easy decision, leaving the death sword behind, and Bryony had not made it lightly. She’d tried to transform the thing into a less conspicuous shape with no luck. It wanted to be a reaper’s scythe, and there was simply no arguing with it. She couldn’t guard the weapon twenty-four seven. She needed to sleep, and taking a giant scythe with her into the shower would hardly be prudent. What if she slipped?
She decided it would be equally imprudent to take the scythe to Martha’s Café. It was rarely advisable to bring a weapon to a peace talk, and she intended to speak to Loki as a friend. At the very least, dragging a giant scythe through town would make a spectacle of her, and she was already garnering much more attention than she wanted with her angelic companion. No, it made more sense to shove the scythe under her bed and hope to god no one else broke into her house looking for angel swords.
Azazel walked beside her and exuded charm. His turquoise hair looked vibrant in the morning light, and his amber eyes positively glowed. His smile was unnaturally perfect, and his outfit unsuitably loud. If she was honest, though, she would admit he looked gorgeous, like a tropical oasis in her gray little world.
When they arrived at Martha’s, Bryony entered through the front and sat at her private booth. Azazel joined her and took in his surroundings. “How charming,” he said.
Before long, Martha found them and stood ready to take their order. “And who have we brought along today?” she asked. “A new friend?”
“Yes.” Bryony decided his abbreviated name would be less conspicuous. “This is Azza. I met him yesterday and wanted to show him your place.”
“A pleasure, Azza.” Martha extended her hand, and to Bryony’s utter shock and just a touch of horror, Azazel kissed it.
“The pleasure is entirely mine, I assure you.” He grinned, and Bryony loudly cleared her throat hoping he’d get the message and turn down the charm. He didn’t. “This is a palace, I must say. How on earth did you get it up and running in such a sparse little town?”
The usually unflappable Martha blushed for perhaps the first time Bryony had ever seen. “The uh . . . The town wasn’t always this sparse, but thank you.”
“The truth takes no effort at all, darling.”
“Martha.” Bryony interrupted before Azazel could charm Martha right out of her own café. “I wondered if I could have a private word with Bill.”
Martha tapped her pen on her notepad. “Well, he’s on kitchen duty right now, but I suppose he’s due for a break. Go on then. I’ll take over for him. In the meantime, would your friend like any coffee or tea?”
“Oh, he’s definitely a tea drinker.”
Azazel answered, “Tea would be lovely, thank you. But to be honest, I’d be more than thrilled if you showed me your kitchen. I could help you out while you’re short-staffed.”
Martha hesitated, and Bryony felt the need to explain. “He made those biscuits you liked.”
“Oh!” Martha was taken aback. “But I thought that was Michael.”
“I was mistaken.” The answer was hasty, but Bryony must have looked a sight because Martha didn’t question her further. “It turns out Michael truly cannot cook.” She tried to laugh and failed miserably. “Will you two give me a minute to get Bill out of the kitchen before you go back? He’s not entirely comfortable around my friend.”
“Goodness, is there no one that man can get along with?” Martha pocketed her pad and pen and gestured for Bryony to head on back.
“Sometimes I wonder the same thing,” Bryony muttered. Last night’s battle flashed through her mind just as she reached the kitchen. Loki had almost lost the fight, and what would Azazel have done to him then? She didn’t want to imagine it. “Bill?”
Loki turned, and she saw him in full kitchen regalia. He wore a white apron and held a spatula in one hand. His beard was neatly trimmed and his long hair tied back. He looked positively domestic. It was almost impossible to see him as the fractal firelight he had been the night before.
His greeting wasn’t warm. “What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk.”
“Do we, though? I think I made myself quite clear.”
She gulped. This was not going to be easy. “Yes, you did. I just . . . I need to know why. Please. Martha said you could take a break.”
“Oh, and I suppose you two get to dictate what I do with my breaks now, do you?”
Bryony couldn’t help her own exasperation. “You’re immortal, Bill. What’s ten minutes?”
“Fine.” He removed his apron, balled it up, and tossed it onto the folding chair that always propped the back door open.
