by RJ Blain
I laughed at the thought of a being as powerful as an archangel lowering himself to teaching a woman how to swim so he could have a niece. Then, as I wanted to get on with the rest of my life sooner than later, I said, “Let’s assume I want this over as quickly as possible with as little interaction with my parents as possible. How would we accomplish that?”
“I will present an offer to them for the property including a payment on all owed back taxes, get their signature, and pay for it in cash, with an immediate closing date following the final approval of the sale. I will be your legal representative for the transaction. While Eoghan’s name would be on the official documents, it’s minimal work to have ownership become joint after the finalization of the sale. The bank will add a day or two, but this is no concern. Should you add in an agreement that you will handle anything left on the property, and that the price includes them moving out sooner than later, you should find the keys in your possession within three days.”
I could work with three days. “And in the meantime?”
“Go home, relax, and don’t go on any evening trips to purchase furniture.”
Right. Buying bookcases had gotten me into trouble once already. “I think I can manage that.”
“Eoghan, you should keep her amused at home. You should use your masculine charms to accomplish this,” Michael suggested.
Michael went to the top of my list of archangels I liked.
According to Eoghan’s expression, he believed the archangel had lost his mind. “Pardon?”
“Right. Forget I said anything. Anwen, my dear, I will discuss this matter with Darlene before your coffee date—and I’ll pay a visit to her to make sure she’s clear on what the actual situation is. I’d rather my brother not come to his demise at the hands of his wife. He’s bored, and when he gets this bored, his wife does sometimes manage to beat him into submission—and it really makes a mess of his hells when he’s on bed rest for a few months because he angered his wife.”
What the hell could his wife do to the devil to put him on bedrest for that long?
“You really don’t want to know the answer to that question. It’s terrible, and being the devil, he even likes it. But there is nothing scarier in all the hells than the devil’s wife running the place.”
“I should be more surprised by this than I am,” I confessed.
“I propose you start looking into your dream home on the internet.” Michael stretched his wings and gave them a shake. “Work on that with Eoghan. Build a future on the rubble of the past, although you will want to thoroughly investigate the house before you demolish it. It would do you well to show Eoghan your past, too.”
“But why?”
“So you can let it go, of course. These things have a way of clinging if you don’t air them out.”
“I’ll take that advice,” I promised. Letting go would do me a lot of good—as would moving on.
“That’s a girl. Now, run on home. I’ll pop in to get the appropriate signatures as needed, I’ll work with Lucifer’s precious little attorneys making certain they are ironclad, and I’ll even make sure no one signs their soul away in the process. It’s annoying when souls get signed away in basic paperwork.”
“Thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome. Good things will come, so just bear with this a little longer.”
Fifteen
Taking the advice of an archangel seemed wise.
Taking the advice of an archangel seemed wise to me, so I took Eoghan home, set up the laptop at the kitchen table, and browsed real estate sites for houses while he sat with me, marveling at the modern designs. I learned three key things about him during our browsing.
He loved modern homes, he loved anything that could be turned into a barn for horses, and he fell in love with the idea of living on a ranch. The ranch made sense to me; he could ride and check on his herds and reach back to his roots despite being separated from them by thousands of years.
I preferred the larger farmhouses, the kind that could grow up to become a plantation manor with a little work and a few extensions.
Gordon joined us after nightfall, and we huddled around the laptop trying to make sense of the real estate world and how someone might have the perfect house built where an imperfect one stood. Gordon pointed at a massive log cabin that fringed on being a mansion. “You should get something like that.”
I clicked on the house’s picture on the real estate site, winced at its multi-million price tag, and did my best to ignore that element of the home. The exterior took the log cabin motif to extremes. The interior began rustic and transitioned to modern in places like the kitchen, the master bathroom, and the small movie theater and bowling alley in its basement. I whistled. “That’s insane.”
Eoghan pointed at the picture of the movie theater. “What is this room for?”
“Watching movies. You know that television we bought?”
“I do. The annoyance came over and showed us what it was, and he turned on a movie so we could be amused while waiting for news, as we would otherwise create trouble inappropriately. Once the movie was over, he suggested we should visit the cemetery.”
The devil would be the death of me at the rate he was going. “What movie?”
“The Land Before Time.”
Wow. The devil was truly ruthless. “Did you enjoy it?” Neither man would look me in the eyes, which made me giggle. “You totally enjoyed it.” I bet they cried, too.
I did, always.
As I could be a nice person when I wanted to be, I didn’t press them about it, clicking to the picture of the bathroom, which had an oceanic theme. “This is nice.” I clicked to the next bathroom, which had a clean, elegant, and modern theme and a jet tub I could spend the rest of my life in. “This is nicer. I want a bathroom like this.”
“What’s so special about it?” Eoghan asked. “It looks nice enough, I suppose. I like the ocean theme better, though.”
