“You may ask me anything, Miss. Anything at all.” Then he paused and held up a finger. “Except for the spice I put in my rum cake. That is a highly classified secret,” he teased with a twinkle in his blue eyes.
Chuckling, she leaned back against the white marble countertop, veined with deep gray and black. “What did you mean when you said you were paranormal again? You were just recently turned into a troll, so what were you before you were a troll?”
He cocked his head as Nina entered the kitchen and answered for him, draping an arm around Arch’s shoulders. “He was a vampire. Just like me. Turned against his will like a zillion fucking years ago. He was Wanda’s husband Heath’s manservant.”
George blinked and gave that a moment’s thought. “So, you can be turned back? I thought once paranormal, always paranormal?”
Was there a way out of this for her? Did she want a way out?
Of course she should want a way out.
Then that voice in her head, the one that haunted her, said, Duh, dummy. You’re not cut out for helping people when you couldn’t even help yourself. Remember what happened not so long ago?
If there’s a way out, take it and run.
Nina flicked her on the shoulder and popped her lips. “Don’t get too excited, Wings. Arch was turned back because his sire died—a rare damn occurrence if there ever was one. You’re an angel. Totally diff ball of wax.”
“Sire?” Dex repeated as he, too, entered the kitchen, making her legs feel like soft butter with his dark hair gleaming and his big frame dressed in a dark blue and black sweater The sleeves were rolled up to expose his strong forearms, and his jeans fit him like he’d been born wearing them. “I don’t understand the term. I’ve been around a while, but that’s a new one to me.”
“A sire is the vampire responsible for turning a human. Or creating him is possibly the word I should use,” Arch provided as he added a full stick of butter to a fluffy pot of mashed potatoes. “My sire, the vile man responsible for turning me and my then charge, Heath, was, by some miraculous quirk of fate, killed hundreds of years after he turned us. Not an easy feat for a vampire, if you know what I mean. Thus, we reverted to humans once more. Oh, the absolute hell of that time in our lives will surely never be forgotten. Mr. Heath selling Bobbie-Sue cosmetics, our car wrapped—out of a desperate need of cash—in an advertisement for a feminine hygiene product. ’Twas dreadful. But we managed, and somehow came through it together. That’s how we met this ragtag crew.”
So they’d helped this guy Heath and Arch, too?
Nina’s head fell back on her shoulders as she laughed, exposing her creamy throat. “That was some shit, right, pal? Ah, the good old days, huh, Arch? Before all this OOPS crapola.”
Arch patted Nina on the hand and clucked his tongue. “Though, it did bring us Miss Wanda. There is that to be ever so grateful for.”
George gave them all a confused look, scratching her head. “But I thought Heath was still a vampire? Does that mean he’s human?”
Wanda turned in her chair at the long dining room table and smiled fondly. “He is a vampire. He turned back for me. Another crazy story you’re probably not up to yet, but someday, once you’re settled into being a guardian angel, we’ll all get together at a BBQ or a bar mitzvah or whatever needs celebrating, and tell paranormal tales. Because believe me, we’ve got plenty. For now, you just focus on wearing those wings and staying upright.”
George’s cheeks flushed bright red. Struggling to get up off the floor earlier while Gladys licked her face in sympathy had left her feeling—and, she was sure, looking—like a beached whale. But Dex had pulled her upward, straightened her wings out, and told her everything was going to be fine.
That’s what he said about everything. It was going to be fine. Everything was fine.
And George wanted to believe him. She also wanted to believe she’d be able to make her wings disappear and reappear the way he did simply by snapping his fingers, but she had her doubts.
All in good time, he’d said, and did she really have a choice but to believe him?
Nope. So here she was, in the middle of paranormalpalooza, with outrageous stories of accidental turnings amidst laughter and smiles and friendships like she’d never before witnessed, lying low and trying to take it all in.
Dex tugged at her hand and pulled her toward the window seat at the breakfast nook, where pillows sat against the icy windows and the night sky had fallen.
“Anything yet?”
Sighing, she shook her head, taking her hand from his and putting it back in her lap in order to ignore the feelings he’d begun to evoke in her. She leaned against the icy window, grateful for the cool against her back.
“Nope. Nothing but what I told you happened when I first put the wings on.”
Dex had said, shortly after her wings arrived, she’d know what her assignment was. It would just come to her like a thief in the night.
But it hadn’t, and she wasn’t at all surprised. Not a lot had gone right for her lately; learning to be an angel was turning out not to be so different from her real life.
He cocked his head. “Huh.” Then he patted her leg and slapped on that eternally handsome, optimistic smile. “Don’t worry. It’ll come. I promise it will. Until then, how are you feeling? Any better?”
“I don’t know, to be honest. I’m feeling weird and good all at the same time. I mean, it’s nice to have company, because most of the time it’s just me and Gladys and the occasional dysfunctional boyfriend, but is this the kind of company I wanted?” She looked over at the table where everyone had
