When Spell Freezes Over (All My Exes Die From Hexes Book 4)

by Killian McRae

  “Your... dad?” Ramiel asked with a leading tone. “You told Riona about who your father is?”

  Ramiel winced as Riona’s fist went knuckles-first into his bicep. “You knew? You knew and you didn’t tell me?”

  “Wow, you are definitely your father’s child.” The angel massaged away the pain, but found no sympathy or apologies coming his way. “No, the information was... is contraband. One of the conditions of Jerry being a Pure Soul again was that he couldn’t talk about it with anyone. For his own safety, of course. Not all witches are good, Riona, and not all tales of princes and magic and wishes have happy endings.” He turned to Jerry. “You know you weren’t supposed to talk about that, not even with her.”

  “Sorry, Ram, but I’ve had a fresh, moral philosophy since I was resurrected. It starts with not being a dick in general and works its way up to not lying to my wife. Besides,” he shrugged, “it was hard to deny it when we gave a new definition to the spread eagle when we made love. I can explain away how I know so many sixth-century sex acts to Hell’s extensive reading library. Sprouting fluffy white wings while engaged in coatis? Show me a passage of Aristotle or Sophocles that tells you how to do that and I’ll show you a man who’s never had blue balls in his life.”

  Leaning back, Riona caught Jerry in her sight. “What sixth-century sex act?”

  “Remember that one time with the rutabaga?”

  She blushed a deeper purple than the aforementioned vegetable. “Oh, that.” Then sitting back up, she continued. “But what they’re planning will make the HHA’s falter. If the HHA’s falter, then the realms will merge and billions will die when they get exposed to hellfire. If you don’t want me to be involved in this, someone else has to be. Come on, Ramiel. You talked Steph into your bed. Surely you can talk her out of Hades’s. Politically speaking, that is.”

  The archangel grimaced. “I never talked her into anything. She seduced me. And she made it perfectly clear she’s done with me. I show up anywhere near her now, and barbeque angel wings will be on the menu. As much as I hate to admit it, I don’t think I could defend myself against her. I wouldn’t have the will. I love her too much.”

  “What about Hades?” Jerry asked. “You still have your blade. If you could pop in on him alone, corner him, you can either get him to give up or kill him.”

  “As with so many ideas in life, I’m afraid that would cause more problems than it would solve. She’s already placing blame for Zeus’ death on me; if I come around and openly murder her ex right now...” Ramiel shook his head. “I can’t be the weapon that ends this. Even if I had good cause, it would only further legitimize her actions in the eyes of the Nephilim.”

  “Dee and I could do it,” Jerry said. “Dee can make a show of wanting to join their side, and I can pretend to go state’s witness and help out the Grigori.”

  “Jerry!” Riona’s eyes turned daggers, visibly assaulting her husband. “Nope, not going to happen.”

  Ramiel looked to the ex-demon like he’d suddenly become a six-year-old child. “Dear simple Jerry. Can I remind you that you’re human again? You can’t cross enter Hell. You’d melt.”

  “Humans can’t go, but half-angels can,” Riona said. Then, her voice became a mere shadow of itself. “I know, I was there.”

  “Wait, what?” Jerry’s face went ashen. “When? Why?”

  “When I was in Olympus. I don’t really know how, I just sorta... was thinking of Marc, and then suddenly, I was in his room in Hell, staring at him.”

  A seething, sizzling sound filled the air as Ramiel sucked in a deep breath through clenched teeth. He stood, tiptoeing away from the bed and the crossbeams of the space between Riona and Jerry. “Whoa, um. Okay, good piece of information to know. I’m just gonna... Yeah, I’m going to shift out of here for a few minutes and give you guys a chance to talk.”

  Jerry barely noticed the angel evaporating into nothingness. The entirety of his being existed for holding his eyes in place as he glared at his wife. “You fucking went to Hell to see Marc?” His chest heaved, his fists clenched, released, clenched, released. “So that dream I had when I was on my way to you wasn’t just a dream after all. Marc said he’d been spending time with you, but I of course assumed that he was lying. Turns out someone was pulling my leg, and not the happy, third one.”

