Not Always an Angel (Unlocking His Heart #3)

Chapter One

The thumping drone from the overhead speakers didn’t come close to drowning out the persistent, annoying tinkle of bells. So many freaking bells. Liss Jemison looked around the belly-dance class. She was the sole woman not draped in gauzy, colored scarves dripping with bells. Her navy Lycra shorts and workout tank clearly marked her as a newbie. Looking at the mirror, she was a black hole tainting the entire class.

Liss didn’t enjoy sticking out. Hated it, in fact, just as much as she hated lentils and people who waved you through a four-way stop even though it was clearly their turn.

Gee, it would’ve been nice if the teacher had given her the dress code heads-up. Although the teacher—her new-ish friend—was an actual, real, full of powers witch , so Aradia probably didn’t worry too much what others thought of her.

Liss was nothing more than an actual, powerless human . Something of which she was reminded every day.

At least, ever since six months ago, when her bestie accidentally dragged her along into the adjacent world of angels and demons and freaking unicorns.

“Hey!” The woman next to her had four long blonde braids. Each with its own damn tinkling bell on the end. “Your arms are going the wrong way. You almost clocked me.”

Her feet were going the right way. Didn’t that count for anything? “Sorry. It’s my first time.”

“Then maybe you should stand in the back and watch instead of potentially wiping out an entire row.”

Wow.

Liss was a scrapper. She’d been dragged across Europe for most of her childhood by her parents. Always the new person in a room. Always the first one, not picked , but picked on . She’d learned fast that there wasn’t any point in waiting. Or being polite. Standing up for herself, fighting for respect, was ingrained habit.

But…she dialed back the urge to bare her teeth. Because of her newfound knowledge that something far worse could be piloting that bitchy, tinkling woman.

Something wholly evil.

So she swayed and swiveled her way to the front row. The distance ought to calm the snarky dancer. And nobody else would dare snap at her that close to the teacher.

Probably.

Because she did bend her arms the wrong way again, almost immediately. How was it so easy to dance on top of a bar after two tequila shots, and so difficult when completely sober?

Thankfully, the music soon stopped. Aradia did a triple pirouette that sent her long black hair flying. “Let’s give ourselves a big hand for celebrating our bodies tonight!”

After everyone clapped, they quickly filed out of the wood-floored studio. Liss had heard whispers in the locker room about somebody bringing their famous pumpkin brownies for after class. Nobody directly mentioned them to her, though.

Which was fine. It always struck her as counterintuitive to gorge on sweets right after exercising. A lot like her dorm mates in undergrad who thought eating yogurt for breakfast entitled them to a full pizza for dinner.

“What’d you think, Liss? Did you enjoy your first class?” Aradia grabbed a towel and dabbed at her sumptuous cleavage.

She contemplated lying. But, again, Aradia was a witch. Wouldn’t she be able to tell? Or was that not an always-on thing? Did truth-telling require a spell? There was so much she didn’t yet know about the paranormal world.

So Liss went with her trademark blunt honesty. “The bells kind of drove me crazy.”

“Oh. Hah. Yes, they do probably take some getting used to. Sort of like walking through a Christmas party. Festive, right?”

Christmas was still two months away. Not a selling point. “The moves were fun. The ones I managed to keep up with. Is there a class—a beginner class—where people don’t dress up?” There. It was a subtle way of saying I can’t take the bells again .

“Sure. I told you to sign up for this one purposefully, though.”

“Why?” It wasn’t like Aradia sensed her natural talent. Because Liss had zero dance training. Unless very infrequent Zumba sessions counted.

“Everyone but you here tonight is a witch. Some from my coven, some independents.” Aradia shook her hips, sending the purple chiffon scarf covered in silver coins into a cascade of sound. “That’s why they’re all decked out in bells—to keep demons away. I figured it would make you feel safer.”

Nope.

While it was sweet and thoughtful of Aradia, it made Liss feel annoyed rather than safe. Combative, even. Although that was probably residual from her toe-to-toe with braids girl.

She could take care of herself.

Okay, not actually .

The past six months had been spent learning about all the awful Hell creatures that tried, on a daily basis, to destroy humans. But the Buffalo Dance Studio wasn’t a demon nest. There was an entire closet full of tutus in the back! Liss needed, desperately, to assert her independence from the powerful half-angel warriors that treated her like a blown-glass figurine dropped onto a go-kart track.

