by Liz Meldon
Today, however, he wanted a rough idea of the interior layout of Seraphim Securities. If they eventually did manage to find Moira’s dad, Severus figured the best approach would be to confront him head-on at work when his guard was down. Severus wouldn’t accompany Moira inside for that, but he’d expressed an interest in the building’s floor plan just in case she needed help.
It was almost…sweet.
Of course, he could want that kind of info for his own purposes, but that wasn’t Moira’s business. If it made no impact on the search for her dad, let the guy do whatever he wanted.
When the Farrow’s Hollow Building and Service Development Center insisted there were no floor plans on file for Seraphim Securities, Severus had suggested they press the woman who sat at the front desk in their ground-floor lobby. The whole thing seemed risky, and Moira had been a bundle of nerves ever since she’d woken up two hours before her alarm went off that morning. Yet as Severus fiddled with her outfit, a little handsier, a little rougher, than he needed to be, she had some confidence in the fact that he appeared cool and collected.
Moira might not know a thing about this world, about the real angels and demons walking amongst mankind, but she almost felt safe so long as he was with her. In recent months, she had felt her strength grow, and she was only half angel; Severus was a full-blooded demon—from Hell. Should something go wrong today, that ought to count for something.
“There,” Severus said, taking longer than necessary to smooth the creases out over her hips. “All sorted—”
“Stop.” She batted his hands away, then stepped to the side to study her reflection in the café’s front window. He’d managed to turn a flouncy, slightly-too-puffy blouse into something that looked tailored to her figure—an hourglass figure at that. When was the last time she’d seen her body sport an hourglass figure? Months. Maybe even a year. Chin lifted, she appraised herself a moment longer, then gave a curt nod. “Nicely done.”
“I think so.” He slid his hands in his pockets as the sounds of early morning rush hour traffic pervaded the early morning quiet. “Your hair looks good too. I was worried it’d be too noticeable, the white.”
She swallowed hard and ran her hand over each side, catching any flyaways. Normally Moira wasn’t one for painfully tight French braids, but when she had told Ella she had a seminar presentation that morning and couldn’t wear a wool cap, her bestie had taken pity on her.
Knowing Moira didn’t want the whole world staring at her new hair, Ella had slicked it back with some styling product, then braided it in a rigid French plait. The tail end tickled the nape of Moira’s neck whenever she looked down, but all the styling product had managed to make her hair look a bit darker than the usual blindingly bright white. All the other angels had the same insane shade of hair, and it was a wonder more people weren’t curious about why everyone who worked in Seraphim Securities rocked the same styling.
Ella had been all too eager to help with her hair and outfit, and Moira had left the house with her stomach in knots. She hated lying to her, but the truth was still way too out there, even to share with Ella. So, Moira had told the most harmless lies possible, hoping that should she ever tell Ella the truth, her best friend would understand the need for secrecy.
Understand, sure, but Moira didn’t expect her to forgive. Not right away, at least. Best friends don’t keep secrets. They’d made a pact in elementary school.
But when it came to all this—
“Okay, okay, stop staring at yourself.” Severus’s voice cracked sharp as a whip through her musings, and she straightened up, her palms clammy, and faced him again.
“So, are you sure about this?” she asked, hoping to hide her nerves with a confident tone and moderately direct eye contact. “About, you know, this.”
Severus’s gaze followed her nod toward the depressingly masculine building across the street.
“Not really.” He pursed his lips for a moment, then shook his head. “Look, we’re here before they usually arrive. I estimate we’ve got about forty-five minutes to get the information we need and get out. If things go south, there’s a fire exit just off the lobby that’ll take us into the alley.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “And then?”
“And then we hope that I know the side streets of this city better than they do,” he told her with a cheeky grin. Severus thought he was so charming sometimes, so slick. A part of her knew it was an act—no one could draw like that, possess the attention to detail, take the time and care, all for something that had no obvious benefit for himself, and be a total arrogant horndog too. The act became more and more transparent with each passing day. The other half of her, however, didn’t want him to stop.
