Chapter Fourteen
Angie
Villetti entered my apartment, handed me two paper bags of food that smelled divine, accepted the towel without comment, draped it over his head, and rubbed his soaked hair with both hands. “Ahhh. Thanks.”
I didn’t ask myself how I had known ahead of time his hair was wet.
He peeled himself out of his damp winter coat and hung it on the ornate green metal hat and coat rack, as if he’d been here often.
“S?” he asked.
The coat rack had a fancy S on the very top, like a finial, and each hat-spike was curved and curlicued like more S’s. “Gift,” I said. “Vintage early nineteen hundreds.”
“Cats?”
“Two.”
“Thought you witches didn’t believe in familiars.”
“The cats believe in witches.”
Villetti grinned. Not cop Villetti. Not the war-ravaged-soul-from-a-dark-ops-division Villetti.
This was boyfriend Villetti. From college.
Young and carefree. He handed the towel to me and toed off his ice-covered shoes, shoving them near the door, his hair slinging forward over his eyes.
I noted he still wore thick wool socks in winter, just as he had when we were together.
This pair was black with brown turkeys all over them.
Something warm curled through me. It was kinda cute. Until I remembered how successful he’d been undercover. Villetti was good at games. He’d had to be to stay alive. I was part of his case. Is he playing me? I frowned before I could control it and went to the kitchen.
In the kitchen I poured hot water over the grounds in the French press. More over the leaves in the teapot and strainer. Opened the food, dividing it onto two plates. Placed cloth napkins and stainless steel utensils on the island, watching my uninvited guest who had come bearing gifts.
Villetti had seen my quick frown but he didn’t remark on it, instead walking around the apartment.
When Aurora bumped his leg, asking for attention, he let her sniff his hand, then picked up the cat, where she cuddled in the crook of his elbow and started purring.
Which she never did with anyone but me. And sometimes not me. I narrowed my eyes. Disloyal cat.
Except—Villetti would have read my sheet before he came over. I wondered if he had a trace of catnip in a pocket and on his fingers. I narrowed my eyes at him and leaned a hip against the kitchen counter, watching.
The cop and former lover looked at my belongings but didn’t touch. Touching things in a witch’s domicile could be hazardous, and I always had things lying around that would go boom if mishandled. He seemed to remember that danger.
But he walked around as if he was learning who I was by what I owned. Taking his time. Not looking at me. Letting me watch him. Maybe letting himself settle into whatever he was now, the not-a-cop, or the only-a-cop, in my apartment.
I, for some ungodly reason, let him look. Let us both…acclimate. That was the word. Acclimate to this moment.
“Peewee?” he asked, taking us back to before my frown, to the guard at the door as he took in the greens and blues and fluffy, cozy warmth of my apartment. As he petted my traitorous cat.
“Because she’s vertically challenged,” I deadpanned.
Villetti slanted a look at me under his still-wet hair. “Six-two, maybe -three. Six-four in boots. Vertically challenged?”
I shrugged. When coffee and tea were ready, I poured his into a mug.
Crossed the kitchen. Put the mug in his free hand.
Leaned my hip against the island on that side, closer to him, where I could keep an eye on him.
“They either pick their names or are honored with them. Currently, I have Grizz, Raccoon, Pretty Thang, Peewee, Boots, and Peg.”
“And Pretty Thang is?” He sipped.
“The team’s medic. And a man whore. He has magic. Women fall at his feet, and his penis falls into their vaginas.”
Villetti snorted and dropped the cat when hot coffee splashed onto his hand and went up his nose.
Aurora didn’t seem insulted at being dropped and began to weave around Villetti’s legs as the cop coughed and set down his mug. He accepted a tissue from me and blew coffee from his nose.
“That was evil, tesoro mio,” he said, sounding all Italian in the words my treasure.
“That was perfect timing,” I said, still leaning on the island. I took a chance. “Like the catnip in a pocket or rubbed into your socks.”
He disposed of his tissue. Shoved his hair away from his face. “Figured that out, did you?”
“Mmmm.”
“Mind if we sit and eat? I’ve been on my feet all night, and I’m done in.”
“Done in,” was a Southernism. I had always loved to hear him mix his languages. Ital-glish, I had called it. When he was in college, he’d spoken four languages. I wondered how many languages he spoke now, after the war and being a covert operative.
I shrugged, took a place at the table, and dug in.
