by Lisa Olsen
“Oh.” That changed things. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about explaining to Parker why I hadn’t shown up for work, but I was tired enough to call in sick and sleep for a week. Still, it was hard to wrap my head around the concept. “Just a few hours?” I frowned when I realized that Sam hadn’t eased his stance or taken his eyes off of Nelo. “Sam… relax.” I laid a hand on his chest pushing him backwards, tugging Nelo behind me like a human choo choo train.
“I don’t understand,” Sam replied, but he did send the magic sword back to wherever it went when it wasn’t in use. Maybe it lived wherever he kept his wings?
“I can see that, but you can calm down. I never would have gotten out of Midian if it wasn’t for him, he can be trusted.” I gave the little demon’s hand a soft squeeze of encouragement, but he still hid behind me like a two year old. “I had to have some help since some people were unavailable.” I gave him a pointed look.
“I could not go to Midian.”
“Adam did,” I pointed out.
“OMG, he did?” Sam gasped and I did my best to stifle the smile that rose to my lips. He had to have been spending more time with Daphne lately…
“But you did know I was in Midian? I thought you were in the Ether going after Azazael?”
“Yes, Adam sought me out there after you were taken. He told me you were safe in Midian and not to be disturbed. He said he would deal with Azazael personally.”
There went Adam, making life altering decisions for me again, and my temper snapped. “For the love of God, when are you going to stop doing every little thing that Adam tells you! He tells you to hide away from me and you do it. He tells you to stop pursuing Azazael and you do it. He tells you to leave me in a demon world and you do it! When are you going to start thinking for yourself?” I stared at him accusingly.
“I… had not thought…”
“No, you don’t think. That’s the point. You’re happy to let him make all the decisions. Well, I’m sick of it. Just because I’m in love with the guy doesn’t give him the right to play with my life like that. From now on, I’m in charge of my destiny. Not some ancient prophecy, or a sadistic demon lord or even God’s gift to angels.” My anger spent, I was instantly contrite as Sam shrank away from me like a spanked puppy.
“I apologize, I didn’t realize it was so contrary to your wishes.”
He was backing away from me, and I felt about an inch high for putting that look on his face. “Sam, I’m sorry… it’s been a rough day.”
“I will leave you to your rest then, if you are certain you are safe?” He looked to Nelo who enacted his best impression of a statue, remaining perfectly still.
“Yeah, I’m fine, but you don’t have to leave…”
“I won’t be far.” With another pointed look to the demon, Sam stepped out onto the balcony and disappeared from view.
Great, now I’d gone and upset the sweetest guy on the face of the earth.
“Perhaps I should go, Mistress,” Nelo’s small voice pulled me out of my shame spiral and I gave him a reassuring smile.
“No, don’t be silly. He might be Fallen but Sam’s still an angel, that comes with a certain amount of prejudice, I suppose. He’ll get used to you being around after a while. If you decide you want to stick around that is, you don’t have to stay with me. You can go anywhere in the world you want to.” Instead of taking that as an encouraging thing, the idea seemed to throw Nelo into a panic and he crouched down smaller as he looked out the window to where Sam disappeared.
“He lives here with you, Samael?”
“Sort of. He’s helping protect me from Azazael and the demons Raum sent after me. Not that it ended up doing a whole lot of good.”
“And you belong to Adamiel…”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Are there any other angels that live here with you?” His eyes darted around nervously.
“No…” Poor little guy, he was scared to death. “Oh Nelo, try not to worry about it, okay? I won’t let them hurt you. But I’ll understand if you don’t want to stay with me, my life can be kinda complicated.”
“Oh no, Mistress. I would not willingly leave you,” he shook his head earnestly. “If you will allow me to stay, I would serve you.”
It warmed my heart to hear his pledge, but I wasn’t looking for a servant. “You don’t have to serve me, Nelo, you can stay here as my friend.”
“As you wish, Mistress.”
“And you don’t have to keep calling me Mistress.”
“As you wish, Mistress.”
