A Terrible Fall of Angels

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  The boyfriend got the door of the shop and escorted Shelby inside. They were still holding hands. I didn’t like that I couldn’t see them anymore, but I didn’t expect her to dive out the back to escape me either. In fact, it was going to get awkward fast if I didn’t have more people helping me tail them.

  Of course, right now I had the perfect reason to follow them. “Maybe I should try for some jewelry instead of flowers, then,” I said.

  “Or maybe she should be buying you apology gifts,” Miranda said.

  “I don’t believe she owes me anything.”

  “Is the flirting the act, or is the vulnerability the lure when the confident flirt fails?”

  “You’re lovely, Miranda, and if you were my wife, I’d remember to buy you flowers, but I think I’m going to go with jewelry before I actually do something that I need to apologize for to my own wife.”

  “You’re big and boyish and yummy, Havoc.”

  I smiled. “And you’re beautiful and insightful, and it would be a pleasure to take you to bed, but . . .”

  “But you’re going to go buy jewelry for your wife?”

  “I am.”

  “If you want to go back to her, then stop flirting so damn well, before someone takes you up on it,” she said, and went up on her tiptoes to touch the side of my face. I wanted to rub my face into it like a cat scent-marking. The urge was so strong that I put my hand over hers, trapping it against my skin, so that I wouldn’t follow through on what felt too intimate to do with a stranger. Miranda took the hand over hers pressing her against my face as the more intimate gesture, which I guess outside my head it was; she was right, I should really stop flirting before something happened that I couldn’t take back.

  Miranda let herself collapse against me still on her tiptoes, so that I put my arm around her waist to keep her steady. The flowers were pressed between us, her other arm around my neck. The flowers saved us from being pressed completely together, and I was grateful for the space because my body reacted instantly to her in my arms. I couldn’t control the reaction, but I could keep her from feeling it and my gun if I was careful.

  She leaned her face upward for a kiss. I couldn’t blame her for expecting one. I wasn’t going to do it, but then I felt the warmth at my back; my Guardian Angel was trying to get my attention. There was a brush of invisible wings on my right side, up the sidewalk from where we’d come. I looked in that direction and saw an early-twenties-aged white male over six feet tall, but shorter than me so under six-three. Short dark hair, cut and styled in a way that Reggie called movie star leading man trying too hard, paired with dark eyes, probably brown. All his clothes looked brand-new: solid red T-shirt made out of something satiny or silky, tight blue jeans distressed from the store, very expensive high-top jogging shoes artfully unlaced, so that they were useless for actually running. He had a watch on his right wrist that looked like Cartier and if it was, then it cost more than everything else he was wearing plus a car.

  The man looked at me looking at him and there was a jolt of recognition, as if I not only knew him but I’d seen him in a bad place as a bad guy. I needed to figure out where I’d seen him before he figured out the reverse on me, so I bent over Miranda and met her offered kiss. If he’d seen me as a cop, I’d have probably been in a suit surrounded by other cops, not like this with a woman and flowers. People see what they expect to see most of the time, so I’d be a guy in gym clothes giving his girlfriend flowers and getting a kiss in return.

  Miranda melted into the kiss, her arm encircling my waist so only the pressure of our bodies kept the flowers pinned. Her hand slid inside my tank top, tracing along the bare skin of my back. The feel of her fingertips tracing along my spine made me shudder in her arms. Which made her dig her nails lightly into my back. My knees almost buckled, sending me falling into her arms so that she had to brace before I caught myself.

  The man passed behind us, and the angel at his back screamed for help. The psychic push of it stabbed through me like a spear. I pulled away from Miranda, but my arms were still on her arms; the flowers fell to the sidewalk as I turned to watch the man walking away from us.

  My angel flared halo-bright at my back and I could see Miranda’s glow white and pale yellow in the sun, but the angel on the man’s back . . . It should have been all light, or a tall humanlike figure at his back with outspread wings and hands on his shoulders or spread above his head, but the white figure was covered in blackness like tar or ink had been poured over it, and the arm I could see was white and free of the blackness but was bent at horrible angles as if it had been broken in multiple places and let heal that way. It turned its head like the blackness was a hood over it, like the kind a kidnapper would use except this darkness wasn’t cloth but something liquid and heavy that clung. The angel opened its mouth like a hole in the darkness and screamed again. The sound stabbed through me, but I braced for it this time. I’d heard the cries of the damned before, and this was a shadow of it, except that angels couldn’t be tortured like this; they could choose to take some of the damage that their human suffered. I’d seen guardians that were damaged from that, but that was part of them helping their human in this lifetime. What I was seeing now wasn’t that. The man looked and felt fine; if his angel had taken damage for him it would have shown more on the human. He would not have been able to stride past us confident and whole.

  “What’s wrong?” Miranda asked.

  “Where’s your car?”

  She smiled, but her eyes were still worried. “That way.” And she nodded in the same direction the man was walking. “Go back inside the florist, no, go back to the Cozy Cauldron and stay inside until it’s safe.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I moved my oversized shirt enough for her to glimpse the badge at my waistband. I picked up the dropped flowers and put them in her hands. “Please, Miranda, I have to go, but I want you safe.”

