I woke up hungry. I woke up feeling a little less achy – a few more nights in my own bed would help. I also woke up with a sense of clarity. Talking with Michael – with myself – weird as it was, had been helpful. We needed to know what the Fallen were planning next before I dove head first into an offensive move. I showered, dried off with the smoky towels, and then dressed in smoky clothing.
It was early and the convent was deserted. Cupid hadn’t said what time they would return, but I figured it would be after breakfast before any of the angels returned to the convent. That gave me a couple of hours to see what Ty wanted, and some time to come up with a plan as I walked to Qube, the bar he worked in.
We had managed what had seemed impossible, and defeated Asmodeus, but there was still Beelzebub. And Lucifer… Both needed defeating. The last I had checked, Luke Goddard, the ridiculously popular pop star being possessed by Lucifer was currently miles away from New Orleans, making his way to the west coast leg of his tour. Unfortunately, as he had shown by orchestrating the arson attack on the convent, he was proving to be just as annoying when he was several thousand miles away. The current focus in the House was fixing the mess he’d made, and not working out how to defeat him. When I got back later, I was going to make sure that only a few of us were focused on the cleanup.
Although a lot of the bars on Bourbon Street would stay open all night, towards the end furthest away from Canal Street, many chose to close in the late hours of the morning. Some would reopen for the breakfast crowd. Qube, which served amazing chocolate crêpes, was one of these bars. I paused outside of it before entering, staring over at one of the bars that was located opposite, just off a side street: Bee’s. The cute name and the bright yellow and black paintwork was a deceptive cover for its owner, Beelzebub.
“Have you developed super powers?”
“No,” I refused to take my eyes off the building as I responded to Ty’s question. Half of me wished I had developed super powers – they'd be useful about now. Then again, the added responsibilities would probably make life (death?) even more complicated than it was, and I was hitting the limit on complicated. I finally turned to face Ty. His gray eyes had lost their shine, and were almost hidden beneath the dark bags under his eyes. It looked like he had been getting as much sleep as me.
“We should probably talk inside,” he suggested, pulling back the door with a nervous glance over at Bee’s.
I peered into the dim bar, and shook my head. “Not going to happen,” I muttered.
“You still don’t trust me.”
“It’s not you I don’t trust,” I returned, giving him a pointed look.
Ty rubbed a hand over the stubble which had grown over his chin, before shrugging his resignation. “I guess I could do with a coffee.” He pushed the door shut with his elbow, and then indicated that I should lead the way.
We walked in silence as I took us to a nearby coffee shop. It was busy, early morning workers getting their caffeine fix before starting the day, but most people were getting their coffee to go. It wasn’t until we both had our lattes in front of us that Ty spoke. “You managed to kill Asmodeus,” he said definitively, his voice low as he made sure no one was in earshot.
“Cupid gets that credit,” I sighed. “Asmodeus very nearly killed me.” I took a sip of the coffee, watching Ty. He was fidgeting with the mug, turning it around as though trying to find the best part of the foam to start with. “I take it your dad is pissed?”
“Understatement,” he muttered. “He took a golf club to his Diablo, and then disappeared as soon as he heard the news.”
The mug, which had been halfway to my lips, was set down on the table, coffee streaking down the side of the china and pooling around the bottom. I let out a low whistle. “I thought that car was his prized possession?” I’d been to Ty’s house, once. I’d seen the sports car. I’d given it a wide berth because I'd been terrified of damaging it. If that was what Beelzebub was willing to do to something that he liked, I had to tread carefully.
“I don’t want to talk about my dad,” Ty continued, though he refused to meet my eyes.
I mopped up the spilt coffee with a napkin, waiting for him to elaborate, but when he didn’t, I scrunched the napkin up in my fist. “I’m not playing Twenty Questions.” It took another long moment for Ty to speak, and when he did, his voice was so quiet that I couldn’t hear him over the din of the coffee shop. “FYI, the super-hearing doesn’t kick in until I become an archangel,” I said, dryly.
“I need your help,” he repeated, his eyes still looking at anything but me. I said nothing, waiting for him. Finally, he looked at me, and for the first time I saw something in his eyes which had me worried: fear. “In the last three weeks seven nephilim have been killed. I need you to make them stop.”
“Me?” I repeated, confused. I’d had one lucky break with Joshua and that had been tracking my own murderer down. I wasn’t a detective. “I could talk to Joshua,” I suggested. “I don’t know what power he has to choose his own cases, but I’m-”
“No,” Ty cut me off. “I need you to make them stop.”
I shook my head at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Them,” he repeated. “Whichever of the angels is behind the killings… You need to stop them.”
“Angels don’t kill!” I exclaimed, before quickly lowering my voice as the table next to us looked over. “I can’t even get them to learn basic self-defense.”
“Angel? Archangel? Whichever. Just, make them stop, please. These are my friends being murdered,” Ty begged. He reached over, grabbing my hands. “Please.”
