Page 51

Ma ybe It’ll Be Okay?

“T his is sad,” Agent Archon said, shaking her head as she peered into the cri me scene.

The summoning circle inside had ceased smoking, but the smell lingered in the air and would for a l ong time.

Her fellow officer, Agent Sophia, approached, an annoyed look on her face. “So far no explanation as to why this room wasn’t still locked. They have documentation of performing the cleansing ritual up until September and t hat’s it.”

“That’s a citation at best. Few thousands of dollars and they’ll go back to forgetting,” Agent Archon d ismissed.

“What do you think happened here?” Agent Sophia asked, looking inward. Flashes sharpened the horror of the scene as the techs kept up with their work: doc umenting.

“Someone summoned a demon,” Agent Ar chon said.

“Well, yes, that much is clear.”

“But that is all we know. They could have just been victims. They could have been the summoners… Have we made any progress on finding the other assistant…” Agent Archon glanced down at the notes. “Helena Rhodes. Do we know if sh e’s safe?”

“No one here has seen her. The guard is getting checked out, but he seems to have suffered from the demon attacking him. He doesn’t remember anything. And of course the minute the summoning happened, all the cameras back here fried. I’ve sent a unit to her house to confirm if she’s there or not, and we have a call out to all the hospitals. I do have a report that she was last seen helping the chef for the event.” She glanced at her notes. “He see med sick.”

Agent Acheron tapped her teeth. “Hmm, that sounds promising. High stress jobs are prone to demon s ummoning.”

“Cooking is high stress?”

Agent Acheron looked over the rim of her glasses at her partner. “Sophia, you need to get out more.”

The blip of the ambulance made both agents glance over as they took away the survivor. “First stop is the hospital though, where I’m sure a lawyer will be present to make sure we don’t get anything,” she said dryly. “Come on. It’s going to be a lo ng night.”

“You were right, honey lips. I will admit it. You saw something that I didn’t, and I will own it,” the being calling herself Ho ney said.

“While I thank you for the acknowledgement, I do question it,” the being called éliott said. “If we had intervened when you said to, an innocent person would be alive right now. And the anathema would not have been created.”

“We can’t interfere in their choices. No more than a demon under their control can ignore a direct command,” she reminded him, then laid a hand over his, patting it. “But this is not entirely a tragedy, and that is thanks to you. You should have more faith in your judgment. She pulled the demon out of hell.”

“But he is still a demon. Sort of.”

“One step at a time. There was something to be redeemed wi thin him.”

“But I do not understand what has happened?” éliott insisted, fluttering his wings in a show of agitation. One of his gray feathers dislodged and drifted down to sit between the crest of the ram-like horns circling the sides of his head.

Honey lowered the newspaper she was reading to look at the other angel sitting before her. “Well, what do you think happened?” she asked as she leaned forward and caught his feather off his head, holding it up to study its beautiful patterns.

“I do not know. That’s why I’m as king you.”

She fluttered her own pure white wings behind herself. It felt so good to stretch them out. “Well, to be frank I’ve only ever seen this happen a couple times myself, but every so often when a very old soul, one who has lived many lives and figured out many things, they sort of, take a leap and become on e of us.”

éliott thought about that, mulling it over. “Is that how we came int o being?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t have any memory of being a mortal before. There are some questions I don’t know if I can ever answer, but that is what she did. And now we’ll have to deal w ith that.”

éliott nodded, looking down at the headline and sub headline of her paper. Socialite sacrifices assistant in demon ritual for youth and beauty. Federal agency for demonic security and prevention (DSP) inves tigating.

He shook his head. “It didn’t have to happen that way.”

“But it did, crab cake,” Honey said, folding up the paper. “They make their choices and we can only do so much to protect those that don’t deserve to be dragged into it.”

“But even then, what we do is so inadequate,” éliott said, des pairingly.

“There are only so many of us that even want to come here and way more of them . We do the best that we can. And chin up. Now we’ve got one more.”

“But what are we going to do about t he demon?”

Honey hummed on that a little while. “At this point, nothing. We’re going to watch him and see what she does.”

“Do you think she would be able to send him back if it ca me to it?”

Honey beamed. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Wonder what she’s going to say when we tell her what is really going on?”

“Okay, that’s enough, angel food. Let’s get going.” Honey made a shooing motion with her hands, indicating she expected him to take flight and get off the roof of the Wrightwood Ballroom.

“Will you stop calling me foodstuffs?” élio tt asked.

“Nope. Now hurry up, crumb cake. We have an escaped demon to find.”

Helena opened her eyes but saw very little. They were gummy and filmy. She blinked rapidly to try to clear her vision, but it wasn’t until she rubbed her eyes that they finally cleared.

She lay on the floor of her kitchen, the hard tile underneath pressing into her body, making it ache, like she had fallen asleep there and had never rol led over.

A rough tongue licked the back of her hand and Helena blinked to see her little black cat Pooka looking at her worried, though for a split second she thought she saw two of them.

“Hi, girl. I’m fine,” she said, her voice croaky. She ran her fingers over Pooka’s head, smoothing down her soft fur a couple of times, then rolled onto her back. Doing so made her bump into something on the ot her side.

“Rafferty?” s he asked.

A man laid next to her on his side, his shoulder pointed up to the ceiling in a familiar rou nd curve.

She rolled over and put her face into his dark hair, smelling his scent, spicy and masculine. No wings, no horns, no unhealthy pallor. Slipping her fingers under his arm, she pressed herself against him and held h im tight.

His own fingers drifted up to lace through the back of hers and squeezed.

“Helena?” his voice croaked.

Pressing back, he turned over, cupping her face with his hand, and it was only then that she realized they were both naked. It didn’t matter. Of course they would be, though she had no idea why she k new that.

“What the hell did you do?” he asked, looking around her kitchen.

“I have no idea,” she said, laughing.

The circle beneath them was cold with no sense of wrongness or illusion. It just looked like someone had torched her floor as a stylist ic choice.

“Are you alright?” s he asked.

“Yes. Are you?”

She smiled. “Yes and no. We escaped.” The sadness returned. “But Scarlet a nd Yosef…”

He closed his eyes and nodded. “We couldn’t have stopped it. They messed with a demon.”

Helena took that thought and applied it elsewhere. Sitting up, she set a hand on his very human chest. “Rafferty, can you…?”

“What?” he asked , unsure.

She lifted his hand up for him to se e. “Look.”

His confused silvery eyes shifted to his hand. Then went wide as he made it into a fist. Pushing himself up to sitting, he ran his hands all over his body. He was still too thin for his frame, but he wasn’t emaciated like he had been before. His skin was a natural color and again, no wings or horns to speak of.

“Can you shift into it?” s he asked.

He looked at her and then tensed all his muscles. Nothing happened. He stopped looking sheepish. “No,” he said with a shake of his head.

“You’re alive!” she said. She threw her arms around his neck and laughed.

“I don’t deserve to be,” he said, even though he held her back.

“Shut up. Yes, you do.” She laughed and that was enough for both of them.

For th e moment.