Aradia didn’t know how much Liss chafed at the coddling, though. She’d met Liss at the start of all this. Back when Liss had jumped at every dark shadow and gasped every time a new horror was revealed. The hard-nosed witch was simply acting like an older sister.

Damn it.

She couldn’t be anything but grateful.

So she smiled and bent to grab her water bottle from along the mirror, crooning out a few lines from the classic song “Don’t You Worry ’bout A Thing” under her breath.

Then Aradia’s thumbs bit into her sweaty shoulder, pulling her back up. “You’re good.”

“Hardly. I’m lucky I didn’t maim anyone tonight. I need blinking lights overhead showing me which way to go. Like in the airport parking lot.” Wasn’t there a video game where you danced for points? Maybe she should go to an arcade to up her skillz before the next class.

“No, Liss. Your singing. It’s remarkable.”

Huh. Aradia was managing to pick at all of Liss’s barely-scabbed-over sore spots tonight with unerring accuracy. It showed how off-balance she was that she’d let a song slip out in public.

“I’m average.” She shrugged it off and immediately swigged her water.

“We usually hire singers for our solstice celebrations. It’d be wonderful if you could sing for our winter solstice.”

“I don’t sing for money. I don’t sing for anyone.” Yikes. The speed and tone of that bypassed harsh and zoomed straight to bitchy. “Sorry. Um, not my thing.” Aka , Liss would rather crawl over ground glass and then swallow it before singing for money. Overreaction? Sure. Deeply rooted in childhood trauma? You bet. It didn’t change her stance.

Aradia’s dark brows knitted together in confusion. “I thought you were looking for any and every side hustle?”

“I am. Only the ones that don’t require singing, though. That’s my—what’s it called?—hard limit.”

“Ooh. I always suspected you had a darkly playful side.” Aradia trailed her hand down Liss’s arm. “I’m even more intrigued that you know about hard limits.”

Liss wasn’t sure if it applied to all covens, or even all witches, but Aradia had a sixties free love approach to sex. She appreciated Aradia finding her own happiness and not conforming to societal norms, but…

Liss was a teacher by vocation. She was at heart, however, a rule follower and an absolute, um, norm.

“I’m a reader. Not a doer.” Dark and hot romance books were the way she rebooted after a crappy waitress shift or a boring day temping at an oxygen warehouse. Imagining doing the things in those books, though, was as far as she went. “But I appreciate the compliment.”

“It’s just a shame to waste all the good chi that’s built up in here tonight.” Aradia floated her hands through the air. And floated a few inches off the ground, too. Without causing a single bell to tinkle. “So much healthy positivity! I could make sparks fly. With my tongue. Not a euphemism.”

Wow. Liss couldn’t wait to get home and share that little nugget with her friends. It was yet again a day that ended in Y…and therefore a day when Liss learned something absolutely new about the paranormal.

It was wild to think that this was her life now. Less than six months ago, she’d been the cliché of riding out a quarter-life crisis. Not by choice, but due to her school district cutting her job as the music teacher. She’d downsized to a crappy apartment with her best friend, Maisy, and worked three very crappy temp jobs to make ends meet.

But then a freaking demon had crashed Maisy’s birthday party. It had been the equivalent of them cannonballing into this entirely other world. A tall, dark, and gorgeous Nephilim —half-angel, half-human—named Rhys became their guide. He also became Maisy’s boyfriend, after lots of bickering that turned on a dime to banter to flirting to innuendo that usually made Liss hustle out of the room with an eye roll.

Had she been scared when that green, scaly demon with two sets of teeth announced it’d be eating them for dinner?

Absolutely.

Had she been scared the next day when meeting Rhys’s winged warrior partners, Gideon and Zavier?

Absolutely.

Was she still scared every single day?

Mmm, a little?

Liss accepted that it was all true. You couldn’t watch a six-foot-three-inch man pop out wings of velvety black and silver while spinning knives in both hands and not go weak in the knees with lust… and believe that half-angels were real.

Not to mention totally human witches who floated while hitting on her.

She was spared having to come up with a polite refusal when the studio door banged open. Zavier Carranza filled the opening—partly from his height and muscled breadth, and partly because he wanted to be noticed.

