Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
“Where is he?” I asked, marching towards Shane who was behind the bar, like anyone else ever came in here.
It wasn’t as vile as it had been the first time.
There was a cozy fire that smelled like gas instead of wood, the better for not smoking up the undercity.
Actual fireplaces weren’t legal, at least the smoke wasn’t.
The floor was still clean, like the walls, and the light was brighter, less dingy.
“Who?” Shane answered, pulling a blood bag out of a fridge and pouring it into a glass.
I blinked at him, feeling weird about taking blood like it was an ordinary drink. His dark eyes glimmered as he set it down in front of me, almost like he was challenging me to trust him.
I took the glass but frowned at him. “Lorien the cupid. I think he knew about the attack.”
“That explains why he hasn’t been around ever since. The poor fool.”
I sipped my blood while I eyed him. “Poor fool because I’m going to kill him?”
“Poor fool, because he’s working with someone who would send mercenaries to capture a notorious assassin, and then after that vampire personally didn’t kill a single one of those mercenaries, killed them himself.
We got there in time to grab a few, but no one talked, because when they tried, they died.
Very messy deaths.” He shuddered melodramatically.
“Poor mercenaries. You’ve got to check your contracts, particularly when working with demons. ”
“Which you’d know personally?”
He flashed a smile at me. “No. I know from Frankie’s father, who made a terrible deal with a demon.”
“Not your father?”
“No. My mother’s second husband. My father could never produce such a delight as Frankie, or his father, who actually trusted others.”
That made me very curious about what, exactly Shane and his father were, but it would be rude to ask any more personal questions. I sipped my blood, put it down, and then started tapping the bar.
“That’s odd. Tralcon wouldn’t kill off his hired killers,” I mused.
“Too bloodthirsty?”
Oh. I’d said that out loud. I shook my head. “Bad business. Tralcon was as bloodthirsty as they come, but he always looked at long-term results. You kill off your hires, you get lower and lower quality. They weren’t particularly good in the first place.”
“Then maybe they were tied to Romi instead.”
I gave him a look. “I suppose it’s possible, but what would be the point? Revenge for liberating a fairy? Do you know how expensive mercenaries are? Romi’s a goblin. They look at the bottom line.”
“Interesting. Demons it’s long-term, goblins it’s money… What do vampires look at?”
I blinked at him. What did vampires generally consider? “Whatever is the least disruption to their state of undeath. Most vampires are very placid and like it that way.”
“And fairies?”
I sniffed. “I don’t know fairies.”
“And yet, you knew to get sparkly clothes that Chira still won’t take off. Not any of them.”
“Oh. I need to return her cake box.”
“Her?”
“The fairy who helped me bake the cake and shop for Chira’s clothes. She works at the department store. A lot of fairies worked there, but she was the only one who didn’t mind interacting with a vampire.”
He scowled. “She should.”
I nodded. “Yes, she should. At least snobbery keeps them from rubbing elbows with the things that would devour them.” I finished my blood and stood up. “Do you have any ideas for tracking the angel?”
“No. Did your angel like the cake?”
I blinked at him and then felt all cold and hot even though my temperature was perfectly stable. "He said that he did." I felt guilty for no reason, no, for hoping that Gavriel liked my cake when I knew that him having any genuine feelings for me would ruin him.
“He lied.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
“He hates that cake with a passion. He hates that you protected it instead of yourself. He wishes the cake had never been born. It could taste like heaven itself, and he’d still despise it. He doesn’t understand that the cake is your love, that your love makes you weak, that he is the cake.”
I stood for a moment, considering. “You’re saying that he hates himself?”
“For not protecting you, for convincing you to stop killing and putting your life at risk, yes. Most likely. But he’s got a good smile that can cover up all the feelings.
He’s an angel. Would you like me to tell you what they’re like?
” He leaned over the counter, eyes burning with an eerie green light. What was he?
“I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Purpose. And what happens when an angel loses his purpose?”
“He starts hanging out with vampires.”
“You aren’t ‘vampires’ to him.”
I winced. Except I was supposed to have a cover where we were runaway lovers. I’d accepted his love and thought it was fine. What world would it be fine for someone to ruin someone else’s life and call it love?
“The longer you are together, the less comfortable you are with the situation,” he observed.
“I’m used to being alone. And he is used to being part of something great and important and noble.”
