15. Why are you wearing my clothes, Quinn? #3
I gulped. Had he been talking to my parents for the entire time?
Why were they in Richmond? What had lured them out?
How? Why? A thousand questions without a single nice answer hammered through my head.
“If we could forget this ever happened, that’d be great.
I think I left something in the car, Perky. ”
Perky tightened his grip on my arm. “Drink your coffee. Everything’ll be fine.”
Drinking my coffee sounded like a good idea. Would I find a hidden stash of alcohol at the bottom of my cup? Miracles could happen. There was an angel in the room after all.
Quinn cleared his throat. “We need a copy of your birth certificate.”
“They try their best to forget I was born. You do realize I could have expedited one, right?” Did we need a copy of my birth certificate to get a bogus marriage license?
Damn it. Stupid government bureaucracy. If my parents had brought the certificate with them, I had ways of getting it out of their hands.
Beating them to death in a courthouse full of witnesses wouldn’t work.
I would need something equally violent but more private.
Did Richmond have a river or lake? Maybe a deep pond? Drowning them seemed like a good idea.
Sighing, Quinn shook his head. “I thought it would be faster to check with the CDC’s HR department, get their number, and ask for it nicely. I’m sorry. I had no idea they were such—”
The angel clapped its hand over Quinn’s mouth. “You will be polite, little one. Those words you intend to speak are not polite.”
Okay. I could act like an adult, or I could get smacked down by an angel. I could act like an adult. I could speak to my parents without screaming, yelling, or breaking down into an anxious, crying mess. Holding out my hand, I said, “Birth certificate, please.”
Look at me, all sorts of polite.
Everyone stared at me like I had grown a second head. My mother scowled and turned away. My father also scowled, but at least he had the basic decency to look me in the eyes when he did it.
Okay, then. If asking nicely wasn’t going to work, I had a second plan, and all I had to do was dig the vial out of my bra to implement it.
“I have enough pixie dust on me to turn this into a very public party you’ll never forget.
I’m probably the only person in a hundred miles licensed to do this.
If you don’t want my grandparents finding out you went on a pixie dust bender in a courthouse, I suggest you hand over my birth certificate. Please.”
I could be polite while issuing threats, too. I needed to give myself a gold star for my skills at being a real adult.
The angel’s laughter tinkled in my head. “How refreshing. She’s so serious.”
Stretching his velvety black wings, the incubus joined in, his chuckles making my toes curl in my shoes. I could threaten my parents while snuggling up to Quinn, couldn’t I?
The angel reached out and slapped the incubus upside his head. “No. You’re being bad.”
My desire to rub all over Quinn evaporated. Damn it. I couldn’t tell if I was disappointed or annoyed over the incubus manipulating me.
The incubus giggled. “Pixie dust benders are the best. Can you blame me? I’m allowed to do so much when everyone’s high. I even brought my camera.”
Sure enough, the incubus held a camera with his tail, and the red flashing light informed me he was already recording the scene. I spent several moments admiring his steady grip on the device.
One of the vampires cleared his throat. He wore the black robes of a state-licensed judge. “Miss, are you actually licensed for the handling and distribution of pixie dust?”
I gave Perky my coffee so I could dig out my CDC card for the judge to look over.
He read over my long list of permit codes and chuckled.
“Very nice, Miss Gardener. Should you decide to turn my courthouse into a rave, do handle your substances with the appropriate amount of caution—and send someone for me. Some things simply can’t be missed. ”
My mother whirled around and her eyes widened. “You wouldn’t dare!”
Damn, she had a piercing voice. I rubbed my ear against my shoulder while returning my identification card to my wallet. What had possessed me to call her when I had been ill?
Quinn grunted and shot the angel a glare.
With a shake of its wings and shoulders, the angel made a disapproving clucking noise.
“No, little one. That is not a polite thing to say. I’m sure this can be handled without Miss Gardener resorting to her secret stash of pixie dust, especially as I believe she has special plans for that vial.
It would be a pity to ruin her plans, wouldn’t it? ”
Crap. Angels were mind readers, and it must have been picking my brain when I had been outside. My entire body flushed. Tricky, sneaky angel.