If he didn’t want to be? He would’ve made it into the mirrored room without a sound or even dispersing a molecule of air. That was the talent of this trained warrior. But honestly? Liss couldn’t imagine ever not noticing Zavier. Not with the shock of black hair that contrasted with his dark gray eyes. The muscles-for-days and yet the way he moved like a panther, stalking or being poised to attack whether crossing to pick up a remote or training—shirtless! Yay!—with Rhys and Gideon.

Oh, she noticed Zavier. Constantly.

But right now, Liss was mostly noticing that he shouldn’t be here.

She rushed over to him, bare feet squeaking on the wood. “What’s wrong? Is Maisy hurt? Or Eva?”

His deep bass voice always managed to send chills racing across her skin. “Why would you think that?”

“Because there’s no other reason for you to show up at my belly-dancing class. Unless you want to pre-pay for a series of lessons for yourself.”

“I don’t need to be taught how to dance. My people invented the flamenco . Rhythm flows in my blood.” He placed a hand on his chest, extended his other arm, and shifted his weight side to side.

Even in his black cotton sweater and jeans, the simple moves flooded the room with sensuality. Liss, however, wouldn’t tell him that. Their relationship was founded on bickering, with breaks for mocking and occasional co-snark aimed at their friends.

“You were taken from your mother a week after you were born and raised in the training stronghold of the Right and Holy Seraphic Order of the Nephilim . I’m guessing they didn’t include cotillion class in the curriculum.”

“Fighting is a dance. You learn choreography—who feints, who lunges—and carefully execute it hundreds of times until the moves flow out of your muscles without thought or hesitation.”

Well. That was about as many words as Liss had ever heard Zavier spew at one time. He was more of the why use ten words when a grunt will do kind of guy. “That’s relatively eloquent. Who are you, really? What shape-shifting demon has possessed you?”

Another shock. One of his quicksilver, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it grins ghosted across his face. “A man who knows that dancing gets you laid.”

“Ugh. You’re a disgusting beast.”

“He’s not wrong, though.” Aradia winked and trailed her fingers across his shoulder blades as she exited the room.

He twitched off her touch after no more than a second. “Grab your things. Let’s go.”

Liss had left her shoes against the wall, rather than in the locker room. Because nobody told her not to wear shoes. She jammed her feet in. “Again, where? Why? What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” He gave a firm push at the small of her back, aiming her toward the back door. Liss worked very hard not to wriggle at his touch.

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s no emergency. No more than any other day, which, recently, is a hell of a lot more.” Yet still, Zavier gently pushed at her.

“Then why are you here?”

“To take you home. Keep you safe.”

Those words ground Liss to a halt faster than stepping in cement. “No, thank you.”

“Not up for debate.”

God, he was infuriating. Stubborn. Bossy. And certain that simply because he’d lived eighty-seven years, he was right more often than not.

Not this time.

“You’re right. I’m not debating. I’m telling you that I don’t need a guard dog. And I really don’t need someone else telling me what I need. Ever.”

“Wrong. You’re human. Nephilim protect humans. It’s that simple.”

She grabbed her coat off the row of hooks. Although Liss was almost pissed enough to let her anger warm her against Buffalo’s November chill. “Yes, sure, you protect humanity in general. Specific humans from specific demons that have been sighted or already threatened them. I don’t have a demon posse coming after me.”

“That’s optimistic of you.”

Zavier was too subsumed by the dangers he fought on a daily basis. It seemed to have gone right over his head that all that protecting and defending worked . “I’ve lived twenty-nine years without even knowing demons existed. I never heard voices trying to talk me into doing something evil. Never saw ghosts, never felt a chill in the air.”

“But you’re one of us now.”

“Hardly.” The Nephilim were crazy powerful. Had wings.

Gideon’s girlfriend, Evangeline, was a Dark Nephilim , with powers she hadn’t fully identified yet. And Maisy—who’d always seemed as average as Liss—had picked up a snazzy new power as Keeper of the Key to the Gates of Hell. She could shoot the First Light out of her body. It eviscerated anything evil.

Then there was Liss. A tagalong, third wheel, normal/average/powerless human.

With a tight smirk thinning those full lips, Zavier snorted. “You think the paranormal world gossips any less than humans? Everyone knows about you, Liss. That you live with a Keeper of the Key to the Gates of Hell. That you’re friends with the three most powerful Nephilim warriors.”

Ha. Liss noticed that he slid in that self-stroke, calling himself the most powerful. Zavier wasn’t at all modest about his fighting skills. For a man who kept such a low profile in conversations, it was always adorable watching him puff himself up.

