At first he’d assumed things were looking better because they had a woman around and Sissy was cleaning. But in the last two days, the changes that had emerged were structural, not anything explained by one hell of a Swiffer job.
“Wait, wait, promotion like what?”
Jim shrugged. “With Nigel gone, I’m supposed to take his place up there.”
He pictured the archangel with his three dandy backups, having a proper English tea up in Heaven. Then tried to imagine himself sitting there, passing scones and the sugar bowl around with his pinkie extended and his legs crossed at the knees.
Yup. Right.
Adrian moved around in his wooden chair, his weight causing the thing to groan. “I didn’t know that was in the rules.”
“What a fucking surprise.” Jim took another drag. “We need to verify the information. Any idea where we can go?”
“Yeah.” Ad resumed eating. “And he’s dead up in the attic.”
There was a period of silence during which Ad became a member of the Clean-plate Club. When he was finished, he pushed himself away from the table, cupped the back of his neck with both hands and sprawled.
“Maybe we should just take a trip to Purgatory.”
“Excuse me?” Jim asked.
Ad shrugged. “That shit about not making it into Heaven if you commit suicide is no bullshit. Trust me.”
As the guy cleared his throat like he’d gone too far, Jim’s wheels got turning. “You’re saying Purgatory is real.”
“Been there, got the T-shirt. Blah, blah, blah.”
“So how’d you get out?”
“Eddie.”
Jim sat up straight. “You’re telling me Eddie went in there and came back out? With you?”
“Hold up.” The guy extended his hands in classic stop-it-right-thur style. “I was just being a smart ass—don’t even think about that. You’re our special golden boy, whatever—and Eddie condemned himself to do it. Besides, no offense, but you’re still getting up to speed, this is a clutch round, and we both know how well things go when you’re ‘distracted.’”
The air quotes would have made Jim violent … except for the fact that he had come to the same conclusion, which was why he was here and not going after Sissy. As much as it pained him, he needed to win and he needed to somehow keep his job even with Nigel being dead. If he could prevail, and avoid turning into an archangel, then after the great victory or whatever he’d have an eternity to help Sissy. Now was the crisis time for the war, though.
Besides, the rounds had been coming faster and faster. Forty-eight hours. Maybe seventy-two—and he could refocus on her.
“I’ve got to go over and bring him back.”
“Jim, you’re fucking crazy—”
“What’s my other option?” Jim narrowed his eyes. “If Devina’s right, and I’m supposed to succeed Nigel? I can’t let that happen. I don’t trust anyone else to do this job—I can win this, Ad. I can goddamn win this.”
All he had to do was think back to the way he’d spent the night. Devina had a critical weakness … and it was him. She wasn’t suggesting they both throw in the towel because she was scared of losing—it was because she didn’t want to lose contact with him: Unless he quit, he was apparently going to have to step into Nigel’s spats and she didn’t want to fight with anyone other than him. Fuck the rules, fuck the archangels, fuck the Creator—Devina was a parasite addicted to acquisition and he was her number one target.
And she was going to take that weakness to her grave.
Because he was going to personally escort her there with it.
Adrian’s one functioning pupil roamed around Jim’s face, and Jim held himself perfectly still. He was prepared to take any scrutiny, because he knew, down to his soul, what he needed to do … and how he was going to do it.
“Ad,” he said in a low voice, “I can do this.”
The other angel almost hid the tremors that crept into his hands. But the fine tic that teased his bad eye was nothing he could camo. “No, you can’t.”
“What put you in there, Ad. How’d you get over.” Not questions, because he knew the answer. “Devina got into you, didn’t she. She got to you somehow, and you couldn’t take it—so you ate a bullet. You slit your wrists. You hanged yourself—”
“A cliff.” The voice that interrupted was so hoarse, it was made of ninety percent air. “I, ah … I had made a deal with her to save someone.”
Jim waited for the story to roll out. When it didn’t, he said, “What happened.”
Ad cleared his throat and covered his face with those shaking hands. “I made an arrangement to save someone and I turned myself over to that demon. I was down on that table of hers for … it felt like years. Eddie told me later it was two nights of earth time. When I came back, after she released me, I wasn’t the same.”
Like bats out of Hell itself, memories of Jim’s own time down there swarmed and descended, clouding his brain. He knew exactly what Ad was talking about. He’d been on that table, too.
That was how his path had first crossed Sissy’s.
After he’d found her body, that was.
