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Fix E verything!

“I can fix everything!” Helena cried, unable to contain her relief. Her face was flushed with excitement as she wriggled in her chair. “We don’t need Vassago’s help a fter all.”

Rafferty’s heart lurched in his chest. “Vassago?! You saw him?”

“Yes, but now that I’m an angel, and I can perform miracles, I can fix ev erything!”

Rafferty couldn’t take that point in. “He saw you? Or you spok e to him?”

“Yes, I tried to tell the agents about it, but they didn’t see him, and they didn’t believe me. He wanted to make a deal with me to undo everything that happened, but I told him no.” She nodded with conviction, and he didn’t think he could love her more at that moment. “Then he said he would see what you thought. Did you…”

“I spoke to him, too,” Rafferty admitted, affirming that she hadn’t been d elusional.

Helena’s eyes went even wider. “Do you think… this is all h is doing?”

“Getting us out of trouble with the Earthly authorities, yes. This…” He gestured up and down at her. “I do n’t know.”

“But why would he do that? Why would he help us like that? Neither of us made a deal with hi m, right?”

“Demons will do that occasionally. Expend a bit of free power to show what they offer when they are trying to tempt someone.”

“But we’re safe here?” Helena asked, looking about the room. “I can… I can feel it, all around us. The protection circle. It feels w onderful.”

Rafferty shifted, clearly uncomfortably at the observation. He didn’t feel a thing. Instead, he reached for the thing that always grounded him. He stuck his pinkie finger into the whipped parsnips on his plate and scooped some into his mouth, chewing anxiously. Then he stopped, a groan slipping out of him, his eyes rolling back and going closed while he shuddered.

“Are you okay?” Helena asked, alarmed by the reaction.

He gestured at his mouth; his eyes still closed in savor. “The ta ste… I…”

She smiled, not needing him to finish. With everything that had happened, he had forgotten that he had gone through great changes as well. The restoration of his taste was the most important to him. His punishment was over.

Hers was just beginning.

At that thought, he froze and opened his eyes, “Do you taste anything?” he asked urgently.

“What? Yes, I…” She regarded the burger, then took another bite. “Yeah, it tastes fine to me,” she said around the mouthful.

He took another bite of the parsnips.

“I don’t… I don’t taste anything…” He contracted his eyebrows.

Helena wrinkled her nose. “But you looked like you were—”

“I mean power,” he corrected. “When I was a demon, I couldn’t taste the flavors of the food, but I could taste the power I used to create it or infl uence it.”

“But now you can’t taste the power, just the flavors?”

“I taste…” He sighed again, unable to resist scooping up some more food into his mouth. “Everything,” he growled lustily, going for a third scoop. On his fourth scoop, she leaned in and licked it instead, trapping his finger in her mouth.

His eyes went wide as she suctioned her lips to him, slowly sliding off his digit in a playfully suggestive way. Now that she was back in a human form, he felt nothing but the usual reactions this body had to such an act, and since it was naked for her to see, see she did. His reaction made her giggle so hard she almo st choked.

But as she moved the food around in her mouth, her expression bec ame sober.

“What is it?” Rafferty asked, catching the shift.

“I think I taste it. The demonic… or celestial energies, I guess. There is an after-tang. It is almost a sickly sweet sort of taste, and this is usually a decidedly savory food. It’s sort of what I would imagine… turquoise would taste like, if that makes a ny sense?”

He nodded slowly, then glanced at the table, spying a dessert tray, something her power hadn’t touched. Prying off the plastic lid, he pinched off a bite of the chocolate cake within and held it out. “Taste this,” he said urgently.

She licked that off his fingers too, albeit with less sensuality than she had with the parsnips.

“How is it?” he asked, the worry rife in his voice.

She took her time, letting her taste buds inform her. “It… is very rich, and chocolatey. Yeah, I don’t think I taste any celestial energies.”

Growing thoughtful, Helena brushed her fingers down the side of his cheek. “I don’t know much, but I do know… at least I’m pretty sure… This angel thing isn’t happening to me because of some divine punishment… and I don’t know why, but I’m sure … I am sure that it isn’t anything Vassago di d either.”

He pressed her hand against his cheek. He really wanted to believe that. “We don’t know that for sure.”

She gave that a thought. “Okay, let’s test it out. Ask me for s omething.”

He blinked and recoile d. “What?”

“Ask me for a miracle. I have celestial power now. Ask me to do something for you. Something that would require otherworldly a bilities.”

He stood up, backing away from her and her offer, shaking his head. “No. No, we shouldn’t do that.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” she tried to assure him, lifting her hands to take his, but he pulled away eve n sharper.

“No, it’s not!” he shouted, losing control. “This is not how the rules work. You cannot get something for nothing, there is always a cost. Always. Throughout the entire universe, this one rule is absolut ely true.”