I decided to give up, it was late and I was bone weary. Only… would Azazael be waiting for me in the Ether when I closed my eyes? Even if Adam decided to handle him personally, would he have taken care of it already if only a few hours had passed since I’d left? It was enough to give me pause and send me to the kitchen for a cup of coffee instead of to the bedroom. Would I be a big fat chicken if I called Sam back to watch over me while I slept? Somehow I wasn’t able to bring myself to do that after the way we’d parted.
I was turning the coffeemaker on when I heard the jangle of keys at the door. Was Sam coming back on his own?
“Mercy?” It was Ben who stormed into the apartment, looking frantic until he spotted me in the kitchen, my keys and purse in his hands. “Where the hell have you been?”
Any relief I felt at seeing him was instantly sucked down the drain at his tone of voice. I hated it when he talked to me like that. Only how had he even known I was home again? “Ben, what are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here?” Uh oh… I recognized that tone and I did my best to remember he was only worried about me and leave my temper at the door. “I’m looking for you. You show up at my house, never make it upstairs, your purse is in my garage, your car is on my street. You don’t answer the phone, you don’t call… you could have told me you were leaving again.”
“Yeah, but how did you know I was here?”
“I had a black and white keeping an eye on the place. They told me you got dropped off about fifteen minutes ago by a seedy looking car. So, where were you?”
“That’s my brother’s car,” I frowned defensively. “You had the cops watching my apartment?”
“I thought you were in danger, I thought you’d been attacked or something.”
“Yeah, well you’re not wrong there,” I conceded. “Do you want a cup of coffee? I could really use one.”
“Do I…” Ben’s hand clenched into a fist and he brought it up to his mouth, as if he didn’t trust himself to speak any further until he got a hold of his temper. “I swear, if you don’t tell me what’s going on right now, I’m going to walk out that door and I won’t come back.”
“I’m trying to, but you need to calm down. Have a cup of coffee, trust me, you’ll need it.” Either that or something a little stronger, but I already had the coffee mugs down. Ben slid onto one of the barstools, waiting patiently for me to begin. I have to admit, I wasn’t looking forward to the conversation at all, so the story spilled out in a disjointed, convoluted manner.
Starting with the arrival of Bert and Hubie in his garage, I led him through the tale, ending up with my arrival back home again but leaving out my argument with Sam or the fact that Nelo was crouched behind the couch, watching us like a tennis match. I went a little light on the details involving Adam, because that was a whole other conversation we needed to have, and I wanted to tackle one thing at a time. But otherwise I didn’t skimp on the particulars, and I was almost to the bottom of my coffee mug by the time I finished.
Ben hadn’t touched his coffee.
“So…” I ventured, setting my mug into the sink. “Now you can see why I didn’t call you, and why I disappeared so suddenly. It wasn’t exactly my idea.” I expected an apology maybe, or an expression of worry over my wellbeing. I didn’t expect the simmering anger at all.
“That’s where you were. You were in another plane of existence. How the hell am I supposed t
o deal with this?”
“You could be a little nicer to me, considering where I’ve been,” I scowled, immediately on the defensive. Was I pushing his buttons on purpose to put the break up on him? Looking back I can agree I could have handled it differently. But hey, I never claimed to be an angel, I’m just as screwed up as the next person.
“This… this isn’t normal, Mercy.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Things hadn’t been normal for me since I’d woken up in the hospital with Sam’s Grace, but it was my reality and I thought he’d had some time to reconcile himself to the idea.
“This isn’t what I signed up for. I can’t take not knowing what might be happening to you when you aren’t there.”
“It’s not like I did any of this on purpose. I didn’t ask for the Grace, and I didn’t ask to be a demon magnet.”
“It’s just… you never consider what I have going on in my life, Mercy. It’s all about you. I have an incredibly stressful job, and a responsibility to the community to do it well. I can’t be up all hours of the night chasing after you every time you attract a new threat from the underworld.”
