by C. L. Coffey
“That’s the one,” Cupid breathed. He seemed as surprised as I did.
I gave another twirl and the doubt crawled into my mind. “You don’t think it’s too much?”
“No, this is the one,” Cupid repeated firmly.
I frowned, gathering the skirt up. “What are you doing?” he demanded, tugging the fabric free from my grip, but taking care not to mark it.
“It’s gorgeous, but not very practical. How on earth am I going to carry my sword?”
“You are joking, aren’t you?” Cupid asked, stepping in front of me with narrowed eyes. He jerked back, his eyes wide. “You’re being serious? Angel, you are not wearing your sword with that dress!”
I folded my arms. “I’m going to the NOPD Winter Ball – the same NOPD Leon and Joshua are investigating to see how far Asmodeus’ reach goes. For all I know, I could be walking unarmed into a trap.”
There was a sound at the doorway and I dropped the conversation, just in time as the attendant stepped in and gave me an appreciative nod. “I was just checking everything was okay in here, but it looks like you’ve found the one.”
“Told you so,” Cupid said, smugly.
“Your boyfriend is one lucky guy,” he informed me, before disappearing.
“Yes, he is,” I muttered running my hands over the bodice. I looked up and caught Cupid watching me with a strange expression plastered on his face. “Are you all right?”
“You’re not talking about me,” he said. When I shrugged, confused, he frowned. “Your boyfriend?”
Out of the corner of my eye I could literally see the color drain from my reflection. “No,” I whispered.
Cupid studied me, then, with a loud sigh, sank onto the chair in the corner of the room. His head came to rest in his hands. “Oh, Angel, you can’t,” he moaned.
“We haven’t done anything,” I said, feeling the need to defend myself.
“You can’t do anything at all,” he said, continuing to address his lap instead of me.
I was ready to assure him that wasn’t going to happen, when I changed my mind. “I know about the covenant.”
Finally, Cupid raised his head to look at me. He sat there, chewing on his lip, staring at me with a strange expression. “That covenant was put in place for a reason: to protect us.”
“When I was still alive, if someone told me that I was going to believe a guy was more important than I was, I would have laughed at you. I would maybe have been convinced if you’d have said I would see him as my equal, but certainly not more important than me. I would have told you that I was going to marry a guy and he was going to worship the ground I walked on.” I couldn’t help but pull a face at that, but it was the truth. “Then I died and I discovered that the things I thought were make-believe were actually true. I discovered that I had a greater purpose. I may not know why Joshua is important, but I one-hundred percent believe it. I take my job as his guardian angel seriously, even if there are others who would kick ass better than I would. He is the number one priority in my life, and I don’t say this as some lovesick fool. I say this because I truly believe that the same God I didn’t believe in six months ago, has said that he is important.”
I thought he would be reassured by my words, but if anything, he looked devastated. “Oh, no,” he whispered. “You fell in love.”
“You say it like it’s a bad thing, Cupid,” I sighed. “All it does is make me more determined than ever to protect him. I will give my life for him.”
“And what about him?” Cupid asked. “What about him wanting to give his life for yours?”
“Considering I’m immortal, it would make him an idiot!” I exclaimed. “I’m constantly pointing that fact out to him.”
“Which is exactly my point,” Cupid snapped. He got to his feet and started pacing in front of the mirror. “You won’t notice it happening, but slowly, he will start changing his life to suit you – to make things easier, or simpler, or compatible – for you. How do you know that your purpose isn’t to protect him, because he’s supposed to meet someone else? How do you know if his destiny is to father a child who will bring about a united world?” he asked, pulling at his hair. “How do you know he isn’t going to be the one to stop the persecution in the country, but instead ends up falling in love with you and growing old with you instead of doing what he was supposed to?”
“I don’t,” I told him. “I just refuse to believe that God would be so cruel as to have our paths cross.”
“So did I!” Cupid cried.