“I thought I was okay.” Ad shook his head. “I wasn’t. I lasted about a week, made some excuse to Eddie about going somewhere. I was going to shoot myself, but I’m an angel, right? I wanted to die flying. So I jumped and did nothing about it … the canyon was about seventy feet deep. I hit hard and that was all it took. Split second later—shit, I thought I’d survived. I woke up in Purgatory—I thought it was gray because of moonlight or some shit.”
Finally, Ad dropped his arms. His eyes, both of them, were red ringed from tears he refused to let fall.
“Eddie went there because of me, but he was also the reason we got out. The Creator has a thing for love.” Ad stared at his own hands, watching them shake. “I mean, Eddie sacrificed himself for me, and that’s love, right? Not the dumb-ass romantic kind … but the real shit. So yeah, when Nigel went to the Creator and argued for us—that was what worked. Nigel was able to strike an arrangement that freed us about a month before you came along. If we see you through this war? We’re free. It’s our penance.”
“So you can help me find that archangel and get him back.”
“Maybe Devina is talking out of her ass, though. Not like that bitch has a problem lying—”
“So you can help me,” he repeated.
Ad shook his head again. “Jim, this is a really bad idea.”
“But you can get me there, can’t you.”
“No, that’s on you.”
As their eyes met, Jim knew exactly what the guy was talking about. “But you can help me out of there.”
“No, I can’t. Didn’t you listen to me? It’s not up to us, buddy.” Ad looked up at the ceiling. “Your exit visa can only be issued by the Creator.”
Jim could sense the guy retreating—and that couldn’t happen. “Listen, this is an extraction. Nothing more, nothing less. You think I haven’t done one of these before? I’ll go in, get him, bring him out—”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“There has to be a way.” Jim curled up a fist and banged it on the table, making the plate and fork dance. “Even if Devina is wrong? Heaven is stronger with Nigel back up there. Colin’s head is completely fucked with the bastard gone, and right now, Bert and Ernie—”
“That would be Albert and Byron.”
“Fine, whatever. Call ’em Mozart and Beethoven for all I care. The two of them are holed up in the Manse of Souls, stuck there, while Colin is disintegrating. And this is not a hypothetical. I went up there after I got home last night. All it’s going to take is for Devina to get a hard-on to hit the place, and then we got another set of problems we don’t need. Hell, the Creator can’t even control her, and she sure as shit doesn’t follow the rules. What do you think is gonna happen.”
“But what if I can’t get you back? Then what? Or haven’t you thought it through that far.”
“Then you take over.”
“Not in the rules.”
“Fuck the rules. You’ll handle things because that’s what men like you and me do.”
“On that logic, you could just go up and be Nigel now, and let me take care of the next schlub who fills your shoes. Save the trip to the other side and skip the risk that you’re going to get stuck there.”
“But I’m the reason Nigel’s gone.” Jim jabbed his thumb into his own chest. “I did it. It’s my fault. If I had done shit different … except that doesn’t matter anymore. I want to make amends for the death, and the only way to do it is to bring him back. I settle my debts, Ad. You hear me?”
Adrian scrubbed his face. “I don’t know. I guess there might be a way to get you out.”
“See, I knew this was going to work.”
“I did not say that.”
“Whatever, I’m not a quitter. Even if Devina wasn’t a liar, I’m not quitting this. I’m marshaling my weapons and moving forward. First, we get Nigel back. Then we’re going to hunt down Devina’s lair, we’re going to take that mirror of hers, and we’re going to win these final two rounds. That is our plan. We are going to execute it.”
“What about the next soul?”
Jim opened his mouth to reply—but didn’t get that far. The back door to the mansion blew wide open like it had been hit by a gale-force wind.
“You’re fucking her?!” Sissy spat.
Chapter Four
Sissy was breathing hard even though she’d run only the fifteen feet between where she’d parked the Harley and the back door to the old house. Then again, she’d had to hang onto the bike’s handlebars with a death grip on the ride back. It was either that or lose total control.
Or had that already happened, even though she’d made it here in one piece?
“Well?” Like Jim hadn’t heard her. “You’ve got nothing to say?”
Jim reached forward and calmly stamped out his lit cigarette. “Sissy—”
“She had you raped!” As Jim’s face went ashen, she slammed the door behind herself, shutting them all in. “Did you think I don’t know what she had done to you? We all saw it from the walls! I watched when they … hurt you. How do you—” Her voice cracked. “How can you be with her after something like that?”
