into his mouth. I put a hand on Zeke’s wrist before he could raise his hand and pull that trigger.

“Get Griffin down, Kit,” I murmured. “We need to get him to a hospital. He’s the important thing now, not Eligos.” Zeke often couldn’t see reason or rather, he saw a reason that escaped the rest of us, but he saw the truth in what I said and was gone instantly up one side of two sets of stairs in the foyer that led up to the second floor.

“Come on, Trixa. I saved your peri from some flunkies who thought they had enough brain cells to actually have ideas and plans of their own.” He snorted. “Plans . . . Can you believe that? I told you I wouldn’t make a move on your pets for a year, and I went wildly above and beyond that promise to save this one from demons other than myself. I think a little reward...”

“Beelzebub,” I said, cutting him off. “We left him on Tropicana Avenue. He was mostly in one piece if you’re interested in changing that.”

“Ah.” He made a face. “You made that far too easy. You’re no fun at all,” he grumbled, dropping the fork into the Styrofoam container. “I was ready to use my wiles, the pure sex appeal that comes off me in waves. Hell, it comes off me like a damn tsunami and you go and ruin it by just giving up that piece of fucking worthless shit.”

I gave him a smile, but it wasn’t for him or for me. . . . It was for Griffin. There was only one reason I hadn’t killed Beelzebub myself . . . because having a demon do it would be the worst death Beelzebub could suffer. His blackly pathetic hopes would die before his body did. Death of spirit, death of body, and it still wouldn’t be enough to pay for having a part, no matter how passive, in what had been done to Griffin.

“Think you’re clever, don’t you?” Eli said, waving a hand through the flame of the several candles surrounding his dinner. The flames spread over his hand before he extinguished them with a snap of his fingers. “But I know what you want, his death to be the slightest edge more horrifying because it comes from his most eager hope. Perhaps his last hope. I like the way you think, Trixa. But guess what? I’m no one’s subcontractor and I’ve done you favor enough today. Hanging around aboveground where Cronus could take my wings, all to save a former fellow rebel. I’d think you’d be grateful . . . not trying to shovel more work onto me.” He pushed the container of Thai food away. “I remember him, you know. There isn’t a demon in Hell I don’t know, but your pet . . . Glasya-Labolas . . . he hung with the big boys. Not as big or bad as me, naturally, but neither was he a former Candygram pigeon. He had balls. He was on the front lines in the Fall—one of the willing, not the wandering. Justly damned, not drafted. A true soldier, a warrior of God and Lucifer. And after we set up shop Downstairs, he did things....” He grinned, happy to be spreading the news. “Let’s just say he set the bar a little higher for those who someday might hope to be . . . well . . . me.”

“He’s not Glasya-Labolas. He’s not a demon. He’s something so different from you, you could never comprehend it.” Before I could move to stab him with the fork he’d discarded, Zeke called my name. I stepped back out of the doorway and beneath Griffin’s unconscious body.

“Catch him.”

I looked up to see Zeke’s face, pale and set, as he began to saw through the rope with one of his many knives. “I won’t let him fall,” I promised. No, no matter what Glasya-Labolas had done, Griffin would never fall.

The rope snapped. Zeke caught it and fed it hand over hand until I caught Griffin around the waist—a tumbling mass of limp legs, arms, and flopping blond hair. Either the hair or his soap smelled strongly of strawberries and I had an instant flash of who’d last done the shopping. Ninety-nine-cent shampoo. In the basket it goes. Pink? So what if it’s pink? It’s ninety-nine cents. Zeke, so very Zeke, and so very Griffin to have used it anyway, although on the weeks he shopped I knew he’d drop fifty dollars on shampoo alone.

It was a warm moment that vanished quickly when I realized that holding up one hundred and seventy pounds of unconscious male when I now had a completely human body wasn’t precisely easy. I’d have to start lifting weights along with the running.

With Cronus in my life? I should live so long.

I eased Griffin to the floor, made it look simple, and pulled my phone to call 911. It was a triumph over protesting muscles, the second part of it, but I did it . . . because Eli was watching. In the midst of it all . . . Cronus and Griffin . . . Eli was still watching and if I forgot that, I wouldn’t be around to worry about living with a Titan on the warpath. A demon would take me out instead. “Do me a favor, Eli,” I said as I put a thumb on Griffin’s right eyelid and lifted it and then followed with the left. His pupils were equal and reactive to the light. That was good, very good.

