Jason bounced off again.
Catriona locked her attention back on Anne. “You were saying?”
Anne nodded. “I’m just going to say all this as bluntly and quickly as possible.”
“I’d appreciate that.” Catriona looked at Luther. “You too, I imagine. You’re probably due back at the morgue.”
Luther laughed.
Sounds like Luther’s laugh.
Anne plowed ahead. “There’s a group of beings—the Angeli. They act as mankind’s guardian angels. They influence people and history to make sure we don’t get too far off track, without really interfering. With me so far?”
“We’ve git guardian angels?” asked Broch.
“Right. Though they’re not angel angels. At least I don’t think so. Whatever. They are what they are.”
Catriona had fifteen questions formulating but decided to let them go as Jason appeared with three waters and a sangria glass as large as a fish tank. He placed it in front of her and she lifted the glass with two hands to take a deep drought.
Thank you, Jason, you strange, wonderful, bouncy creature.
She looked at Anne. “Sure. Guardian angels. Why not. Go on.”
Catriona still hadn’t decided if Anne was trustworthy. Part of her felt the redhead and ‘Luther’ were playing a con. Or that she would wake up any moment to find she’d been dreaming.
Anne continued. “A while ago, some of the Angeli started getting sick. Long story short, they’d sent an angel somewhere he shouldn’t have gone and he came back with a disease called Perfidia.”
Anne’s hand shot out and tapped Jason’s arm as he passed on his way to the far table. His head turned to look down at her, his eyes not unalarmed.
“I’d like five shots of Irish whiskey.”
Yikes. Catriona was already starting to feel the warmth of the sangria running through her veins. She couldn’t imagine what five shots of whiskey would do to Anne. Maybe make her slip up. Talk too much.
She caught Broch looking at her and smiled back, trying to telegraph the message, I’m going to jump your bones the moment we’re alone, but she wasn’t sure if he got every bit of it. He seemed to, though. He swallowed his smile, his cheeks and the tips of his ears coloring.
Catriona returned her attention to Anne to keep from crawling across the table to kiss Broch or, at least, turning and running away from the whole scene and hoping he followed her home. The idea of losing herself in him, far away from the lunch table, seemed like heaven.
“So this disease killed the angels?” she asked trying to get Anne’s story rolling again.
Anne shook her head.
“No. It made them less interested in helping humans. Which doesn’t sound awful, maybe, at first, but when a very powerful being suddenly realizes they’ve spent eons helping an arguably inferior creature advance themselves, turns out it doesn’t sit well.”
“And we’re the inferior creatures?”
Anne nodded.
“Are you an inferior creature?” asked Catriona.
“Am I human? Yes. Sort of. Except a bit enhanced. I’ll explain that in a minute.”
Catriona tried not to roll her eyes. “Hm.”
“The Angeli started hurting fowk?” asked Broch.
“Yes. They discovered they could eat them, so to speak. They siphoned away their energy for their own use, turning their victims to dust.”
Catriona stopped mid-gulp.
“They eat them?”
Anne nodded. “So to speak.”
Broch grimaced. “Och.”
Jason bounced back to the table and deposited Anne’s five whiskeys before her. She shot one back before he set down the second.
Catriona stared down at her ruby-red sangria, fruit floating at the top, and then looked back at Anne’s shots lined neatly before her. Her own cocktail looked like the Playskool version by comparison.
Well. I feel a little less cool now.
Anne pushed a shot in front of Broch, Catriona and Luther. The remaining glass she kept for herself and held it aloft.
“Cheers.”
The others picked up their shots and downed them.
“Ah prefer Scotch,” said Broch, wincing.
Anne smiled. “Duly noted.”
Catriona wiped her mouth as her throat began to burn.
I am in trouble now.
She took another sip of sangria to cool the sting.
“So, anyway, that’s where I came in,” continued Anne. “To help the Angeli with their rogue angel problem.”
“And you are, who, exactly?” asked Catriona.
“I’m Anne Bonny.”
Broch’s head cocked. “Anne Bonny?” His voice dropped to an awed whisper. “The pirate?”
Anne nodded. “That one.”
Catriona scowled. “What are you two talking about?”
Broch pointed at Anne. “Lassie’s a pirate. Ah read aboot her in mah history books.”
“In your history books?” Catriona squinted at Anne, who shook her head.
“No, I’m not a time traveler like you. I’ve been alive since then.”
“T’was the seventeen hundreds, was it nae?” continued Broch. He couldn’t seem to get past the pirate thing. He looked like a little boy who’d just met the real Peter Pan.
Anne nodded. “I was born in sixteen ninety-eight, but yes, most of my original time was in the seventeen hundreds.”
Catriona leaned back in her chair. “So you’re saying you’ve been alive since pirate times?”
“The whole time.”
“Are you a vampire?”
Anne laughed. “No.”
“But that’s impossible—” Catriona looked to Luther, who sat, bemused, his arms crossed against his chest. She realized she was looking to a dead man to help her debunk a three-hundred-year-old pirate. She dropped her head back into her hands, defeated.
“Fine. Finish your story.”
Jason arrived and placed a plate in front of each of them, forcing Catriona to move her elbows and support her head on her neck.
They took a moment to shake hot sauce on their food and then Anne continued, “Here are the important things: First, the reason I’ve been alive so long is to reboot the angels infected with Perfidia.”
“Reboot?” asked Broch.
“It’s a computer thing,” interjected Catriona, happy to feel like she knew something someone else didn’t.
“Yes, like restarting a computer. I
