Chapter 3
3
TLALLI
T lalli’s heart thudded in her chest as she made her way up the floors, feeling as though the elevator was going half its normal speed. She had briefly traded smiles with the woman in the opposite corner, then kept her eyes on her own gold-tipped toes sticking out of her sandals. Try as she might, she couldn’t determine what she was feeling, whether it was rage or fatigue or fear or sadness or disappointment or panic or... lust.
Oh yeah, Cahuani was just as smooth as he’d always been, but he was different too. More specifically, he was cold . That chill hit her like a brand against her back.
And she liked it. Fuck, she liked it. She liked it, and she didn’t know how to cope with that.
But that wasn’t the point. The point was that she had put far too much faith in him. She’d seen the first opportunity—which wasn’t really an opportunity at all—to escape, and she’d taken it like a naive child. What did she expect? That he would simply forgive her in this gaudy old lounge after four years of nothing? Maybe she had hoped that by now, he may have realized that she had a job to do, and that given the Puri let him live, he might’ve gotten over it. But no. No, he was still angry. Honestly, if she didn’t know any better—and she didn’t... she never did—she would say he was even angrier now.
Yet that only made her more eager to persuade him. Maybe she really did have a death wish. Then again, death didn’t seem so bad if the alternative was Anthony and the Dominion.
As if to remind her of this, Anthony’s voice boomed around the room the moment she entered, causing her to recoil.
“Where have you been! I told you not to wander!”
“And I told you I didn’t care,” she shot back.
“You know,” Elias drawled from where he sat on the couch, “your behavior is very unbecoming of your position, Goldie.” She hated that she couldn’t tell whether he was mocking her or Anthony with that bored, monotonous tone. “We are here to conduct a very serious business that has no room for error.”
Never mind, he was definitely being sarcastic.
“Look, I can do my job just fine,” Tlalli retorted. “If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t be here. And if you don’t think I can, tell Michael to send someone else. Otherwise, my free time is mine.”
She could see the agitation on Anthony’s face, but before he could initiate another tantrum, she slipped into the bathroom and slammed the door, then spelled it shut. The door handle shook violently once Anthony reached it, but she paid it no mind. After all, they had somewhere to be.
Tlalli took her time in the shower, allowing the hot water to alleviate some of the tension built up in her neck and loosen up this skin. Anthony banged on the door a few times, but she ignored it until her hands had pruned and the steam was too much.
Still, she made an event of getting ready after, taking at least long enough for the fog to start lifting from the mirror that she kept trying to wipe clean. She thought of the mornings she would get up and find her mother already seated in front of her vanity mirror, applying her favorite eyeliner beneath tattooed brows. To this day, in all Tlalli’s years alive with and without her, she still found Mecati the most beautiful person she had ever seen.
Mecati had been a quiet woman who wielded her magic in service of their people, their community, rather than the Puri or the Dominion. There were many witches from various factions, such as Brujas and Curanderas Tlalli had grown up around, who did the same. They were all categorized under the title of “witch” by angels and demons, but they had their own internal names, and the magic differed from group to group as did the way they chose to utilize it.
The Nahualtins’ identifying trait was the ability to shift into a second form, usually an animal. This form was known as their Nagual, and when mastered, it could even be manifested outside of their body like a companion.
Mecati, whose Nagual had been the coyote, never had the chance to teach Tlalli how to fully take her second form before the angels laid claim on her, but some nights, Tlalli still dreamed of the jaguar.
Mecati had raised Tlalli on the banks of the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico, cultivating Tlalli’s love for the land and their people. Tlalli’s father had never been around. She’d only met him once when she was really young, and she didn’t find out he was an angel until Gabriel himself swept into their humble living room demanding Tlalli fulfill her duty to the Dominion. She was sixteen then and an adversary of humility, so despite her mother’s fears, she had agreed to join them because she thought she had something to prove. It would forever be her greatest regret.
Mecati had explained that, while she knew Tlalli’s father was an angel—procreation between humans and mortals, which could only happen at will and not by accident, was severely scrutinized but not entirely outlawed—he had made it clear he didn’t want Tlalli knowing. Mecati believed keeping it a secret would protect Tlalli from the Dominion. It hadn’t.
Instead, in their efforts to build an army that could finally stomp out their enemies, the angels had apparently made the decision to utilize any and all angels they could, even those born from the witches they loathed so deeply.