At that moment, she wanted to weep, but she didn’t give in. How could she? This wasn’t a safe place for her, even though the two “men” who were at the table, both so silent and still, were supposedly angels.
“Whose side are you really on?” she demanded.
Jim put his palms on the table and braced his arms. As he stood up, it was clear he had an iron lock on his temper, and for a split second, she felt a flash of fear.
But she’d already faced off with the devil herself. So she wasn’t about to be frightened by him.
“Fine, forget about what she did to you—she murdered me!” Sissy barked. “That bitch took my life away from me. She ruined my family’s lives. Nothing will be the same and nothing will ever be right—and you’re sleeping with her?”
Jim’s voice was deep and low. “Adrian, you need to leave this room now.”
The other angel was up and out of his chair before the sentence was finished. And as he limped out, Sissy was glad for the privacy. Shit was going down, and this did not need an audience.
When they were alone, Jim locked eyes with her. “I didn’t want you to see that.”
“What they did to you, or the scratches she left on your chest last night?”
“Either.”
“Too late.”
He closed his lids, but she wasn’t sure whether that was because he had serious regrets … or because he was trying to figure out what to say.
“I just don’t get you.” She shook her head. “And maybe that makes me naive—”
“This is war,” he cut in.
“And that is just sick!” she yelled back. “You’re disgusting!”
With an explosive lunge, he flipped the table over, sending a plate flying, scattering chairs. “Do you think I’ll stop at using anything it takes to win! Even if it’s myself!”
Sissy took a step back, and hit the counter by the stove. Something about seeing his anger got hers under some control.
After a long moment of standoff, she said grimly, “I don’t expect you to enjoy it, how ’bout that. Or are you going to tell me men can get it up even though they’re grossed out by someone? Didn’t think the anatomy worked like that—then again, I’m a virgin, right. So what do I know.”
Jim was breathing hard now, his blue eyes glowing, and not in a good way. But he wasn’t going to hurt her—in spite of what he’d just done to that poor table, she knew deep down in her soul he would never, ever hurt her.
At least not physically.
He’d already torn her apart on the inside, however. Although she wasn’t sure exactly how he’d gotten the power to do that.
“I hate it,” he said raggedly. “But I will use any weapon in this war, even my own body. Are we clear?”
“So now you’re a martyr as well as a savior? I don’t know, like I said, I think men have to enjoy it, don’t they.”
“Wait, wait, promotion like what?”
Jim shrugged. “With Nigel gone, I’m supposed to take his place up there.”
He pictured the archangel with his three dandy backups, having a proper English tea up in Heaven. Then tried to imagine himself sitting there, passing scones and the sugar bowl around with his pinkie extended and his legs crossed at the knees.
Yup. Right.
Adrian moved around in his wooden chair, his weight causing the thing to groan. “I didn’t know that was in the rules.”
“What a fucking surprise.” Jim took another drag. “We need to verify the information. Any idea where we can go?”
“Yeah.” Ad resumed eating. “And he’s dead up in the attic.”
There was a period of silence during which Ad became a member of the Clean-plate Club. When he was finished, he pushed himself away from the table, cupped the back of his neck with both hands and sprawled.
“Maybe we should just take a trip to Purgatory.”
“Excuse me?” Jim asked.
Ad shrugged. “That shit about not making it into Heaven if you commit suicide is no bullshit. Trust me.”
As the guy cleared his throat like he’d gone too far, Jim’s wheels got turning. “You’re saying Purgatory is real.”
“Been there, got the T-shirt. Blah, blah, blah.”
“So how’d you get out?”
“Eddie.”
Jim sat up straight. “You’re telling me Eddie went in there and came back out? With you?”
“Hold up.” The guy extended his hands in classic stop-it-right-thur style. “I was just being a smart ass—don’t even think about that. You’re our special golden boy, whatever—and Eddie condemned himself to do it. Besides, no offense, but you’re still getting up to speed, this is a clutch round, and we both know how well things go when you’re ‘distracted.’”
The air quotes would have made Jim violent … except for the fact that he had come to the same conclusion, which was why he was here and not going after Sissy. As much as it pained him, he needed to win and he needed to somehow keep his job even with Nigel being dead. If he could prevail, and avoid turning into an archangel, then after the great victory or whatever he’d have an eternity to help Sissy. Now was the crisis time for the war, though.
Besides, the rounds had been coming faster and faster. Forty-eight hours. Maybe seventy-two—and he could refocus on her.
“I’ve got to go over and bring him back.”
