but no one can get to him. Only my husband and Raziel have been able to hear him, and the mountain caves are the only place quiet enough for Raziel to listen. As for what we want with him—the Fallen want him to lead them as they overthrow Uriel.”
I blinked. Just my luck—I died, and instead of a peaceful afterlife, I got stuck in the middle of an angelic coup d’etat. I pulled my legs up under me, hugging my knees, and cast a glance at a plate of blueberry muffins that was sitting on the coffee table. Before I could reach for them, Sarah went on, “Ask Raziel about it. He’ll probably think I told you too much already. You know how men can be.”
I was ready to make a smart-ass comment—so far Raziel had shown little inclination to tell me anything—but I stopped myself. “You called him a man. Is he?”
“A man? Oh, most definitely. When the angels fall, they take human shape along with their curses.”
“Humans aren’t immortal. Humans aren’t cursed. They can’t fly and they don’t . . .” I hesitated. Once spoken, it would be too real. “They don’t drink blood.”
Sarah’s quick laugh took the onus off it. “Don’t be picky. Call them what you will—they are many things, as you already know.” She moved over to the window. “They’re cursed, and the curse goes deep. If you understand that, it will make things easier on you.”
I stared longingly at the blueberry muffins. If I had one, I’d be hard-pressed not to eat three, and that would use up half my calorie count for the day.
“Why don’t you have a muffin?” she asked, mystified. “You’ve been staring at them since we arrived.”
“I don’t dare. The food’s too damned good here—I’ll end up looking like a blimp.”
Sarah laughed. “That’s one advantage to living here. You won’t need to worry about diet. The women may not be immortal, but we still manage to live a lot longer than most humans do. It’s almost impossible to kill us. In a little while your cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, and anything else will be textbook perfect.”
“Except that I’m not mortal, I’m dead. Aren’t I?”
Sarah’s forehead wrinkled. “I don’t know if anyone’s quite sure what you are. You’re something of an original, and we have yet to discover your purpose.
Even so, I think we all suffer a sea change when we come here. Those who come as wives and bonded mates become almost invulnerable. I don’t think there’s been a flu or a cold here in generations. We live very long lives—I was born at the beginning of the last century, I have the body of an extremely healthy sixty-something, and I expect to live at least another fifty years. It’s similar for the rest of us. The good news is we can give up glasses, contact lenses, allergy meds, and diets.”
“How come you know about some things and not others, like contact lenses and Ben & Jerry’s, but you don’t know what Google is?” I asked, confused.
“It depends on what the newest wife brings to us. I don’t believe Carrie has mentioned Google but she was very fond of ice cream.”
“So am I.”
“Well, you’ll be pleased to know that you won’t have to worry about gaining weight. You’ll stay exactly the same as you are now.”
“What?” I was horrified. “I’m still fifteen pounds overweight. Are you telling me I’m going to be like this throughout eternity?”
Sarah laughed and patted my hand. “Don’t worry—it’s a healthy fifteen pounds. And Raziel might like it.”
I stared at her. “What does that have to do with anything? He didn’t even stay around long enough to say good morning. Besides, I don’t like him very much either.”
Sarah tilted her head, surveying me with eyes that saw far too much. Or read too much into an entirely innocent situation. “He didn’t say good morning?”
she echoed. “Did he sleep with you last night?” The idea seemed to astonish her, which wasn’t particularly flattering.
“Of course not!” I said, trying to sound horrified rather than . . . God, I was feeling almost wistful. What was wrong with me?
“But he spent the night in the same apartment?”
I hesitated, then decided to dump. If anyone was going to help me figure things out, it would be Sarah. “In the same bed, I think. But he didn’t touch me. I fell asleep in here, woke up this morning in bed, alone”—I saw her mouth open to ask a question, and said firmly—“and untouched. It looked as if someone else had slept there too, and he’s the logical choice since these are his rooms, but if he did he kept to his side of the bed. He didn’t even bite me.”
Sarah blinked for a moment, then laughed, her voice light and curiously beguiling. “He’d shag you before he’d bite you, Allie. That’s the highest form of intimacy there is. It’s the last thing he’d want with you.”
Of course it was. Thank God, I told myself virtuously. “I’m thrilled to hear it. So he’s only intimate with you?”
