Bedlam
I followed Siren out of Heaven and found myself in a quaint little cafe that, judging by the posted signs, was somewhere in the English-speaking world.
Come on, focus for a second. You can tell where.
Can I? Oh, hmm. You’re right. Upper East Side. Swanky.
Told you so.
No wonder Sunshine looks underdressed.
The cafe was pretty crowded, but I was able to spot Mephistopheles sitting at a table by the back wall with a laptop computer in front of him. I raised my hand above my head and gave him a big wave, which resulted in identical glowers from Siren and Meph.
Siren moved toward Meph’s table, but I grabbed her arm and stopped her. “Wait, aren’t you going to order something?”
She tapped her foot. “We’re kind of on a timetable here. Dying angels, remember? Besides, I don’t eat.”
Who doesn’t eat? Food is delicious!
Remember that whole nephilim thing?
Not really?
“Fine. You go talk to Meph. I’ll join you once I’ve gotten my coffee.” I sauntered over to the counter and gave the barista my most winning smile. She was a pretty girl with long brown hair and a snub nose. The nametag on her apron read Peyton. “I’ll have a caramel mocha with a shot of balsamic vinaigrette, please.”
“Sir, we don’t… do that?” Peyton’s eyes bugged out. They were a nice brown, like Khet’s.
Gabs’s silent trumpet! You can’t think things like that!
What? Why not?
Because you’re not in love with Keziel anymore! You can’t go falling in love with a random barista girl. She’s going to die.
Hmm. Well, she’s being so prissy about the vinaigrette that I think my heart is safe.
“Why not? You have balsamic vinaigrette on your salads. It’s on the menu. And you don’t have them all pre-made and dressed because A, that would make the lettuce all soggy, and B, I can see the salad dressing bottles behind you. So I want you to take it and put a shot of it into the mocha.”
Peyton looked around, as if looking for a manager to discuss this with, but she was alone behind the counter. “I… we don’t have a menu price for that.”
Definitely not so nice a shade of brown. “You can charge me for the salad too, if you like. Just don’t give me the salad. Oh, hmm. Unless you’re willing to put barbecue sauce on that?”
“We definitely do not have barbeque sauce,” Peyton said.
“Okay, then just the coffee please.”
“I… okay.” She rung up my order and charged me for the salad.
Well, that’s not very generous.
Aw, be nice. She’s probably just some low-level employee who can’t make her own decisions.
Even so. What if Khet runs out of money?
You have tried to make Khet run out of money before. I seriously doubt a salad is going to break the bank, even one in the Upper East Side.
Peyton gave me the price, and I handed over the credit card Khet had given me in North Carolina. It really was amazing that I hadn’t dropped it in my trips to Rio and Heaven and Haven. Khet had reported the poor thing lost so many times it was amazing they were still willing to reissue it.
The credit card made a clack-swish sound as Peyton ran it through the machine, and the receipt squeaked as it printed out. Peyton ripped it off the dispenser and handed it to me.
I grabbed a nearby pen and wrote “BEDLAM” in big black letters. Peyton’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of her head again. “Sir, that’s not the name on the card.”
Oh, right. Khet had given me some song and dance about how I needed to have a human name to be issued a credit card. There had been something in there about her forging documents for me. Still, I was pretty sure… “Check the signature block.”
Peyton flipped over the credit card and compared my signature to the writing on the back of the card. She looked back and forth between them a few times, but as I suspected, they matched perfectly.
“I… okay.” She handed me back the card, still looking confused. She moved over to the espresso machine and began preparing my beverage.
Hey, she didn’t ask what kind of milk I wanted. Or if I wanted whipped cream.
Well, first of all, you don’t care, and second of all… Nathaniel’s belt cord, is she making a face as she puts in my vinaigrette?
What do you care, as long as she puts it in?
I don’t, but I’m definitely not going to be falling in love with her.
Yeah, I know. That’s a good thing.
She did ask me if I wanted whipped cream—I did—but she didn’t have any little peanuts to sprinkle on top. She offered to add some caramel sauce, but there was already caramel in the drink, so that seemed like too much caramel. I bid Peyton a disappointed farewell, picked up my drink, and headed over to where Meph and Siren sat.
Correction. Where Meph is sitting alone.
What happened to Siren?
“Hey, Meph.” I plopped down in the seat across from the bespectacled demon and put my feet up on the table. “Wasn’t Siren coming to talk to you?”
That’s quite the shadowy blond bombshell Meph is in love with.
Do I know anyone who looks like that?
Nope. It’s probably an unrequited thing anyway. No way a nerd like him could get someone like that to give him the time of day.
“Was she?” Mephistopheles looked up from his laptop. “Oh, yes, I suppose she had a few words to say. She’s gone now.”
So what do you think Meph said that had Siren rushing out of here?
I’m really more interested in what he’s working on with that computer.
Ugh, it’s probably some stupid, diabolic world-domination scheme.
Yeah, but if we pretend it’s a steamy romance novel, it’s way funnier.
Ooh. Yup, that’s what it is.
“And what did you say to her that had her rushing out of here so fast that she didn’t have time to grab me?”
“Come now, Bedlam. You know me better than that. You don’t get information from me for nothing.” He typed a few words that I desperately hoped included “quivering.” “Besides, I doubt Siren has started including you in her plans.”
