“I don’t know,” I said, my shoulders slumping. “I think he was taken.”
I explained about the various incidents in the alley, from our following of the power signature to my attack. I left out the part where I had accidentally reestablished relations with the wolves, and pretended I didn’t suspect the identity of my attacker. There was no need for Nathaniel to know anything about Samiel right now.
He looked thoughtful, something I hadn’t expected. “How could the . . . Gabriel have been taken without your knowledge when he stood in such close proximity to you?”
“Exactly,” I said. “Beezle thinks it was the wolves.”
“Beezle?” Nathaniel asked.
“My gargoyle,” I said, waving my hands impatiently. “Do you have any way of tracking power signatures? Gabriel could do it, but he didn’t show me how.”
Nathaniel’s nostrils flared and his lips thinned. “That ability appears to be the exclusive provenance of the children of Lucifer.”
I could tell that it cost him something to say this. He wasn’t the type who enjoyed admitting weakness. But while it was an interesting fact for me to tuck away for later (being a child of Lucifer, I theoretically could manifest this power at some point) it didn’t really help me with my immediate problem—finding Gabriel.
“Besides,” Nathaniel pointed out, “if the kidnappers did not use magic, there would be no power signature to trace.”
“You think something swooped in from the sky and plucked Gabriel out of the alley without me noticing?” I said doubtfully.
“You have not yet visited the courts of other fallen,” Nathaniel said grimly. “There are horrors there that you cannot comprehend.”
Horrors, I thought. Once more, a warning of horrors that I could not understand. I felt a prickling on the back of my neck. Nathaniel’s eyes widened at something behind me.
“Down!” he shouted, his hand reaching across the table as something smashed into the dining room window and slammed into me.
6
THE BREATH LEFT MY LUNGS IN A TREMENDOUS whoosh as something heavy crashed through the chair, into my back and then fell to the floor with a thunk. The apartment immediately started to fill with smoke. I shook my head, trying to collect my thoughts.
A firm hand grasped my elbow and yanked me up from the table.
“You have to get out of here,” Nathaniel said, dragging me away from the table and the source of the smoke.
I shook my arm free from his grip. “No, I have to get whatever is smoking out of my apartment before the whole building blows up.”
I couldn’t see his expression but I’m sure he disapproved. I dropped to the floor, coughing and covering my mouth and nose with the neckline of my T-shirt.
A hissing noise emanated from just behind the chair I had been sitting in. I squirmed along the floor on my belly, feeling in front of me for the source of the noise. My vision was only slightly clearer than it had been when I stood up. The smoke was quickly filling the room. I could make out the vague shapes of furniture but nothing more.
“Open a window!” I shouted to Nathaniel. He didn’t respond, so I assumed he had found the nearest exit and gotten out of the building. Which is what a smart person would do. But still, not very gallant of him, considering he was engaged to me.
The hissing noise grew closer. I belly-crawled toward it, fingers of my right hand outstretched, the other hand holding my T-shirt over my nose.
There was a blast of cold air on my back and the smoke seemed to lift temporarily. I glanced behind me and could make out the shape of Nathaniel in the front living room, opening all of the windows. Huh. So he hadn’t left me, after all.
I turned back toward my goal, and saw that the smoke had dissipated just enough for me to see the source of the noise. I crawled toward it and carefully examined it without picking it up. It looked like a medium-sized black bowling ball with gray smoke emitting from a hole in the top. There did not seem to be any kind of incendiary device on it but I wasn’t about to take chances.
I came to a crouch and then carefully lifted the ball into my arms. It is an unfortunate testament to my total lack of fitness that despite my newfound angelic strength, the ball felt heavy to me.
I began to move through the house toward the back door. A moment later, Nathaniel was next to me, taking the ball from my arms.
“Where?” he asked shortly.
“Down the back stairs, to the yard and into my rain barrel,” I said. I was embarrassed that I was huffing and puffing, but it wasn’t all laziness. The smoke had obviously affected my puny mortal lungs more than it had affected his.
