“And I’ll fire them again. You may hold a high-ranking title and position at Ubiquity, but I rule hell. I created them.”
“And you’d steal their freedom, to spite me?”
His expression turned cold again, amusement fading from his eyes.
She wasn’t going to win this argument. Backing down felt wrong, but she didn’t like the alternative of throwing logic at an illogical surface for the rest of eternity. “Did you have another reason for calling this meeting?”
“No.”
Despite her irritation, she kept calm on the surface. “I have other things to do.” Such as finding out where Irdu and Tia were, and hoping it was just frustration that kept him from calling her when he was laid off.
The next question was where to look. She called their phones first and went directly to voice mail. Of course, it couldn’t be that easy. If neither Tia nor Irdu were at home, she had no idea where she’d go.
She phased and landed at Tia’s place in a blink. A knock yielded no response. No answer when she rang the bell, either. Unless Tia was hiding. Which left Irdu’s place.
When Ronnie appeared in front of his door and knocked, footsteps and murmurs filtered out from inside. Someone was home. She waited for several seconds, but nothing. She was about to ring the bell, when the door flew open.
“Fuck that,” Irdu said to someone behind him. “We’re all in this together.” A glance past him told Ronnie Tia was on the couch, arms crossed and a scowl on her face.
“Hey.” Ronnie managed a week smile. “At least one of you is talking to me.”
Irdu looked at her. “She’ll come around.”
They’d lost her jobs because of her. She deserved Tia’s hostility. “I’m sorry.” That was a good starting point, right?
“We made our own decisions.” He hooked a finger with hers. It was as simple and small as a touch could get, but the contact sent waves of comfort through her.
“If you’re going to be all kissy-facey, instead of yelling, let her in. The world doesn’t want to hear it if it’s not drama.” Irritation lined Tia’s words. That was unusual.
Ronnie’s guilt grew.
Irdu squeezed, gave her a soft smile, and tugged her inside.
Ronnie didn’t know what she would have done if they hadn’t made things right. Having Irdu on her side was a billion times better than arguing with him. “I really do want to apologize. For everything. For your jobs—”
“Oh fuck me.” Tia’s exclamation mingled with the clatter of the TV remote as it struck the coffee table. “All’s forgiven. Yada-yada, blah blah blah.”
Ronnie raised her brows, and Irdu shrugged.
Tia grabbed the remote again and cranked the volume. Irdu and Ronnie crossed the room to see what was on screen, and her gut plummeted. Fuck me was an understatement. Ronnie was on screen with Tia, Michael, and Vine, in front of a high school in Los Angeles. The image was complete with swords, wings, lightning, and water. It was a poor-quality clip and only lasted a few seconds, but it was undeniably them.
Lucifer’s logic rang fresh in her mind. People would be too busy looking for strings and mirrors to believe the rest.
He was wrong. What people were doing, according to the news anchor, was analyzing the video to see if that was the COO of Ubiquity, in the midst of chaos, on the other side of the country from where she was spotted less than an hour later.
She wanted to sink to the floor. Scream. Pass out. She settled for hugging herself. “What are we going to do?”
“If I were mean, I’d tell you there’s no we.” Irdu wrapped his arms around her. “That’s not me, and they don’t care who Tia is.”
Ronnie hoped this was going somewhere good.
“But like I said, we’re all in this together.” He pulled her into him, so her back rested against his chest.
Tia stomped the ground as she stood. “This is so so bad.”
Ronnie didn’t have anything to add to the concisely accurate assessment. She spun lists of possible outcomes and consequences in her head. At best, this came out as a hoax. Would denying it go over well, or would it make things worse? What were her next steps?
Her phone chimed with a new text that vanished in a ring. She checked the screen. The message was from Michael. The call was Samael. That neither was Lucifer was something to be grateful for. She took the call. “Yeah.” She didn’t try to hide the stress pumping through her at high velocity.
“We have a problem,” Samael said.
“I know. I’m watching the news now.”
“What?” Panic bled into his words. “This shouldn’t be public yet.”
Or ever. “What problem are you talking about?”
“My office, five minutes?” Samael sounded as tired as she felt.
“On my way now.” She glanced at the message from Michael.
Are you seeing this?
She couldn’t believe she hoped he meant what she was watching. Stepping into a meeting. I’ll let you know as soon as I’m out.
Irdu kissed her on the cheek. “Come back here as soon as you’re done. Fuck anyone who tells you that you can’t.”
Ronnie nodded. At least that she could do.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ronnie appeared in front of Samael’s office in less time than it took to say his name. The door was open and he sat behind his desk. Lucifer was in another chair, which meant he was there when Samael called her. Fantastic. Not.
Lucifer met her gaze as she sat. “If you’d given me some warning you needed me in meetings all day, I could have cleared my calendar, rather than having to cancel everything.” His tone was cool and even.
“Neither of them have been my meetings.” Her ire rose several degrees past the scorching level it rested at.
“Are you certain?”
A growl rose in her throat, and she forced it back. Of all the places she could be, and the things she could be doing—like finding out why the video from the high school existed and how it made national news—putting up with Lucifer’s shit was on a completely different list. Instead of sliding into whatever argument he hoped to provoke, she turned to Samael. “Are we waiting on anyone else?”