The morning was crisp and pleasant. Bryony had always been fond of the fall, although it meant harder times were ahead. When she was a child, her parents had kept the worries of winter well disguised, and her days had passed in blissful ignorance. She recalled piles of colorful leaves rounded up and then scattered by the wind and her own little feet, frozen blades of grass that crunched when she walked on them, and a warm fire when she found her way back home. It would have been glorious to walk alone and reminisce, but she had come here for a reason, and it wasn’t a pleasant one.
“Please, don’t do this,” she said after several minutes of walking in silence. “Please, Loki.” No one was around, so she used his oldest name—the oldest one she knew—in an attempt to placate him. It didn’t seem to work. She tried another tack. “Are we really going to just let someone die when we could so easily save her? Are we that heartless?”
Loki picked up his pace. “First, we have no way of knowing this mystery woman even exists. It could all be a scam. You and I should both be aware of that possibility, considering. We’ve fleeced so many people together, Bryony. To this day, I have no logical explanation for why you’re not more skeptical.”
That stung. “I just don’t understand why you’re doing this to me. I thought we were family.”
At that, Loki stopped walking. His weakness, it seemed, was the same as hers—family. He’d lost his own long before Bryony was born, and perhaps he craved a new one as badly as she did. He turned to face her. “I’m not doing this to hurt you.”
She looked up into his alarmingly blue eyes. “Then why?”
He spread his arms and shook his head at her. “Because my god, Bryony, you can’t begin to strategize. You don’t even see it, do you? You’re winning! Why are you so eager to give up now? You’re on a roll, girl. So let me be the bad guy for a while, and we’ll keep playing the long game together.”
She wrinkled her nose. “The long game? Is that what you think this is?”
“That’s what I know this is.”
“You’re wrong. I’m not winning anything. I’ve lost Michael.”
He shook her by the shoulders. “You’ve gained Azazel! Do you have any idea who he even is? Didn’t you learn anything about angelic history while you were doing all that reading in the Black Armada?”
“No.” She shook him off. “I was too busy reading medical texts. I didn’t have time to learn about angels. I don’t care about their history. I hope the world forgets it one day, and we can all go back to our normal, monster-free lives.”
“Oh, for crying out . . .” He grabbed his own head and curled his fingers into his skull. “You! Are going to make me say something I regret later. I can’t stand people who don’t know their own potential. You’ve won Azazel. He may not be much in hand-to-hand combat—”
“He beat you,” she muttered.
Now the Jötunn’s face was burning red, which gave Bryony some small satisfaction. “I was trying to save your house, you ungrateful brat. I could have ended him right there if I hadn’t needed to be careful.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sure.” It was good to fight with Shakespeare again, like old times. She’d always enjoyed ribbing him and watching him bluster and boil. She imagined his feathers all fluffed and his beady eyes blinking back at her.
“You’re infuriating,” he said.
“Ditto.”
“Bryony Moss, you will listen to me right now, or I swear to Odin I’ll stop speaking to you for the foreseeable future.” He was so perfect when he was angry. Bryony couldn’t help but smile at him, and he immediately softened at the sight of it. “You insufferable woman. Listen to me. Azazel may not have much in the way of brute strength, but he’s an unmatched magician and the most powerful conjuror to ever walk the earth. I was mad to tangle with him, and had I known who he was from the start, I probably wouldn’t have. Now, for some mysterious reason, the son of a bitch likes you.”
She couldn’t help but take offense. “It’s not a mystery, Bill. I just promised I’d try to save his granddaughter.”
“Good, and you keep on promising him.” He took her by the shoulders again and looked directly into her eyes. His earnestness was not lost on her. “Keep him in your corner, Bryony. Let me be his villain. Most likely, your fiancé is alive and Azazel’s descendant has time. Believe me, we would not be negotiating with him if she didn’t.” He sighed and dropped his hands. “You’re winning,” he said one last time. “Let me carry you over the finish line, just this once.”
They walked in silence a few minutes more until Loki appeared to have a revelation. “Hang on. Please, tell me you didn’t leave an angel at home with the death sword.”
“No,” Bryony answered.
“Then where is he?”
She shrugged. “He’s back at the café.”
Loki’s shoulders tensed, and he shouted, “What?” Then he turned an explicit shade of rage-pink and ran back to the café at a speed Bryony was certain no world champion could match.
