“Okay, then,” I said. “We’ll find them.”
“You should know that you’ve been expressly ordered to, and I quote, ‘stay out of this matter entirely,’” J.B. said.
“Like I give a shit,” I said.
“That’s what I figured you’d say.”
So where do we start? Samiel asked.
I took my phone out of my pocket. “Let me see if Granddaddy has any useful intelligence. He’s got to be tracking Azazel himself, right?”
I dialed Lucifer’s number and waited, listening to the phone ring. After a while it clicked over to voice mail.
“Hello, you have reached the voice mail of the Morningstar. Please leave a message and I will get back to you when my schedule permits.”
I hung up the phone and stuffed it back in my pocket. “Why is he never around when I want him to be, but he always shows up when I don’t want him at all?”
“I’m sure it has something to do with being the Prince of Darkness,” J.B. said.
“Right,” I said. “Look, can we finish this conversation at my house? Beezle and Jude will have some ideas, and it’s hard for me to think here.”
The sight of all the mangled bodies was making it difficult for me to collect my thoughts. And I couldn’t help thinking that if I’d found Azazel already and killed him as I should have, none of these people would be dead.
I’d gotten distracted by the faeries, and forgotten my promise and my purpose. Finding Azazel—and the missing Agents—was now priority number one.
“I have to go back to the office and finish some paperwork first,” J.B. said. “You’d better come, too, and fill out the forms for the souls you lost.”
“Why bother?” I asked. “The Agency is going to be royally pissed at me when they find out I’m tracking Azazel. What’s the difference if a couple of papers don’t get properly filed?”
“How about you try following the rules for a while so as not to arouse their suspicion?”
“You’re talking logic here,” I said. “I don’t do logic.”
“Indulge me,” J.B. said.
I tapped Samiel on the shoulder. He was facing the crime scene techs as they did their gruesome work, but I knew he wasn’t really seeing them. He was seeing Chloe. It took a few seconds for him to focus on my face.
“I’m going with J.B. to pretend to be a good Agent,” I said. “Can you get home and fill in the others? We need to put together some kind of plan to find Azazel.”
Samiel nodded.
“I’ll be back soon.”
He took off, flying north toward home. I hadn’t realized he was in love with Chloe. Maybe he hadn’t realized it himself, until she was taken.
“Let’s walk,” J.B. said. “The office isn’t that far from here. We can unveil once we get across the street.”
“Okay,” I said, sensing that he needed some time to brood. I did, too. Even though I’d disavowed any relationship with Azazel, it’s hard to acknowledge that the person who fathered you is responsible for organizing the killing of dozens of people. Beezle would no doubt tell me that I was being absurd, but I felt a little tainted. Like I had bad blood in me.
“You are being absurd,” I muttered to myself. Because if I had bad blood, then so did my baby. And I refused to have either one of our lives dictated by the actions of our forebears.
“Did you say something?” J.B. asked as we walked in the shadow of the Sears Tower.
Far above us the red safety lights of the tower glowed. Most of the restaurants that served the nine-to-five crowd were closed up for the night. I could see workers through the windows at Starbucks mopping the floor and cleaning the espresso machines.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just thinking out loud.”
“You should probably know that I received an official missive from Titania shortly after I talked to you,” J.B. said.
“And?”
“She’s holding me responsible for your behavior in her court.”
“Well, that’s just dumb. I flat-out told them that I represented nobody but myself.”
“It’s apparently my fault that the situation escalated because I didn’t punish you immediately as I was supposed to,” he said.
“And it’s your fault that I don’t file paperwork on time and let souls get lost, too, I suppose,” I said.
“That’s how the Agency sees it,” J.B. said.
“I know I keep saying this, but I’m sorry,” I said.
“You’re sorry, but you won’t change, either,” he said.
“I’m not changing for anyone, especially not the faerie queen. Or the Agency. Upper management can take this job and stick it up their butt, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Titania has ordered me to appear in her court next month to receive my punishment for your actions. On Valentine’s Day,” he said.
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, tugging J.B.’s sleeve so that he would stop. A man walking behind us huffed as he was forced to take one step sideways to go around us.
“You’re not going, right?” I said.
J.B. shook his head at me. “I have to.”
“No,” I said, grabbing his shoulders. “You don’t have to. You have to stop thinking that way. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”