29 Ariuk #2
My gaze slowly traveled from the phone to Luc. He raised one eyebrow. Nick had stopped eating altogether, while Zel wore the particular expression of someone who had just discovered dessert after believing the meal was over.
I looked back at the phone. “Are you two together?”
“No,” Raphael answered immediately.
“It’s complicated,” Dante said at almost the exact same time.
The bathroom went so quiet that I could hear water dripping from the edge of the tub onto the floor. Raphael seemed to realize what Dante had said a second later because his voice sharpened almost immediately.
“It is not complicated.”
“Oh, it absolutely is.”
I forgot there was still a sandwich in my hand.
There had been something between them the first day Dante came to collect me.
I had noticed it even while my entire life was falling apart around me—the way Raphael stiffened whenever Dante got too close, the ridiculous pet names, the looks that lasted longer than they should have.
At the time, I had been slightly more concerned with the fact that Heaven claimed the Devil owned my soul.
Apparently, I should have been taking notes.
“Why does Dante sound like that?”
“Like what?” Dante asked.
“Soft.”
A strange choking noise came through the speaker that I was almost positive came from Raphael. Beside me, Deus’s mouth spread into a grin, and the second he drew breath I lifted one wet finger toward him.
“Don’t.”
He pressed his lips together with visible effort while Dante sighed through the phone. “Can we discuss literally anything else?”
“Eventually.” I settled back against the tub, no longer remotely close to falling asleep, while Deus returned his hand to the back of my neck. Judging by the slight shake in his shoulders, he was still enjoying this far too much. “But I’m keeping this information forever.”
“Ari.” There was enough warning in Dante’s voice to make my smile widen instead of disappear. Whatever had happened between him and Raphael clearly wasn’t something he wanted dissected with four demons listening in, which only made me more interested in doing exactly that later.
“Fine.” I took another bite of my sandwich and rested it against the napkin Zel had tucked over the edge of the tub. “Why are you calling?”
The mood shifted almost immediately. Whatever amusement had been carrying through the speaker disappeared, and Nick straightened beside the tub while Luc reached for the phone and dragged it a little closer across the counter.
Even Deus’s fingers slowed against the back of my neck as Dante took a breath on the other end.
I lowered the sandwich to the edge of the tub where Zel immediately slid a plate under and looked toward the phone. Whatever Dante had called to tell us clearly wasn’t another one of his games. “What’s going on?”
Raphael let out a long breath on the other end. “For one, I learned that Dante is Chance.”
I waited for the rest of that sentence, but apparently that was the whole fucking thing. My brows pulled together as I tried to attach any meaning to the word beyond the obvious one. “What?”
“Chance,” Dante repeated. “An IDEA.”
I knew the old stories well enough to recognize the term, but stories were exactly what IDEAs had always been. Things tied to balance and impossibilities, not people you could call and annoy from the bathtub. “You’re telling me IDEAs are real?”
“Very,” Dante said.
Raphael cut in before I could ask anything else. “You know about them?”
“As horror stories. Things we tell each other to keep people from playing in the golden pools and stuff. It never stopped me. Wait, Dante, you’re one of them?”
“I am.”
I stared at the phone for another second before rubbing a wet hand over my face. Somewhere along the way, finding out the Devil was apparently a living IDEA had become something I was expected to absorb while naked and covered in bubbles. “Is that why you knew so much about what I am?”
“Partly.” Dante paused before continuing, apparently recognizing that I was about three seconds from refusing any answer longer than a sentence.
“Chance and Temptation aren’t the same thing, but I recognized some of what was happening to you because I’d already survived becoming something I wasn’t supposed to be. ”
The moment he started into something about the balance and rules beneath the ones Heaven taught us, I lifted one hand even though he couldn’t see it.
“Nope. Stop right there. I already know I’m an impossibility, I already know I’m Temptation, and I have no interest in discovering twelve new layers of existence tonight.
” I gestured vaguely around the bathroom with my sandwich.
“Zel is feeding everyone in a bathroom, Deus has finally figured out how to touch me without making me scream, and I was approximately thirty seconds away from falling asleep. Whatever metaphysical nightmare made you Chance can wait.”
Deus looked mildly offended beside me. “Finally?”
I patted his wrist. “Not the important part.”
I snorted, trying to play off the bit of embarrassment that was currently running through me. “Great, lovely. Can we get to the part why you had to call me? Please?”
Raphael answered this time, and the exhaustion in his voice wiped away the last of my amusement.
“I started asking questions about you and Uriel. Jophiel refused to give me the records surrounding Uriel’s condemnation, became increasingly hostile when I pushed, and told me you should never have existed the way you do. ”
My fingers tightened around the napkin beneath my sandwich.
Of course Jophiel had managed to turn my existence into an offense even after kicking me out of Heaven.
Deus’ hand resumed its slow movement along the back of my neck, the warmth of his touch taking the edge off the irritation crawling beneath my skin. “Well, that’s fucking rude.”
“Ariuk,” Raphael said, although there wasn’t much reprimand behind it.
“I know, I know. Serious.” I sighed and rested my head against the tub again. “I just really wanted one night where my biggest problem was finding out Lust has two dicks.”
Zel coughed hard enough that I looked toward him, while Raphael went suspiciously silent. Dante was the one who finally asked, “I’m sorry, what?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.” I pointed a warning finger at Deus when his grin widened again before turning my attention back to the phone.
“So Jophiel is still a dick, Heaven still thinks my existence is personally offensive, and Raphael apparently decided breaking rules and hanging out with you was the best way to investigate it. What does any of that mean for me?”
“I don’t know yet,” Dante admitted. “That’s the problem. Uriel believed something was wrong in Heaven before he was condemned, and what Raphael found the other day makes me think whatever he noticed never stopped.”
The last of the humor drained out of me. I stared at the water moving gently around my legs while Nick’s hand found mine where it rested over the side of the tub. His fingers threaded through mine without interrupting the call.
“Do you think Heaven is coming back for me?” I asked, ignoring the fact that my father figure wasn’t as big of an asshole as I had originally thought.