In the moment it took for me to process what Cupid had just said, he had already started striding towards the door. “You fell in love!” I exclaimed, stopping him in his tracks.
“I’m not talking about it, Angel,” he said, gruffly, but he refused to turn around and face me.
“I am not you, and Joshua is not whoever-”
“Cassius,” Cupid spun on the spot, and I was surprised to find pain and tears in his eyes. “His name was Cassius.” He let out a dry chuckle. “That’s the first time I’ve said his name in over two thousand years.”
“You fell in love,” I repeated, softly. Very slowly, Cupid nodded his head. “What happened?”
“I can’t…” Cupid’s voice broke and he stopped to clear his throat. “Julius Caesar was alive when this happened, and I still can’t talk about it,” he mumbled, his eyes narrowing in anger.
I hurried over, reaching for his hand. Cupid loved to gush over some clothing and fangirl over Stephen Amell (I couldn’t blame him for that), but he was strong and bad-ass. I hated seeing him broken like this. “I don’t know what happened, and you don’t have to tell me, especially if it still feels that raw,” I consoled him. “But your experience is not my experience.”
“And I don’t want it to be,” he told me, pleading in his eyes.
“Maybe things are playing out the way their supposed to?” I offered. “Maybe we are supposed to end up together. Either way, I’m not going to do anything that would intentionally harm him, and we’re not rushing into anything.”
Cupid squeezed my hand. “I trust you, Angel. I do. I just don’t want you to make the mistake I did, because things like this take a long time to get over, especially when you don’t have the opportunity to move on like most humans do.” He gave me a wry smile as he let go of my hand. “I was trying to get you and Michael together.”
“I know,” I informed him. “It took a while for my oblivious self to notice, but I did.”
“Obviously your attention was elsewhere.”
“Are we agreed on this dress then?” I asked him.
Cupid took a step back and tilted his head, pursing his lips. “Absolutely.” He frowned. “You need new shoes.”
“You don’t think these go?” I asked, hitching the dress up to reveal the biker boots I was still sporting.
“Angel, they’re perfect,” he gushed. “The color matches that detail perfectly!”
I faltered, the grin falling from my face. “Are you being serious?”
With a roll of his eyes, Cupid tapped me upside the head. “No, you fool, I’m not being serious. They look positively hideous with that gown.”
I smiled, but it slipped from my face when I returned to the fitting room to get back into my uniform. I usually stopped myself from thinking too far into the future. I was immortal and Joshua wasn’t – that wasn’t ever going to have a happy ending. Much as I was in love with him, our relationship had a shelf life. Maybe I did need to question our relationship…
But that wasn’t happening today.
With the dress left in the safe keeping of the store assistant, Cupid dragged me to the shoe section. It was as though we had left the conversation in the fitting room. The haunted look remained in Cupid’s eyes until we were surrounded by shoes, then his eyes took on an excited expression as he examined all that was on display. “These,” he suggested, with a mischievous grin.
I took the patent leather thigh-high boots off him and held them up
. “Alas,” I sighed, with as much melodrama as I could. “These are not my size.”
Thankfully, it was a lot easier to find a pair of shoes he approved of (although he didn’t hesitate to throw in a few suggestions to improve the ones I was already wearing), and they had soon joined the dress. We paid for them both (a reasonable price too), and headed back to the convent, although Cupid did insist on swinging by Café du Monde for some beignets as he’d declared he owed me a bag. I wasn’t complaining.
When we pulled up in the parking lot outside the convent, he killed the music, but left the engine running. “Thank you,” he said, solemnly. “You were right: I did need to get out of there.”
“I know we stuffed up, and I know we have a lot to do to fix it, but it’s going to take some time. We’re not Michael – we don’t have experience of running a House,” I told him.
“I know,” he sighed.
