Possession

Chapter Thirty-three

“These are all for me?”

As Sissy leaned into the huge white-and-red Target bag, she was astounded. It was like a bathtub full of yoga pants, and shirts, and sweatshirts—even bras and underwear and socks. And there was another load, this one with books, magazines, bath towels, toothbrushes, and toothpaste.

She sat back in the kitchen chair. “Thank you—this is incredible.”

Adrian, Jim’s roommate, colleague, fellow angel, whatever, looked over as he shut the refrigerator. “And I brought a couple of dinners home with me. Some loaded potato skins or something—and ribs. Also a steak.”

Across the way, she sensed Jim looking at her and she glanced over. He was leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed over his chest, eyes heavy-lidded.

For a moment, she pictured him on the floor of that bathroom, weeping. Difficult to ever imagine that had happened—right now, between his hard body and impregnable expression, he seemed bulletproof.

After leaving the warehouse, they had driven out to the quarry because she’d had to see if anything came to her. No luck. But they had spent a long time out there, just sitting side by side, waiting for the sun to go down. The cloud cover had been spotty to the west, and as the rays had broken through, the peaches and pinks in the horizon had nearly been too bright to look at.

She had stared into them until her eyes had run with tears from the burning.

In a lot of ways, that was the end of her journey. There were no more places to go, no other veins of memory to mine, nothing left to investigate.

As Jim checked his watch for the second time, she said, “You’re leaving, aren’t you.”

One of his dark blond brows lifted like he was surprised to have been called out. “I have to go.”

Adrian eased down into a chair with a grunt and nodded at her. “You and I are going to stay here.”

So the pair of them had had a talk while she’d been in the ladies’ room.

“How long will you be gone?” she asked.

“Just going to chat with the boss.” Jim shrugged. “Depends on how it goes.”

“I am tired.” At least, she thought she was. Shouldn’t she be?

There was a long, awkward pause, as if Jim didn’t want to take off to wherever he was going. To fill the time, she glanced back and forth between the two men, realizing only Jim had a halo: No glow around Adrian’s head.

“Take care of her,” Jim said gruffly before he turned and walked off.

Closing her eyes, she listened to his footfalls fade, and wondered if it wasn’t a lie … if instead, he wasn’t walking off into the horizon, just as the sun had.

For some reason, that panicked her.

“Tell me there’s a TV in this place,” she said roughly. “And cable.”

The man, angel, whatever, shook his head. “Sorry. No dice. Jim’s got a laptop, but there’s no hot spot here, no modem.”

Great.

“Can I ask you something,” she blurted, not expecting any kind of—

“Yeah, sure.”

Well, that was a change of pace. Unless he assumed she just wanted to inquire about the weather? “You were injured in a fight, right?”

“Nah, the limp and the cane are an artistic choice.”

Shoot. She didn’t want to offend him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

He pointed to his chest. “Asshole. You gotta know that about me. When I’m in a good mood, it’s fun for me, when I’m like this, it’s more of a reflex. So yeah, ask whatever you want—just don’t take my answers all that seriously.”

“Well, are you an angel?”

“Most of the time, yeah.”

“So why don’t you have a halo? Is Jim something special and that’s why he can heal himself and you can’t?”

“Halo?” Adrian frowned. “I don’t know about that one, but yup, Jim was chosen by both sides to do this final war. Both the good guys and that bad bitch had to agree on him. And as for my shit? Long story—but these things aren’t ever ‘healable.’”

“I’m so sorry.” She shifted in her chair. “What do you mean, final war?”

“Evidently the Creator is as bored of life as the rest of us are. He set this thing up—seven souls, seven rounds. Jim’s job is on the field, trying to make the people choose the right path. And if he doesn’t prevail? It’s gonna get really fucking hot around here.”

Sissy wrapped her arms about herself. “Hell’s actually not all that warm…”

Adrian winced. “Sorry. I’d forgotten that you … yeah, sorry.”

As a shiver laddered up her spine and settled in her nape, she knew she had to change the subject. “It’s okay … so, ah, what did Jim do before this?”

“Carpentry. Before that, he killed people for a living.” As her eyes bulged, Adrian shrugged. “Look, if you want sugar-coating, you’d better read one of those mags I bought you. I’m not good at it.”

“Killed people as in how?”

He leveled a stare at her. “Put a bullet in their brains. Poisoned them. Threw them off buildings—do you need a picture book?”

When she stuttered, he rubbed his face. “Sorry, I’m really not good at this, am I?”

“No, it’s all right, I just—”

“It was for the U.S. government, I guess. That whole thing with him never mattered much to me. But his old boss was one of the souls in the war—actually he was in two rounds. We lost the first, but won the second with good ol’ Matthias. And I don’t hate the guy, actually.”

“How many more rounds are there?”

“We’re even at two to two with three to go at this point. And that’s what I’ve been working on while Jim’s been…”

As the angel let the sentence drift, Sissy sighed. “I’ve been in the way, huh.”

“I think he’s back on track now. No harm, no foul—yet. Assuming Nigel doesn’t castrate him when he gets up there.”

“Nigel?”

“Head of everything.”

“Ah. So how are the souls chosen?”