Nathaniel disappeared into the kitchen, streaming a trail of smoke behind him. I walked through the apartment opening windows and letting the frigid November air inside. Luckily, we hadn’t gotten into a period of deep frost so there should just be a thin coating of ice on the rain barrel. I just hoped that whatever was inside that ball would respond the way smoking things usually responded to water—by getting doused. If the item was magical, there was a good chance that it might blow up when it hit the water. You could never tell.
When I’d finished opening the windows and the air had cleared somewhat, I went back to the dining area to survey the damage. The ball had completely smashed the window—no surprise there—and rendered the back rest of the chair I had been sitting in to splinters. I put my right foot down and felt something sting. I stood on the opposite foot and looked at the oozing wound on the sole.
“Well, of course there would be glass on the floor, dummy,” I muttered to myself. I hopped down the hall to the bathroom and sat down on the toilet. There was a small sliver of glass embedded in the ball of my foot. “I don’t know how I survived this long on my own wits.”
I reached down to the cabinet underneath the sink, pulled out my nail kit and collected the tweezers. Then I grabbed some rubbing alcohol and cotton balls, all while twisting around on the seat with my right leg crossed over my left and my right foot dripping blood on the blue tile floor. I dumped a little alcohol on the cotton ball and swabbed the tip of the tweezers. Then I added some more alcohol to the other side of the ball and applied it to the wound. I hissed as the alcohol stung.
You would think that after nearly being killed by a nephilim I would have more tolerance for pain.
I bent over my foot and began the business of trying to extract the glass. I grabbed at the sliver with the tweezers and pulled, whimpering as it came free from my flesh.
“I am so not cut out for a life of adventure,” I muttered, wiping more alcohol on the wound to make sure it wouldn’t get infected. My eyes teared up as the alcohol did its thing.
I finished bandaging the cut and stood up to test my weight on it. I would survive. A moment later, Nathaniel slammed the remains of my back door. I stepped gingerly into the hallway to meet him and had to cover my mouth with my hand to stifle my laughter.
Well, I’d wondered if he’d ever get rumpled, and now he was. He looked kind of like that cartoon coyote after the dynamite has gone off in his face.
Nathaniel’s blond hair stuck straight up in front and had been blackened by soot. So had his face and his formerly pristine shirt front. As I sniggered into my palm, a couple of blackened feathers fell from his wings onto the floor.
He raised an eyebrow at me and I schooled my face into seriousness. Then he wordlessly thrust a piece of paper into my hand.
I turned the paper over and saw that there was a message printed on one side. It said, simply, “I KNOW WHERE THEY ARE KEEPING HIM.”
I flipped the paper again, looking for further information. There was nothing but the message.
“Well, that’s really freaking helpful,” I muttered. “You’d think they’d have included a map or some flying directions or something.”
I looked back up at Nathaniel, who appeared to be gathering the shredded remains of his dignity around him. “What happened when you brought the ball outside?”
“It explo
ded before I managed to get it to the rain barrel,” he said tightly.
“I didn’t hear anything,” I said.
“It was a small explosion, and I held the bomb close to my chest so as not to cause property damage.” He looked as though he were regretting this act of charity.
“Well, thanks,” I said, touched by his thoughtfulness, however grudgingly given. “And where was the message?”
“Inside the bomb.”
I rubbed my fingers on the paper. It felt like perfectly normal standard bond notepaper. “How did the paper survive the explosion?”
“Perhaps there was an enchantment on the paper,” Nathaniel replied, shrugging.
He didn’t seem as interested in the mechanics of the message-delivery system as he was in straightening and dusting the cuffs of his shirt. I, however, was very interested. An enchantment could only mean that the message had been delivered by a magical practitioner. Okay, fine. Most things that go bump in the night have some kind of magic. Not all of them had the kind of fine abilities that would allow them to keep a piece of paper safe inside an incendiary device.