“But this i s divine—”

“It’s coming from you!” he shouted, only for someone to bang on the wall. He swallowed down a breath and forced himself to soften his voice. “The energy it takes to make something like this happen, it can only be coming from you, your essence. You can’t just spend it like it’s r enewable.”

“But you said I am an angel,” she said, her voice coming out small.

Another invisible stomach punch. “I don’t know … okay? I don’t know…” He could feel his lie exposing him. “So many things in history that have been attributed to angels were just demons whose gifts worked out well for everyone. There have to be some wins or humans would not eve n try us.”

Helena’s expression was unsure. She didn’t understand, but before long, she would realize she needed to make a deal to have enough energy to stay. Just like with Vassago, she wouldn’t be able to remain in creation, at least not without an anchor point and a supply of energy to resist creation trying to expel her.

Since she was not privy to any of these thoughts, she tried to reach out to him again, but he recoiled even more, taking several steps back to put space between them. He surprised himself with his reaction.

Rafferty had never felt rawer and more vulnerable in his life. A cold chill rolled up his spine, sending shivers and forcing him to hug his arms against himself. He had never felt m ore naked.

I won. So why doesn’t it feel like it anymore, h e thought.

“Rafferty,” she whispered, his na me a plea.

“I’m sorry, but… I can’t… I just… I need…” He shook his head as he turned around, plucking up his discarded shirt from the ground to dress himself with. Somehow that small action felt just as much a rejection of her as everything else had. But he didn’t know what else to do. He needed space from her, time to think.

Helena turned away, too, but went to the unopened suitcases. She tore through the first one, which luckily was the one she wanted, and yanked on a set of pajamas. By the time she was dressed, so was Rafferty, who headed to the door to th eir suite.

“Agent Sophia said to stay here,” she said, alarmed as he reached for the door.

“I just can’t,” he repeated, but he hesitated, unable or unwilling to look at her. “I ’m sorry.”

And then he was out the door.

Rafferty never felt so shattered in his entire existence. Not like this.

“I’m a coward. I’m a coward. I’m a fucking coward,” Rafferty repeated to the echoing sound of his feet hitting the concrete steps as he went down the stairwell. He knew he could have taken the elevator, but the point wasn’t to get away. The point was to move and try to think, not to feel so much only inside. Fifteen floors gave him a lot to th ink about.

He hurt her.

He knew he hurt her by rejecting her like that. Whatever had happened to her, it wasn’t her fault. There was nothing she had done that was evil, but he also couldn’t stay. The squirming terror inside at what she had become drove him.

Too soon, he reached the bottom, out of breath. Pushing his way through the door jarred him as he emerged into the opulent hotel lobby, an extreme contrast to the plain, beige walls and echoing emptiness of the stairwell.

A couple standing near the door to the stairs shot him startled, offended glances at his sudden appearance. Breathing noisily, he ignored them and scanned across the carpeted space with its warm lighting and elegant clusters of furniture to find a semicircle dais that proclaimed its elf a bar.

The carpet gave way to a marble floor then back to carpet as Rafferty cut across the space before the check-in counters. The staff there gave him a passing glance, but only enough to see if he was approaching them to ask for anything.

There was nothing that he needed they could offer him at th at moment.

A part of him was aware he still felt elated at his new existence. He moved about the world with freedom; everything he saw was for the first time with his new eyes. Though he had been taken to bars and had appeared in restaurants—they were the most common places desperate chefs would summon him—this was different.

He was free.

Dropping into one of the high chairs at the bar, his elbows hit the top, and he grasped his head as if that would help him keep it from exploding at the war raging inside him. His joy at being human again and his horror at Helena becoming… something else. He had no idea what he was about to do, but he had arrived at his destination. It was all he could focus on in th at moment.

“What can I get you?” a voice asked, mildly cautious.

With a sharp lift, Rafferty dropped his hands onto the bar, aware of the scene he w as making.

“Huh, I… I do n’t know.”

“Okay, no problem,” the bartender said, smiling a thin smile as he slid over a menu. Rafferty didn’t look at the menu, though, but instead studied the worker’s clothing. It was a simple ensemble of black slacks with a white shirt held back with a black vest and a bowtie. What undid the formal appearance, however, was that the man had rolled his sleeves up to the elbows, and one of them looked on the brink of comi ng undone.

The chef in Rafferty reacted. “How are you getting away with that?” he asked, gesturing to th e sleeves.

Predictably, the bartender looked down, raising an eyebrow. “Get away w ith what?”

“Your sleeves,” Rafferty said, his words t ensing up.

“Oh, you know. They don’t really care too much as long as the shirt is clean, and I don’t cause any trouble. I’m really vigorous when I shuffle up the ice, and I hate getting my sleeves wet,” the bartender said, just as someone waved at him down the bar. “I’ll be right back. Take y our time.”

Rafferty let it go.

“You truly are a chef, aren’t you?” a familiar accented vo ice asked.