“Do you a favor?” He sounded interested and, worse yet, sounded as if he were right at my shoulder . . . ghosting up without me hearing a single scuff of his shoe. “You would owe me a genuine debt? One you would actually pay this time instead of being the liar and thief you were last time?” He said liar and thief with an oddly possessive affection. He’d said it before—fooling and cheating him while killing Solomon was as intriguing as it got to a demon bored with eternity.

“One I would pay,” I replied after I finished with the 911 operator. Zeke was beside us now, his hand cupping Griffin’s jaw and then his forehead resting against the slowly rising and falling chest. Listening . . . and not for a heartbeat. As much as he hated Eligos and Eligos being that close to any of us, he could see only one thing now.

“And how could I possibly take your word on that?” came a rightfully skeptical question.

Like Zeke, I had eyes for only one person and that wasn’t Eli. I had one aim, one goal, and I’d do anything to accomplish it. “In Kimano’s name. In my brother’s name, I’ll return the favor. Now take the car the demons drove out here with Griffin or the bus and drive away. I want something I can build a story on for the cops.”

“A small favor, then. Mine won’t be.” His hand was on my shoulder, but with a far different emotion than was passing from Zeke to Griffin. “You didn’t ask about the Roses.”

“Those Roses are your plan. Your scheme to stop Cronus. That is not my problem and has nothing to do with me, apologies to the Roses,” I dismissed. It was the best way to sell a concept to a mark. Make them believe the idea was theirs and theirs alone and they’d do all they could to make it happen.

“My plan. Exactly. And the boss liked it.” Eli’s hand tapped a finger on my shoulder. “He did simultaneously explode a few of his top advisers and it sounded as if he’d destroyed a small chunk of Hell, but that is the best part of not knowing precisely where your boss is”—and why Cronus wanted to—“since you don’t have to see the expression on his face when things aren’t running as smoothly as he’d care for.”

I could hear a siren in the distance. “That sounds wonderful for you, Eli. Your work ethic astounds me. Now take the car and go.”

This time the clamp of his hand was painful, but I didn’t let him see it. “We set the Roses free an hour ago. Find out if that satisfies Cronus. Find out soon.” Then he was gone to drive off one of the vehicles to create more of an evidence mishmash for the cops. As for the freedom of the Roses satisfying Cronus, unfortunately for Eli and Hell, that wasn’t going to happen.

But it certainly satisfied me.

The hospital was as most hospitals are or I was guessing. This was only my second time in one. But they were similar. Busy, sharp with the smell of alcohol, and staff who positively wouldn’t consider letting nonfamily members stay with a patient . . . unless you were the patient’s power of attorney—that would be me. Eden House demon slayers weren’t the only ones with a library of fake IDs to hand out. When it came to kicking Zeke out . . . there was absolutely no admittance, and then there were the absolute exceptions. The doctor and the nurses each had a quick look at Zeke and that was the end of that. No calling security. No urging him out. Zeke, at the moment, was why people in the Bible feared to look upon angels.

They were scary sons of bitches, some of them. It hadn’t been a demon or Lucifer who’d killed the firstborn of Egypt. It had been an angel. The staff in the ER saw, unknowingly, in Zeke what people had cast their eyes away from in ancient times—the inexplicable or a reckoning. Trying to toss Zeke back out to the waiting room was a reckoning waiting to happen. Wisely, no one took him up on it.

The police had come and gone and I’d given them a story about being kidnapped by two men with guns—we sacrificed my favorite shotgun and Zeke’s Ruger for verisimilitude—very pasty white men who beat up our friend, robbed us, and then left us—not to die, but probably because they were late for the latest World of Warcraft campaign or a slot machine appointment with their grandma. They were, after all, incredibly, unbelievably practically glow-in-the-dark white . . . with socks . . . and sandals.

About time that slice of the population had the blame dumped on them for some fake crime. I was happy to even the score a bit, although good luck narrowing down “two pasty white men” in Vegas where the tourists primarily came in two colors—alabaster and fake-tan orange.

Zeke went with Griffin for the CAT scan and I waited, pacing—no hard plastic chair for me, no standing still when my boys might need me. I called Leo and filled him in. “Goddamn kid.” He sighed at Griffin’s one-man quest to make up for a past that wasn’t his anymore. I’d reminded him Griffin might be older than Leo was; you couldn’t be sure. Correction, I couldn’t be sure. Leo could. “Older than you, little girl, maybe, but he’s not older than I am.”

“Because you’re forever, ‘Grandpa,’” I mocked, an argument we’d long thrown back and forth between each other.

