Before he could answer, Osh, or Osh’ekiel as he was known in the celestial realm, walked into Reyes’s office. Just strolled in like he wasn’t supposed to be somewhere else.
“Osh,” I said, alarm rocketing through me. “Why are you here?”
He bowed his head a moment and stuffed his hands in his pockets. As usual, he was wearing a short black top hat over his shoulder-length black hair. But today he also wore a long duster, just as black as the rest of his attire, and heavy motorcycle boots.
Reyes stood and waited for his answer as well.
“We had to move her.”
A blast of heat scalded my skin as Reyes lost control of his emotions. My emotions, however, took a different turn. They pushed my heart into my throat and poured adrenaline by the bucketload through my nervous system.
“Where is she?” I asked, stepping closer to him.
He pulled his shoulders up to his ears and jammed his hands deeper into his jeans pockets. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
I was on him before I even had the thought. No matter that he was the deadliest Daeva—lower-level demon trained for fighting—that hell had ever seen. To me, he was a nineteen-year-old kid who knew more about my daughter than I did, and I suddenly found the situation intolerably unfair.
I had him against the wall with one hand around his throat. He held my arm with both of his hands but didn’t try to stop me.
Reyes was at my side in an instant. “Dutch,” he said softly, placing a hand over the one I had wrapped around Osh’s throat, but unless he planned on helping me choke the life out of the kid, he was of no use to me at that moment. So my free hand went to his throat. He raised his chin, almost as though he welcomed the contact.
I needed to know where my daughter was. Why they had to move her was one thing, but not knowing where she was gave me few options should I need to help her.
Valerie, who Cookie told me was one of Reyes’s servers, stopped wiping off a table, glanced inside the office, then scurried off, presumably when she noticed her boss’s ire.
“Dutch,” he said again past the tightness in his throat. I’d slipped to the other plane and looked on as Osh’s aura spiraled like vapor around me. He didn’t fight me in the least. He still held my arm with one hand but had moved the other to my shoulder. He was lightning quick and just as deadly, so I had little doubt he was forming a plan.
The darkness surrounding Reyes billowed around him. The flames that perpetually bathed him leaped out at me. Normally, they would have scorched. Blistered. Seared. But today they only annoyed.
“Where is my daughter?”
Osh simply shook his head, carrying out his orders, obedient till the last. And it was about to be his last; that much I could guarantee. My anger shook the walls around us, and I heard a high-pitched scream from the kitchen. Probably Valerie, the server.
“Dutch,” Reyes said, “he can’t tell us. You know that.”
“Then he’ll die wishing he could.”
If I’d been paying closer attention to my husband, I would have seen the sideways glance he offered Osh a microsecond before my face was planted into the wood floors of his office. They had turned the tables so fast, I hadn’t seen them move.
They’d slowed time.
And I’d stood there like a lunatic on too much lithium. I could only hope I didn’t drool.
“Do you understand?”
I blinked, groaning under their weight, trying to remember what they’d said. Whatever it was, I felt yes would be the appropriate answer.
“Yes,” I said from under a ton of limbs and torsos. Holy cow crap, they were heavy.
“What did I say?” Reyes asked. Damn him.
“That the two of you are going to get the fuck off me, and Osh is going to tell me where my daughter is.”
“Wrong.”
The weight multiplied, and I groaned, the agony of defeat almost too much to bear. As were its muscle mass and bony elbows. They had to weigh like five hundred pounds. Each.
They had my arms locked behind my back, several knees lodged there for good measure, and one arm—Reyes’s, I assumed—was wrapped around my neck while the other one held my head down, keeping my face planted hard against the floor, so close I could see every splinter in the wood grain.
And, sadly, I was going nowhere fast. If I could’ve spoken more clearly, I would’ve cried uncle. As it stood, I couldn’t even get enough air in my lungs to cry, period.
“We are going to let you up if you promise not to kill anyone.” When I only groaned, I received another fifty pounds per square inch of pressure on my midsection.
“Okay,” I half groaned, half squeaked.
Slowly, as though to make sure I didn’t lose it again, they eased their weight off me but kept my face planted to the floor. Probably hoping I’d germinate. Sprout roots. Why else plant something so thoroughly?
A soft feminine voice penetrated the fog of oxygen deprivation. “Is—is everything okay?”
“No—” I started to say, but a strong hand clamped over my face.
“Yes,” Reyes said. “Thank you.”
A deep laugh came from behind Valerie. It had to be Sammy, the head cook. Also known as the traitor. I was clearly being subdued against my will, but did he care? Hell, no. Like the men holding me down, he probably belonged to the League of Extraordinary Assholes.
“It’s okay, Valerie. They do this sort of thing all the time,” he said. Completely overstating the fact.
“Oh,” she said, unsure.
I saw feet through my tear-blurred vision as Sammy led her away.
Then I was up. I took a lungful of air, grateful for the fact that Reyes had pinned me to the wall as a precaution. I would have fallen otherwise.
“No fair slowing time,” I said, leaning my head back and panting.
“You did it first,” Osh replied. He was doubled over, one hand on a knee, the other massaging his throat. Testing it with hesitant pokes from his long fingers here and there.
Reyes had pressed his entire body against mine. It was the most action I’d seen all week, and I basked in the feel of it. The warmth as the tips of his flames licked across my face and saturated my skin.
Then I realized what I’d just done. I’d threatened the life of one of my best friends. One of the few beings on Earth who could help protect Beep. One of the even fewer beings on Earth who would give his life to do so.