“Exactly. And if he’s part of you, and he thinks you’re great and important and noble… That’s a lot of pressure. Not that you can’t handle it. I mean, you didn’t kill a single one of them. It’s almost as if they were sent to die. But what would be the point of that?”
“None of them were identified?”
“After their faces melted off, there wasn’t much to identify.”
“There was one demon with wings. And a werewolf. Fresh recruits. Who would you go to if you wanted to hire mercenaries that you were going to kill? What about the Devil?”
“The Operator of Wonderland?” He grimaced. “If there’s anything worse than a demon, it’s a devil.”
“Exactly. And if it was him brokering the talent, then he’d be quite put out about their demise. It would be bad for business.”
Gavriel cleared his throat behind me. My skin started itching, particularly my gums.
“The devil?” he asked.
I turned to stare at the most beautiful, glorious, ominous presence in the world. In any world. “I can see him on the way to drop off the cake box.”
He raised the blue and white striped container, ribbon wrapped around his wrist. “Let’s go then.”
“Angels don’t belong in Wonderland.”
“This angel belongs wherever my vampire goes.”
His vampire? I got goosebumps and my stomach tangled and my hands got weird, sweaty, only vampires don’t sweat. “Right. No point in trying to look like a gambling addict, so we’ll go in with a moderate show of force, get his attention, and talk to him about the mercenaries.”
He cocked his head, thinking. “This is the Devil of Song. I’d say that we go in offering him information about the mercenaries that he probably fixed.
And if it wasn’t him, then maybe he can tell us who it was.
A show of force isn’t going to impress him.
How well do you know the Devil of Wonderland? ”
“Not at all. And you?”
“We’ve had a few dealings.”
“Dealings?” I glared at him. “You’ve made deals with a devil?”
“Dealings, not deals.” He took my hand and pulled me closer so he could gaze into my eyes while his heart beat in his chest, harder and faster the closer we were together. “If you haven’t met him, that means that your demon avoided him, right?”
I scowled at him. “Tralcon wasn’t my demon.” Also, he shouldn’t be so close to me, and he definitely shouldn’t look at me like that. His heart shouldn’t be reacting to me, and I shouldn’t be craving more of him, either.
“You’re so beautiful when you give me that fierce gaze of righteous indignation.”
I shook him off me and headed for the door. “There’s nothing righteous about me.”
Wonderland was in a more respectable part of Song, if such a thing existed, across the street from the Sphinx’s Curse. The gate into the park wasn’t large enough for cars. That must be a different entrance, or devils don’t deal with cars. Just cards.
I glanced at Gavriel, who I’d avoided looking at on our entire walk. I was still too aware of his every breath, his movement, the way his wings brushed the wall on my right side protectively around me.
“You’ve been here? Did you gamble?” I asked as we walked through the iron gates and headed beneath the trees that swayed under a different sky than had ever been in Song.
It was a sky, for instance, instead of the roof of a cave, a pocket that was in another world, or at least a different place in our world.
It made my skin itchy; the trees that weren’t quite right, the flowers that exhaled a perfume that mesmerized the senses, relaxed and beguiled like an angel with delicious blood that was too perfect and pure for the world.
“It was something of a gamble, but I stacked the deck first.”
The flowers were supposed to put me in a state of relaxation and lower my inhibitions. Happily, I didn’t breathe. I glanced at Gavriel again.
He looked back at me, brow raised.
“Don’t relax,” I said.
He smiled slightly. “The flowers are lovely. You don’t think I should enjoy them?”
I scowled and stopped looking at his beautiful face. “No.” And I shouldn’t enjoy looking at him, either.
“Is there something wrong with enjoying your life?”
“Yes.”
He chuckled. “Why is that, Miss Ruby?”
He’d called me Louisa. That had felt so good to be called a name given to me by someone who loved me instead of someone who owned me.
“You’re an angel. Enjoyment is for those without a purpose.”
“Don’t listen to Shane. He knows nothing about angels, only sees Lorien after he’s abandoned his cause and thinks he knows all of us.
The thing about angels is that we don’t enjoy very many things, not that we’re against enjoyment.
For instance, the flowers make me irritable and impatient at their lack of truth.
They tell me lies, which I can’t take pleasure in.
Richard is constantly seeking pleasure and is unable to find it.
He did enjoy the vampires taking his blood, though. ”
I stiffened up. “He shouldn’t.”