“Are you saying you want out of this relationship?” A flutter of guilt pulsed in my belly. Was I taking the coward’s way out? There wasn’t even time to think about it before he rose to his feet, pushing away from the breakfast bar.
“Is that what this is? Because I feel like I’m the last to know about every little thing that happens to you. You won’t let me stay here with you…”
“I’m trying to keep you safe.”
“That’s my job. I’m the cop for chrissakes.”
“Wait, are you complaining because I don’t let you into my life enough, or that I’m making too much of a dent into yours? ‘Cause I’m a little confused.” It stung that he thought I was selfish, partly because it was true. I had been incredibly focused on the things going on in my life, but just then was the wrong time to call me on it; my nerves were already frazzled to raw edges.
Unfortunately Mimsy chose that time to venture into the living room, hissing when she noticed Nelo for the first time. Nelo, finding himself in a staring match with the fuzzy little creature, completely forgot he was supposed to be keeping out of sight.
“What the hell is that?” Ben demanded, one hand going for the holster at his belt.
“No, it’s fine.” I stepped out from behind the kitchen counter, putting myself between him and Nelo. “Ben this is Nelo, remember I told you about him?”
“You did not mention you had a… a demon still here with you. Mercy… you can’t expect me to be okay with this. Get it out of here.”
“He’s not an it, he’s a him and he’s my friend.” I expected it from Sam, but hadn’t Ben heard me say how I couldn’t have escaped Midian without Nelo’s help? Acutely uncomfortable, Nelo backed towards the nearest shadow, and I was afraid he’d jump somewhere and get lost and I’d never see him again.
“I don’t give a good goddamn what he is, get him out of here.”
“Oh, would you just pipe down!” I waved Ben off, moving to intercede before Mimsy took a swipe at Nelo. “Mimsy, it’s okay, baby… calm down, this is Nelo, he’s a friend.” I spoke in a calm, soothing voice, but she still backed up when I approached. God only knew what I smelled like coming from Midian, I didn’t blame her for being skittish.
“What is that beast?” Nelo asked, eyes wide as he peeped out from behind the couch.
“This is my cat, Mimsy. Haven’t you ever seen a cat before? No, of course not,” I answered my own question at seeing him cower from the little animal. “She won’t hurt you if you don’t get too close until she gets used to you, she’s just as afraid of you as you are of her.”
“She is your… companion?”
“Yeah, she’s lived here with me for a couple of years now and she’s a little skittish with new things, but she’ll settle down quick enough. Won’t you, Mimsy?” I reached out to let her sniff my fingers and she let me pat her head, but that’s as close as she let me get to her. I was so fixated on calming her down, I didn’t realize Ben had fallen silent right away. Until I looked back and saw him frozen in place, his expression one of exasperation mingled with anger. “Ben?” Then it dawned on me, I’d frozen him just as Nathanael had done that time in the parking lot at Severino’s!
“Oh no…. no, no, no! Ben? Ben, can you hear me?” Rushing to his side, I reached out to touch him, but he gave no response. How the hell had I done that? Would he snap out of it eventually or had I unwittingly done something worse to him? “Sam? Samael? Are you around?” Maybe it was selfish for me to call, but I needed angelic reinforcements.
Landing light as a cat, Sam dropped to my balcony, his face a mask of worry as he pulled open the sliding door. “Is something the matter?” he asked, with no sign of any hard feelings.
“I’ll say, take a look at what I accidentally did to Ben!”
“Yes, I see him,” Sam nodded, and I waited, but that was his only response.
“Is there anything you can do to snap him out of it? What if I accidentally messed with his brain?”
“I like him better like that, Mistress. Perhaps you should leave him this way?” Nelo commented, coming out from behind the couch to study him closer.
“I actually agree with him on this one, he’s much more agreeable this way,” Sam nodded.
“When the two of you are done with your comedy act, can you maybe help me focus on the problem at hand?” I replied tartly. “What if he’s stuck like that?”
“It will wear off soon enough, though you might wish it hadn’t when he wakes. He looks angry.”