  Riona stood straight up, her hand waving in the air. “Technically, it was an omission, not a lie.”

  “Seriously? You’re going to get caught sneaking off to see your ex after we were married, and you want to chalk up that kind of sneaky, evil behavior by playing a game of semantics hopscotch?” He shifted his weight. “Did you sleep with him? And just so we’re clear on what I’m implying by that, I’m asking if at any point his dick entered your body, regardless of the orifice.”

  That little instigation threw the switch on the witch’s temper. “I can’t believe you’re actually asking me that question.”

  “Doesn’t change the fact that you didn’t just answer it right now. Come on, Riona. It’s not like I’m living in a glass house here. I know you could flip this. You could throw so many stones at me—and righteously—that you’d leave me looking like olive-colored Swiss cheese. Just be honest. I know you still love him. If you had the opportunity to...”

  “Stop, okay? Just stop. I am being honest with you. Yes, I loved him, but I mean him: Father Marcello Angeletti. You don’t understand what things were like for me when Marc came into my life. I know you weren’t around to see it, but after what you did to me that day in the meat locker—”

  “You mean after what Lucifer made me do.”

  “Do you think that matters to me?” she asked. “I can’t divorce the person you are now from the demon you were then. And believe me, you don’t want me to. If I convince myself that there were two separate Jerrys, how can I be sure that this is the one who I fell in love with back then? Or am I married to a man who was once complicit in an attempt to murder me?”

  “Wait just a minute here.” Jerry leaned in, reaching out to touch her, but stopped a moment before making contact. “So you’re telling me that you accept me as a continuous entity, forgiving my sins, but you expect me to believe that you don’t consider Marc the same person he was when you fell for him as a human? You can’t do that, Riona. It’s the same thing. Hell, being a demon... It robs you of your will, but in the greatest of all punishments, it doesn’t deny you your intellect. Hell is knowing what you’re doing is wrong, and being completely powerless to stop it.” He turned from her. “Perhaps being an angel means knowing what is right, and being powerless to do it unless commanded. Maybe angels and demons aren’t so different. Maybe that’s what went on between you and Marc. Maybe it’s the two of you that were meant to be, not us.”

  “Six months ago, even knowing you were a demon, I would have scoffed at that. But since all these,” her hands shuffled in front of her chest, “angel things started... So many things lately that just... happen. I don’t mean them to, but my emotions get out of check and... poof, suddenly I’m looking at Marc’s four-poster in Hell or parading around Hades’s library in the middle of the afternoon. Yes, I was with Marc. I don’t know how, I just... ended up there. But outside of that...”

  Riona stood, marched to where her husband faced the wall, and spun him. Before he could utter a single word in protest, she had her lips on his and her hands in his hair. Riona kissed Jerry hard—harder than she’d done since his resurrection, and let all the anger, longing, and frustration that defined her conflicted feelings about her fuse into an onslaught of desire.

  “Fuck what may be. I deal with what is.” She pulled back, letting him breathe. “I would never do anything intentionally to hurt you or to fuck this up. I love you.”

  “I’m sorry, I never should have doubted you.”

  “Show me,” she said, rolling down the toga the archangel had unceremoniously and magically swaddled her in.

  By the time they made their way downstairs twenty minutes later,
both togas had become fodder on Riona’s bedroom floor, and there were fresh holesin Riona’s wall where the bars of her four-poster leaned against it.

  Dee and Anwen, sitting in wait with Ramiel, rolled their eyes.

  “Great!” Ramiel exclaimed with all the enthusiasm of a dentist discovering his patient had had anchovies for lunch. “Now that the two of you have that out of your system... Let’s figure out a plan. As half-nephilim, Dee will also be safe in the Underworld. I’ll work with him and Jerry to keep Steph from doing something stupid.”

  “And what about me?” Anwen asked.

  Ramiel looked at her confusedly. “What about you?”

  Anwen laced her fingers with her husband’s. “If there’s to be a fight, you can be sure that I’ll be going. I have all my memories back, and I was a Pure Soul once. I don’t plan on being left behind.”

