Heaven can Wait

by Nicola Lawson

  I had a moment of gratification when I noticed that they were considering my words. Ciriaco took his attention off his fingernails. He looked across the desk at Selene.

  “You think the Drazi was working for something else? Drazi are notoriously independent, they surround themselves with human followers more often than not rather than associate with other demons.”

  Selene seemed as cool as ever. “It’s actions weren’t those of a typical Drazi. It had minor demon bodyguards and was operating more subtly than their kind normally would. It wouldn’t take you a week to locate the base of a usual Drazi. This one was keeping a relatively low profile for a reason.”

  DeLuca nodded once as he considered her explanation, his face remained a blank slate, betraying none of what he was thinking.

  She looked at me. “The Drazi was keeping a very low profile, these recent killings have been anything but.”

  She had a point there. “So your interference forced whoever is behind this to use a more public method now that the Drazi is gone.” I had to make them understand.

  “It warned me off, it must be connected,” I implored.

  Selene was starting to shake her head, she still wasn’t convinced by my argument. I was about to open my mouth to try again when Ciriaco put in on my side and saved me the trouble.

  “There’s another link as well. Selene, you came to me because the only information Faith was able to get from the Drazi’s victims that you thought had any meaning was the link to Delco, Diablo and Caine. The same firm that Andrew Jacobs had links to.” He aimed his piercing eyes at me. “Faith you said it was just after the demon warned you off that a lawyer from the very same firm came and hustled you and your NIRU investigator away from the scene?”

  I nodded. “But I didn’t sense anything in Thyme to indicate that he was getting Alex and myself out of the way with any malicious intent.”

  “He wouldn’t have to know about the reasons behind it, he would believe whatever he was told,” Selene said to me. She paced in front of the bookshelf for a moment then halted and turned to Ciriaco. “This needs looking into, can you get us an appointment with somebody inside Delco, Diablo and Caine?”

  “Us, being the two of you?” I ventured, although I already had an idea of what Selene was planning.

  “Us being the three of us, Ciriaco has the contacts and I want you there to get a read on whoever his contacts can get us in to see.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I took the trip to the Delco, Diablo and Caine building in the cab of Ciriaco Deluca’s truck. The huge purple pick-up that I had parked behind had turned out to belong to him. More embarrassing than standing there with us both next to our respective vehicles, Ciriaco with his flashy truck and me with my beat-up motor, was when we got inside and my car coughed, sputtered and died. Selene had offered me a lift on the back of her motorcycle, despite having only just met Ciriaco I accepted his offer instead. The idea of travelling with a virtual stranger in a secure metal cage was preferable to straddling a bike behind Selene with nothing around me but open air, a helmet didn’t seem like it would offer anywhere near the amount of protection of Ciriaco’s truck. Selene trailed behind us on her back. I could see the inscrutable black visor of her helmet, which always seemed to be looking directly at me, whenever I glanced back through the mirror at my side.

  DeLuca had proven he wasn’t much for small talk, he had been gentlemanly in opening the door for me and inviting me inside but since then he had barely spoken two words to me, preffering instead to drive in silence. I decided it was time to put an end to that. “So how do you know Selene?”

  Ciriaco glanced sideways at me and then turned back to the road. “From around, what about you?”

  He was as much a closed book as Selene, well two, or rather three, could play that game. “Just around,” I said aiming for the same nonchalance as had been in his tone.

  Ciriaco gave me a thin-lipped smile and took is hand from the wheel just long enough to brush some of his stray hair away from his face. With him concentrating mostly on the road I had all the time I wanted to study him in profile without it being too obvious that I was staring. He was the third man to have created a substantial ping on my attraction radar just recently, the first selection of such pings to have begun to affect me so strongly.

  These sorts of things were the reason the elders had sent Halberd with an offer to bring me back, well that was tough they should have thought about that before they banished me. Most angels are kept so out of touch with their feelings that eventually they forget how to feel. In order to remove the wrong sorts of feelings we relinquish all feeling. Our empathic abilities are made all the more important because of this. Those of us who are sent to earth to advise the believers need a helping hand to understand how they feel because we are unable to imagine it for ourselves. That is how the elders prefer it, those of us who spend too much time amongst humanity and try to get involved, well they end up like me. Those who take it one step further, who try to come forward and do more than advise who get so involved that they try to influence humanity’s path . . . Azazeal and Lucifer would be the most famous of their number and they were banished to somewhere rather more hostile than the mortal realm. I wasn’t as far gone as they had been, and I didn’t intend to take it that far, I had no ambition like that. I just wanted to be left alone to a normal life.

  My eyes travelled from DeLuca’s face on down the side of his body. Yes, a normal life with normal pleasures. I thought about the sparks I had felt with Thyme and Frost, I guess if I wanted that I had to take all the normal confusion along with it.

  DeLuca glanced at me and I casually flicked my attention away, alternating my focus between watching where we were going and looking back in the mirror at Selene. Whether the smirk I caught from him out of the corner of my eye was because he had caught me looking or simply because he liked what he was looking at I did not know.