The food was so far beyond divine that angels may have hovered overhead singing hymns about it.
Mama & Tía Maria’s made the best breakfast in town.
Cops, city workers, construction crews, members of the city council, the mayor, bankers, financiers, and every other mover and shaker in the city and county ate there, rubbing elbows.
It was a place where there were no class distinctions.
Mama and Tía Maria made it so. The Salvadoran breakfast el tipicos was heavily seasoned beans tossed with rice, fried eggs with crushed red peppers to the side, tomato and lettuce, corn tortillas, and fried plantains, and both meals came with a side of wild-sow bacon, cured with Salvadoran spices and local honey and fried to a perfect crisp. It was a little piece of heaven.
We ate in silence as the sky brightened and the snow grew harder, thicker, heavier.
I hoped Villetti had brought an ATV or he wasn’t getting out of here.
He’d be bunking down with the guards. A thought that made me smile.
His eyes caught it and I waved away the question in his lifted brows with my egg-stained fork.
When I sat back, the spicy food sat uneasily on top of the donuts. I’d need to work out extra hard to keep the pounds off.
Villetti took our dirty plates to the kitchen and washed them, setting them on the drying rack. He had always done that—cleaned up after us, no matter who cooked. Asshat had blood servants who did that sort of thing.
When Villetti sat back down, he reclined in his chair, his lean legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. Our feet brushed under the island. His face altered, just a hint of a change, but I knew what was coming. He started to speak.
“Stop,” I said.
He closed his mouth.
“You’re getting ready to question me. I need to know who’s asking, Leandro or Villetti?”
His eyes constricted, just a hair, telling me what I needed to know.
In my most formal voice, I said, “You may address me as Princess Angelina. As such, I am under the protection of the queen. You will have a witness, and I will have legal representation.”
“We don’t have to do it that way, Ange. We can just talk. No taping, no notes, nothing.”
“Lessons learned the hard way,” I said. But dang it, the sun was up and Walter was asleep.
“Ojos. Contact the queen’s official residence for Robere.
I need a witness to listen as I am questioned by an officer of the law in my home.
If a Robere is unavailable, I’ll need representation by another of the queen’s lawyers. ”
“Affirmative,” the butler-accented voice said. “Communication underway. One moment.”
Villetti rubbed his forehead and said something beneath his breath in Italian.
It sounded like a prayer. A lot of people on the front lines who had never believed in anything supernatural, who had never believed in prayer, had begun praying during the war.
Being faced with a demon who wanted nothing more than to take you over and use you to kill everyone and everything you loved tended to send you looking for something bigger than yourself.
I’d had my own angel once upon a time. I knew we weren’t alone in the universe, in the various dimensions, and that some inhabitants of other places were dangerous, and some were helpful.
And some were tricky and unpredictable. I had always prayed, though Hayyel’s presence in my life for so long meant my prayers were different from most people’s.
It occurred to me that I hadn’t prayed before trying to use the untested staff, before going to Londyn’s house, before…anything. And nothing had turned out okay. I’d had a concussion, so…lesson learned. Of course, I had prayed before marrying Asshat and that had been a disaster too.
The ambient sound on the other end changed. I sent the conversation to the wall screen and Brandon Robere introduced himself, his face and upper body life-sized. He smiled and said, “Leandro Villetti. You look good. Better than the last time I saw you. It looks as if your skin grew back well.”
Villetti gave a much smaller smile, clearly not happy to begin this conversation in a lesser position of strength. “Thanks to you. I appreciate you keeping me alive and getting me a Mithran Infermieri.”
“Don’t thank me. It was the queen’s orders: keep you alive.”
Villetti’s head jerked up, just the slightest. Mine went up faster, higher. The wooden vase didn’t suggest anyone was lying. And no one had told me about this. “Queen’s orders?” I asked.
“You’ll have to ask her about it,” Brandon said, his dark hair swept back, a morning shadow on his usually clean-shaven face. “For now, Leandro Villetti, lead detective of the Paranormal Investigations Division of Chattanooga—would that be your title?”
“Close enough.” The vase glowed faintly at the lack of full disclosure, though neither of them would see the glow.
“State your full title, please,” Robere said.
Villetti frowned and sat up in his chair. He gave the date and time, and added, “Newly appointed chief of the Tri-County Paranormal Investigative Bureau, working out of Chattanooga main law enforcement offices, and liaison with PsyLED unit eighteen out of Knoxville.”