The Dirty Streets of Heaven

“But doesn’t it burn you? I thought silver…”

She reached up and pushed the locket to the side. Where it had rested, an angry red mark disfigured Caz’s white skin. Even as I watched it began to fade.

“Does it burn?” she asked. “Every moment of every day. That helps me remember.” And the way she said it gave me chills all over again. Her voice turned softer. “Do you have to leave right now, Bobby? Or do we have a little more time…?”

I wanted to-God, how I wanted to-but first things first: I had made a decision while I was on the phone. It scared me, but I was determined. “Listen, I have a couple of questions to ask you.”

“Be my guest.” She reached down and began to play with my wedding kit, as Leo used to call it. Very distracting.

“Not when you’re doing that. I can’t concentrate. Come on, stop tha-ouch!” She had wickedly sharp fingernails. “Bad girl!”

“Well, duh.”

“Look, I’m going to do something first that’s probably really, really stupid. I’m going to tell you the truth.”

Suddenly she became very still. “Really?”

“Yes, really. Here it comes. I have never, from the beginning, known what you took from Eligor. I told you that before. That was true. What’s also true is that I still don’t know. I found out it was a golden feather-how I found out doesn’t matter-but I have no idea what that means. I can’t imagine one of Hell’s major players gets worked up over any mere piece of jewelry. He must be able to get his hands on all the gold he wants. It has to be something more.”

She was lying on her side facing me. Her hand slid up to her own throat as if for protection. “Go on.”

“So what is this thing? I’m tired of bluffing, Caz. You’ve been straight with me as far as I can tell. I’ve been wandering in the wilderness for a long time. What’s this about? Why all the fuss over a feather?”

She raised herself higher on the pillows. The blankets slid away from the upper half of her slim torso like waves retreating from a beach. Even if it was an illusion, she was so beautiful that it was all I could do not to reach out and pull her to me.

“You’re right, Bobby,” she said slowly, her hand still at her throat. “Gold and jewels don’t have much meaning to…to people like us. In some rare cases, the value could be sentimental.” She lifted her hand away, revealing the locket. “Like this has meaning to me. A few dollars worth of silver but I’ve worn it for five hundred years. Would I raise a ghallu to get it back? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m strong enough-but I’d consider it, I swear I would.”

“Eligor doesn’t strike me as the sentimental type.”

“I’m just saying that there can be other reasons to covet something.”

“So the feather has some special meaning to Eligor?”

“To anyone who knows what it is-really, to anyone who sees it. It’s hard not to recognize it when it’s in front of you.”

“I’m not following, Caz.”

“Then you’re being a bit slow, Bobby. Where does a feather come from?”

“A bird.”

“Now you’re overthinking. Simpler. Where does a feather come from?”

I gave it a moment, then took a breath as it came to me. “A wing,” I said at last.

“And what has wings? Birds and bees and…?”

I shook my head. “No. Not here on Earth. Not in the real world. Look, Caz, I should know, I’m an angel myself. We don’t have wings here.”

“You don’t, Bobby. Because you’re Earthbound. You’re minor-league, if you’ll pardon me for saying-a foot soldier. But when the higher angels manifest here…well, they keep their heavenly attributes. If they’re important enough, that is. If they’re high enough up the ladder.”

I felt like she’d punched me in the face again. “So you’re saying that what Eligor had was a feather from an important angel? You really believe that?”

“Believe it? I held it, Bobby. I stole it out of Eligor’s safe and smuggled it out of the building-with a little look- the-other-way help from some bribed security guards. And if you’d seen the feather, you’d know I was right about it.”

“Yeah, but I haven’t seen it-and that’s the problem. Everybody thinks I have it but me. And eventually that’s going to get me killed.”

Her face changed then, blue eyes widening in such a convincing display of guilt and sorrow that for the first time in a while I wondered again whether I had been a fool to trust her at all. “I honestly didn’t mean this to happen to you, Bobby. It was my play, but it went wrong. I trusted Grasswax-not very far, but far enough for him to betray me, as it turned out.”

“Explain.”

“I had to get rid of it-I told you, I was being watched. And followed. As soon as Eligor knew his prize was gone, he knew what I’d done. He knew that I had it, and that I wouldn’t be afraid to use it against him.”

“What does that mean?”

“Look, you don’t just pluck a feather out of one of the Powers or Principalities,” she said. “And they don’t molt, either. Eligor had that feather for a reason.”

I was beginning to see the light. “A pledge, or a marker. And I’m guessing that somewhere in Heaven someone’s got something of Eligor’s stashed away in a desk drawer, too, which would prove to Eligor’s side that he’d been messing around making deals he wasn’t supposed to make. That way if either one betrays the secret, he goes down as well. All the way down.” I saw how it fit together, but I still had an awful lot of questions. “So one of my bosses and the grand duke must have made a bargain…but a bargain about what? What secret would be worth that kind of risk?”

She shrugged. “If I knew-or if I even had the feather-I wouldn’t be hiding out right now.”

“Because if that gold plume belongs to one of the higher angels, the rest of the higher angels could probably tell who it came from.” I whistled. “Man, this shit is bigger and crazier than I even guessed. Tell me the details about Grasswax. When did you give it to him, and when did it go missing?”

“I gave it to him the day before he died.”

“The day Sam and the kid opposed him over that Marino woman.”

“I suppose. And the next day he told me he’d hidden it-that he’d let me know where it was when we could talk in private.” A startled look crossed her face. “You were there! When he told me that, I mean.”

“At the Walker house? When we all found out about the missing soul? Seems a bit weird that would be a coincidence-the two biggest things to happen around here in years both going on at the same time.” I paused to chew things over. “Is that when Grasswax told you he’d got rid of the feather?”

“Yes, when I showed up. I was in a foul mood about the whole Walker thing because I thought Grasswax had done something stupid to draw attention to himself at exactly the time we didn’t need it. I didn’t realize how much bigger it was than that. And I didn’t get a chance to talk to him again before they killed him.” Her mouth pulled into a grim line. “He was a nasty, treacherous bastard who was going to rip me off, but even he didn’t deserve to go that way.”

“Are you sure he was going to betray you? Maybe he just didn’t get the chance to tell you where he stashed it before-”

“He had a perfectly good chance. I tried to have a private talk with him just afterward-I still had the excuse of debriefing him on the Walker thing, so it wouldn’t have attracted attention. But he shined me on, told me he had something crucial to take care of, making sure the feather was safe. Really he was going to offer it to Sitri, I’d bet now, to buy himself out of his gambling debts. But Eligor must have got to him first.”

I did my best not to dwell on the ugly memories this brought up, of Grasswax’s remains unstrung and festooned across Edward Walker’s backyard. “So that means the missing feather isn’t just Eligor’s problem, is it? Whoever it came from has to be just as worried about it as he is. Maybe even more. Any idea at all who it might be? A name Eligor might have mentioned?”

“In front of me?” She was scornful. “He wouldn’t take that risk. Where I come from nobody trusts anyone,