“Jim, you’re fucking crazy—”
“What’s my other option?” Jim narrowed his eyes. “If Devina’s right, and I’m supposed to succeed Nigel? I can’t let that happen. I don’t trust anyone else to do this job—I can win this, Ad. I can goddamn win this.”
All he had to do was think back to the way he’d spent the night. Devina had a critical weakness … and it was him. She wasn’t suggesting they both throw in the towel because she was scared of losing—it was because she didn’t want to lose contact with him: Unless he quit, he was apparently going to have to step into Nigel’s spats and she didn’t want to fight with anyone other than him. Fuck the rules, fuck the archangels, fuck the Creator—Devina was a parasite addicted to acquisition and he was her number one target.
And she was going to take that weakness to her grave.
Because he was going to personally escort her there with it.
Adrian’s one functioning pupil roamed around Jim’s face, and Jim held himself perfectly still. He was prepared to take any scrutiny, because he knew, down to his soul, what he needed to do … and how he was going to do it.
“Ad,” he said in a low voice, “I can do this.”
The other angel almost hid the tremors that crept into his hands. But the fine tic that teased his bad eye was nothing he could camo. “No, you can’t.”
“What put you in there, Ad. How’d you get over.” Not questions, because he knew the answer. “Devina got into you, didn’t she. She got to you somehow, and you couldn’t take it—so you ate a bullet. You slit your wrists. You hanged yourself—”
“A cliff.” The voice that interrupted was so hoarse, it was made of ninety percent air. “I, ah … I had made a deal with her to save someone.”
Jim waited for the story to roll out. When it didn’t, he said, “What happened.”
Ad cleared his throat and covered his face with those shaking hands. “I made an arrangement to save someone and I turned myself over to that demon. I was down on that table of hers for … it felt like years. Eddie told me later it was two nights of earth time. When I came back, after she released me, I wasn’t the same.”
Like bats out of Hell itself, memories of Jim’s own time down there swarmed and descended, clouding his brain. He knew exactly what Ad was talking about. He’d been on that table, too.
That was how his path had first crossed Sissy’s.
After he’d found her body, that was.
“I thought I was okay.” Ad shook his head. “I wasn’t. I lasted about a week, made some excuse to Eddie about going somewhere. I was going to shoot myself, but I’m an angel, right? I wanted to die flying. So I jumped and did nothing about it … the canyon was about seventy feet deep. I hit hard and that was all it took. Split second later—shit, I thought I’d survived. I woke up in Purgatory—I thought it was gray because of moonlight or some shit.”
Finally, Ad dropped his arms. His eyes, both of them, were red ringed from tears he refused to let fall.
“Eddie went there because of me, but he was also the reason we got out. The Creator has a thing for love.” Ad stared at his own hands, watching them shake. “I mean, Eddie sacrificed himself for me, and that’s love, right? Not the dumb-ass romantic kind … but the real shit. So yeah, when Nigel went to the Creator and argued for us—that was what worked. Nigel was able to strike an arrangement that freed us about a month before you came along. If we see you through this war? We’re free. It’s our penance.”
“So you can help me find that archangel and get him back.”
“Maybe Devina is talking out of her ass, though. Not like that bitch has a problem lying—”
“So you can help me,” he repeated.
Ad shook his head again. “Jim, this is a really bad idea.”
“But you can get me there, can’t you.”
“No, that’s on you.”
As their eyes met, Jim knew exactly what the guy was talking about. “But you can help me out of there.”
“No, I can’t. Didn’t you listen to me? It’s not up to us, buddy.” Ad looked up at the ceiling. “Your exit visa can only be issued by the Creator.”
Jim could sense the guy retreating—and that couldn’t happen. “Listen, this is an extraction. Nothing more, nothing less. You think I haven’t done one of these before? I’ll go in, get him, bring him out—”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“There has to be a way.” Jim curled up a fist and banged it on the table, making the plate and fork dance. “Even if Devina is wrong? Heaven is stronger with Nigel back up there. Colin’s head is completely fucked with the bastard gone, and right now, Bert and Ernie—”
“That would be Albert and Byron.”
“Fine, whatever. Call ’em Mozart and Beethoven for all I care. The two of them are holed up in the Manse of Souls, stuck there, while Colin is disintegrating. And this is not a hypothetical. I went up there after I got home last night. All it’s going to take is for Devina to get a hard-on to hit the place, and then we got another set of problems we don’t need. Hell, the Creator can’t even control her, and she sure as shit doesn’t follow the rules. What do you think is gonna happen.”