  Of the three men who were on my radar I didn’t know any of them at all well. Instant attraction, lust at first sight, was pretty much all I had. Well, a girl’s got to start somewhere. Besides so far everything that happened was taking place inside my head. Fantasies couldn’t hurt. I studied Selene in the mirror, that black visor seemingly staring right back at me. There was yet another option that I hadn’t even let enter my head as a fantasy. Maybe that was because where I had only just met each of the men Selene had been my friend. Anything that I considered happening with her would seem more real. And subsequently even more confusing, things were bad enough already.

  “Almost there.”

  Ciriaco’s voice brought my attention back to the here and now. I had some rather less pleasurable experiences still to go through before I should be thinking about anything else. We pulled in outside the law firm’s offices. We were in an even classier part of the city than where DeLuca’s building was located. I was glad my car hadn’t managed to start, the police officers I could see pacing up the clean swept streets would have paid me far too much attention had I rolled up in that.

  Ciriaco jumped out first and then came around to open the door of the truck. He offered me his hand to help me climb down from the elevated cab, so much easier than getting up and out of my own low car.

  I stepped onto the pavement and DeLuca slammed the door closed behind me with a weighty clunk. Selene had slipped in behind us and was shaking her hair loose where it had been confined inside her crash helmet. She had unzipped her leather jacket to midway down her chest flashing a decent, almost indecent, amount of cleavage. What stopped her removing the whole jacket was the gain she made in concealment. There was probably a small armoury contained about her person. I wondered how she expected to get it all, or any of it, past the tight security I could see through the huge open plan windows inside the lobby. Delco, Diablo and Caine certainly didn’t take any chances with disgruntled clients or their associates turning up.

  Immediately inside the lobby we were stopped by a pair of uniformed security men in
black uniforms of a vaguely military cut. They had holstered pistols on their hips opposite small canisters that presumably contained some sort of incapacitating spray. Their hands weren’t near either weapon but the second pair of guards just beyond them did have their hands next to a weapon. I didn’t fail to notice that both of them had chosen to place their hand on the lethal pistol rather than the non-lethal incapacitating spray. I looked from the double-wide metal detector to Selene and attempted to catch the bounty-hunters eye without attracting the attention of any of the security guards. Selene looked across at me and I attempted to express my concerns by flicking my eyes from her to the detector and back again. Selene didn’t look in the least concerned, or perhaps she didn’t get my hint. I filed in behind her and we waited while Ciriaco prepared to pass through the detector. The guards on either side were too close for me to risk whispering my worries to her.

  DeLuca placed his keys and wallet on the table at the side of the detector. His belt with it’s large metal buckle joined them in the tray and were slide along to the other side to wait for him. Ciriaco stepped through the detector with total ease. He casually brushed his fingertips along the metal of the detector, clearly assured that it wouldn’t detect anything on him. He picked up his belongings and started threading the leather belt through the loops on his trousers.

  The empty tray was pushed back for Selene. With an assurance that matched Ciriaco’s casual attitude she placed a handful of metal belongings on the tray, none of them weapons, and prepared to pass through. Selene and DeLuca might have been able to keep any nerves they felt well under wraps but I felt all of my muscles go tense as Selene stepped forwards. I fully expected the detector to go off and for alarms to start blaring at any moment. The guard behind me would shove me aside and keep me covered while his colleagues moved to deal with Selene and Ciriaco.

  Selene passed through the detector and out to the other side without incident. She retrieved her belongings and placed them back in her pockets. It would be too uncharacteristic for her to have come here without any weapons at all. That wasn’t Selene’s style at all. I caught her gaze and she flashed me a wink so fast that if I had blinked I would have missed it.

  Everybody was watching me waiting for me to take my turn. My absent-minded hesitation must have been making the security guards nervous. I looked suspicious even though I was probably the one out of the three of us that the guards would have the least to fear from. Somewhat sheepishly I rummaged about in my own pockets for anything that I thought might set the detector off when I passed through. I placed my selection in the tray and stepped forwards. I couldn’t help the small sigh of relief that escaped me when I arrived at the far side without setting the device off. I grabbed up my belongings and just stuffed them all in the same pocket instead of bothering to sort them all out into their proper places.

  I followed my two companions across the minimalist lobby to the reception desk. Ciriaco had arrived shortly before I caught up with them and had already announced himself to one of the young women behind the desk. She was currently talking on a slender black telephone to whomever Ciriaco had gotten us an appointment with. The other receptionist was acting as if she was completely oblivious to us, tapping away on a keyboard with her eyes glued to a flat panel monitor that cast an unnatural glow onto her features, but I spotted the surreptitious little glances she was sneaking at Ciriaco. The receptionist who was dealing with us replaced the handset on its cradle and looked at Ciriaco more directly, the smile she flashed him might even be genuine.

  “Mr Griffith will be down in a moment. If you would care to take a seat while you wait?” The receptionist waved at a set of low white-leather seats.

  “Thank you,” Ciriaco replied, returning a smile which set her blushing.