“Damn close.” He sounded smug. He sounded less so when I told him Hell had set the Roses free. “That’s nice for the Roses, escaping torture and being a demon’s supper, but it doesn’t help us with the Cronus situation or the Eligos situation when he finds out what you’ve done. You managed to kick Hell’s ass and fuck up intentionally all in one. That is quite a trick.”

“But it’s a good one, isn’t it?” I asked, an excitement no trickster could deny sparking through me . . . distant fireworks on a passing Fourth of July. What I’d done was more than good. It was, for one, nearly impossible to pull off. Second, it saved thousands of souls from horror, then nonexistence. Third, and best of all, it screwed Hell itself. You couldn’t ask for a better hat trick than that.

“Yes,” Leo admitted with a mixture of reluctance and an echo of the same excitement in his voice. “You are now legend with this one.” As if I weren’t legendary before this, ass, I thought, somewhat disgruntled. “I’ll be at the hospital as soon as I can. The tourist doesn’t want to go down. Hard digging out this way. I picked a bad spot. But I’ll be there in at least two hours. Griffin will live, won’t he?” He didn’t sound worried, but he was. Griffin and Zeke had been his strays as well as mine when they’d shown up at the bar as teenagers on the run.

“If I had my doubts, I’d be in Hell myself right now, beating Cronus to the punch. Oh, and if you see Beelzebub on the way, kill him for me, would you?” I clicked the phone shut as Griffin was pushed back on his gurney into the curtained enclosure of ER bed 7. Lucky seven, I was fervently hoping.

Zeke immediately took the plastic chair I’d disdained and pulled it up to Griffin’s side. “No hematomas, subdural or epidural.” He might not bother himself over the larger words that made up the English vocabulary, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know them. He did, and when it was important, he could not only use them, but he could amaze with what he knew. “But his Glasgow Coma Scale is seven.” He put his hand very lightly on Griffin’s forehead, the purple bruising feathering up under his palm.

“And that’s not good?” It didn’t sound particularly good the way Zeke said it. Lucky number seven wasn’t so lucky this time.

“No. I made the doctor explain it to me.” I wished I’d been there to see that—what sort of medical equipment had been involved and where it had threatened to be inserted. “It means he won’t open his eyes, he won’t speak, but he does react to pain. He’s in a coma. Deep.” Zeke bared his teeth briefly, as I saw him thinking how Griffin had gotten there, but he recovered his calm quickly in a manner so unlike him, I felt like the one who needed guidance. Tutoring, as his partner gave him. I felt like the one who was lost. When Zeke was more on top of things than I was, I was through the looking glass hanging out with the Mad Hatter. But that was making this about me, and it wasn’t. It was about Griffin and what I could do to help him.

Whisper was a healer I had helped months ago. “Whisper,” I said, “is in Louisiana. I can call her. Get her to fly back.” That was something, and I had to do something. That’s who I was. Created to do, teach, act, save. But forgetting all that, it didn’t matter what I’d been born to do; it was about what I had to do—anything I could. I was already standing and slipped my hand into my pocket for my cell phone again.

But sometimes it wasn’t my place to do.

“No. I’ll bring him back,” Zeke said without a shred of doubt in his voice.

“But, Kit, you’re not a healer.” He was many things . . . some good, some mysterious, some disastrous, but he wasn’t a healer.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll bring him back.”

“Zeke, you can’t pull someone out of a coma because you want to. No matter how much you want to.” I hated to be the voice of reason when it came to this, when what he needed was the voice of hope. But even more than hope we needed a healer, and I couldn’t ignore that, not for Griffin’s sake—not if we wanted him back. “You just can’t do it.”

“You fucking watch me.” Zeke closed his eyes while I watched, and, equaling almost anything I’d seen in my life, he did. He actually did. I would never underestimate the bond between a telepath and an empath. I never had in the past, but this . . . This was some serious tough love if ever I’d seen it—tough and untouchable.

Zeke with his hand still on Griffin’s forehead, a bloodstained hank of blond hair falling across his knuckles, started. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. Just as in the abandoned house he had lowered Griffin to me by the rope, hand over hand, he now did in reverse. I could feel him dragging him out of the void, hand over hand, with such power and strength—he was a half reclaiming the rest of himself to become whole. That the air didn’t shimmer with intensity put off by the profound effort surprised me.

For almost ten minutes . . . the air became heavier and heavier until it almost hurt to breathe, and then Zeke spoke.