Except for now.

When he was using it as a ridiculous excuse to harangue her. “Great. Maybe this so-called notoriety will get me a job offer. Or my Tinder profile will get better matches.”

“Stop joking,” he ordered. His words clipped off like bullets. “You’re a target now. A way to get at us.”

That…hadn’t occurred to her. Sure, she enjoyed a good superhero show where the secret identity was maintained to keep family and friends out of danger. But those weren’t real.

Of course, six months ago, Liss hadn’t thought that devastatingly hot half-angels were real, either.

“You taught me and Maisy all that self-defense.” The ultra-warrior had attempted to train them in some celestial form of jiujitsu. She and Maisy had agreed to the basics of knee to the balls, heel to the instep level of training. They’d both been black and blue for weeks from practicing a special move that flipped an attacker onto the ground. It made Liss feel powerful. “I’ll be fine.”

A second later, his elbow was crooked at her throat. He’d wrapped a leg around hers. Oh, and Zavier’s other hand held a knife to her ribs. “How fine?”

Liss wasn’t worried at all that he’d hurt her. She was worried that she’d sort of…quiver at her back side being pressed up against all of him. “Show-off.”

“Preternatural speed isn’t showing off. It’s just one of a dozen ways creatures can kill you before you realize they’re even there.” Zavier released her. Then he brushed a fingertip across the beads of sweat dappling her chest just above her sports bra. “Where’s the protection charm Gideon made for you?”

Uh-oh. This was her bad. She tossed it into her pocket—most days—before leaving for work. But the velvet pouch wasn’t much of a workout accessory. “On my dresser. I didn’t want it clanking against my sternum during the class.”

“As much as you don’t want to be eaten by a demon?”

She threw up her arms, whacking her wrist on the doorframe hard enough to feel the pain reverberate up her arm. At least it distracted her from the lingering heat where her ass had been pressed against Zavier.

“Enough. You’re hyper-vigilant. I’m…not. Yet . Where we both should be is probably somewhere in the middle.”

Liss wanted to storm toward the bus stop. But it was hovering around freezing, so it wouldn’t exactly suck to immediately jump into Zavier’s SUV. And what really stopped her intended dramatic flounce (which he’d so earned with that smug, know-it-all attitude) was the layer of ice bridging the doorstep and the parking lot.

She looked down. Prepped to step flatly so as not to land on her ass…

…and promptly landed on her ass. Because Zavier had shoved her. “Hey!”

Looking up to yell at him gave her a front row seat at watching the Nephilim warrior in action. He’d popped out his ombre black and silver wings to fly over the ice. In those two seconds, he’d also popped jagged-edged knives into both hands from his arm sheaths.

That was due to the…thing at the edge of the building.

Of course.

Oh, Liss was sure it was a demon, thanks to the giant fanged, disembodied head with bloody entrails hanging from it. She just didn’t know what kind. Or what gender.

Somehow, without wings, it floated. Zipping around, evading each of Zavier’s knife thrusts, the offal hanging from its face waggling around and dripping black blood on the fresh snow. Liss scooted over to the door. Then she slid her arm through the handle, holding it closed. Nobody was coming out here to witness this horror on her watch. It was the smallest possible thing she could do to help.

It was also the only thing she could do. So she wouldn’t run inside and scream and flip out. No, she’d stay out here with it and help keep Zavier’s secret.

She’d watched him train with the others. But watching him fight an actual demon kicked everything up several notches. Now she understood what he’d said about dancing and fighting being similar. His body moved so fluidly. The only noise was of the scritch of his coat and the wheezing gasp of the demon head. Zavier wasn’t panting. Or grunting with effort. He used his wings minimally, mostly to shoot up in the air.

Aside from the whole disgusting demon thing? This was a show that Liss could watch all night. She wasn’t scared. Okay, a little grossed out and terrified, but that was more of a knee-jerk, lizard brain reaction.

The logic center of her brain was aware that Zavier, Rhys, and Gideon truly were the best fighters out of all the Nephilim . Liss had zero doubt that Zavier would triumph. Probably without so much as breaking a sweat.

Too bad it was November, and his coat obscured the movement of his muscles. Still, it was super cool to see his wings somehow coming through the coat. And to watch him spin and twist and lunge in athletic and acrobatic mastery.