She walked back to the café alone. When she arrived, she saw the tall, blond man holding Martha in his arms. He looked like a protective father who’d just found his lost child wandering aimlessly in a shopping center. Bryony imagined him saying, Don’t you ever do that to me again! You hear me? to Martha. Instead, he snarled, “Get him out of here,” to Bryony as soon as he saw her.
As Bryony passed by, Martha said, “Sorry. I don’t know what’s come over him all of a sudden.”
“Oh, Bryony knows.” Loki’s eyes flickered orange in the morning light. Bryony suddenly remembered what he was and who she’d managed to piss off, and she hurried into the café.
Azazel was in the kitchen humming to himself over a mixing bowl. He seemed perfectly content and docile. Someone would have to speak to Loki about his overprotectiveness when it came to Martha, but Bryony decided the best person to do that would probably be Martha herself.
“Let’s go, Azza,” she said, and she led the angel out the front. All eyes were on him as they left the café. All eyes had probably been on him from the start. He was quite a whirlwind character to have blown into a small town like this, with his stunning colors and his ridiculous charisma. Even the clothes he manifested were works of art. He somehow managed to look both modern and eighteenth century at the same time.
They walked together down the lane Bryony knew so well. The branches overhead were bare and brown, and wet leaves covered the ground. “So,” Azazel began, “how did it go?”
Bryony just bowed her head.
“That bad?” He heaved a deep sigh. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected better. That Jötunn reminds me of Ash. They’re equally hardheaded, and neither one is likely to give in any time soon. It’s a shame we’re caught in their crossfire.”
“Yes.” But it was Bryony’s crossfire, too, wasn’t it? To hear Loki talk, she’d been in on it from the start, setting up a risky con with an enormous payoff. “Loki said she has time, your granddaughter. Is that true?”
“A few months at least. A year at most.”
Bryony cleared her throat. “Is she . . . in a lot of pain?”
“None.” Azazel stared at the web of branches above them and smiled a devastated smile. “Hopefully, she won’t feel it until the very end.”
“Then how do you know she’s sick?”
“Ah, well.” He pushed his perfect brows together and frowned. “I’m a touch ashamed to admit it. But possession is not all speaking in tongues and frothing at the mouth, you know. Long ago, artists were said to have daemons or muses to inspire them. I was hers.”
A knot began to form in Bryony’s gut. “You possessed her?”
“Occasionally.” He smiled wistfully. “We made art together. She’s a rare talent, but of course, she is my granddaughter. One day, while occupying her body, I felt part of her that hadn’t been there before. It was her, but it wasn’t. The following month, it had grown. Such a ridiculous disease, cancer.”
Bryony chewed her lip in thought. How could she make him understand? She didn’t want to behave like a con artist anymore. She needed to try something different. She needed to try the truth. “Loki says Raphael would never have let medicine die.”
The angel just stared at her.
“Loki says . . .” She picked up her pace and dug her fingernails into the heels of her hands. “He wants you to bring Raphael back, and he isn’t going to budge on it. He . . . He says we’re playing the long game this time.”
“The long game?”
“It means we have to be patient. We have to make sacrifices for a bigger payoff in the end.”
“Payoff?” He narrowed his eyes. “We?”
This conversation was getting more and more precarious. Bryony bowed her head. Her past was hardly a secret now. “The thing is, Ashmedai was telling the truth about me. I am a con . . . was. I became a god by lying to the people of this town. I let them believe I had healing powers, when really I’d just found an abandoned angel’s sword. Well, it turns out Loki had stolen it, but at the time, I thought it had been abandoned. I think, to him, the long game is just how we operate.”
“Loki didn’t steal the sword.” Azazel looked annoyed, and Bryony could only hope he was directing his annoyance at the Jötunn instead of her. “He won it. Ash has never been able to resist a wager, and it seems Loki took advantage of that. At the time, the healing sword was little more than a trifle to Ash. He hasn’t cared for a mortal since Sarah. Probably, he’s decided caring for mortals just brings too much trouble.” The angel shot Bryony a sharp look. “I’m beginning to see where he’s coming from.”