“No.” Samael crossed the room and closed the door before returning to his desk. He rubbed his face, a sigh escaping through his fingers. “Where to start?”
“With the punchline, probably.” Lucifer’s posture remained casual, but when Ronnie took another look, she saw the tension in his neck and the set of his jaw.
“Right. I talked to the SEC representative this morning. They believe they have enough information to proceed with filing official charges.”
“What?” The last of Ronnie’s restraint evaporated. If someone asked her to describe her worst-possible workday, it wouldn’t have been this bad. Mostly because, at this point, the building exploding would be less stressful. The occupants would survive that unscathed. “Discovery takes months or years. They’ve been here for a week.”
“And you’re suddenly an expert in legal proceedings?” Lucifer asked.
God. What was wrong with him today? “I am. I read all about it online.” She let the sarcasm bleed into her voice.
“I hear rumors the Ubiquity search engine isn’t the most reliable these days. I hope you used a different resource.”
Samael cleared his throat. “Yes, discovery takes longer, and they’re bringing in an independent prosecutor to confirm their findings... and let them move on to less clear-cut cases. What they have is damning enough to take before a judge. I thought you’d want to be looped in before the news went public.”
An ache started behind her eyes and spread through her skull. When she woke up tomorrow, would her personal life be making the news as well? It was a selfish thought; this was bigger than her. Which didn’t make the headache go away.
“So we settle,” Lucifer said.
“It’s a criminal charge, not a lawsuit.” Ronnie regretted the words as soon as they passed her lips. She braced
herself for another dig.
Samael gave her a dry smile. “It’s more complicated than that. They’re going to pick the charges most likely to stick. Their burden of proof isn’t the same in a civil case, and someone here”—he looked at Lucifer—“is adept at finding loopholes.”
Lucifer stood. “That’s settled then. We’ll pay a fine, we’ll go on with life. No harm, no foul.”
“That’s it?” Ronnie struggled to understand which of her concerns about the situation was strongest. “No one goes to jail? There’s no media circus? We pay a fine, and it’s done?”
“Would you rather someone was arrested?” Lucifer’s calm tone faded into irritation. He rested his hands on the back of the chair, the posture making him look imposing and tired at the same time.
She had to strain her neck to look up at him. “It doesn’t sound like that was ever a threat. All this bullshit about us being in trouble, and keeping secrets, and not telling...”
“Not telling... Samael?” Lucifer finished for her.
“Telling me what?”
Ronnie already all but admitted her guilt, and she suspected Lucifer knew anyway. She might as well own it. “Exactly. The plausible-deniability thing. If you were never worried about the outcome, why all the secrecy?”
Lucifer narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure I can answer that, since the secrecy didn’t happen. Samael, I leave the rest to you. Grab someone from marketing to make a press release. Email me if you need anything else.” He strode out of the room without a backward glance.
Annoyance raged inside Ronnie at the brush-off—at the casual approach to a serious conversation.
“Do you have a minute?” Samael’s question cut into her thoughts.
Not really. She had to get back to the fact she made national news as an angel, rather than a Ubiquity executive. But his request polite and she needed kindness today. “Sure.”
He flicked two fingers, and a gust of wind blew the door shut. The pressure in the room shifted, and Ronnie raised her brows. He was extending a shield, to keep power from getting out. Or the other way around. Instinct clenched in her gut.
“You and I have this history. As friends. As lovers. With a very close mutual connection.” Despite the filter he set around them, he kept his words so quiet they barely reached her.
Her anxiety grew, and ribbons of energy slid through her. “All right?” Her phone buzzed, and she ignored it.
“I know all of us—angels, demons, born in heaven, created in hell—are unique. You and I, though... Foolish enough to love originals, despite the fact those men won’t have us.” He shook his head, as if to knock something loose. “My point is, it’s presumptuous of me, but the connection makes me trust you. I can’t tell this to anyone else.” There was no threat in his voice or the way he kept his fingers intertwined. He stayed seated. None of that calmed Ronnie. “I don’t want to start a witch hunt. That’s the last thing heaven and hell need,” he said.
It might be a little late for that. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Concern and anxiety raged with reason in her thoughts, pointing out that being the only person at Ubiquity who was kind to her didn’t mean he was sincere. But this was Samael. “I think that’s smart. What are we talking about?”
“You’ve run into some of this—Gabe being gone doesn’t mean those loyal to him are.”
The same thing Irdu said. “All right...”
“I overheard a couple of them the other day. Two agents in Media, talking about how... It didn’t make any sense.”
Her tolerance level for drawn-out points had vanished over the last couple of hours. “Well? What was it?”
“I didn’t hear it all. Something about how happy it made Gabriel that she was looking in all the wrong places for answers.”
“She?” Ronnie’s phone buzzed again. She hoped it wasn’t Michael, waiting for her reply.
“Keep in mind I’m quoting. That impostor in operations.”
Ice bled into the irritation flooding her. “What else did they say?”