Yeah—she was getting turned on by watching him battle a demon. That summed up the weirdness of her new life in a nutshell.

Zavier somersaulted under the dangling entrails. Then he grabbed them to reel in the head like a kite bucking against the wind. Once the head was in reach, he buried his knife in an eye.

That dropped it immediately to the ground, motionless. Zavier barely rolled out of its way in time. He stood, looking at the streaks of black entrail blood glistening wetly on his clothes. “Damn it. This is going to reek on the drive home.”

“Are you okay?” Liss asked in a breathless rush. Because now that the head was dead—or incapacitated, how could you tell?—she realized that she’d been tamping down on more fear than she’d admitted to herself. And she was comfortable staying pressed against the building, a solid dozen paces away from the head.

“Of course. That was nothing.” His tone indicated that her question was like asking a weightlifter if opening a jar of pickles had been tough.

“It was something . What was it?”

“A Leyak . Indonesian demon that’s human by day, which is how it’s getting around downtown Buffalo unnoticed.” He pointed with a bloody knife at her position. “Good move barricading the door. Thanks.”

“Um, really the person due thanks is you . For saving me, and everyone inside, from that thing.”

Zavier opened his trunk. Pulled out a tackle box full of absolutely zero fishing supplies. He grabbed a container of Morton’s salt, a small vial, paper, and a lighter. “Yeah, well, it’s handy to have a visual aid to make my point.”

“Huh?”

He sprinkled salt in a circle around the head. Crumpled the paper into a ball. Then he dripped the contents of the vial onto the oozing entrails. “Holy water. It’ll speed up this clean-up.” After lighting the ball, he dropped it into the circle. Green flames shot at least twelve feet into the sky. It lasted for three seconds, and then nothing at all was left but the salt. “This Leyak was lying in wait. You could’ve been killed.”

Typical Zavier, unfazed enough by a little demon ass-kicking to immediately resume their squabble. Technically, if Zavier hadn’t come, she would’ve exited via the front door to get to the bus stop and would’ve avoided it completely. But Liss knew he’d barrel right over that argument. And the only reason she would’ve made it was to piss him off, on principle.

“It wasn’t lying in wait for me .”

He waggled a hand back and forth. “Fifty-fifty. The witches are a big draw. That much power in one place makes them a target. Chum in the water.”

“Aradia said they were wearing bells to repel demons,” Liss murmured. Suddenly the annoyance of the tinkling was something she was quite willing to accept.

If she came back for another class. Which wasn’t looking real likely right now.

“Smart. Smarter than you with no protection charm. Frankly, this thing could’ve been tracking you all day, in its human form. Then waited back here for the dark and the easy opportunity to take you out. Both for a snack, and as a smack in the face to us.”

“Oh.” Guess she couldn’t try to refute that anymore. Shame washed over her for putting Zavier in the position to have to rescue her. For being so stubborn and ungrateful every time one of the guys had insisted on giving her rides.

Yes, they were all over eighty. Loved video games and tech, but were gentlemen of a different era who defaulted to chivalry. She’d assumed that was all it was. Old-fashioned nonsense.

She’d been wrong.

“Come over and blend this salt into the snow.”

Liss used her foot to wipe away the circle while Zavier cleaned his knives. “Sorry that you had to work, um, off the clock, as it were. I can’t really afford your standard demon-slaying rates.”

“Nobody hired me for this. Still would’ve done it to protect those witches inside.” Gruffly, he added, “Especially you.”

“Because if I died, it would make Maisy cry, and then Rhys would be pissed.” She knew she was the third wheel. The Nephilim accepted Maisy because she and Rhys were together. And they accepted Liss as, well, an appendage of Maisy. Technically, they had no reason to keep her in their inner circle.

“That.” He opened the door for her. “And I like our movie nights.”

Zavier’s admission took her by surprise. “Oh. Good.”

When the others coupled up to do lovey-dovey stuff, Liss educated Zavier on all the classic films he’d missed out on while saving the world over and over again. Along with some classically horrible films—to make him suffer, and to try and tease out a rare laugh.

That smug, pretentious grin flashed as he started the car. “Mostly, I’m happy to do this freebie because it proves my point.”

Jackass.

But he’d more than proved his point. That Liss couldn’t do anything to protect herself.

As well as the auxiliary point that Zavier was smoking hot with a knife in his hand…