  She nodded. “I’ll go save us a table,” she said, trying for normal.

  “Get under the table when it starts.”

  “When what starts?” she asked.

  I glanced back and saw the man reaching for the door of the jewelry store just like I’d known he would. I didn’t know how, but I knew that was Mark Cookson if he’d hit the gym and put muscle on his thin frame, with better clothes, a better haircut. It was like a demonic makeover. I prayed that he would try to seduce Shelby away from her boyfriend, because that would give me more time to think of something.

  “I have to go.”

  She handed me a Kleenex. “Clean off the lipstick or the other cops will make fun of you.”

  I had to smile. I realized that her face was smeared with it too. We both started cleaning our faces.

  I started hurrying toward the jewelry store, just another guy looking for an engagement ring for the woman he’d just seen me kissing. I prayed that Mark Cookson would pretend to be normal while I pretended to look for rings.

  Mark Cookson paused and looked at the window just like Shelby and her boyfriend had done. I hit Charleston on speed dial as I walked toward Cookson. “Subject is inside Newton’s Jewelry Store, ninety percent certain our suspect is about to walk inside and confront her and the boyfriend.”

  “Uniforms should be on the street five minutes, ten tops. We have security footage that shows a man that matches Cookson’s height and general coloring coming out of crime scene covered in blood.”

  “New clothes and haircut,” I whispered, and then was too close to the man, so I switched to a normal voice and said, “Looking for a ring to pop the question.”

  “Does he recognize you?”

  “No, Dad, I don’t need you to help me get the ring.”

  “Be careful, Havoc.”

  “Of course,” I said, smiling and happy, doing my best to show only that as I paused at the door and asked, “Are you about to go in? Don’t want to cut in line.”

  The man turned and looked at me; the moment I saw his eyes I knew it was Co
okson. Once I was sure, I could see that the bone structure of the face was the same; the demon had just given him the body he’d have had if he took better care of it. Like all demons, it could only give the person what they could have accomplished on their own with hard work or steal it from somewhere else.

  His lip curled up in an expression I’d seen at the hospital, and I held my breath thinking he’d recognized me. “No, Chad, you go ahead, I’m still deciding.”

  “Um, I’m not Chad, my name’s Hank,” I said, because I couldn’t remember if Miranda had called me Havoc within his hearing, and Hank was the closest soundalike I could think of in the moment. I couldn’t risk him hearing Havoc and remembering who I really was.

  The disdain on his face took the handsome face and curled it back into the ugly one he’d had at the hospital. “Hank, Chad, you’re all the same.”

  I frowned at him as if I didn’t understand what he meant, because he’d basically called me a dudebro jock. “Sorry, I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Don’t think too hard about it, Hank.”

  “Okay,” I said, being puzzled and being Hank. I opened the door, keeping my attention half on him as I went through, but as a confused college-age Hank, not as police officer Havoc who didn’t want to turn his back on the bad guy.

  A sound like an electronic doorbell sounded as the door opened and then closed behind me. The air conditioning was on so high that all my exposed skin ran in goose bumps.

  I spotted Shelby Jackson and her boyfriend at the far end of the room in front of a glass-covered jewelry display that ran around the room in a U shape. There was an elderly man helping them look at rings. The glass display at the back of the room was only partially filled and next to what looked like an area with equipment where maybe you could watch the jeweler actually create some of the sparkly things in the displays. There was one door beside the work area that was closed and marked Private. It probably led to the offices and private restrooms, maybe a break area. There was an entrance near the door that let you walk back behind the display area so the salespeople could go back and forth and another larger opening in front of the far door and the workstation.

  The older man looked up at me and said in a soothing voice with just a trace of accent, “We will be right with you, please feel free to look around and see if anything catches your fancy.”

  I thanked him and pretended to look at the jewelry, but I was really keeping an eye on Mark Cookson, who was still standing there, staring through the window. He wasn’t looking at the jewelry in the window display either. He was staring at Shelby and her boyfriend. He didn’t look angry, or even upset, he looked thoughtful. Was he going to wait until they were somewhere less public? I would have. He looked so completely different from in the hospital and in all his pictures that he could start a new life somewhere else. He could have a true do-over if he was patient and willing to wait on taking Shelby. The fact that he was hesitating this much let me know that he didn’t realize there was security film of him coming out of one of today’s crime scenes in this new body.

  I wanted him to wait until I had more backup, but I didn’t want him to disappear. We needed to catch him before he hurt anyone else.

  A younger woman came out of the door in the back of the shop. She had long dark hair and glasses. She moved past the older man and walked toward me on the other side of the display cases.

  “How can we help you today?” she said with a smile that was pleasant and professional.

  “I’m wanting to buy an engagement ring.”

  She glanced down and I realized too late I was still wearing my wedding band. I’d been too worried about Cookson to think my cover story through.

  I smiled at her and put everything I had into the smile, so that she put her hand to her throat and her breathing changed. Okay, tone down the smile, I thought, we aren’t flirting, we’re just undercover while we guard Shelby.

  “I couldn’t afford to give her an engagement ring when we married, but for our anniversary I want to surprise her with one.”