  I didn’t get a chance to ask Selene about how she had managed to pass through the metal detector while we sat and waited for Griffith, nor did I get the opportunity to ask either of my companions exactly what we were supposed to do now that we were here. All we had were rumours and coincidence, the average Joe on the street wouldn’t break down and admit to anything with evidence like that a bunch of hard-nosed professional lawyers who were good enough to have an office building like this would laugh in our faces and hit us with a restraining order before the first accusation had left our lips.

  There was a discreet ping to announce the opening of a set of elevator doors across the lobby and a man I hoped was Mr Griffith stepped out. My hopes seemed to be rewarded when the middle-aged man started walking across the polished floor towards us. He wore a simple, yet stylish, suit and carried himself with the same sort of confidence I had noted in Selene, although he left off the suggestive swagger of the hips that she seemed to favour.

  “Ah, Mr DeLuca,” he offered his hand in greeting. “It is good to see you again.” He finished shaking Ciriaco’s hand and gave an evaluating look to Selene and myself. “And it is a pleasure to meet your companions.”

  Ciriaco made the introductions and we took it in turns to shake the lawyer’s hand. “Charmed.”

  “Mr DeLuca, Ms Jones, Ms Smith, shall we go to my office where we can discuss things with a little more privacy?” Griffith stood aside and motioned fro us to precede him into the elevator which he had exited, there was a uniformed young man inside keeping the doors opened for us. The young man waited for us all to get comfortable inside the elevator before hitting the button that would take us up to whichever floor Griffith’s office was on.

  The elevator was large enough that I risked whispering into Selene’s ear. “Ms Smith?” I didn’t know what her surname was, or if she even had one, but I doubted that she was Selene Smith.

  Selene looked at me through her reflection in the front of the elevator and just gave me a smile by way of reply. “It’s as good as any,” She mouthed. “Keep your mind open.”

  I sighed, I guess that meant it was show time. I carefully started breaking down some of the barriers I used to keep the eternal clamour of emotion from hammering at my senses. I kept the opening as small as I could and yet still allow the feelings in, like it was one of those hatches in the door of a prison cell and I was ready to slam it closed at the first sign of trouble.

  I kept Ciriaco and Selene tuned out, although it was tempting to try and get a read on what either one of them was thinking I couldn’t risk being distracted. I had been distracted enough by my talent already, what with Frost and Thyme, I didn’t need any more distractions and certainly not here and not now. The young man running the elevator was best characterised as bored. He was so used to having to discreetly ferry people up and down in the elevator hundreds of times a week that he barely even noticed the people he was shuttling. Whatever his orientation he would have noticed one of the three of us had his job not become so very routine. I tuned him out as well, whatever we thought the firm might have been up to, and I wasn’t sure that any one of us had developed a working theory on that one, I doubted it was some far reaching conspiracy of low level employees.

  Mr Griffith was more difficult to read, he kept his emotions under very tight control, but he was curious as to why we were here, why Ciriaco had asked for this meeting at such short notice. There was also an undercurrent of greed and satisfaction, Ciriaco must be a good client and he was going to be paying a lot of money for this short notice meeting.

  There was another ping and we arrived at our destination floor. The doors opened automatically and Mr Griffith stepped out and waited for the rest of us to follow. Selene and Ciriaco moved after him without any difficulty, so it was just me who felt like there was some almost physical pressure marking the point where the elevator opened into a corridor, wasn’t that just fantastic.

  “Ms Jones?” Griffith asked.

  They were all waiting for me, it was clear that none of them had experienced anything when they crossed the divide. I felt like a grade A idiot just standing there, but there was no way I was going to give voice to my feeling with Griffith standing right there. I lifted
a foot with a supreme effort and set it back down about half a step in front of the other one. I had to put another mammoth amount of concentration into the effort of shifting my second foot and then following it up with another movement of the first. It seemed to take an eternity to reach the point where I was going to pass from the elevator to the corridor but finally I was nose to nose with the terminus. The oppressive pressure threatened to send me running from the task to huddle in the corner.

  I attempted to give myself a bit of a mental slapping, this was ridiculous, there was nothing out there to account for how threatened I felt. Of course not all threats presented themselves as something to be seen. No, stop it, they are all waiting. I took a breath and forced myself over the edge. I stumbled at the side of Selene and I could almost here the snap as I passed through the pressure bubble.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  No-one seemed to notice my trouble, or if they had they were doing the whole be-polite-and-don’t-mention-it thing. I played along with Ciriaco and Selene as they questioned Griffith. I knew they were fishing for information and I had a general idea about the sort of thing they were after, the fact that I couldn’t spot the links between their questions and what we were looking into meant that Griffith was probably unaware of any hidden agenda.

  The meeting was pretty much concluded when Selene managed to get the two of us excused, apparently my incident earlier hadn’t gone entirely unnoticed but it gave her the excuse to get us some time alone in the building.

  “So what was that earlier?” Selene asked.

  We were alone in the ladies bathroom down at the far end of the corridor from Griffith’s office. Selene had made sure that we were alone by opening each stall as soon as we entered. Now we stood by the sinks, well I stood, Selene had jumped up and now sat perched on the pseudo marble surface at the edge of the basins.