“Not a lot. Something about abandoning... hope? Abandoning someone? As I said, a lot of it didn’t make sense. I caught snatches about planting an older agent close to your friends. How people you trusted would vouch for the real threat, and you’d never know.”
Ronnie’s inner circle wasn’t exactly existent. The only person who met that description was Michael, and she didn’t buy for a second that he was on Gabe’s side. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
She grabbed her phone as soon as she left his office.
The texts were from Lucifer. A string of repeated, We need to talk.
She turned in the appropriate direction, and then paused. No. He’d wait. She was tired of letting his whims and bizarre moods toss her around and interfere with her priorities. No reason to ignore him, though. About what?
I’ll tell you when you get here.
Send a synopsis or schedule a meeting.
No.
I have other places to be. She wasn’t playing his games anymore. If he couldn’t give her a hint up front, it wasn’t critical.
MICHAEL FORCED HIS gaze from the video playing on his phone. He’d been watching one after another since his phone buzzed with the alerts nearly an hour ago. Clips and analysis of the fight with Vine in L.A.
Why wasn’t Ronnie returning his call? He understood she was busy; her schedule had to be packed. This was urgent, and he needed her to be aware. Perhaps she was dealing with it. He wanted to be there, to help—to offer support.
“Is this a bad time?” Abaddon’s question cut into his unsuccessful attempts to figure out a next step.
Yes. He’d called her though, before this news hit him. “It’s fine.”
“Are you certain? Because that was the third time I asked.”
“Now is great.” He set his phone aside, but within view, so he could see when Ronnie replied. “The news has part of my attention, but I appreciate you meeting me.”
Abaddon settled into the wrought-iron seat across from him in the cafe. He’d picked a spot a few blocks from her house, both to keep things convenient for her, and because it was afternoon here. The sun warmed his back, and people passed by on the sidewalk inches from their table.
“I saw some of the reports online. How’s Ronnie coping?” Abaddon asked.
“I don’t know. That’s not me being coy and evasive. I have no idea.”
She slid an envelope across the table. “I’m sorry—not that it helps with your current concerns. Or it might. That’s a list of everyone I know of whose loyalty lies with Gabriel.”
“Do you mind if I take a look?” He was already sliding the flap open.
“Be my guest. Depending on how long you were at Ubiquity, you’ll see a few familiar names on there.” She waved over a waiter and ordered an espresso and a sparkling water.
Michael scanned the names. There were a lot. Three pages, two columns each. Too many for him to process at once, but someone was bound to stand out. He recognized several of the angels who, like Abaddon, had worked with Gabriel for millennia. Others he’d never heard of before.
And then one all but flashed bright neon, despite the fact it was typed like all the others on the list. Samael. “How current is this?”
“I’ve only been gone a week.” Abaddon rose in her seat, to glance over the top of the page. “Oh. Yeah. Samael’s as old as I am. You knew about him, though? The fallout with Lucifer, the jealousy... You didn’t know.”
He knew things had soured between Lucifer and Samael when Metatron refused to go to hell with them. He didn’t realize that could still be impacting anyone so many millennia later. His phone chimed, and he grabbed for it.
Ronnie’s note read, Where are you?
Italy. With Abaddon. He sent Ronnie details about the location.
The air shifted, pressure weighing on Michael for a second before lessening again, and Ronnie stood next to them. Her shorter sword was drawn and pressed against Abaddon’s throat.
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“Game’s up.” Ronnie’s voice was a low growl. “I hope you had a good run.”
“Ronnie,” Michael warned. “Stop.” Every inch of him hummed with barely repressed energy as he debated best courses of action.
Abaddon held her hands up, palms out in surrender. “I heard you weren’t psycho anymore. What changed?”
“I should have guessed it was you, getting close to one of the people I trust more than anyone. Making him vouch for you.” Ronnie didn’t back away or push in.
Michael wanted details. To figure out where this came from and why so abruptly. The electric blue growing around Abaddon and clashing with Ronnie’s ethereal blades told him that was a low priority. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but it’s not Abaddon,” he said.
“Really.” Ronnie didn’t look at him. “Who is it then?”
Abaddon laughed, but fear lay underneath. “Did it ever occur to you Gabriel doesn’t want me here? That he had an idea this would happen? That he’s got a backup plan?”
“Like feeding you more bullshit to spread?”
Michael would take Ronnie’s side in any battle, but she wasn’t facing an enemy. He didn’t doubt Abaddon’s growing terror was real. “Back down now.”
“Like having Samael plant the idea in your head that I’m your enemy, not him,” Abaddon said.
“No. His loyalties have always been clear. Samael would never side with Gabriel.” Despite Ronnie’s firm tone, her stance wavered.
Abaddon scooted her seat back, and Ronnie didn’t close the distance. “Are you sure about that?” A quaver ran through Abaddon’s question. “A broken heart makes people do funny things.” She stood, taking herself further out of range. Around them the world passed by as if nothing were happening.
“You’re lying.” Ronnie’s sword faded then sparkled into a pile of glitter at her feet, before vanishing.
Abaddon let out a shaky breath. “It doesn’t matter what you believe; the list is a favor for Michael. And I was wrong about you.”
“Oh?”
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