“He was angry,” I sighed, wondering if that was it for Ben and me. I know I was in love with someone else and I hadn’t intended to keep seeing Ben on the side, but that wasn’t how I’d planned to end things with him. Actually, I hadn’t made any plans at all yet on how to handle the break up, but I knew I hoped we could still stay friends, as cliché as that might sound. “Maybe if we…” Ben came back to life then, not missing a beat from his last train of thought.
“I mean it, Mercy, this… is…” Ben blinked, looking from me to Sam to Nelo who all stood around him, watching him intently.
“Ben…”
“You did it again, didn’t you? You messed with my head, like you did before.”
“No, it wasn’t like that. Last time it wasn’t me, it was Nathanael,” I tried to explain, but he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to listen.
“Like that makes it better,” he gave a short bark of laughter. “Or is this your doing this time?” Ben accused Sam, who gave him a ‘who me?’ look, but remained silent.
“No, it was an accident, I didn’t mean to,” I stepped in, not wanting Sam to take the fall for me. “Look, if you’ll calm down, we can talk about this.” But Ben was already pushing past me for the door.
“I can’t do this right now, Mercy. I have to get to work.”
“But it’s the middle of the night,” I frowned, following him to the door.
“There’s still plenty of work to do. I need to focus on the familiar right now, because I’m all mixed up inside about what’s right and wrong, and I don’t like how that feels one bit.”
“Okay, if that’ll make you feel better.” I wasn’t sure what else to say to that, but I made one last ditch effort. “If it helps, we’re with the good guys.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” he scowled, looking with equal distrust to both Nelo and Sam. “Right now I have to go with my gut, and my gut is telling me to get the hell out of here.”
“I guess we’ll talk more later then,” I added, but he was already out the door, leaving me to lock it behind him.
“Did I offend him?” Sam asked softly and I flashed him a sad smile.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Was it my presence that upset him so, Mistress?” Nelo chimed in, and I waved them both off, heading back to the kitchen to get a drink of something stronger.
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“No, I’m thinking it’s me that upset him so much. And he doesn’t even know the half of it,” I sighed morosely, pouring a healthy shot of Bailey’s into Ben’s untouched cup of coffee and taking a deep drink. I started to recognize things with Ben were likely broken beyond repair even before we got to the issue of Adam, and there was a tiny part of me that was glad about it. I hadn’t been thrilled with the idea of giving him the ‘it’s not you it’s me’ speech, and I had more than a little bit of guilt wrapped around how much I’d leaned on Ben over the past few months, even though I knew he wasn’t the one.
“Maybe this was for the best?” Sam suggested, echoing my own thoughts. “I really didn’t see the two of you working out anyway. Anytime there are secrets between people, it corrupts the bond between them. And any time a person can’t be their true self with another person, it’s only a matter of time before they grow apart.”
Sam dispensing relationship advice? Had I emerged from the demon plane into an alternate reality? “Have you been watching Oprah lately?”
“Yes, why?” he smiled brightly, and I had to laugh. Grabbing another mug out of the cupboard, I poured a splash of the alcohol into it and slid it across the counter to him.
“Have a drink with me.”
Sam accepted the mug with a dubious expression on his face. “Will this make me sick? Like the beer?”
“Not if you don’t have too much. Just try it, you’ll like it, it tastes like chocolate.” That was all I needed to say and Sam was game, instantly bringing it to his lips and tipping the mug back to finish it.
“That was delicious, may I have some more please?”
Ordinarily I might have said no, I didn’t want him getting sick after all, but I didn’t want to drink alone. “Sure, just take it easy, it’s not like chocolate milk. How about you, Nelo, do you want a drink?” For the moment Sam didn’t seem to mind the demon’s presence. Maybe having a common ‘enemy’ in Ben had brought them over to the same side? Mimsy still gave him a wide berth though.
“No, thank you, Mistress. I am rather tired and dawn approaches. Is there a place where I may rest?”