Chapter Thirteen #2
“I’ve changed my mind.” Silas glowered. “I’m siding with the others. You’re insane.”
Azrames practically glowed. “I couldn’t disagree more. This is probably the coolest idea anyone’s ever had. Good going, Marmar.”
He plucked the baggy from the table and made a fist. He tipped a small amount of white powder onto the steely meat between his thumb and first knuckle, then offered it to me.
I leaned into his hand as if we were partying in Ibiza, letting his palm clamp down over my lips as my nose met the patch of drugs, and I inhaled.
He licked up the remaining granulates.
We were going to be trouble.
Ever the buzzkill, Silas made his displeasure known.
Smoke and myrrh crashed over me from either side. I rubbed my eyes, blocking out the marble floors, the luxury furniture, the clean lines of the high rise. I’d known this would be a hard pitch to sell. My plan to win the siren’s army required both Azrames and Silas to play along.
“Any news from the Spider Queen on this?” Azrames asked Priscilla.
She peeked open an eye from her place in quiet meditation. She said, “I’m just her servant. I can’t sway fate.”
“And,” I prodded, “is fate on our side?”
She disappeared into meditation once more, either unable or unwilling to answer.
Silas smoldered, crossing his arms as he leaned against the glass.
The others had split into subgroups as we dove into our tasks. The humans split off as the day wore on, with Xuan and Priscilla casting protective wards as they stuck with Nia and Kirby, finishing out the women’s summit until we could reconvene.
That left me alone with the seemingly impossible task of convincing Silas that this was a good plan.
“Come on,” I pushed. “You’re already defecting, right? Why not stick it to the man?”
His lips became a flat line. “Falling is one thing, Marlow. And as it stands, they issued the sort of demand that implies I could turn you in and still comply with Heaven. If they think I might be on their side, it’s one less target on our back.
You’re safer from outside threats as long as they think the sleeper cell beside you might finish the job.
There’s wisdom in playing it close to the vest instead of humiliating Heaven. ”
“Humiliating Heaven?” Az asked, propping an ankle over a knee as he reclined. He’d been examining a dagger that appeared to be made entirely of shadow. He pressed his finger to the tip of the blade and asked, “Or humiliating you?”
Silas grumbled, “Humiliating me is a given. Is that the goal?”
I scrunched my face apologetically. This was why he hated my plan for the siren. I said, “Kind of. But in my defense, we need people to hate Heaven. If it’s just a video, people will say it’s fake footage. If there are a million witnesses—”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“I am. But the principle stands. Every time that K-pop band has a show, they sell out in seconds. I think each stadium has a carrying capacity close to eighty thousand? They are objectively the biggest army, but they aren’t on tour at the moment.
But Vexa LaRue’s last tour broke attendance records everywhere she went.
Her fans are feral. If you show up and—”
“And what!” He threw up a hand. “Threaten the pop star? Tell some singer that she’s going to Hell?”
“She’d have a great time in Hell.” Az shrugged from the couch.
Frustration wrinkled my brow. I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I don’t care what you say or do. You just need to show up and make it clear that she has upset Heaven. And physically show up. In angel form. Like, whip your wings out. Can you do that on Earth?”
He narrowed his eyes. “I can do anything. I just don’t think this is the right call.”
I planted my feet. “Be honest. You truly think it’s a bad idea? Or you just don’t want to do it?”
His nostrils flared as he did his best to control his temper. After a beat, he said, “I see why you’re going in this direction. Have an angel harass the siren, have the siren’s people hate angels.”
“Wait,” Az piped. “You forgot the part where the demon saves the day.”
Today was the second day of the angelic countdown, meaning Silas should be left alone through tomorrow.
He made a few offhanded comments—one about his warding, and the other about how, even if the archangels spied on him, they’d assume he was behind enemy lines, conning me into loyalty—which triggered a discomfort I wasn’t ready to handle.
Thanks to Alessia’s venom, I was invisible, as far as our enemies were concerned.
Inelegant? Perhaps. But it was a good plan.