  Dee looked like a puppy who’d been caught chewing its master’s slippers. He squirmed and shifted, but kept his tongue still.

  It was Ramiel who made the proclamation. “No, you won’t.”

  Anwen squeezed Dee’s hand so hard, she made a demigod gifted with superhuman strength wince. “Oh, yes, I will! Dee, tell him.”

  Ramiel clicked his tongue. “You may have some basic wiccan skill, and be able to pull off a partial Peter Pan, but a Fallen would toast you. Plus, Dee would be useless to us, constantly worried about you. I mean, do you even remember any spells or hexes?”

  She clutched her forehead with both hands as her eyes squeezed shut. “There’s still parts that are fuzzy, but you don’t know how confusing it is to have two people inside you at the same time.”

  Before anyone else could speak, Jerry yelped. They turned to see the ex-demon cowering at the side of his wife, who had a finger pointed in his chest.

  “I swear, Romani, try a ‘that’s what she said’ joke right now, and I’ll slay you again.”

  “Hello, human now. That, sweet wife, would be murder.”

  She pulled a glare from her “pissed off woman” collection.

  He resumed a more natural pose. “Fine, I’ll hold my tongue. At least until you give me yours to replace it. Ouch, damn. Okay, no dick, tit, or sex jokes right now, got it. Geez, what has you in such a mood?”

  Dee ignored their banter and focused on his wife. “As much as I don’t want to leave you behind, Ramiel’s right. When I even try to picture you in danger, I feel like I need to kill something.”

  “And what is it you expect me to do, just sit here and knit?”

  Anwen’s stare down must have done the trick. Immediately, Dee pivoted and besieged the archangel. “There’s got to be a way.”

  “This isn’t a dictatorship, and I’m not some sort of king, Dee,” Ramiel responded. “Anwen, I’m not telling you you’re not allowed. I’m just pointing out the practical. Look, Riona’s experience tells me that Jerry won’t have his flesh melt off. Dee is a demigod, and I know from ancient times that they can survive down there too. But you... You’re only a quarter-god. There’s a very good chance that you’ll turn into a pool of biological waste the moment we cross. Bad for them, worse for you.”

  “Fine, I see what my place is.” She huffed. Then, standing, she stormed out of the room.

  Dee immediately rose to follow her, but Ramiel held him back, taking to his feet instead.

  “Let me be the bad guy.”

  “You, a bad guy?” Dee asked. “Do you even know how?”

  “If you’d seen me during the raptures, and knew the horrific things I did, you wouldn’t ask me that.”

  Anwen didn’t know this house. Since arriving the night before, she’d only seen the entryway and Dee’s bedroom. Even in that latter place, she’d been thoroughly distracted. She wouldn’t have been able to tell you at the moment more than the fact that his sheets were baby blue and his headboard was cracked. She found herself in the kitchen, and her hand on the handle of a door that appeared to lead into a tiny backyard area. Pausing, she recalled the fact that this house was under some sort of enchantment of protection. Whether or not that protection extended to the exterior, she didn’t know.

  She huffed when she heard footsteps behind her. “Unless you’re here to tell me that you found your bollocks and fed them to that angel, I’d prefer to be alone.”

  “Yeah, well, being alone for you is going to be real hard for a while. Assuming we keep the end of the world from happening.”

  She spun to find the Archangel Ramiel staring at her from the counter. Behind him, she noticed the air shimmer, like in a movie where an advanced technology created force fields that would kill anyone who made contact.

  “Sound barrier,” he explained, jerking a pointed finger in that direction. “I don’t want the others to hear this. Like I said, they don’t need the distractions.”

  “Is that all I am, a distraction? You may have command over the Pure Souls, but I am Dee’s wife and I...”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Anwen visibly bristled under his cool and collected gaze. “Okay, technically as Anwen I haven’t taken vows or anything, but as Carol, I—”

  “You don’t get it.” He took a step towards her, and the sound barrier followed him. “Whoever pulled this off did a very good job. It even fooled me at first, but you’re not Carol.”