“Come on,” Severus muttered, moving toward the road. “We’ve wasted enough time already.”
Moira hurried after him, her kitten heels clicking noisily on the sidewalk. They stood side by side on the curb, waiting for the sudden rush of cars to pass, then darted across the street. Severus’s hand hovered over her lower back the whole way there, straight up to the tinted twin glass doors at the entrance. Moira glanced up as he held one open for her, catching Seraphim Securities scrawled in gold, antiquated font across the front of the building. Severus was right; the angels weren’t trying to hide it. But then again, why should they? If their purpose on Earth was to corral wayward demons and discipline problematic humans, they had nothing to hide.
Taking a deep breath, she strode inside. Shoulders back, chin up. Confident, but not too showy, not like she was better than everyone in a ten-foot radius—which only consisted of Severus and the woman behind the enormous metallic front desk in the middle of the empty foyer, a woman who couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Moira. As she marched forward, the clack of her damn heels thundering with every step, she tried to project that she belonged in a place like this. Because, from the receptionist’s slow, unimpressed up-and-down appraisal, she would need to prove that.
Moira bit the insides of her cheeks, ruffled but less annoyed than she could have been, and stopped about a foot from the metallic monstrosity of an information desk. At no point did the receptionist mirror Moira’s forced saccharine-sweet smile.
“Can I help you?” she droned, pushing her chair away from the computer and standing. The enormous wall hiding her actual workstation came up roughly to her waist; the woman was a giraffe. “The offices won’t be open until eight.”
“We’re a little early, but I was actually hoping I could speak to you,” Moira said as she offered her hand for the woman to shake. When the receptionist continued to stare back like Moira was the gum she’d just peeled off her shoe, she retracted it and forced it to her side. “My name is Rachel Clemmons, and this is…”
Shit, what was his cover name? They had both agreed to use fake names during this initial run into Seraphim Securities; Severus had suggested it after he’d had a good ol’ guffaw over the fact that Moira had used her real name when she’d booked him for that night. At the time of his less than gentle ribbing, Moira had just continued to eat her ham and cheese omelet in a stony silence, not responding until he changed the subject.
“Aaron Tanner,” Severus said, sidling up and planting his hand on the desk. “We’re architecture students from the university interested in acquiring some building blueprints for a research paper we’re working on.” When the receptionist’s entire face seemed to pucker, a rejection nigh, he carried right along. “We won’t need to take it out of the building. Photos will suffice.”
“If you need a floor plan, you should ask the city—”
“We did,” Moira told her, feeling only slightly smug when the woman pressed her lips together in a frown. “We were told your employers haven’t registered one with the city.”
“As I recall, my employers are not required to do so,” the receptionist said snippily, “nor am I able to just give out private information—”
“Perhaps we could come to some sort of agreement.”
Quick as a striking viper, Severus snapped his hand around the woman’s wrist. At first she appeared startled, but then, as if injected with a fast-acting tranquilizer, her entire body seemed to melt under his touch. Her eyelashes fluttered, and suddenly she was all smiles.
“Oh, an agreement, eh?” The brunette practically purred. “What did you have in mind?”
“What are you doing?” Moira whispered heatedly to Severus as she searched for surveillance cameras. Besides the golden-doored elevators just off to the left, the emergency exit to her right, and two bushy ferns on either side of the main doors, the lobby was the epitome of stark—and not a camera in sight, as far as she could tell.
“You’re the one going on and on about how kosher we demons are,” he murmured back. “Take a look, firsthand, at the effect of an incubus on a human.”
Moira swallowed hard, staring wide-eyed at the receptionist—who had very likely heard Severus say he was a demon. However, it soon became apparent that the woman couldn’t tell you what decade this was, let alone what Severus had admitted. She just gawked at him like he was some sort of god, and a twinge of unwelcome heat roiled inside Moira when Severus smiled right back—that handsome, endearing, genuine sort of smile she’d only seen him use on her.