“What makes you sure it’s an angel?” I asked. “Our home has been half-destroyed. We’re too busy clearing the soot out to think about killing nephilim. More to the point, we’re not killing anyone. We don’t do that.”
“We’re not immortal like angels are, and while we don’t heal anywhere near as quickly as you, we don’t get ill often. If we don’t die of old age, it’s because someone has killed us.” Ty pulled his hands back.
“But what makes you think it’s an angel? You can’t tell me that nephilim and the Fallen don’t choose to hang around with unsavory characters,” I pointed out. “What’s to say they didn’t upset someone? Someone human?”
“We’re not all like that,” Ty said. “I don’t ‘hang around with unsavory characters’.”
I shot him a look. “Your dad is Beelzebub.”
“Yeah, and I choose to work in a bar that isn’t owned by him,” Ty shot back. “The nephilim are in danger – someone is hunting us.”
I slumped back into my chair and rubbed at my temples. “I’m certain we’re not actively hunting nephilim, but I will ask. I’ll also ask Joshua and see if we can maybe look at the case files and see if there’s anything linking them. It could be a complete coincidence that they’re being killed.” I lowered my hands and reached for my coffee. “How many nephilim are we talking about?”
“One hundred and sixty-three.” The mug fell from my hands, sending coffee all down myself. I launched into a stream of expletives and both Ty and I reached for the napkins, trying to clear the coffee up. “Sorry,” Ty muttered.
I glanced around, and seeing that we had attracted the attention of just about everyone in the room. I grabbed Ty’s hand and led him outside. I ducked into a quiet alcove and whirled around to stare at him. “How many?” I demanded.
“One hundred and sixty-three, now,” he repeated.
“One hundred… How many Fallen are there?”
“About forty,” he admitted.
I could feel the blood rushing from my head, and I lowered myself to the sidewalk, ignoring the looks of the occasional passerby as I stared wide-eyed at Ty. “You’re telling me there’s the best part of two hundred fallen angels and nephilim in New Orleans?” I asked, my voice hoarse.
Ty glanced up and down the street, nervously. Finally, he lowered himself next to me. “New Orleans has less than four hundred thousand people living here. It’s not that many, really. And there were only two high-ranking Fallen. And they cover a lot of ages.”
“That’s not helping,” I muttered. More than two hundred? What exactly had the angels in Michael’s House been doing here for the past year? I was absolutely, positively, certain that none of them had the vaguest of ideas of the numbers we were dealing with. “There’s no way it is angels killing the nephilim,” I assured Ty. “If they had any inkling at all, there would be higher ranking angels patrolling the streets.”
“Something is killing us,” Ty said, quietly. “And believe me when I say, I wouldn’t have come to you if I wasn’t worried.”
As I stared into his gray eyes, I knew he was telling the truth. “I don’t know how much I can help,” I admitted. “I doubt the other angels will help: we’ve got enough to focus on cleaning up that convent. Besides, just because they’re not out there actively hunting you doesn’t mean they’re going to be sympathetic. You’re half-Fallen.”
“And I’m half-human,” Ty pointed out. “I’m doing my best to stay out of my father’s business, and I’m not the only nephilim with the same opinion.”
“Why are there so many here?” I asked him.
Ty shrugged. “The Fallen are loyal to each other and there’s not many others that my dad would trust to work in his bars.”
My mouth fell open. “Bee’s?”
“About half of the workforce are human.”
I leaned my head back against the wall behind me and stared up at the clear blue skies. “I’m going to do what I can, but I need you to trust me.”
“I already do. I told you this, didn’t I?” Ty asked.
I glanced over him. “I want the names of all the nephilim in New Orleans.”
* * *
I left Ty there, mumbling that he would do what he could. I didn’t expect him to hand the list over, but it would be helpful. If we could get some names, I could see about getting someone to follow them, try to find out who was killing them, and see if they themselves were up to no good… Or at least, that was my intention. The truth was there were nowhere near enough angels in the convent to be able to do this. That would be me – and there was only one of me. Joshua would be the best person to talk to. Not that I wanted him drawn into this whole angelic mess, but he might have some idea of how to tackle it.
I was walking back to the convent when a car slowed down beside me. “Excuse me!” the driver called. I spared a glance over my shoulder. “Do you believe in love at first sight?” I opened my mouth to answer, but he answered his own question before I could. “Or do you want me to drive past again?”
I stopped and turned, hands on my hips. As my eyebrow shot up in a question, the car stopped beside me. “Are you insane?”
There was a long pause. “Sorry, you’re so beautiful; you made me forget what I was going to say.”
I leaned forward, resting my forearms on the car door as I leaned in, sniffing. “Joshua, are you drunk?”
“Drunk on you?” he offered, with the cheesiest grin.
I laughed, opening the door and getting in. I had barely shut the door before Joshua had leaned over to claim my lips with his own, and was kissing me earnestly. When we eventually broke apart, there was a massive smile on my face. “Don’t take this as me complaining, but what’s going on with you?”