The angel’s laughter sounded in my head, and I got the feeling I was the only one to hear its chiming amusement.
“Mr. Gardener, Mrs. Gardener. All they need is the birth certificate. It is in your possession. I can hear you thinking about it.”
“You filthy, headless blight,” my mother hissed through clenched teeth.
I took my coffee back from Perky, drank it down, and launched the empty cup in the direction of the nearest trash bin ten feet away.
It bounced off the rim, teetered, and fell inside.
With my hands free, I turned to Quinn’s officer and used his shoulder to hide my face.
“She just called an angel a blight, Perky. We’re going to get smited. ”
I didn’t want to be smited again. Smitings hurt.
“I think you mean smote.” Perky patted my back. “It’s okay, Gardener. Some people are just too stupid to live. We’re very grateful this pair lived long enough for you to be born.”
The angel’s amusement rang out, the sound so full of warmth and joy my entire body relaxed against Perky.
Without his help, I would have melted to the floor and been happy about it.
“No, little one. You can’t strangle your friend.
” The angel turned to the human woman standing off to the side.
“Darling, how ever did you manage to birth such a troublesome child?”
She laughed and flipped her dark hair over her shoulder with a smug smile. Yep. I’d seen that smug smile plenty of times on Quinn’s face. “Careful planning, Dad.”
Wait, what? Dad?
I stared at the angel. If angels had eyes, I’m certain it would have been staring back. Wait. Him? Did angels have gender? How could an it be a dad? How could a human have an angel for a dad?
Nothing made sense anymore.
“Please just give me my birth certificate.” There. I could become a bastion of sanity in a world gone mad.
“Wow, Gardener. You have really aced this being polite thing. Who are you? What have you done with my favorite coffee-making bitch?”
“Perky, I will kill you.”
The angel needed to stop laughing. It—his—laughter made me go all weak in the knees. “She loves you too much to kill you, Mr. Perkins, so don’t worry much. She’ll just make you suffer for a while.”
Damned angel, blabbing my darkest secrets. Perky wasn’t supposed to know I liked him too much to kill him. No wonder Quinn kept telling me angels were jerks.
“Yes,” the angel agreed.
My mother inhaled, and I closed my eyes, leaned against Perky, and braced for the worst. It came when she said, “And to think we were hoping you’d finally gone and gotten yourself killed.
No. I don’t see why we should do anything for you.
You caused this mess all on your own. Deal with your own problems.”
I’d heard variations of the same thing over and over again, but it still hurt. What had I done so wrong? Why were their shortcomings my fault?
The angel’s laughter stopped, and the world seemed an even darker place for its loss. Perky rubbed my back and whispered in my ear, “Please don’t cry. Chief Quinn loses his shit when you cry, and I don’t want to witness a murder today.”
The angel coughed, an accomplishment for an immortal lacking a throat. “Your Honor, fellow singers of the night, you might wish to turn around for a moment.”
I peeked through my lashes. The vampires cleared out so fast they forgot to take their clothes with them.
With another stretch of his black wings, the incubus chuckled. “This is so much fun.”
The angel smacked the incubus with a white, blue, and golden wing. “Mr. Gardener, Mrs. Gardener, let us try this one more time. You will give my future granddaughter-in-law her papers. You will do so now, without complaint. If you wish for me to be a blight on this Earth…”
I sucked in a breath, shoved away from Perky, and squealed, “Not the halo! Or the singing. Or the smiting. But please, please, not the halo!”
Quinn cracked up laughing, lifted his hand, and peeled the angel’s fingers away from his mouth. “Maybe you should step outside for this, Gardener. Perkins, why don’t you go with her and maybe cover her ears. If she faints, try to catch her, would you?”
“You just want to watch, don’t you?” Perky accused.
“Yes.”
By the book, I was supposed to walk away from dangerous individuals to avoid drawing unwanted attention.
If the angel wanted to chase me, could I really get away in time anyway?
I ran all the way to Perky’s SUV and hid under Quinn’s blanket so I wouldn’t have to witness when the angel smited my parents, no matter how much they deserved it.
Smote. Whatever.