“Come now—” his eyes darted down to the woman’s breasts, which she’d thrust in his direction, her hips pressed up against the computer station below—“Mary. Honestly, is that your real name, or do they just make you wear the name tag?”
“It’s my God-given name,” she cooed back, rubbing her hand over his arm. “You feel like ecstasy.”
Moira wrinkled her nose. “Yikes.”
“Well, I’m taking more than I usually would,” he said with a sigh, then glanced back to Moira. “She won’t remember this encounter.”
“That’s a relief.”
“For who, exactly?”
She bit her cheek, wanting to slap that smile right off his face. It was pathetic that this had such an effect on her. Just disgraceful. And weak-willed. And… And…
Ugh. Now she could see why women fell for assholes all the time. They really knew how to get under your skin.
“All right, Mary,” Severus rumbled, his attention on the receptionist again. “We’d like the floor plans for this entire building. Every nook and cranny. Do you think you can do that for me?”
“They’re upstairs,” she said dreamily, now clutching at his sleeve. “In a locked room. Off-limits.”
“How scandalous. Perhaps you could give me a tour—”
“Hey!” barked the deepest voice Moira had ever heard. Its rich, somber timbre reverberated off the walls, hitting her full force, rattling her bones, and both she and Severus whirled around at the sound of a briefcase slamming into the tile floor.
There, almost engulfing the main doorway, was Angel number seven, dressed to the nines in the standard well-fitted suit and tie getup. He must have been pushing seven feet—seven feet of rippling muscle, that is. Near-identical eyes to Moira’s darted between her and Severus. Black-skinned, yet somehow still sallow like her, and robust; they’d giggled over the fact that while he had no hair—a glint of sunlight off his bald head could cause an accident on a good day—his eyebrows were just as white as hers.
They had also argued about his jaw; Moira always said Severus made it too sharp, that it was bulkier, more square. Now that they were up close and personal, Severus would be pleased to know he’d been right.
“Time to go,” Severus muttered, immediately releasing the receptionist, who flopped back into her chair with a moan, and grabbing Moira’s hand.
“Out, demon,” the angel roared, striding toward them with a fury that made Moira’s knees weak. Luckily for her, it didn’t matter if she was weak-kneed or not—because Severus was doing all the running for her. With an arm hooked around her waist, he hoisted her up and bolted for the emergency exit, keeping her flailing body squarely between himself and the pursing angel. As soon as they all but fell through the steel door, an alarm blared overhead, its piercing shrillness like a drill buzzing into her skull.
They were off and running as soon as they stumbled into the alley, and Moira trailed after Severus, clutching at his hand, hoping she wouldn’t roll her ankle in these damn heels.
When they reached the end of the narrow corridor, the alarm muffled by the now-firmly-shut door, she finally clued in to what Severus had done during their hasty retreat.
“Wait. Did you just use me as a human shield?!”
Severus wrenched his hand from hers with a yelp.
“Mind the rage, sweetheart,” he shouted back, neither of them breaking their stride as they turned sharply to the right and raced down the alley behind the low-rises next to Seraphim Securities. Skirting garbage dumpsters and wayward trash bags, Severus made a big show of blowing on and shaking out his hand, and when he looked over his shoulder at her, his eyes were completely black. “You nearly burned my hand off.”
“Well, maybe you deserved it.” Not that she’d done it intentionally—or even noticed it had happened. But good. Moira hoped it hurt as much as his dramatics implied. “I’m not your human shield.”
“No—technically you’d be a half-human shield,” he said, throwing her a wink before grabbing at a rusted door, which was slowly opening as an employee in a grey chef’s jacket sauntered out of it, phone and cigarettes in hand. The man leaped out of the way, and Moira muttered her apologies as they blitzed inside.
