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Life is loud and messy. My life is exceptionally loud and messy. I used to think it was weird that Helia and I got so much attention from our uncles, but when Azrael’s girlfriend became pregnant, it clicked into place. It wasn’t necessarily about Helia or myself in particular. It was about having a baby, the baby growing into a little kid, then a teenager, and finally a young adult. The archangels bred so slowly that it was easy to shower an angel or two with attention and affection for a few hundred years until the next one was born into the family, especially when births were often separated by a few hundred years. It made sense that many of my uncles were now gathered at my house. They were still grieving the loss of an angel life and they’d come close to losing another. Azrael and his girlfriend, Krystal, lost a baby due to demonic possession related to her work. She was a nurse and became possessed while attempting to diagnose someone who was possessed. While child souls are resilient, unborn souls are easily destroyed. She blamed herself and secluded herself after the loss. This second pregnancy seemed to be going better, and she had taken leave from work this time and rarely left her house as a result. I was thankful she had joined everyone at my house for pizza and the ogling of my super-damaged wings.
Jerome sat down at the table, and after a moment, he grabbed a slice of pizza and unwrapped one of his subs. He offered Krystal half of it, and she took it. Krystal was a vampire. She and Azrael had been a couple my entire life, but this would be their first baby together. The cacophony of noise in my house was somber, excited, happy, sad, and comforting. It was the sound of love. Jerome, in his infinite wisdom, often said that while meeting me gave him a guardian after his mom was gone, what it had really done was unite him with the family he and Valerie had craved since his father died. It sometimes showed on his face, as it did now while splitting a sandwich with Krystal and offering Angel a bite of sausage under the table.
“I would just like to say that after some discussion, we’ve come up with a plan for Soleil,” Azrael said loudly.
“What kind of plan do I need?” I asked suspiciously.
“Well, until the damaged spines fall off, you need caregivers and guardians,” Azrael said. “We can’t have you passing out from blood loss when one falls off. Plus, Michael says in the next six hours, you are going to really start to feel all those bumps, bruises, and broken bones, which means you’re going to need help around the house, especially with the horses and Angel. We’ve worked out a rotation.”
“The blanket forts have been rebuilt, haven’t they?” I asked, feeling my eyebrow raise as Azrael spoke.
“Yes, they have,” Remiel said proudly. “I may have nightmares from watching Karadon try to eat you, which means Jerome will also probably have nightmares about it. You both need us for protection, comfort, and our able bodies. We also know you don’t want all of us here all the time and yet, we all want to be here all the time. Hence, the rotating schedule. You are absolutely not allowed back at work until the wing spines come off. Tomorrow, Jerome can stay home if he wants to, but after that, he has job shadowing to do. I will take him to work with me every morning, allowing him to continue to shadow Janet and myself.”
“Having said that, we know you’ll go nuts cooped up in the house with nothing to do, so we have brought the missing person case paperwork home for you to review,” Helia added.
“Along with the Bureau of Exorcism’s files on demon boxes,” Azrael said. “We’re hoping you can look at them and find something that we missed because we were working on the ‘old ideas’ about them.”
“This schedule had better not preclude me from spending as much time as I want with Soleil and Jerome,” Sophia said.
“It doesn’t,” Azrael quickly replied. “No, we figured you, Raphael, Helia, Jerome, and the girls would be in our care for the duration.” I had a sudden thought and forced it away.
“Very close,” Remiel said, and I knew I hadn’t pushed it away fast enough. “Extremely close. Michael did remove some of the poison and he will be recuperating for a week or so, too. He refuses to have us around while he heals himself, so he’ll hole up in his cave.” My Uncle Michael really did live in a cave. He turned it into a house using the natural features of the cave and adding some supports so it wouldn’t collapse during an earthquake. It was really nice, but it was still a cave.
“You were drawing magic from our bond to survive,” Jerome told me. I hadn’t felt myself drawing upon Jerome’s life force to live, but if the kid said I did, I believed him.
“I am so sorry,” I told him, forcing myself to meet his eyes. I now understood why he refused to leave my side at the school and the hospital. “Sometimes I do really stupid things.”
“Yeah, sometimes,” Jerome said sadly. “However, even though it was incredibly stupid, it wasn’t entirely your fault. I would not have guessed he would try to eat you either or that it would be so effective at nearly killing you. I’m just grateful you are bound to someone strong enough to borrow from. If your bond was with someone mortal, you both would have died.”
The last bit was a painful jab. I had once floated the idea of breaking my binding with Jerome and binding Valerie to me instead so she could draw life from me to fight her curse. Michael had sternly told us it wouldn’t work; it would only have infected me with her death curse and we both would have died. Sometimes, I still think I should have done it, because death curse or not, she would have survived the fire that did kill her, and Jerome would have had a little more time with his mom. Almost exactly a year after his mom’s death, I had nearly died on Jerome. I am a fucking idiot. Jerome nodded at me and I accepted the chastising look, because he and I both knew the thought was accurate.
After the announcement of the rotating schedule, everyone settled into hushed comfort eating, being together, and watching whatever sport they were watching on my TV. I ate half of my first sandwich sitting at the kitchen table across from Jerome, in our usual spots despite the extra people. I picked up the wrapper of the open sandwich and the one I had yet to open and went into my living room. I found some free space on the floor and sat down in front of the TV. After a few moments, Jerome joined me. We sat nearly touching and ate sandwiches as we watched the Chicago White Sox play the Toronto Blue Jays. As Jerome chewed, his White Sox baseball cap floated to him from his bedroom. The kid was born and raised in Chicago until he was 13. He was now a Cardinals fan because my family were Cardinals fans, but when a Chicago team was playing, even if it was the Cubs, he donned his Chicago gear. The cap stopped in front of me. I plucked it from the air and pulled my long hair into a ponytail and stuck it through the back of the cap.