  The saleswoman liked the story, because her smile filled her eyes, as she said, “What a great idea, I’m sure your wife will be thrilled.”

  I smiled back. “I think she will be.”

  “What were you thinking about spending?”

  I hadn’t thought that far, so I said, “I’m not sure, I know the kind of ring I want. Can we go backward from there?”

  She smiled. “Of course,” she said, though her eyes were a little less sure than her smile. She probably had a lot of people come in here without a budget in mind and then freak out about the prices.

  “Promise I won’t freak out about the prices, but since my wife waited so long for an engagement ring, I want it to be special.”

  Her eyes matched her smile again. “I’m sure we’ll be able to find the perfect ring for you.”

  I nodded as if I believed that, and half watched Cookson at the window as the saleswoman started to point out different styles of engagement rings.

  Someone’s cell phone rang, and it turned out to be the boyfriend’s. “We’re looking at rings, don’t you dare answer that,” Shelby said. Her tone was serious; if Reggie had used that voice with me, I would have ignored my phone.

  “It’s my coach, babe, there are scouts coming to the next game. He was supposed to learn what pro teams are coming and then call all of us that have a chance in hell of getting drafted.”

  “Fine, take the call,” she said, with an eye roll that I saw from across the room. The boyfriend took the call, getting up from the seat to stand in the middle of the room as if he couldn’t take the news sitting down.

  Shelby saw me then or recognized me. “Didn’t I see you at the Cozy Cauldron earlier today?”

  “You did,” I said, smiling at her.

  Her boyfriend had walked across the shop like he wanted privacy for the call.

  “You were sitting with what’s her name, Elizabeth?” Shelby said to me.

  “Emma,” I said.

  “That’s right, her and her new boyfriend.”

  I nodded, still smiling. “That’s right.”

  She glanced behind at the boyfriend, who was standing with his back to us. It was an important call for him; his whole future was on the line, and if they married, Shelby’s future, too.

  The saleslady hesitated with a tray of rings in her hands. They were princess cuts, and I shook my head. “They’ll stick out too much at work, she’ll hate that. Do you have anything that is more flush to the ring mounting?”

  “What’s her job?” the saleslady asked.

  “She’s a teacher,” I said.

  “Was she the lady I saw you with at the coffee shop?” Shelby asked. I hadn’t even known she’d noticed me with Miranda. I’d thought Shelby was totally into her boyfriend as she left the café. It meant she was a far better actor than I thought and that she noticed men even when she was on the arm of her soon-to-be fiancé. It was none of my business, but if I had been dating her it would have given me pause; lucky for all of us I was just there to keep her from getting killed by her stalker.

  The boyfriend came back pumped and over the moon, listing teams that would be scouting him tomorrow. He actually did a little bounce on his toes like he was a little boy, too excited to hide it. I liked him better for it, but Shelby got that disdainful crook to her upper lip, and the eyes said clearly that he was behaving like a child and she did not approve. Reggie had a similar look; so had my first wife. Most women had it.

  Boyfriend didn’t notice; he was too busy bouncing. Shelby saw me notice. She gave me the full force of that disdain and then her mouth softened into a smile, but her eyes didn’t go softer. No, the look in her eyes was hard and sharp as if her eyes were blue glass with edges hard enough to cut yourself on, but it just might be worth it. She was too harsh for me, reminded me too much of my first wife, and she had been a woman who used men until either she used them up or they wised up and moved on to someone safer to love.


  The saleslady said, “How about these rings?”

  I turned to look at the new tray of rings and took the chance to look at the window. Mark Cookson was still there but he wasn’t looking at Shelby, he was looking at the boyfriend and me. The boyfriend I understood; hadn’t Charleston said that one of the boyfriends had been killed along with the woman? I wasn’t sure why he was noticing me, but in case he was about to make a connection to me from the hospital I looked back at the rings as if I was serious about them. Before Cookson or the demon inside him recognized me as a cop, I needed backup.

  The rings were pretty enough, but none of them were right, because the right one was on Reggie’s finger along with the wedding band that matched mine. I was suddenly homesick for her, for us. I shook my head at the rings.

  Mark Cookson reached for the door. The homesickness vanished in a spurt of adrenaline.

  “I want that one,” Shelby said.

  “Babe, that’s got to be one of the most expensive rings in the store, I can’t afford that.”

  Cookson walked into the store smiling and looking normal. If I hadn’t known what his angel looked like, or remembered his eyes from the hospital, I wouldn’t have given him a second look, but Shelby did. Maybe she was just one of those women who notice men?

  “You have excellent taste in jewelry. This ring is one of my best,” the older salesperson said.

  “Don’t I deserve the best?” she asked, gazing up at her boyfriend.

  “Of course you do, and in a few years maybe we can do what this guy’s doing and buy you the biggest, most perfect diamond, but I can’t do it right now, babe, I’m sorry.”

  “I can,” Mark Cookson said.

  “You can what?” the boyfriend asked.

  “I can buy her the ring she wants.”

  “Why would you buy her a ring?”

  “Because a woman as beautiful as Shelby deserves a ring like that.”

  “How did you know my name?” Shelby asked.