Beezle was like a phone book of things that go bump in the night. He knew every species, every subspecies, every hierarchy and every rule. He could run the gamut from werewolf law to the vampire courts to the reigns of demons. There was very little that Beezle did not know. I wondered how J.B. had managed to conceal his status from my gargoyle.
“Well, presumably Amarantha is someone with a lot of influence or else Nathaniel wouldn’t have touched J.B. even if he were wearing gloves,” I said, staggering toward my back door. “On the upside, this means that he is probably healing J.B. as we speak, and I don’t have to threaten him to do it.”
I grabbed the doorframe and leaned on it for a minute, which gave me a good look at the damage Nathaniel had done to the lock by kicking it. The door normally locked with a dead bolt. The bolt had torn through the wooden frame and was now totally useless, which left my abode uncomfortably open to the aforementioned things that go bump.
A threshold, even without a door, is enough to stop most supernatural beings of power. Vampires, werewolves, fallen angels, demons . . . none of them could cross a threshold without an invitation. Nathaniel had been (reluctantly) invited inside by me before, so he was able to cross the threshold without penalty.
But there were plenty of lesser magical beings for whom the rules were a little more fuzzy. They could construe an unlocked or open door as an invitation. I didn’t fancy an infestation of gremlins eating all of Beezle’s precious popcorn stash or an imp whispering nasty things to me while I slept. And repairs cost money, money that I didn’t have. I usually generate some income by working as a freelance recipe developer, but since I’d been running around trying to keep up with my Agent duties and Azazel’s demands, I hadn’t had much time for that work lately. Although I supposed that since Nathaniel had done the kicking and the breaking I could get him to pay for the repairs.
I dragged myself up the back stairs, holding on to the railing as if it were a lifeline. Beezle fluttered around my head, cajoling me to keep moving forward when I wanted to stop and rest.
When I got to the top of the stairs, I saw that Nathaniel had repeated his destroying act on the upstairs door, which hung drunkenly from its hinges like a scene from a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I slumped on the landing, exhausted and annoyed.
“Come on, Maddy, get up,” Beezle said, pulling ineffectually at my collar.
I waved him away. “Leave me alone. I’ll get up and go inside when I’m ready.”
“I want to find out what Nathaniel’s doing to J.B.,” Beezle said, tugging at me again.
“So go,” I said, leaning my head against the wall and closing my eyes. I heard Beezle flap uncertainly for a moment, and then the sound of his wings receding as he went inside the apartment.
I want Gabriel, I thought. I couldn’t help it. When he was away from me, I was like a planet without a sun. I wasn’t supposed to love him, and maybe if I could have had a normal relationship with him, I could have gotten him out of my system. But the longing . . . the longing . . .
“Madeline, wake up.”
Gabriel?
“Madeline, please. Madeline.”
I’m dreaming you. I need you.
“Madeline.”
Hands on my shoulders, on my face. Warmth like the light of the sun.
I opened my eyes. His face was so close to mine that I could see the stars deep in his black eyes, and as I watched I saw one of them burst and flare and fall away, and I knew that my eyes looked the same.
His breath was on my lips, a whisper away.
“Madeline, what has happened? Why are you sleeping on the stairs?”
His words reminded me of J.B. and Nathaniel only a few feet away inside the apartment. If I gave in to the impulse to kiss Gabriel and Nathaniel found us, Gabriel would be dead before you could say “Jack Robinson.”
I shook my head to clear away the cobwebs, and shifted away from the wall. Slowly I realized that Baraqiel stood a few feet behind Gabriel, watching us with an avid gaze. There was a knowledge in his eyes that I did not like, and I wondered how much of my need for Gabriel had been revealed to the messenger.
“What happened to you guys?” I asked. “You were gone forever.”
“Baraqiel suggested we observe the human investigation for a time to see if they discovered anything. I sensed the death of the wolf was important to you and thought you would be safe enough with Bennett for a short time. Apparently, I was mistaken. What happened?” he repeated.
I told him that Antares had attacked us as I shuffled into the kitchen and filled the teakettle with water. The muscles in Gabriel’s face froze one by one.
“I should not have left you,” he said, and his voice was filled with heat.
I shrugged, not wanting to get into this in front of a witness. Something about Baraqiel told me he was collecting everything he saw and filing it away for later use. I wondered what he would report to Lucifer.
I could hear a murmur of voices from the living room. I couldn’t understand what was being said but Nathaniel’s tone was absurdly deferential, almost as if he were talking to my father. I wondered again what it was about J.B. that made Nathaniel act this way.
“Madeline,” Gabriel said, frowning. “What did Antares do?”
“Oh, the usual,” I said lightly. “Threatened to pull my entrails through my nose. Clawed me up some. J.B. got set on fire.”
“How did you escape? You were completely powerless,” Baraqiel said. He still had a speculative look on his face, like he was trying to decide whether or not it would be worth it to blackmail me over Gabriel.