“I know,” he said softly, a tone I’d never heard him use. But he wasn’t speaking to me. He was speaking to a Griffin who might not yet be awake, but was now having thoughts, if disjointed. Thoughts were good. You can get through life without them—I saw that every day—but there was no denying they were helpful. “No . . . no, Griffin. Not that way, this way. Come this way.” His forehead creased and overhead the lights flickered slightly; then he nodded. “Right. That’s right. It’s morning,” he lied. “Time for breakfast. Time to get up.” This time he shook his head minutely. “No. Nothing wrong. No demons. Just some eggs. With that fancy funny-tasting sauce on them. Your favorite. I’ll even make them.” He paused again. “No, Griff, no demons. No trouble. I promise. Everything’s fine. You can come home, okay? Come home, Griffin.”

“Now.”

“Come home.”

“Come home.”

Griffin’s eyelids fluttered and finally lifted, a confused blue haze wandering from Zeke to me and back to Zeke again. “Wha’ happened? Zeke . . . you . . . all right?” His voice was thick and his lips barely moved, but he spoke. He was awake and talking and Zeke had done that. Quicker than a healer and more certainly than any doctor. I’d seen a lot of things in my wandering days, but I’d not seen anything like this.

I’d always known he was a miracle.

Zeke moved his hand aside to rest his forehead against Griffin’s for a moment, a damn wonderful moment, before straightening. “All right? No, it’s not fucking all right. After what you pulled, I am never speaking to your ass again. You got that? Never.” He swiveled around in the chair to face the wall full of monitors and shelves of medical equipment. “Give me your hand, goddamnit.” He took Griffin’s hand before it had more than a chance to twitch, linked fingers, and then closed his mouth tightly. I didn’t think he actually meant “never,” especially as he squeezed the hand he held—a hand, dried blood under its short fingernails, that gripped back tightly.

Griffin blinked and he opened his mouth. Zeke cut him off, that “never” being somewhat shorter than even I anticipated. “Jackass.”

“Idiot.”

“Asshole.”

“Mega-friggin-asshole.”

“You left me. Damn it to hell, you left me.”

With the last insult on his list, Zeke was right. Griffin had left him. Inadvertently, but he’d left him. He’d left his brother-in-arms, his best friend. Some would call it his best friend with benefits and more than just sexual, but that would be an insult to what they had. The description fell so very short. Yet Griffin had walked out the door on that and disappeared. That hadn’t been part of his plan, but it had happened.

Worse, though, he’d taken his bucket when he’d gone, leaving Zeke sinking fast. There was no Zeke without Griffin—the same as there would be no Griffin without Zeke. They both had a responsibility to each other that they thought they understood, but they didn’t, not entirely. There was no one without the other and when they fought demons, it was something they had to remember. Saving your partner was pointless if you didn’t save yourself too, because, in the end, it was one in the same.

“Griffin.” I bent down and cupped his cheek before kissing the corner of his mouth. “I had no idea you were such an idiot.”

He blinked a few more times as the thoughts swam in and out behind the blue and the puzzlement began to clear. “Oh. The demons.”

“Yes. Oh. The demons.” This side of his face was un-bruised and pale, faint blond stubble beginning to show on his jaw. “If you keep trying to make up for something you never did, especially alone . . . If you keep trying to prove to us something we already know is true, then you won’t be around very long. And if you’re not, then Zeke won’t be either. Did you think of that when you left this morning when you were lying to Zeke with your thoughts?”

He swallowed and slid his gaze toward Zeke, who was most meticulously not looking back at him. “No . . . wasn’t. I’m sorry.”

Zeke kept his head turned away. “Trixa, tell the asshole he’s not half as sorry as he’s going to be.”

“Kit says not half as sorry as you’re going to be,” I parroted faithfully and somewhat gleefully—the relief was so great. “You screwed up, Griffin, and it’s time to take your medicine. I’m not standing in the way of that. How would you learn if I did?”

“I’m not the teacher”—he coughed a dry cough, the same as you gave after a long sleep—“anymore?” His hand tightened on Zeke’s again.

“Not for a while at least.” I patted his chest now covered in a hospital gown. “It’ll do you good. I think you might’ve forgotten we all have lessons to learn. We’re all teachers and we’re all students, and I’m thinking, sugar, you’re due a little detention.”

“Not a little. A lot. A lot.” The glower was directed at me over a shoulder, and I obediently relayed the message, using my fingers to comb through Griffin’s tangled hair, but the blood and dirt were there to stay until the next shampoo, the hospital version or strawberry scented.