One of Vexa’s top-grossing songs, “Satan’s Gospel,” had spent twelve weeks at number one, giving conservative talk show hosts something to fearmonger about and angering millions of pearl-clutching churchgoers.
If the Lord was going to strike someone down, of course it wouldn’t be murderers or human traffickers; it would be a pop icon.
When an angel popped out of nowhere up to harangue her, it would shock and infuriate sixty thousand fans, at modest estimates.
When a handsome, horned demon stood up for the singer and swiftly bested his adversary, it would provide the army with someone to side with.
Not only was Heaven the bad guy, but they had a good guy behind whom they could throw their weight.
“I don’t think you’re thinking this through.
” Silas kept his hand up. He took a cautious step toward me.
“Think of all of the lukewarm believers right now. If they see unimpeachable evidence of an angel, particularly one telling them things they already believed about this Vexa LaRue person, it will send them back into the pews in droves. Heaven will experience an attendance boom like never before.”
I looked to the corner of the room, sucking my teeth while I flipped through the outcomes.
This was the flaw in my plan. On the one hand, Heaven would look weak when the angel lost in mock battle to the demon.
On the other, 2.8 billion people who loosely identified as Christian would have concrete evidence of their faith.
The evening sun dipped between buildings, hitting me in the eye as it found the gap in the skyscrapers.
I squinted up at it, eyes hurting as it reflected a brilliant shade of gold on the tall glass building across from ours.
My shoulders slumped, a humorless chuckle sweeping my frustration from me as dry helplessness took its place.
“What?” Az asked, looking up at me from the couch.
“It’s nothing,” I said, still looking at the red-orange glow. “Helios. Inti. Amaterasu. Ra. Surya. Mithras.”
“Sun deities?” Azrames clarified.
It was moot. There were deities in every pantheon dedicated to the sun, including the King of Heaven, who was said to have made the sun stand still for three days.
But the religious majority neither knew about nor believed in any other god.
Our performance before the siren and her army would wake people up to life behind the veil, but it would keep them in binaries.
Heaven would get more worshippers than ever before. Unless…
“Holy shit,” I mumbled. I caught their widened eyes out of my periphery, but I had already taken off for the bedroom.
The men trailed behind me just in time to see me tip my suitcase upside down on the bed, lacking the patience to carefully unpack. I grabbed my laptop and cursed repeatedly as I connected to the hotel’s Wi-Fi.
“Are you going to tell us what’s going on?” Azrames asked.
I didn’t answer. I was already hard at work finding the number for the largest private antiquities museum in Greece.
I dialed from my computer and fidgeted as the line rang and rang.
I checked the time in the upper-right hand of my computer.
Fuck. It was the middle of the night in Athens. There was no way—
A voice answered in Greek. I only knew how to say hello, goodbye, and how to ask for the bathroom in their native tongue, but I happened to know polyglots were thought highly of in this household.
“I’m calling for Dorian Castellanos. Is he still there?”
“Ma’am,” replied the accented voice, “the hour is very late.”
It wasn’t a no. Emboldened, I pressed, “Tell him Merit Finnegan is calling. I promise you: He will want to hear from me. He’s been waiting for this call.”
Silas and Azrames moved fully into the room.
Azrames took a knee by the bed to stare at the screen with me.
Silas remained at the end of the bed, frowning down at the back of the computer.
We waited in silence as classical music played.
Nerves ticked through me. I drew in uneven breaths until the line clicked.
“Merit,” came a smooth, smiling voice. “I had no doubts you’d make us proud, but to hear you’re already aligned with Alessia Clovis? Quick work and powerful allies. The Prince has impeccable taste.”
I heated. I closed my eyes to focus as I said, “I need a big favor. Probably the biggest favor anyone’s ever asked of you.”
The line was quiet for a moment. I exchanged looks with Azrames, his eyes a powerful shade of pewter as a wrinkle of hope crept into his expression.
“Color me curious,” Dorian said at long last.
“How do you and Poppy feel about going public?”