Black Spring
Page 18

“Well, there’s no time like the present to start learning,” I said.
I scooped a big spoonful of vanilla ice cream mixed with hot fudge and peanut butter sauce and held it out to him, smiling.
He looked at me, then at the spoon, then back at me again. The smile faded from my face. Suddenly the action seemed fraught with implication. Something shifted in his eyes. There was a light and a heat that was not there before. My hand seemed frozen in place, and everything inside me stilled. I could not take my eyes from his mouth as it moved toward the spoon.
“Ms. Madeline Black?” a voice asked from somewhere above my left shoulder.
I dropped the spoon to the table with a clatter, the spell broken. Several patrons glanced over at the noise and my face reddened. The shop seating area was small and the tables were stacked beside one another with barely enough room to maneuver through the aisles so privacy was completely nonexistent.
Nathaniel calmly wiped the ice cream from the table with a napkin as I turned to glare at the person who had interrupted us.
It was a tall man with blond hair curling over his brow and the tops of his ears. His eyes were a brilliant green, like the poisonous shade of the river, and he was dressed like an Ermenegildo Zegna ad. There was something about him that struck me as familiar. In his right hand he held a creamy white envelope with a seal I recognized on the back. The snake tattoo on my palm twitched.
“Whatever you’ve got, I don’t want it,” I said. I pushed the half-eaten sundae away from me, any pleasure I took in the moment sucked out by the presence of a messenger from my second-least-favorite relation.
“Lord Lucifer expected you to respond thus and instructed me to wait while you read his missive,” the messenger said in a carrying voice.
If anyone had not been looking at us before, they certainly were now, especially after they heard the word “Lucifer.” Some people looked confused, like they thought the guy was kidding. Others looked offended, frightened or suspicious. They may not know for sure whether Lucifer existed, but everyone in Chicago knew there were bad things loose in the world.
“What’s the matter with you?” I hissed at the messenger. “Go outside, for the love of Pete. I’ll be out in a second.”
He looked doubtful, like I was going to try to slip away from him somehow. “Lord Lucifer instructed me to—”
“Shut. Up,” I said through my teeth as I came to my feet. All I wanted was for him to stop talking and everyone to stop looking. Pretty soon someone would put my face together with the video footage of me destroying the vampires at Soldier Field, and then who knew what would happen?
I didn’t want to wait to find out. I waved the messenger ahead of me as I waddled my way out of the seating area and past the bar where the ice cream was prepared. The stares of everyone who had witnessed the scene pressed into my back.
Nathaniel moved up beside me as we followed the messenger out to the sidewalk. As soon as we were outdoors, Lucifer’s errand boy turned to me with the envelope. I snatched it from his hand but did not open it. The Ghirardelli store was next to a Topshop and only half a block from Michigan Avenue. There were a ton of people walking back and forth, and a lot of women giving both Nathaniel and the messenger admiring glances. A little privacy was necessary.
We crossed Pearson and went into the little park next to the water tower. There were several benches with people on them, checking their phones, reading magazines, eating potato chips. I looked for a semi-secluded area where I could read what was in the envelope. Anger and embarrassment coursed through me. I was beyond tired of having every decent moment in my life ruined by Lucifer, and I was in a bad enough mood to take it out on the messenger.
“Are you one of his kids?” I asked as I tore the seal from the envelope.
I really did not want to see what was inside. Every time I received a letter from Lucifer he asked (read: ordered) me to perform some crappy task that would endanger my life and create more enemies.
“One of whom’s?” the messenger asked.
“Lucifer’s, of course,” I said. “You’ve got that look. What’s your name?”
He seemed surprised. “My name is Zaniel, and yes, Lord Lucifer is my father.”
“Who’s your mother?”
“Ariell,” he said with a trace of stiffness in his voice.
I’d started to unfold the paper but stopped at the name, staring at Zaniel in surprise.
“Ariell the psycho? Ariell who I—” I stopped, realizing what I was about to say.
Zaniel finished for me, his green eyes stony. “Killed. Yes.”
That meant this character was Samiel’s half brother. They shared the same mother. And while Samiel had come around pretty quickly to the idea that the world was better off without Ariell, there was no guarantee Zaniel would feel the same.
“What’s Lucifer’s game in sending you to me?” I asked.
“I do not understand what you mean,” he said.
“Are you normally his errand boy, or is this a new thing?”
“This is the first occasion in which Lord Lucifer has entrusted me with—”
I cut him off. “So he sent you here for a reason. I just need to figure out what that reason is.”
“It is not for us to know Lord Lucifer’s ways,” he said.
“It is for me. I’m the one who’s always getting screwed over by his plans.”
While Zaniel and I had our little exchange, Nathaniel took the letter from my hand, opened it and read it.