“The tub includes massagers in this one.” Checking the notes, I gave a breakdown of the insane luxuries, including a heated floor, a ceiling shower, and everything a woman needed to pamper herself. “All it’s missing is a place to put my books when I’m not reading one.”
“Books and water do not mix,” the antique announced.
“They do when you’re using a waterproof electronic reader. I just haven’t been able to afford one. As soon as I feel I can, I will buy one to add to my glorious book collection. And my book collection will be better than the town’s library.”
That wouldn’t be hard; the town’s library was located within a mobile home and contained fewer than five hundred books. When I’d been in middle school, I’d read the entire collection, and when I’d asked if there would be more coming in and been told no, I’d realized why everyone left Sunset.
Damn it, I already wanted to go back to the bookstore and buy more books for my fledgling library.
“Ah. Yes, that reminds me. We retrieved your new bookcases, and they are in the basement for now. We weren’t sure where you wanted to put them,” Eoghan said.
“My new house needs a library. A big one. It must be the best room in the house.”
“I will not argue with you over this. I have enjoyed books since their invention, although initially, a disturbing number of them were exclusively religious texts, which annoyed me. Works of art, but not subject matter I wanted to spend all eternity reading. I was quite pleased when texts shifted from religious and non-fiction to fiction. Fiction is delightful.”
Well, keeping Eoghan amused wouldn’t stress me much. I’d take him to the bookstore, and once we exhausted the local store, I’d run him to one of the cities to the larger ones—or introduce him to online shopping.
His bank accounts might run dry if I showed him the wonders of online shopping.
“Do you think buying the property is a good idea?” I asked, clicking to check out more pictures of the ridiculous mansion and the wonders within it.
“
Of course. Your expression told me so,” Eoghan replied.
“My expression? How so?”
He chuckled, leaning back in his chair. “When you drove to it, and it came into view, you were tense and wary. Upon realizing your parents were not present, you relaxed and smiled. When you realized how much it had fallen into ruin in such a short period of time, your expression once again became tense. Its state made you unhappy. The property makes you feel, and that is important. Some of the emotions are not good, but some are. That is important. There is also room for horses.”
Right. Eoghan liked horses. “I have no idea what’s needed to keep horses.”
“A stable,” he replied. He gestured at the laptop. “Let’s search for one of those.”
Oh boy. I recognized a lost battle, so I searched online for what made a good stable, and we wasted more time looking at stalls, the equipment needed to care for a horse, the cost of care, and how much horses cost. I whistled at the price tags of the animals, which ranged from as much as a month’s rent to costing more than my parents’ home.
“I have a pair of horses for you,” the devil announced. “My wife has informed me if I do not give them to you for bothering you so much, she will surely find a way to kill me this time.”
I hadn’t even managed to call the devil’s wife yet, and she was already out for the devil’s blood on my behalf?
I loved her, and I only knew her name.
“How did Darlene find out Eoghan wanted a horse?”
“My wicked brother told her. Did you really have to involve him? My wife has taken over our bedroom and bathroom to make herself pretty for your play date. She’s wearing her spots, and I wasn’t invited to count them. I was invited to make sure the house sale went through, but my brother is currently—”
“—has taken care of the preliminary phase of the sale,” Michael announced, also from behind me.
Why did archangels and their devil of a brother insist on manifesting behind me?
“It’s more fun that way,” Michael admitted, and he reached around me to set a stack of papers on my table. “As I’m a most benevolent being, I have managed to streamline the sale of your home to be concluded by this evening. It will cost an additional fifty thousand dollars to complete the signing as soon as signatures are ready, but the bank manager was willing to play ball for a fast-tracked sale. It amuses me how legalities can be dodged with the right monetary incentives. It also helped that your parents were willing to abandon everything in the building. It seems they have already removed everything they perceive to be of value from the property.”
Huh. “Is hell freezing over, Lucy?”
“It often is. My wife loves her air conditioning. She is a snow leopard, after all. There’s even a room in the house that has snow year round for her enjoyment. I figured if I wanted to survive my marriage, I needed to cater to her special needs, and snow leopards without snow get very pissy. Pissy kitties like hurting people. Usually me.”
“I wonder why,” I muttered.
Michael snickered. “However much fun it is to watch my brother lose verbal spars, there are a great many papers to sign. Eoghan, to simplify matters for you later, I have taken the liberties of making you and Anwen joint owners of the property. I have also taken the liberty of inquiring with neighbors regarding additional acres, discovering you can add an additional seventy-five to your property, and that property includes a barn in tolerable condition for the housing of your horses until you have made your main home habitable. That will take sixty days to close, but I have secured it for you for a hundred and fifty thousand, which is above market for this area. The couple is older, and the property has become too much for them to readily manage. To them, this offer is a miracle.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Smithy?” I asked, aware of the older neighbors, who’d tried their best to be kind to me despite my parents.
“Yes, that is the couple.”