“Oh, ouch. If the Sox play the Cards in the World Series, you can’t wear those hats in my box,” Remiel said with a smile from the couch.
“If the Cards and Sox face off in the World Series, I will wear my Cards gear where it’s visible and my Sox boxers under all of it,” Jerome grinned at him.
“No cheating by imbuing magic into those boxers,” Remiel said and we all laughed. There were wards in place to keep magic out of all ballparks, even imbued in underwear and socks. There were also magic-hunting security guards that could track magic in the stadium and nix it, then throw out the magic maker. Sports stadiums and arenas were the only places on earth where no magic could be done at all; even I wouldn’t have been able to summon a demon there. Jerome occasionally assisted Janet’s coven with large spells and projects, which was as close to joining a coven as we could get him. Her coven, along with her sister’s, was paid to protect Busch Stadium as well as the Enterprise Center, where the St. Louis Blues played hockey. Even Jerome’s demonic possession amulets couldn’t sneak past the magic sensors at Busch. However, the coven won the contract because of Jerome’s ability to assist them.
“Are the Sox likely to play the Cards in the World Series?” I asked.
“Well, this is game five of the AL Championship, so yes,” Remiel told me. “The Sox lead the series 3–2. If they win tonight, they clinch the pennant and we will have a Sox v. Cards World Series.” The White Sox currently led the game 2–1 and it was the 6th inning. I polished off the first sub and sat and stared at the other one. I wanted it, but I wasn’t sure I was still hungry. “You’re healing, and it is a magical thing. Eat the sub. You’ll burn off the calories by healing,” Remiel said to me.
“But before you do, I have a shot to give you,” my mom announced cheerily from the kitchen.
“I don’t want a shot.”
“According to your uncle, you need the shot before the numbness from the poison wears off. You were eaten at 2 p.m. and it’s now nearly midnight,” Mom called to me. “Why don’t you go take a shower? I’ll give you the shot and then you can decide if you want the bacon sub or not.”
“Why is there still a baseball game on at midnight?” I asked my uncles.
“Because it had a three-hour demon delay,” Remiel said.
“A demon delay?” I asked, cocking my head to the side and raising an eyebrow.
“They played in Chicago, but when the game was supposed to start there was a demon draining the Mississippi to create storm clouds. All sports and air traffic were delayed within a 500-mile radius, which includes Chicago. If it had been last Sunday, the Chiefs, Bears, and Titans all would have had a demon delay to the start of their football games because they were all home games last weekend.”
“Interesting. I’ll go take a shower,” I said, standing up with my bacon sub still in the wrapper. I took it with me to my bedroom suite and left it on my dresser, away from the other starving archangels in my house, and went to my bathroom. My foot was starting to ache a bit when I put weight on it, so I guessed I probably did need the shot. I stripped off my clothes and found they were stuck to me with blood and demon spit, and my entire body shuddered.
There was some debate at the hospital about whether I would be changing into one of their "oh so fancy, but not enough ties” gowns, and what the heck I would be wearing home. Eventually, I caved and put on the stupid gown, but when I finished, I put my dirty clothes back on. I spent just long enough in their gown to get x-rays done, which wasn’t long enough for the spit and blood to completely dry on my body. I should have showered as soon as I got home, but I kind of forgot that I was covered in demon spit. I wondered how I forgot that and didn’t really have an answer beyond I was tired, hungry, and a little cranky, and maybe I just wanted to forget about today from start to finish.
My mom is not quite five feet tall. I tower over her at five feet seven. I took the weight off my foot by leaning on my hands against the vanity as Mom stabbed me in the butt with the syringe.
“At least they gave you the good stuff,” Mom said. “You’ll have to tell me when you start to feel pain; it says every six to eight hours as needed.” Angel metabolism is too fast for pills and most drugs, including pain killers that didn’t have a bit of magic in them. I was prescribed Stygian Morphine, which was opium with one part of Stygian poison per one million. It required very precise chemistry and magic to create, and as such, it was incredibly expensive. However, since one part per million was enough to kill a human, it was dangerous stuff and I wondered if my mother should oversee the injections. Helia seemed like the smarter choice. I turned around to tell this to my mom, and felt the drug hit my system. The world swayed for a moment, then steadied. I forgot to tell her and stepped into the shower. Pain shot through my ribs and down my side, and I felt my knees give out. I collapsed in a heap on the floor of my shower.
“What the fuck!” I shouted and saw blood running across the tiles and heading down the drain. “That hurt.” I said as my mom came into my line of sight.
“I need salve!” my mom shouted. “At least one wing spine is gone.” I moved and felt it lying under me. I pulled on it and it came out. I held up the two-foot long stump.
“Salve!” my dad said, coming into the bathroom.
“I am naked!” I shouted.
“I used to bathe you,” my father retorted, and a towel dropped onto my face.
“You need to roll over onto your other side.” Mom told me sternly as I tried to cover up with the towel. “That towel is white.” She grabbed it from me and pushed me farther up on my side.
“I’m still naked!” I told her.
“Black towels!” Jerome said.
“Don’t you dare enter this bathroom! Neither of us can handle that kind of trauma,” I said as sternly as my mother was with me. I was quite impressed that I found my mom voice, even if I was naked when I did.