Raziel

somehow worse than anything else. I ought to be able to have my errant thoughts be private. Particularly when looking at Raziel made them so very errant. When he wasn’t annoying me.

But I’d better behave. “I’m sorry. I’m being rude as well. Did you want some of this?” I gestured toward the decimated meat loaf.

He shook his head. “I don’t eat meat.”

It was my turn to snort. “Yes you do. You ate a hot dog.” I paused. “How do I know that? When was I around you when you were eating hot dogs?”

“I don’t eat meat when I’m in Sheol,” he said.

“Is that what this place is called? Isn’t that another word for hell?”

“It means ‘the hidden place,’” he said. “And you’re not in hell.”

I stopped shoveling food in my face long enough to drink some wine, hoping it might calm me down. I looked up to realize that Raziel was watching me out of his strange black and silver eyes, watching me too closely, and unfortunately it wasn’t with unbridled lust.

“I want to go home,” I said abruptly, pushing away the tray.

“You haven’t had your strawberry shortcake yet,” he said. “I’ll open the champagne—”

“I don’t want any champagne, I want to go home.”

“You can’t. You don’t have a home anymore.”

“Why not? How long have I been gone?”

He turned his attention to his glass of wine. “From New York? A day and a half.”

I stared at him blankly. “That’s impossible. How can my hair have grown this long in a day and a half?”

“You still have blisters on your feet from those shoes, don’t you?”

I didn’t need to touch my heel to check. The blisters were still there. “If I’ve only been gone for a day, then my apartment must still be there. I want to go back.”

“You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“You’re dead.”

“Crap,” I said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I SET THE WINEGLASS DOWN ON THE table very carefully, pleased to see my hand wasn’t shaking at all. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t suspected as much—after all, I was no dummy. Men with wings, fires of hell, bloodsuckers. One moment I was in New York City, minding my own business, ogling a gorgeous man at the hot-dog stand, and the next I’d fallen down the rabbit hole. It didn’t mean I was going to give up without a fight. “How is that even possible?” My voice was hoarse but, apart from that, entirely calm. I’d learned to hide my reactions and emotions from my mother, Saint Hildegarde.

“You think you were immortal?” Raziel said. “Everyone dies sooner or later. In your case, it was a combination of those idiot shoes of yours and a crosstown bus.”

Okay. I sat back, the meat loaf sitting like a lump in the pit of my stomach, floating in a pool of gravy grease. “What were you doing there? You were there before I crossed the street. You were ahead of me at the hot-dog stand. I remember now.” I stared at him, thoroughly unsettled. “I remember everything now. Why? Why do I remember now when I couldn’t before?”

“I lifted what we call the Grace. It’s one of the gifts we have, the ability to make someone forget things. You wanted to remember, so I lifted it.”

“You should call it what it is: a mind-fuck,” I said, feeling definitely peevish. “What were you doing there? What am I doing here?”

“I was there to collect you.”

I let myself melt off the seat down onto the floor, needing something solid beneath me. I wasn’t going to hyperventilate. I hadn’t had a panic attack since I was a teenager, dealing with my mother’s attempts to save me from the devil. Guess Mom failed, because it looked as if I’d gone to the devil after all, if Raziel’s fangs and blood- sucking tendencies were anything to go by. Calm, I reminded myself. The sound of the sea would soothe me if I could just concentrate on it for a moment or two.

The danger passed, and I sat straight, rallying. “And exactly what were you—”

“Be quiet and I’ll tell you what you need to know,” he said irritably. “Your time was over. My job is to collect people and ferry them to the next . . . plane of existence. You weren’t supposed to fight me. No one does.”

I was freezing, colder than when I’d been lying on the wet sand. “What can I say, I fight everyone,” I said glumly.

“I believe it. As annoying as you are, I was still fairly certain that you’re an innocent, and I—”

“Depends on how you define innocent.”

He glared at me, and I subsided. “I assumed I was taking you to . . . what you might call heaven. Unfortunately I was wrong, and at the last minute I became foolishly sentimental and pulled you back.”

“From the jaws of hell,” I supplied. “My sainted mother would be so pleased.”