“Last night, in bed, I was thinking of you – of us…” When I couldn’t stop myself from smirking, he leaned over and swiped at my shoulder. “Behave,” he said, stealing my line. “I realized that with you being an angel and the two of us fighting evil.” Once again, my expression – this time unimpressed – caused him to swipe at my arm again. “The two of us,” he repeated firmly. “Relationships are about the good and the bad.”
“You know how I feel about it,” I grumbled.
“I do, and I’m choosing to ignore it,” he responded, with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders.
I frowned. “You do realize that the only reason we met was because I’m supposed to protect you. Having you at my side while I’m battling evil is hardly a dazzling example of keeping you safe.”
“The way I figure it is, that if you were the danger, you wouldn’t have been sent to me,” he shrugged. “But as I was saying, fighting evil is hardly the normal dating activities of a couple.” I opened my mouth to retort, but his hand shot out and gently pinched my lips together. “You can have your turn after.”
“Fine,” I conceded, my words coming out muffled.
Joshua released my lips and waited until I gestured that he should continue. “I’m not expecting normal with you, at least not while we have to work out what to do with Lucifer, but that doesn’t mean we have to dwell on that. You are beautiful, and your smile just lights you up. And yet, you don’t smile enough… So as I was saying, last night, when I was thinking of you, I realized I needed to make you smile more.”
“And you’re going to accomplish that with cheesy chat-up lines?” I asked.
“Especially with cheesy chat-up lines,” he assured me. “And dates, and mini-dates.”
“There’s a difference?” I asked, unable to keep the smile returning from my face.
“There is,” he confirmed, settling back into his seat. He pulled the car away, and started navigating around the one-way streets of the Quarter. “For example, right now, seeing as I have to be at work in a couple of hours, we’re going to fit in a mini-date. In a couple of weekends, I plan on taking you out for a real date.”
The thought sent warm and fuzzy feelings radiating through me – a wonderful change to the thrum of pain I was used to. “So where are we going this early in the morning?”
“Breakfast,” Joshua beamed as my stomach grumbled in appreciation. “But there’s one condition with these dates, darlin’,” he said, glancing over at me. “No shop talk: We spend enough time together talking about fallen angels or whatever homicide I’m working on.”
That sounded reasonable enough to me.
* * *
Joshua’s idea of breakfast was a little place on the bank of the Mississippi. I managed to refrain from commenting on Joshua’s voice. The bruises were all but gone from where Mama Laveau had choked him, but there was still a low growl to his tone and I wasn’t sure it was going anywhere soon. We even managed to avoid any talk of angels… Until the generous helping of sweet-potato pecan waffles we were sharing was placed in front of us. “What were you doing out so early?” Joshua asked, pushing the plate more towards me. Fatal mistake: I was hungry.
“Ty asked me to see him,” I explained, then promptly loaded my fork with waffle. They were warm, crispy, and had a hint of cinnamon to them.
“The nephilim?” Joshua asked. He looked surprised, but I couldn’t tell if it was from meeting with Ty, or from the amount of waffles I’d demolished already. He opened his mouth, ready to ask something, and then promptly shook his head. “This falls under ‘shop talk’.” He frowned. “Read any good books, recently?”
I shrugged. I didn’t read much – not even when school had called for it – but I was happy to wait until after breakfast to tell Joshua about my conversation with Ty. “I read an interesting article in the paper yesterday. Apparently, scientists think that Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer had a red nose because he had a parasitic infection.”
Joshua stared at me, then slowly shook his head, sighing. “I don’t know where to start with that. Just tell me what happened with Ty.”
“You’re the one who wanted to talk about anything other than fallen angels,” I shrugged. “And it was an interesting article about Christmas. Did you know, Rudolph was created by a department store as a marketing ploy and was nearly called Reginald?”
“Cute as you are for getting interested in these useless facts, it’s not Christmas,” Joshua pointed out.
“You won’t be saying that when I know all the answers in the Christmas Trivia quiz,” I told him.
“Well, when we go to this theoretical Christmas quiz and you get all the answers correct, you can keep all the theoretical winnings. Until then, can we turn the subject back to Tyrone Hamilton?” he requested.
“I didn’t realize I was dating such a Scrooge,” I sighed, dramatically. I took a few more mouthfuls of the waffles – while they were still warm – with Joshua waiting patiently for me, and then settled back. “You’re not going to like it.” He waved his hand, indicating that I should continue. “Ty thinks the angels are hunting down and killing the nephilim in the city, and that’s not even the most disturbing part of the conversation we had. Did you know there are around forty fallen angels in New Orleans?”
A piece of waffle fell off Joshua’s fork. “How many?”
“And another hundred and sixty something nephilim.” Joshua swore. “I told you: you weren’t going to like it. It can wait until after our date,” I shrugged. “I doubt they’re going anywhere.”
“Okay, an addendum to the ‘no shop talk’ rule: if it’s important, we can discuss it.”
“How do we decide if it’s important?” I asked him.
Joshua pursed his lips. “Darlin’, this is important.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s that important, that we should head into the precinct and tell Leon at the same time.”