So that narrowed things down to a witch or a faerie. Probably. There was still a lot I didn’t know about the world, as I was discovering every day. But it seemed that your average Agent, demon, angel, vampire, et cetera, probably couldn’t have performed this kind of spell.
Of course, one had to wonder why a witch or a faerie would send this completely unhelpful message inside a bomb. Was the being that sent the message a friend? And if so, was it their idea of a funny joke to send it in a way that could have potentially blown off a limb?
“Did you get a look at whoever lobbed this thing through the window?” I asked Nathaniel. “You were facing that way.”
He shook his head. “I only saw the bomb approaching.”
I frowned. “So whoever threw it could have flown past very quickly. Or thrown it from a great distance. Or possibly levitated it from the ground. Oh, hell. Maybe Beezle saw something.”
“Where is your gargoyle?” Nathaniel asked. “Surely this commotion should have attracted his attention.”
“You’re right,” I said, turning and hurrying toward the front of the house. Beezle kept his nest underneath the picture window, on the front porch roof. This ensured that he would not only see anything approaching the front door, but also that he could spy on anything that was going on in the street. Beezle is about as nosy as it gets.
“Beezle!” I shouted, throwing up the screen and leaning out until I could see his nest. The nest was a jumble of sticks, leaves, newspapers and the small piece of plaid wool that Beezle used to wrap around his ears. “Beezle!”
He didn’t answer, and I felt a little ping of anxiety. Whoever had lobbed that bomb at my window could have hurt Beezle. I leaned farther, my hips balancing precariously over the sill, my skin coming out in goose bumps in the chilly November air.
“Beezle!” I shouted. “You answer me right now!”
Some neighbors walking by on the street below looked up in puzzlement and then quickly looked away when they saw me hanging out of the window and shouting like a lunatic.
“Beezle!” I repeated, my eyes searching every tree branch and every roof shingle in sight. No sign of my cranky gargoyle.
“Beezle!” I said again, and I felt myself overbalancing, my nose tilting toward the roof, and I had a second to wonder if I should call up my wings, when I felt Nathaniel’s arm around my waist, pulling me back inside.
I slapped at his arm, struggled against him. “Let me go! I have to find Beezle!”
“You are not going to find him by shouting out the window. If the gargoyle were there, he would have come at your call,” he said reasonably.
I breathed long through my nose in counts of three, and then did the same for the exhalation. I had to calm down. I had to think. Beezle was missing. He could be lying hurt somewhere out of sight.
“Okay,” I said, tapping at Nathaniel’s arm and looking up at his stony face. He was probably pissed that my behavior had reflected poorly on him—again. “Okay. You can let me go now.”
“You are not going to do anything foolish?” he asked.
“Define ‘foolish,’” I said, and then shook my head at his look of puzzlement. “Sarcasm. Obviously not something you are familiar with. Anyway, no, I am not going to hang out the window and shout like the neighborhood crazy anymore.”
He released me slowly, like he wasn’t sure whether or not to believe me. I turned around and faced him.
“I need to find Beezle,” I said. I tried not to think of how alone I felt at this moment, with no Beezle and no Gabriel, because if I thought of that, I might cry, and the last thing I wanted to do was cry in front of Nathaniel. “You can head back to court.”
He raised his eyebrow, an expression that I realized I would probably be seeing often since it obviously meant he was annoyed with me. “So I am dismissed, then, Princess?”
I felt the blood rise in my cheeks. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so high-handed. But I have to go now. Beezle might be hurt.”
“I will assist you,” he said.
I tried not to look completely astonished but I am sure that I failed. Nathaniel was never going to be my first choice for company, but it would be good to have an extra pair of hands around in case whatever threw the bomb was still hanging around. “Um, okay. Let me grab some sneakers and a coat and we can head outside. Can you, um, hide yourself when your wings are out?”
“One of the first things an angel learns is how to disguise his nature from mortals,” he said in an arrogant tone.