“They’re nice people.”
“Nicer than most here,” the archangel agreed.
“Is that a good purchase, Anwen?”
“For your horses, yes. Your bank accounts won’t miss the money, either.”
“Understatement,” Michael muttered.
I jabbed the archangel with my elbow. “If you’re wanting to build a future with horses in it, the extra acres will give them a better home along with enough room to do whatever else you want, including operating a farm if you’d like.”
“I would not enjoy a full farm, but I do enjoy a garden.”
“You’ll have more than enough space for a garden,” I promised.
“Then we will do this. Show us where to sign, Michael.”
It took almost an hour to go through all the paperwork, as Michael had to teach Eoghan how to sign his name and read the important clauses to him, explaining what they meant. It amazed me the antique approached the task with infinite patience, showing no sign his lack of understanding of English bothered him.
I supposed it had become a way of life for him, having to navigate a world without understanding the written languages every time he awoke. That bothered me.
The devil patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry yourself over such matters. Within a year, he will be reading every book he can get his hands on, and you will find the easiest way to keep him at home will be to provide him with a new book.”
Huh. Catching a man and keeping his attention might be easier than anticipated.
“It’s all about having the right bait,” the devil agreed. “I’m sure my wife will help you with the finer points.”
I hoped so. “What’s the next step?”
Michael helped Eoghan sign the last of the paperwork before stacking it in a neat pile. “I will go secure the rest of the signatures and issue the payment for the property, which will be processed by the bank immediately, as you are paying them quite the sum to do so. The tax payment is also being submitted and verified by the bank to streamline that portion of the purchasing process. I will come back here within the next hour with the keys, which is when you become the official owners of the property. I recommend you stay here at night to sleep and wait around for Director Hammel to come to you. It won’t take him long to learn you have purchased the property; the Smithys will make certain of that.”
“How should we deal with him?” I asked.
“However you see fit. We can’t do everything for you. This amuses us, which is why we lend our aid. Although, I suspect Azrael will become a nuisance until this business is finished. He dislikes when his rest is disturbed. See, Eoghan? You have common ground with my brother. You both dislike being roused from your slumber.”
“This is not a good thing.”
“It’s a great thing,” the devil replied, and he stretched. “Try to get along. You are equally important to nature’s flow, and it wouldn’t do to upset the ladies—and my lady? She’s already upset. If you keep Anwen happy, you might actually make it through this era somewhat intact.” With a pop and the stench of damned brimstone, Lucy vanished.
Michael laughed. “For the Lord of Lies, he is a disgustingly honest fellow—and he often offers good advice. That is wisdom I would take seriously, Eoghan. Do yourself a favor. Tell the devil’s wife that the devil is a lucky man to have a woman like her. It’ll help you get through the next few days of your life without earning a beating from the Queen of Hell. And don’t make the mistake most make.”
“What mistake?” I asked.
“She just looks nice. She partners so well with my brother because her capacity for evil is only matched by her capacity for good.”
As promised, I held the keys to my childhood home within an hour. The familiarity of them, once hanging from my parents’ keychains, drove home how much had changed in a few days. Obtaining financial stability shocked me, but holding the keys of my childhood felt more like a miracle than anything else that had happened since I’d offered my arm to Gordon, expecting to die in the basement of the funeral home.
“There wa
sn’t a third set of keys,” Michael said.
“There never was.” My parents had never believed I deserved them; if neither were home and had locked the door, I’d been expected to sit outside, amuse myself, and wait. I’d spent many an hour under the boughs of a weeping willow doing my homework or reading my text books, waiting for them to come home. I couldn’t count the nights I’d slept beneath the stars for that reason.
“I hadn’t looked into the reason why,” the archangel said, his tone heavy with remorse. “I apologize.”
“You did no harm. They are memories.” I considered those old experiences and how they’d shaped my present. “No, they aren’t bad memories. They’re just difficult ones.”
“How are they difficult?” Eoghan asked.
“I never had keys to the house. My parents expected me to wait outside if they weren’t home. By the time I dropped out of high school, they were almost never home. They usually locked the door. I did what I could, but that was the way of it.”
“They sound like cruel people.”
“She is everything they are not—and she is that way because she decided she would not be like them.” Michael closed my fingers over the keys. “These are both the end and the beginning of a journey.”
I understood what the archangel meant; I would continue the cycle by giving Gordon the extra keys to my little rented house—a house Eoghan wanted to purchase only because I liked it.
A week ago, I wouldn’t have believed for an instant so much could change in a matter of days. In some cases, my life had changed in a matter of hours.
Michael leaned over my shoulder, using the laptop to pull up a listing of a log cabin. “This model has much of what you wish, and it will be trivial for the manufacturer to add the things you want, and a second installment can be converted to be a rather nice stable for Eoghan’s horses—and your horses, too. You won’t be able to share space with him without having a horse or two of your own.”