There was the faintest trace of color on her creamy skin. “You mean because he took my blood? Didn’t the two of you talk at all? I can’t believe you simply let him brood around and not answer any questions.”
“We talked. We just didn’t get around to the whole . . . blood thing.”
“Oh,” Sarah said after a moment. “Well, I don’t suppose it matters—it may not affect you one way or another. Unless it makes a great difference to you, there’s really no reason for us to talk about it.”
It did. Everything about Raziel made a great deal of difference to me, but admitting that only made things worse. “No reason at all,” I said brightly.
I looked past her toward the bank of windows overlooking the fog-shrouded Pacific Ocean. At least, I assumed it was the Pacific—for all I knew, we could be on Mars. The windows been left open, and a strong breeze tossed the sheer white curtains into the air, sending a little shiver of some unnamed emotion down my backbone. “Is everything white in this place?” I demanded, feeling cranky. Being dead would do that to a girl.
For a moment I thought I saw something just beyond the windows—the breathless shimmer of iridescent blue wings, the sun sparkling off them. I narrowed my gaze, but there was nothing out there, just a few seagulls in the distance, wheeling and cawing. No
Sarah looked around as if noticing for the first time. “I suppose so. Raziel tends to see things as either black or white— never shades of gray. He’d probably really hate it if you painted anything.” She grinned, suddenly looking mischievous. “Just let me know if you want some help.”
The idea was irresistible, and I laughed. “Do you want to make his life a living hell?”
“No, dear. That’s going to be your job.”
Another odd fluttering. I rose and crossed the living room to peer out into the bright sky, the rolling mist on the ocean. There was nothing in the sky but the seagulls—I must be imagining things.
Or was I? I was stuck in the sterile aerie of a creature who could fly—why would I assume that mysterious dark wings were a figment of my imagination?
I turned my back on the windows. If Raziel was out there buzzing the building in an effort to spook me, I wasn’t going to let him. Though the sight of him dive-bombing the place would have been pretty damned funny.
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you before Sammael gets here. Apart from welcoming you to Sheol,” Sarah said, “I wanted to warn you about Raziel.”
Oh, great. As if things weren’t bad enough, now I needed to be warned about the only man I slightly, somewhat, minimally trusted. “He’s an ax murderer?” I suggested cheerfully.
Sarah’s responding smile was a token. “Don’t be fooled by his kindness. Raziel has shut himself off from all human feeling, from caring about anyone besides the Fallen and their wives. I will speak for you at the meeting today, but if you’re relying on Raziel to protect you, you’re wasting your time.”
I was still trying to reconcile the term
“Oh—there’s a meeting?” I said, feeling doomed. “I suppose they’re going to decide whether I live or die, and I’m not going to have any voice in the matter. Of course, I’m dead already, so I guess it doesn’t really matter. I just don’t feel like I’m dead. And I really don’t want to go back to that place.” I shivered. I couldn’t remember much, just heat and noise and the pain of thousands of souls reaching out. . . .
“I’ll speak for you. I’ll do anything I can to stop them. Right now they’re more worried about the Nephilim and whether Uriel will use your presence as an excuse to move against us. I just don’t want you to count on Raziel. He’s sworn off caring about anyone, and I’m afraid he’s not going to make an exception for you.” She tilted her head sideways, assessing me. “At least, I don’t think so. But I’ll fight for you. And sometimes they listen.”
And if that didn’t sound like a rock-solid guarantee, I figured it was the best I could expect. If I was going to get out of this mess, I’d have to figure it out on my own.
Sammael appeared at the door just as Sarah was leaving, and he didn’t look any happier to see me than he had before.
“Are you ready?” he asked politely.
I suddenly remembered all those flights of stairs, and groaned. Once a day was enough. “I don’t suppose you have an elevator hidden anywhere around here?”
“No.” Sammael moved past me to push open a section of the windows that I had blithely assumed was solid wall. The wind was rising, swirling into the apartment, but in Raziel’s sterile environment there was nothing loose that could be blown away. “Come with me —we’ll take the shortcut.”
I looked from Sammael’s calm face to the wind and ocean just beyond those doors to nowhere. He was an angel, wasn’t he? Albeit Sarah had said he was one of the angels of death. He wasn’t going to toss me out the window, was he?