That snide remark made me feel more at ease. I could go back to disliking him and not have to struggle with the weird feeling of being grateful to him for healing me, and for helping me find Beezle.
I ran to my room, pulled on an overcoat and my black Converse sneakers, and then met Nathaniel by the front door. He was fixing his hair in the small mirror that hung over the table where I dumped my keys and spare cell phones.
“Come on, beautiful,” I said, rolling my eyes. “We have work to do.”
I let my wings out and winked out of sight. Nathaniel disappeared a moment later. Mortal eyes would not be able to see us, but to anything supernatural we would appear see-through, like ghosts.
We headed out the front window and started from the roof of the house down. I carefully checked every eave, every nook, every windowsill. I practically pinned my nose to the ground and crawled all around the front and back yards, calling down rabbit holes and peeking behind bushes. Nothing.
No sign of Beezle. No evidence of my attacker. Nothing.
I tried not to panic. Losing Gabriel was one thing. I had confusing, lusty feelings for him and didn’t want to see him hurt. But losing Beezle was devastating. I had never, never been without him in my whole life. He had always been there—irascible, sometimes annoying, but he was mine. He’d been like a parent to me when I was young and alone and afraid, and a constant companion as I grew older. I could not even contemplate a future without Beezle in it.
I stood in the gangway between my house and my neighbor’s and leaned against the outer wall of the building, rough brick against my check, my eyes closed. My stomach churned with anxiety. What had happened to Beezle? Who had taken him, and why? Were they hurting him? Would they ransom him?
I felt the brush of soft linen against my cheeks, and looked up to see Nathaniel standing before me. He tucked his handkerchief back in his pocket as I straightened.
“I wasn’t crying,” I said.
“Of course not,” he replied.
“I’m just worried about Beezle,” I said.
“Naturally,” he said.
There was an awkward silence, and it only highlighted the nearly impossible distance between us. Gabriel would have comforted me, and I would have welcomed his comfort. Nathaniel didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t know if I wanted him to do anything anyway. And thinking these kinds of thoughts only made me fee
l more alone.
“I have arranged for repairmen to come and fix your back door and your broken window,” Nathaniel said.
The door. I’d mostly forgotten about it. Gabriel and I had pushed it back into the frame as best we could and nailed it shut yesterday morning—was it only yesterday? Why did it seem like ever since I’d discovered I was Azazel’s daughter I had more and more days like this, days that seemed like lifetimes?
“How did you get out the back door when the bomb was in your hand? The door was nailed shut.”
Nathaniel shrugged. “I tore it out of the frame.”
“Ah. But it’s going to be fixed now.”
“Yes. I would not wish to take any chances with your safety.”
He said this in a way that made me look up at him, and I thought maybe there was something like tenderness in his eyes. Maybe he meant it. Maybe he really did want to keep me safe. That didn’t mean he cared about the person I really was as opposed to the person he wanted me to be. And no amount of tenderness would help me find Beezle or Gabriel. But I needed him to cooperate with me, in at least one way.
“Listen, Nathaniel,” I said. “I really do need you to keep this business about Gabriel from Azazel.”
He frowned. “Are you asking me to lie to my lord? Because the penalty for such a thing would be fierce.”
As much I didn’t like Nathaniel, I didn’t want him to be punished. And I was sure that he wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice his beautiful face for my sake. I’d have to play this carefully.
“I think that you would agree that something strange is going on here,” I said.
He said nothing, only nodded so that I would continue.
“But I would not want to alarm my father unnecessarily.”
“Surely in an event like this you would wish him to know? What if you incurred bodily injury while the . . . Gabriel was missing?”
“Well, in point of fact, I already have incurred bodily injury. And I’m okay, thanks to you.”
“And what of the regular reports that Gabriel makes to Lord Azazel?”
I had thought this one through already, and I was pretty sure that I’d come up with a good solution. “What if you made the reports for a few days?”
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