“But what if I can’t get you back? Then what? Or haven’t you thought it through that far.”
“Then you take over.”
“Not in the rules.”
“Fuck the rules. You’ll handle things because that’s what men like you and me do.”
“On that logic, you could just go up and be Nigel now, and let me take care of the next schlub who fills your shoes. Save the trip to the other side and skip the risk that you’re going to get stuck there.”
“But I’m the reason Nigel’s gone.” Jim jabbed his thumb into his own chest. “I did it. It’s my fault. If I had done shit different … except that doesn’t matter anymore. I want to make amends for the death, and the only way to do it is to bring him back. I settle my debts, Ad. You hear me?”
Adrian scrubbed his face. “I don’t know. I guess there might be a way to get you out.”
“See, I knew this was going to work.”
“I did not say that.”
“Whatever, I’m not a quitter. Even if Devina wasn’t a liar, I’m not quitting this. I’m marshaling my weapons and moving forward. First, we get Nigel back. Then we’re going to hunt down Devina’s lair, we’re going to take that mirror of hers, and we’re going to win these final two rounds. That is our plan. We are going to execute it.”
“What about the next soul?”
Jim opened his mouth to reply—but didn’t get that far. The back door to the mansion blew wide open like it had been hit by a gale-force wind.
“You’re fucking her?!” Sissy spat.
Chapter Four
Sissy was breathing hard even though she’d run only the fifteen feet between where she’d parked the Harley and the back door to the old house. Then again, she’d had to hang onto the bike’s handlebars with a death grip on the ride back. It was either that or lose total control.
Or had that already happened, even though she’d made it here in one piece?
“Well?” Like Jim hadn’t heard her. “You’ve got nothing to say?”
Jim reached forward and calmly stamped out his lit cigarette. “Sissy—”
“She had you raped!” As Jim’s face went ashen, she slammed the door behind herself, shutting them all in. “Did you think I don’t know what she had done to you? We all saw it from the walls! I watched when they … hurt you. How do you—” Her voice cracked. “How can you be with her after something like that?”
At that moment, she wanted to weep, but she didn’t give in. How could she? This wasn’t a safe place for her, even though the two “men” who were at the table, both so silent and still, were supposedly angels.
“Whose side are you really on?” she demanded.
Jim put his palms on the table and braced his arms. As he stood up, it was clear he had an iron lock on his temper, and for a split second, she felt a flash of fear.
But she’d already faced off with the devil herself. So she wasn’t about to be frightened by him.
“Fine, forget about what she did to you—she murdered me!” Sissy barked. “That bitch took my life away from me. She ruined my family’s lives. Nothing will be the same and nothing will ever be right—and you’re sleeping with her?”
Jim’s voice was deep and low. “Adrian, you need to leave this room now.”
The other angel was up and out of his chair before the sentence was finished. And as he limped out, Sissy was glad for the privacy. Shit was going down, and this did not need an audience.
When they were alone, Jim locked eyes with her. “I didn’t want you to see that.”
“What they did to you, or the scratches she left on your chest last night?”
“Either.”
“Too late.”
He closed his lids, but she wasn’t sure whether that was because he had serious regrets … or because he was trying to figure out what to say.
“I just don’t get you.” She shook her head. “And maybe that makes me naive—”
“This is war,” he cut in.
“And that is just sick!” she yelled back. “You’re disgusting!”
With an explosive lunge, he flipped the table over, sending a plate flying, scattering chairs. “Do you think I’ll stop at using anything it takes to win! Even if it’s myself!”
Sissy took a step back, and hit the counter by the stove. Something about seeing his anger got hers under some control.
After a long moment of standoff, she said grimly, “I don’t expect you to enjoy it, how ’bout that. Or are you going to tell me men can get it up even though they’re grossed out by someone? Didn’t think the anatomy worked like that—then again, I’m a virgin, right. So what do I know.”
Jim was breathing hard now, his blue eyes glowing, and not in a good way. But he wasn’t going to hurt her—in spite of what he’d just done to that poor table, she knew deep down in her soul he would never, ever hurt her.
At least not physically.
He’d already torn her apart on the inside, however. Although she wasn’t sure exactly how he’d gotten the power to do that.
“I hate it,” he said raggedly. “But I will use any weapon in this war, even my own body. Are we clear?”
“So now you’re a martyr as well as a savior? I don’t know, like I said, I think men have to enjoy it, don’t they.”