“I think I have an idea on what we can do to help,” I added. “I need to spend more time at the precinct to do it, but if we can prove that Asmodeus was behind what happened, which should be relatively straightforward considering he was, we can get Leon to make sure that information is shared with the news.”
“I’m not sure having a corrupt police officer is a better option than a terrorist attack,” Cupid said, dryly.
“Maybe not, but at least it’s a name and face for people to associate with it,” I offered, suddenly not so convinced my idea was a good one.
“I think what we need to do is show the city that it’s okay to celebrate Christmas,” Cupid said, suddenly. “We were lucky no one was hurt. If they can get that ship fixed and out of the port, and we can give them something else to focus on, I think they would forget about it.”
I sat chewing at my lip. “I think that might work, but what can we distract them with? We have so much work to do at the convent, plus the investigations at the precinct…” My eyes went wide. “The cherubim!”
“You want to use the cherubim to work at the convent?” he asked, dubiously.
“I was thinking maybe they could help with cheering up the city,” I shrugged. “They were a part of things at the port.”
Cupid stared at me, unmoving, and then, without any warning, he burst into hysterical laughter, clutching at his sides. I sat watching him, wondering if he was okay, and then he finally quietened, wiping his eyes. “That’s brilliant.”
“I was being serious!” I exclaimed, haughtily. I folded my arms and glared at him.
Cupid leaned over, ruffling my hair. “You are adorable; completely insane, but adorable. Angel, sweetie, if you looked up cherubim in a thesaurus, your alternative words would be ‘moody, petulant, miserable, stubborn, and wretched’. They are the last angels I would consider in trying to help cheer up the city.” He started chuckling to himself again.
“I think it depends on what we ask them to do,” I muttered. I was going to ask them. There was no harm in that, right?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Shots Fired
After stowing my dress safely in my bedroom, I hurried down to help in the kitchen with the final preparations for dinner. My aunt, Sarah, had returned during the weekend and after insisting the kitchen was cleaned again – this time to her standard – she had spent some time with Eugene. Together they had planned the meals for the week. Sarah was going to spend the week at home, to get caught up on all she had missed while being away. She had assured us she was coming back again at the end of the week, even though both Eugene and I kept insisting it wasn’t necessary.
“Nonsense,” she chided us. “I enjoy cooking and you have a lot more important things to be doing. Let me get on top of things, and then I can call in on a regular basis and make sure that everything is moving along nicely. I also want to continue with giving Eugene some cooking lessons.” He had been thrilled at that.
Today we had left several joints of pork simmering in apple juice, ready for serving a pulled pork sandwich. By the time I had made it downstairs, the convent smelled delicious and the pork was falling apart on the chopping board. After pinching off a piece and finding it tasted as good as it smelled, I also discovered Eugene had spent far too much time with my aunt, as he rapped me over my knuckles with a wooden spoon. Traitor.
I wasn’t planning on eating at the convent. Joshua had mentioned getting something to eat after we’d gotten through at the precinct, but I reasoned it was completely inappropriate to be questioning a potential fallen angel with a grumbling stomach. I inhaled a sandwich and then hurried out to grab an SUV.
I was approaching the vehicle when a sullen teenager appeared out of nowhere in front of me. My eyes narrowed at the dark ones which were glaring at me from under a fringe of black hair. “Hello, Garret,” I greeted him, forcing myself to be pleasant. It wasn’t that I hated him, but there was certainly a high level of distain for the cherub in front of me.
“You need to come with me,” he said, his tone acidic. The distain went both ways.
“I would, only I have plans,” I told him, folding my arms and mimicking his posture. If he wasn’t going to bother with niceties, neither was I.
“I could just take you now,” he growled at me. I didn’t think his eyes could narrow any further, but they turned into thin slits.
I couldn’t help but arch an eyebrow at him. “You could, but that would be taking me against my will, and that’s called kidnapping. Given that I witnessed you swear an oath saying you wouldn’t do that, it would result in you losing your wings,” I pointed out, and yes, I was smug about it.