Not that this prejudice had ever stopped the Dominion from using witches of all backgrounds for their own gain before then. That was their thing though—hypocrisy and double standards.
Right before Mecati passed, she and Tlalli promised each other they’d honor the code of their people. They could see each other once a year during the Day of the Dead but not visit or summon each other outside of that. Basically, with the utmost reluctance, Tlalli had agreed to let her mother go.
Some days—well, actually a lot of days—she regretted that too.
When she at last exited the bathroom, dressed in a form-fitting emerald-green dress, Anthony was nowhere to be found, but Elias was still on the couch, twisting a fresh cartridge onto his vapor pen. Angels who descended from the Garden and its subsidiaries tended to pick up some number of human habits after initially attempting to use them to fit in. Something in the air, she supposed.
She wondered if the vape had any effect on him or if he had to do something to the oils to make them stronger. She wondered if angels like Elias felt any weaker here on Earth, the way she felt away from it.
“You know he will throw a tantrum in front of all these mortals if y’all keep at this, right?” Elias deadpanned, sitting back in his seat.
“Where is he?” she asked, ignoring the comment altogether.
“Dunno. He just said to meet him in the lobby.”
“And to make sure I got ready?”
Elias only shrugged.
Though the body he occupied was only forty years old or so, he was an ancient angel, one Tlalli had been taught about as a child. After actually spending time with him, though, any starstruck admiration she had more or less bled away rather swiftly, and she found that, although he was more tolerable company than Anthony—when Elias was alone, at least—he was a dry conversationalist with very little care for anything other than the small bits of joy he could supply himself with in this realm.
In truth, Tlalli was almost certain that he was damn near as disenchanted as she was with the Dominion. Especially now that Michael and Raphael wanted a war, there was very little fun to be had and very little peace to be found.
He sighed. “I’m just sayin’ to keep the peace.”
Anthony’s peace, he meant. Unfortunately, Tlalli was not invested in Anthony’s peace.
Instead, she asked, “Why did you agree to come babysit him anyway, Elias?”
He didn’t answer straight away, instead exhaling a thick cloud of smoke and tugging at the coarse black curls of his thick beard. He slouched in the corner of the couch, his eyes to the sky. Did he still see something when he looked up there, or had the light gone out for him too? Would he pretend it hadn’t if she dared to ask?
“I don’t know if ‘agree’ would be the word I’d use,” he replied. “But let me tell you. With the way shit is now, it’s best for all of us to spend as much time as we can down here. The farther from Eden, the better.”
“I’m sure the demons would let you visit if you ask nicely,” she teased.
He didn’t respond, instead taking a long drag of his pen then springing to his feet and grabbing his evening attire from the opposite chair. His suit was, as always, a simple black-tie ensemble. Comfort was his goal, but Tlalli would never deny it looked good on him.
Subtle as it was, there was in fact a charm to Elias’s disinterested disposition. What a shame Tlalli was only just noticing that charm now.
Or maybe ignorance was a blessing. After all, if she did eventually leave Heaven, she would rather not have anything to miss.
Elias pulled off his shirt and tossed it at her in his version of a truce, and she caught it with a narrowed gaze, taking in his carved shoulders, muscular chest, and soft round belly. She found herself amused by the fact that while Cahuani and Anthony could shift from man to bear, Elias was a bear of a man in human form.
She sometimes wished Elias would give her more. She knew he didn’t owe her that, but it didn’t keep her from wanting it anyway. They could be friends if he weren’t so damn neutral all the time, so damn eager to stay in line. It would be nice to have an ally. Or at least someone who felt the same indignation she did.
He had been a little warmer with her after her mother passed. Then again, he was also the only angel to show any kind of compassion to her, minuscule as it was, so the bar had been low to start.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
She looked up, and he was already in his suit, looking as comfortable as she expected, the fabric loose in some places but tight in others. A reminder that he was the muscle here.
“What is the point of this thing tonight anyway?”
She was convinced rich mortals liked to have parties to flaunt their hoarding problems, and she wished they would have one standard party and not all these different types of events. She would never be able to tell you the difference between a gala and a banquet or a charity banquet and a ball, but she would show up and serve.
“To get a look at the items beforehand and, you know, mingle.”
“With mortals we will likely never see again?” she quipped.
“It’s not about us. It’s not even really about them. They treat parties the way they would treat us if they ever proved we existed.”
“And how is that?”
He smirked and fixed his coat. “Like a spectacle to cash in on.”