Bryony gulped. She’d really made a mess of things this time, hadn’t she? She’d given away Loki’s strategy and possibly lost her only other ally in the process. “Please don’t be angry,” she muttered.
“Angry?” The angel pursed his lips at the word. “I’m furious, darling. I’m positively incandescent, but I’ll keep my temper until I hear the full story.” His expression was too serene. It revealed nothing of how he was feeling, and Bryony got the impression that was because he’d stopped trying. An angel must take pains to imitate human expression. When they lost their composure, they might simply stop applying the effort. She suddenly regretted leaving her scythe behind. “I would like an answer to one burning question if you don’t mind,” he said.
Bryony nodded and tried to subtly put some space between them as she walked.
“I would like you to explain to me why Loki is playing a long game to free an archangel who, frankly, deserved what he got. What in the world does a Jötunn want with Raphael?”
Here was Bryony’s opportunity to abandon the truth and lie her way out of this. She could come up with a story about how Loki had his own vendetta against Raphael and wanted to settle it his way. Something like that. But she didn’t. She seemed to have lost the talent for deceit somewhere along the way. Anyway, she got the impression this angel would easily see through a lie. “He’s doing it for me,” she admitted.
“At your request?”
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t ask for this. It’s his plan, but he’s doing it for me, for who I was ten years ago—someone he seems to have lost.”
“And who were you ten years ago?”
Her house was in view, but Bryony didn’t want to go in. She stopped and stared at the place. There were too many memories locked behind those doors, and she suddenly felt too weak to face them. She answered Azazel’s question. “I was angry.” She couldn’t look at him anymore. If she did, she knew she wouldn’t be able to continue. Sharing this part of her life with an angel seemed so fundamentally wrong.
“I had a family once—a father, a mother, a little brother. We lived in this house together until they got sick. It came on so fast. It was some kind of flu. They say before the massacre there were vaccines and treatments, but not anymore—not for my family. My brother . . .” She choked but pushed through it. “My brother was so young. He was so young, and he took so long to die. I tried everything to break his fever. I wiped his brow with a wet cloth because I’d read that in a novel somewhere. I fed him ice. I gave him my father’s whisky . . .” She sobbed and hated herself for it. Then she rubbed her face on her sleeves and willed herself to go on. “I gave him whisky to dull his pain because of some stupid show I’d seen. It only made him sicker. It became my whole life, watching him die. It became who I was. And when he was gone, I wasn’t anyone anymore . . . until I found this hatred, and I hung on to it, and I used it to survive. That’s who I was when Loki found me.”
She glanced up to see the angel staring down at her. Suddenly, she didn’t care whether he was angry with her. She didn’t care about anything. “It didn’t have to happen that way. One little shot could have prevented it if the angels hadn’t gotten rid of vaccines. So I’m sorry for what Loki’s putting you through, but I don’t think he’s wrong.”
Azazel took too long to respond, and when he did, it could not have been further from what Bryony expected. She’d readied herself for an explosion of rage. Instead, he said, “Please, darling, may I embrace you?”
“I—” She’d already begun to defend herself but stopped short when she found she didn’t need to. She nodded, and her once bitter enemy wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his gold-embroidered jacket.
He held her a long time, and she found his embrace every bit as warm and inviting as his personality. When he spoke, his voice was low and soothing. “I know what it is to lose a child. I know what it is.” His breath shuddered at some ancient memory of grief, and Bryony was sorry to have reminded him of it.
Azazel swayed a little and cleared his throat. “Do you know, when Raphael bound me, he didn’t speak a word? That’s what I recall most about that day—Raphael’s silence. If you knew him, you’d understand. He loved to talk, especially to mortals. He was an incurable gossip. You could have an entire conversation with him without saying a word. So unlike a seraph.” He chuckled. “Sometimes I wondered, when I was sane enough to think, whether he’d been quiet because he hated what he had to do. Sometimes I wondered whether he would have done it had he been able to completely free himself from Michael’s pull. I suppose I should find a way to ask him.”
Bryony pulled back and scrutinized his expression. Was he saying what she thought he was saying?
He smiled down at her. “But you’ll have to be willing to help, darling. I’ll never manage to conjure an archangel on my own.”