  “Don’t be daft, of course I am. I remember... I remember my life. I remember Dee and Persephone and even you, even though I’d only met you briefly. How could I remember, if that was true?”

  “Somebody—and there’s only a very limited number of somebodies who could have managed it—did a memory grab on Carol, then planted her memories into you. Tell me, Anwen, you crossed any angels lately?”

  “Other than you I—” Her voice cut off when the memory of what happened in the loo of the pub kicked in. “In London, there was a woman in the pub bathroom who cornered me. She put a finger on my temple and it... it burned like hell. I remember that Jerry said female demons are rarely sent after targets of the same sex, but we just assumed that’s what it was. Could it have been a fallen?”

  “The Grigori usually appear as men. They really bought into that whole machismo philosophy.” His laugh died when he caught her deadpan response. “Archangels can appear as male or female, but only one of them, Kochab, prefers being a woman. Even if Jerry and Dee thought it was a fallen, they’d have assumed it was her. She’s the only one who prefers that form. They’d never suspect it was actually Azazel.”

  “Azazel?” she repeated, cross-referencing the names against both banks of her memory. “He’s a Fallen.”

  “Yes, he is, and the one who seems to have been behind this whole conspiracy. It fits: Hades convinces Zeus he’s gotten a deal struck with Big Boss to save Carol’s soul, and in the meantime, he’s actually working with Azazel. Memory is his particular specialty; he can do anything with them. Erase them, change them, steal them... even manufacture them. Hades must have gotten him to Carol to steal her memories, then dumped them into you once you so conveniently crossed paths with Dee on his way back to Olympus, thus completing the illusion that Carol had been resurrected.”

  “I’m not Carol?” Anwen asked the question of herself. “But I... I love Dee. Is that not real?”

  “Despite how it came to be, I’m always a believer that the heart doesn’t lie. If you feel in your soul that you love Dee, then you love him. Don’t make it more complicated than it is.” A smile hatched across his face. “I think he was already falling for you way before he thought you were the reincarnation of his wife. He loves Anwen too. Don’t ever doubt that.”

  Tears pooled in the corner of her eyes. “Should I tell him the truth?”

  The angel shrugged. “That’s up to you. Only, I want to beg you, wait until after all this blows over. Like I said, he’ll be distracted. He’s very dedicated to you, and after he finds out you’re also pregnant, I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t want to go through with this mission at all.”

  “Of course he’ll see through the miss
ion. He hates... Wait, I’m what?”

  “Pregnant,” Ramiel repeated. “Angels know. Jerry and Riona will probably be able to pick up on it soon as well, only...” He turned his head back towards the door that led to the dining room. “They’ll have some interference going on with their receptors, so maybe not.”

  Whatever that meant. Anwen’s hand went instinctively down to her abdomen. “Shit, this is all happening so fast. I’m... I’m going to have a baby.”

  His head angled down as he tried to diagnose her reaction. “Are you happy about that? If you don’t want it, I might be able to beg to intercede.”

  “No!” Anwen’s hand shot into the air. “No, I want him. I want Dee. I want... my family. Please, Ramiel, you make sure he comes back from this. You swear to God he comes back.”

  “You know I can’t make those kind of vows. But I promise, I’ll do everything in my power to see that through.”

  Chapter 12

  Lucy strolled down the backstreets of the city with the grace of a prima ballerina, hardly moving her body while eating up yards of space with each sway of her hips. It wasn’t a main street, but Marc didn’t care for the amount of exposure to which they were subjecting themselves. Every condemned soul knew the rumors about Lucifer being sidelined. Surely the Grigori and Michael wouldn’t have left their continued imprisonment totally to chance. If no one was looking for them yet, it wouldn’t take long for the rest of the damnationals to get word.

  “Since you technically rule this place, you probably think you don’t need to be covert or anything,” Marc said, shadowing the Prince of Darkness as stealthily as his legs would allow. “But, generally, when you’re somewhere you’re not supposed to be, you should at least try to be inconspicuous.”

  “Learn that from the time you snuck into the cloister because you just had to know if Sister Carmine’s carpet matched her habit?”