“I almost feel sorry for you when he does speak to you.” I gave up on his hair.

“He is speaking to me.” He raised his free hand to rub unsteadily at his head. It had to hurt. Being pulled out of a coma wasn’t going to change that. “Just because it’s not with words or thoughts”—he closed his eyes—“doesn’t mean anything. What he feels . . .” The hand fell back to the bed as Zeke’s head bowed. No words, but they were communicating and it was heartbreaking to see, as necessary as it was. Now Griffin would have a whole different guilt to deal with. I hope he dealt with it better than the unnecessary ex-demon one.

“I’ll go get the nurse. They’ll give you something for the pain once they get over your practically supernatural recovery. Just don’t tell them quite how supernatural.” I patted him again, his shoulder this time, the same spot I gripped when I reached across the bed to touch Zeke. “I’ll be back in the morning.” I’d only be one in a crowd in the next few minutes. I’d let Zeke have what small amount of extra room there was going to be. Miracles tended to suck the oxygen and space out of a room, and now that I had Griffin back, both my boys safe and whole, there was a catastrophe heading my way—heading everyone’s way. Mama said there was always a catastrophe coming. Someone’s world was always coming to an end. It wasn’t our worry to change every ending, only the endings we could. Know your limitations, girl, else you become one yourself.

This time though, Mama didn’t know. One ending could be every ending this time. One fall could be everyone’s fall.

“Thanks, Trixa, for saving me.” Zeke gave a discontented grunt. “For helping Zeke save me,” Griffin corrected himself.

“My not-so-great pleasure. Don’t get yourself in trouble like that again, not the self-made kind anyway. Besides, I was only along for the ride, to make sure Zeke didn’t tear Vegas down to the foundations to find you.” I paused at the door to look back at both of them, but particularly Griffin. “Remember that. If I wasn’t here, what Zeke would’ve done and I can’t say I blame him. He’s listened to you for all his life”—all the one he could remember—“so now I think it’s time you listened to him for a while.” I held up a finger. “Except on running over grandmas driving tiny ecofriendly hybrids with your big satanic bus. Listen and learn, but there are limits.”

I raised three other fingers to join the first and give them a quick wave good-bye as I left. They needed the time, and I would only be a third wheel to that bicycle . . . or a second wheel to the unicycle. Codependency, it isn’t ever a good thing in the human world, but in the supernatural world, sometimes it could be the very best thing—for some the only thing that kept them sane.

I notified the nurse, who ran for the doctor. I called Leo to tell him to skip the hospital and go home for the night. Then I followed my own advice, ducked under the frame that had once held glass, and walked through my door. Despite the gaping hole in it, I knew nothing would be missing. In this neighborhood, no one except desperate drug addicts tried to steal from me. And if a stranger tried, he wouldn’t leave this neighborhood without an ass-kicking he wouldn’t soon forget. My neighbors loved me. Free-alcohol Fridays made sure of that. As I stood on the shattered glass Zeke had left earlier—one more chore for the morning—all the lights came on simultaneously. The jukebox, which was decorative—it hadn’t worked since about the time they’d stopped making records—came to life, and the sounds of “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen filled the room. It could’ve been worse. It could’ve been “Teen Angel.”

Because that was who was waiting for me, minus the teen part. Shoulder-length blond hair, white wings barred with gold, and eyes the color of the water where the Titanic had sunk. Dark gray-blue. Oh, and he had a sword.

The angel quirked his lips very slightly. “You wouldn’t believe what a bitch it was getting this through airport security.”

I shot the jukebox with the gun hidden in the dead plant by the door, put the weapon back, and then dropped my face into my hands. I liked Ishiah. I trusted Ishiah to a certain point, which was big for a trickster. But I did not need this. I didn’t want this. I didn’t even want to see it. Not now. I was exhausted. I had too much on my plate and I just wanted to sleep.

“Trixa,” the voice coaxed. “It won’t be like last time, my word, not that you have anyone but yourself to blame for that.” There was that attitude. That disapproving, condescending attitude. “I’m here to assist you. Only that. There will be no last time this time.”

Last time. I didn’t want to talk about the last time. I didn’t want to think about the last time. I wished the last time could be erased from time itself altogether, because I would never live it down. Not until my dying day.

Last time. Why did he have to bring it up? I considered taking out the gun again and doing to myself what I’d done to the jukebox.

Hallelujah, my ass.

More like Hellelujah.