He didn’t react to that. He probably knew all about my crazy-ass mother. Was probably best friends with her, being an angel. No, he was a bloodsucker as well—she wouldn’t countenance that. “In a word, yes,” he said.

“Then maybe I shouldn’t be quite so cranky with you.” I made an effort to be fair. If he’d saved me from eternal damnation, then I supposed he deserved his props. “Then what happened? You got sick?”

He looked disgusted at the thought. “We can’t tolerate fire. In particular hellfire, but we don’t like any kind of flame. The women here have to tend the candles and fires when we need them. I got singed pulling you back, and it poisoned my blood. It would have killed me if you hadn’t asked for help.”

That was news to me. “Really? Who did I ask for help?”

“I don’t know—I was unconscious at the time. I imagine you asked God.”

Considering that I’d always had mixed feelings about the existence of God, I kind of doubted that. If God had created my born-again mother, he had a very nasty sense of humor. “And God sent them? The men who brought you—brought us back here?”

“God doesn’t involve himself in the day-to-day business of life. Not since free will was invented. But if you asked God for help, Azazel would have heard you, and he’s the one who came to get us.”

“Azazel, Sarah’s husband? I doubt it. He hates me.”

“Azazel doesn’t hate anyone. Though if he heard you being rude about Sarah —”

“I wasn’t rude, I was envious,” I said. “So they came and found us and brought us here. How?”

He took a sip of wine, stalling.

“How?”

“You know, this is going to take an eternity if you don’t manage to infer anything on your own,” he said.

“All right, I’ll infer up the wazoo and you can tell me if I’m wrong or right. I’m inferring that you’re . . . God, some kind of angel. If your job is to collect people and ferry them to the next existence, then that’s usually the work of angels, isn’t it? At least according to Judeo-Christian mythology.”

“Judeo-Christian mythology is often quite accurate. Angels escort the souls of the dead in Islam and the Viking religion as well.”

“So is that what you are? A fucking angel? Is that what all of you are?”

“Yes.”

Somehow I was expecting more of an argument. “I don’t believe you,” I said flatly.

He let out a sigh of sheer exasperation. “You’re the one who came up with it.”

The problem was, I did believe him. It all made sense, in a crazy-ass way. Which meant all my slightly atheistic suppositions were now out the window, and my mother had been right. That was even more depressing than being dead. “And how did they bring us here from the woods? They flew, didn’t they?”

“I told you, I was unconscious at the time. But yes, I imagine they flew.”

“They have wings.”

“Yes.”

“You have wings.”

“Yes.”

That was too much. “I don’t see them.”

“You’ll have to take it on faith,” he grumbled. “I’m not about to offer a demonstration.”

“So—”

“Just be quiet for a few minutes, would you?” he snapped.

“You’re not very nice for an angel,” I muttered.

“Who says angels are supposed to be nice? Look, it’s simple. You died in a bus accident. I was supposed to take you to heaven. For some reason you were heading for hell, I experienced a moment of insanity and pulled you back, and now you’re stuck. You can’t go back. You’re dead, and your body has already been cremated, so I can’t return you even if I thought it might be possible. Right now you’re here in Sheol with a family of angels and their wives, and you’re going to have to put up with it until I figure out what I can do with you.”

“This doesn’t make sense. If I’m dead and cremated, why am I here?” I looked down at my all-too-corporeal self. “I’m real, my body is real.” I reached up and hugged myself, and his eyes went to my breasts. Real breasts that responded to his look, wanted his touch.

I was losing my mind. First off, I didn’t want him touching me. Secondly, last time I checked, my breasts were incapable of thinking. I was the one who wanted him to touch me.

I was insane.

“On this plane you exist and your body is real. Not on the mortal plane.” He pulled his gaze away from my body, a relief.

“So I’m stuck here with a bunch of Stepford wives. Aren’t there any girl angels?”

“No.”

“Well, fuck that! Hasn’t God heard of women’s lib?”

“God hasn’t heard of anything—he’s not involved. Free will, remember?”

“Male chauvinist asshole.”

“God isn’t male.”

“Well, he