“If you ever do that again—”
“I’ll consider myself warned,” Severus called as they hurtled through what looked like a high-end kitchen—one of the many obnoxiously expensive restaurants one block over from Gabriel Street. Italian, given the amount of pasta prep she caught in passing, a chorus of fuck you and get the hell out of here accompanying them all the way to the dining room. They made a pit-stop at the front, the room quiet and dark, the tabletop linens needing to be changed. Severus had the doors unlocked in a matter of seconds, and she followed him out, her heart pounding.
They pushed on until they had about four blocks between them and Seraphim Securities, darting across throughways and cutting off cars. By the time they finally stopped, Moira was winded—but not as winded as she should have been—and rightly terrified.
“He knew you were a—”
“Of course he did,” Severus muttered, shooting her one of those duh looks he was so good at before peering around the corner of a building. “They’d know in a second.”
“He caught us—”
“We just need to lay low for a couple hours,” he insisted, taking her hand and hauling her across the intersection when the light changed. “Demons heckle angels all the time. Stupid demons, but those pompous fucks know the difference between hecklers and the big players. I’m a nobody. We’ll be fine.”
While he might have sounded confident, the twitch in his cheek and the clench of his jaw told a different story. Swallowing hard, Moira readjusted her grip on his hand and held a little tighter, her surge of human shield–rage ebbing—for now.
“Where can we go? They’ll find us—”
“My place,” he said curtly before another sharp turn took them down yet another alley. “My cousin spelled the place up tight as per my roommate’s father’s request. The entire building is hidden from demons, angels, and everything in between.”
Severus stopped so abruptly that she ended up crashing straight into him—it was like colliding with a wall. Glaring, Moira pulled her hand free and rubbed at the faint sore spot on her arm.
“Look, I know that was a bit of a disaster, but we’ll be fine,” he told her, his tone soft—comforting, almost. “We’ll regroup and try again. It’s not our only option.”
Too jumbled from what had just happened, the best Moira could offer in response was a nod. His gaze flickered down to her hand, but rather than reach for it again, he stuffed both of his in his pockets.
“Come on. We’re not far from my place.”
M
oira would have preferred to sit in a dark, quiet room, preferably her bedroom, and decompress—but that hardly seemed like an option. So, she followed, an ear cocked for the sound of fluttering wings, all the while wondering if they were in deeper shit than Severus let on.
“Well, have we settled down yet, or are we still feeling prickly?”
Moira stared at the half-drunk tea in the oddly charming china Severus had rustled up from his cupboards. Green tea—nothing special. Given all that she’d seen in the last hour, she had expected some weird magical herb blend that was supposed to calm her down, but no. Just green tea—from the shop up the street, where Severus and his roommate Alaric got all their groceries.
“I don’t know,” she said, slowly lifting her gaze to where he stood across the open space, leaning against the black metallic railing. Behind him, a thousand tiny, too-steep steps connected all four floors of his enormous, invisible house in downtown Farrow’s Hollow. Moira was still trying to wrap her head around that, but she resented the accusation that she was the only one rattled by what had happened this morning. “Are we?”
She stared pointedly at the tumbler of whiskey in his hand—his fifth glass, if she had been counting correctly.
“I’m fine,” he fired back. “It’s you I’ve been worried about.”
Something between a snort and a scoff leapt from her mouth, and she ignored his eye roll while she finished the rest of her tea. As she’d suspected—it was lukewarm at this point, all the lingering bits of loose leaf flavor at the bottom leaving an odd taste in her mouth. Without a word, she held out her hand. And waited. And waited.
And waited, until Severus crossed the space between them and handed her his whiskey. The small sip burned all the way down her throat, scalding the green tea taste in the process, and pooled in her belly, warm and ever-present. She handed the glass back with a muffled cough, a hand over her mouth, and Severus strolled back to his spot along the railing, with its thin wrought iron bars in place to ensure no one tumbled over and onto the stairs below, finishing the rest of his drink in a moody silence.