Since the cherubim had moved out of the convent to their secret location, (it was the Plaza Tower. Joshua had figured it out, but the cherubim didn’t know that we knew), whenever they had decided they needed to talk to me, Garret had thrown a bag over my head and taken me against my will. I’d fought back once and then Garret had kicked my ass for it. Seriously kicked my ass – if I’d have been human, I was willing to bet I would still be in the hospital for it. Veronica had made him swear an oath that he wouldn't do any more kidnapping or kicking of my ass, and he was most certainly resentful of it.
It didn’t help that he blamed me for Michael’s death… The only angel who had ever defeated Lucifer and who Garret considered the only one who could have stopped him again.
Needless to say, there was no love lost between us. “Veronica needs to see you,” he tried again.
“Good for her,” I shrugged. “But I still have plans.”
I glared back at him, until he eventually pulled a face. “Please?”
There was a small sliver of satisfaction at his frustration, but I shook my head. “I really do have plans, Garret,” I informed him. “But I can call by tomorrow.”
“I will collect you tomorrow morning,” Garret promptly informed me.
“After lunch,” I corrected him. There was the sound of a door closing behind me and I turned to see Eugene leaving the convent. When I turned back to Garret, he was gone. I sighed and waited for Eugene to come over.
“We need some more chilies,” he told me.
Eugene and his chilies… tomorrow we had decided on enchiladas for dinner. “Don’t we have enough?”
Eugene shook his head. “Not really.”
“I’ll pick some up tomorrow morning,” I told him.
“I can go,” he offered.
When he looked disappointed, I gave him a small smile. “It’s late and the market won’t be open at this time.” When the disappointment didn’t shift, I sighed. “We can go tomorrow,” I offered. He seemed a little happier at that suggestion and disappeared back into the convent. I hung around in the parking lot for a few more minutes, waiting for Garret to reappear, and when he didn’t, I got in the SUV.
I pulled out of the convent, turning onto the street. It was only through chance that out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a familiar figure, lurking on the street corner. I pulled over and wound the window down. “Because that doesn’t look suspicious in the slightest, Ty,” I greeted him.
Ty glanced up and down the street, the cap pulled down low over his eyes doing nothing to hide the nervous energy radiating from him. He took half a step forward and thrust something at me. “Here.”
“What’s this?” I started to ask, but by the time I had gathered the papers up from my lap, he had disappeared. I scanned the pages: a list of names written in chicken scratches. It dawned on me what it was; a list of the nephilim and Fallen in New Orleans. My eyes widened – I was struggling to believe that Ty had truly delivered. Chewing on my lower lip, I folded the pages back up and tucked them into the bottom of one of my many pockets. There was time to deal with this later.
The sun was just beginning to set when I arrived at the precinct. The area around the building was noticeably quieter at this time of the evening, and I had no trouble finding any parking. I hurried inside and found Joshua leaning over the welcome counter, chatting with the officer on duty. I paused in the doorway, not wanting to disturb the conversation, and took the opportunity to steal a look at him. It didn’t matter how many times I saw him, he still could cause the geese sized butterflies to fly in formation in my stomach.
As though he felt my eyes on him, he straightened, his toned muscles rippling beneath his navy dress shirt, and turned. The way his bright cobalt eyes darkened to something closer to indigo sent a wave of warmth flooding through me, almost making me forget why I was at the precinct in the first place, and wishing we could abandon whatever it was we were going to do and head to his place instead.
“I’m glad you could come so late, Ms. Connors,” Joshua greeted me, bringing me out of my imagination and back into the present.
I blinked a few times, frowning. “Not a problem?” Joshua nodded his head, ever so slightly, at the officer. I glanced over at Curtis, then back to Joshua. “Glad to help.”
“Shall we?” he pushed open the door into the back and waited for me. I looked back over to Curtis, catching him rolling his eyes, as I briskly stepped through.