Unnerved and uncomfortable, George nodded. “Of course.”
Titus reached a hand out to her again and pulled her into a warm embrace she couldn’t resist tucking against. “Welcome, George. We’re all kinds of happy to have you. When it’s time, I can’t wait to personally show you Heaven. It’s amazing.”
“Thank you,” she whispered before she turned and headed back down the long stretch of light wood flooring to the other side of the enormous open space and offered to help Arch set the table, where she would try not to think about Dex and his wings and Heaven and whatever else being an angel entailed.
Of course, her mind was whirring at warp speed about what Dex may have done to lose his permanent wings. How bad did whatever you did have to be to lose them? But she was going to try not to dwell on that right now—mostly because he’d looked pretty pained when she’d asked about them.
Hearing the front door shut, George busied herself folding napkins as Dex made his way back to the kitchen. She was avoiding his eyes completely and immersing herself in the silverware when she heard Nina holler.
“What the shit?”
In a total blur of limbs and hair, Nina raced past them like the Flash, so quick, it made George blink twice as her hair whooshed around her face and the frigid air from outside rushed at her feet across the space from the entryway to the kitchen.
But two seconds later, Nina returned with George’s wings in hand, holding them up with her index finger as though they weighed nothing more than a dish towel. She dropped them in a heap at her feet, leaving feathers to shoot up in the air and lazily float back to the floor.
“I think these belong to you, Wings. I get the feeling maybe you shouldn’t leave them the fuck out where just anybody can get their grubby-ass hands on ’em, huh?”
Chapter 6
George blinked, gripping the back of a chair by the massive island to hold herself up. “Did that just happen?”
“You mean did I just save your ass and your wings? Yeah. Yeah, it fucking happened.”
Saved her wings? From what?
“Nina?” Marty said, her brow furrowed, her hands at her hips. “Explain.”
Wanda, standing behind Marty, her hand on also on her hip, nodded. “Yeah. Explain.”
“Please,” Dex agreed, crossing his arms over his broad chest.
Nina tucked her luxuriously thick hair behind her ears and gave them an aggravated look. “Somebody tried to steal her fucking wings. I smelled him before I saw him. His stench is real, people. I can’t believe you two Nosy Nellies didn’t smell him, too,” Nina said, looking to her friends. “He’s ripe. Anyway, he snatched those fuckers up off the couch in the living room and took off. I ran after his sorry ass, but he dropped them and blew. Like disappeared into the fucking dark. Poof.” She snapped her fingers for emphasis.
Marty and Wanda sniffed the air in the direction of the front door and then Wanda covered her mouth and gagged. “Oh, heavens, that’s awful. What is it?”
Nina rocked back on her work boots and gave them an ‘I told you so” look. “No clue, but didn’t I fucking tell you there’s always a motherfucker just waiting to stir shit up? There’s always a motherfucker. Every single time. Who’s the motherfucker, Dex?” she asked with leering eyes.
Fear coursed through George’s veins. She didn’t like the idea there was a motherfucker. “Who would want to steal my wings? What is happening, Dexter?”
Dexter’s mouth turned into a thin line, his eyes full of worry as he ran his hand through his dark hair and shook his head. “I don’t know. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. There is no, ahem…motherfucker, as far as I know.”
Nina made a face before she slapped Dex on the back. “Well, you’d better call your fucking ginger pal and ask him WTF, dude, because somebody wants the kid’s damn wings and he smells like puke.”
George’s finger flew up in the air. “Hold on. What can wings do for someone who isn’t a guardian angel? I thought they were specific to us?”
Dex rasped a sigh. “Well, they are in that no mortal can use them and take flight, but a malevolent force could— Wait…you all don’t think…”
They all looked at each other with knowing glances, and in stoic unison said, “Demon.”
George blanched, her eyes wide, her hands clammy. “Demon? As in a minion from Hell? Horns, pitchforks, soul-stealing demons?” she squeaked, her heart racing.
Everything she’d been taught about Heaven and Hell had turned out to have some merit to it—and it freaked her out. How could this be happening? More and more she felt as though she’d stepped into a horror movie and she was the dumb friend who got whacked because she was too stupid to believe there really was a killer.
“Yep,” Nina said with an all too matter-of fact-tone.
George’s finger shot back up in the air as a small, probably obvious-to-everyone-else revelation hit her. “Then wait. If guardian angels are running around down here, I guess it makes sense that demons are, too. So just for confirmation purposes…are demons really here,” she looked around, her eyes ready to bulge out of her head, “like, here-here, too?”
“They are,” Dex said quietly, his face hard as stone, his distaste for the subject of demons clear. “But we have people who take care of them, George. Angels who are, what some might call, the bouncers of the celestial way. We call them cleaners.”
“Well, guess what, Wings Sr.? You got a