Hm. Good point. She doesn’t care about me.
Yeah, but she promised Michael she’d watch out for me. He must have said something pretty dire to make her forget that.
“I’m not in love with Keziel anymore,” I blurted out.
Mephistopheles raised a single eyebrow. “Is that supposed to interest me? You’ve said the same many times over the millennia.”
Ugh. Why is Siren never around when you need her?
More importantly, it is so unfair that he can raise only one eyebrow. Every time I try to do it, my face looks like a jungle gym.
Huh. That’s a funny term—jungle gym. The jungle’s not full of metallic pipes to climb on.
It’s also not the politically correct term.
“It’s the truth! When have I ever lied to you?”
“Let me see.” Mephistopheles ticked off on his fingers. “There was the time you told me that you had made a deal with those scholars in Athens. And the time you told me you had nothing to do with the destruction of the state archives at Xianyang Palace. And let’s not forget—”
“Okay, okay. I take your point.”
“—every single time you told me or anyone else you were not in love with Keziel anymore.”
“It’s true this time.” I put my feet on the floor and leaned forward. “Look into my eyes, and tell me I’m lying.”
Mephistopheles turned his attention back to his laptop screen and Godric and Rosamund’s furious lovemaking. “Bedlam, I know you. Your eyes are perfectly capable of lying.”
“About Keziel, though? As it’s been explained to me, every fiber of my being has made it clear that I was lying in the past, so it should be as amply apparent as Rosamund’s heaving bosom that I am telling the truth this time.”
Mephistopheles looked genuinely perplexed at my mention of Rosamund, so I could only assume I’d gotten his heroine’s name wrong. But his blasé reaction to the rest of my speech meant he was hiding something.
“Wait a minute. You do believe me because Siren already told you.”
Mephistopheles raised his teacup in salute. “Ah, well, you’ve got me. But you do have an interesting piece of information you could trade, something she was unable to share with me. And that is how?” He was trying to play nonchalant, but there was a gleam in his black eyes.
He wants to know, and he wants to know bad.
Yeah, but should I tell him? Lethe was pretty clear about the whole “don’t tell people” thing.
Well, A: I can’t think of any other information we can give him that’s going to help.
And B: You don’t really care what Lethe thinks?
Exactly. Plus, C: Meph hoards knowledge like he can use it to prevent the apocalypse. He’s not going to tell anyone.
“If I tell you, you’ll tell me everything you told Siren?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
Absolutely? That’s not a good word.
I’m missing something. But what?
Khet would know.
Yeah, well, Khet is wisdom personified, and I’m… Well, I hate to speak ill of myself in my own head.
“Fine.” I summed up my conversation with Lethe and my latest visit with Keziel. “Now tell me what you told Siren.”
Mephistopheles shrugged. “All I said was that I was surprised to see her because I heard a rumor that all the angels of Heaven were being silenced by their own nightmares. That seemed to mean something to her because she zipped off to Heaven straightaway.”
“Oh.”
Well, that’s not very helpful.
Why do I suspect he knows more but is going to be all pissy about the exact wording of that deal?
Because you’ve known him for ten thousand years?
“Oh, and Bedlam?”
“Hmm.”
Mephistopheles smiled, and the glint in his eyes was everything one would expect from a devil. “I would hurry after her. I do suspect she thinks she knows something, but I very much doubt she knows everything. Our brave little toaster may be in a fair bit of danger.”
Wait. Is he warning me or wishing her ill?
It’s Meph, so probably both.
Either way, I’d better go find out what happened to her.
I didn’t bother to thank Mephistopheles. He probably wanted me out of his hair so that Hubert and Penelope could get back to their pillow talk.
Do we really think he’d name his hero Hubert?
I dunno. I just hope the book has a plot and isn’t nothing but sex scenes.
I’ll find out when he gets it published. I’ll just have to find out what he’s using for his pen name.
I entered Heaven to find angel bodies still scattered everywhere. Keziel knelt next to a Handmaiden and looked completely out of it, so I could only assume Kezi was waking the poor girl up.
“Siren!” I moved toward the throne room, figuring I’d search all of Heaven for her if I had to. Though, really, the golden chambers weren’t that big. She should have heard me no matter where she was.
My mind had remembered where the bodies lay, so I thought I was expertly moving around them. I was surprised, then, when I tripped on one, then not at all surprised when I looked down to see that it was Siren, lying flat on her face.
Oh, no! Was there another attack?
If so, wouldn’t it have gotten Keziel too?
I knelt down to examine Siren and discovered that she had a hole in the back of her robe, and when I separated the fabric, I found a strange burn mark on her skin.
It looks like she was stabbed?
By what? One of those heated bread slicers?
Or this weird shiny dagger lying next to her.
I picked it up. The knife had a steel handle wrapped in worn green leather, but the blade itself seemed to be made of moonlight. I thought about running my hand through the blade, just to see if I could, then thought better of it.
Unfortunately, I was still studying the blade when Rachel emerged from Earth with rage on her face and murder in her eyes.
“I knew it!” She pointed at me. “Foul demon, remove your hand from my light blade!”
I realized how this must look. Me, standing over an unconscious Siren, holding the weapon that had harmed her.
Siren’s right. Sometimes there’s only one word for a situation like this.
Fuck.