“By the Maker and Nigel and Devina. We aren’t told shit down here. Every round, the issue is who the hell is in play. Kinda hard for Jim to intercede at the crossroads and influence them if he doesn’t know who they are. Again, we win or lose depending on the decision the soul makes, or the actions he or she does or doesn’t commit. First to four wins? Takes the prize.”

“Who knows about this … war?”

“Not the world at large, if that’s what you’re getting at. They won’t know until the end—well, actually, only if we lose. If there are minions crawling the Earth, people are going to get a clue pretty fucking fast. Otherwise, it’s going to just be business as usual.”

Answers. Finally, she was getting some lay of the land.

“Will you tell me how I fit into all this?” She reached across the Target bags and put her hand on his forearm. “Please.”

When all he did was curse under his breath, she rushed to fill the silence. “Jim took me to the demon’s place today.”

“You went to Hell? What the f—”

“No, the warehouse district, where she used to live, I guess? You know, where Jim found me in that bathroom?”

The angel shook his head and went back to rubbing his face, like maybe he didn’t like what he was seeing in his mind. “Fucking Devina.”

“He said something about a mirror.” She covered her belly with her arms. “That I was killed … and marked to protect her mirror?”

“Her mirror’s how she gets to Hell. It’s the key to the lock down there, and if she loses that ugly old thing, she’s separated forever.”

“It’s like something out of an evil fairy tale, then.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“But she only had me for a couple of weeks, right? That’s how long Jim said I was dead.”

“Well, technically you’re still dead, honey. But yeah.”

Sissy looked around the kitchen, noticing absently that someone had scrubbed the walls while she and Jim had been out. Once grungy and faded, the yellow was brightening up.

“So how many others like me have been sacrificed?” she asked in a dull voice.

Adrian groaned as he adjusted his position. “Time immemorial, right? She’s existed that long—so I don’t know. It’s my understanding that the seal on the door lasts until it’s broken by a third party. She can go in and out as many times as she wants to, but, like, when Jim went into that bathroom door, he broke it. I also think whenever she moves, she needs another sacrifice—new door and all that.”

“There must be others like me down there, then.”

“Yeah.”

That anger started to curl in her gut again, the burning getting stoked once more. Reaching down, she lifted her shirt up and looked underneath.

She expected to find the glowing in her skin, but there was none, no markings, either. Maybe she’d imagined what she’d seen in that loft?

Tugging things back into place, she met the eyes of the angel.

“You got another question?” he prompted.

“The ones like me, trapped down there?” she said quietly. “Is there any way of getting them out?”

The drawbridge was up.

That was the first thing Jim noticed as he arrived in Heaven. Actually, no, that was the second. The real number one was that his summons was not answered and he’d had to force himself up here.

Hadn’t been aware he could do that until he’d found himself back-flatting on Heaven’s lawn.

Getting to his feet, he brushed off his ass and frowned at the abandoned tea table. Hard to believe those four natty bastards would have walked away from it like that, leaving half-filled cups and itty-bitty sandwiches all over the place.

Something had happened.

“Nigel!” As his shout faded, he turned toward the fortified castle walls. “Colin!”

Nothing. Not even that huge wolfhound bounding over to him.

With few other options, he started hoofing it around the perimeter, hoping to run into someone. He’d gone about a fifty yards when he saw Nigel’s colorful tent setup off in the distance, gleaming in the strangely diffused light. Breaking into a jog, he beat feet in its direction.

“Anyone home?” he barked as he got within range of the draped entrance. “Nigel? You in?”

He called out a couple more times. Lost his patience with the whole polite thing.

Welcome back, Ali Baba, he thought as he drew the fabric aside.

Just as before, jeweled colors glowed from every corner, the fine silks and satins hanging in folds that caught the golden light of many candles. The furniture was all antique and very fancy, the place looking like something out of an Old English excursion to the Middle East.

“Nigel?”

At first, the flash of silver on the floor seemed like nothing but the glare of candlelight playing tricks on his eyes. But as he refocused on it, he realized there was … a thin puddle of the shit? Right at the base of one of the curtain falls. It looked as if someone had melted down a sterling tea set right on the Oriental rug—

That was when he smelled the flowers.

Breathing in, his nose hummed with a bouquet of freshly cut blooms.

And then he heard a faint, rhythmic sound.

Drip, drip, drip …

As dread clawed its way into the center of his chest, he approached slowly, and watched from a distance as his hand reached out and grabbed hold of a ruby-colored curtain.

Even before he pulled the thing back, he knew what he was going to see.

“Oh … fuck … no.”

On the far side, lying in an uncharacteristically messy sprawl on a chaise longue, Nigel was at once perfectly alive and completely gone: unmoving, with no breath in his chest or expression to his face, he was nonetheless the picture of health, a blush to his smooth cheeks, his skin retaining that glow he had had during his version of “life.”

There was a crystal knife sticking straight out of his sternum, his own hand still locked on its grip, his eyes fixed on some far-off point.

That silver blood was everywhere on the floor, and the dripping was more of it falling into the biggest of the puddles, the one directly under the body.

Jim backed out into the main space, letting go of the drape. The thing did not return to its former place, however, getting bogged down in the archangel’s blood, the doorway, such as it was, remaining open so that he could still see his “boss.”

Something hit him in the back of the legs. A chair by an inlaid desk.

Jim let himself fall down into the cane seat. Staring at the game changer ahead of him, he was dumbfounded to the point of not being able to breathe.

His choices had caused this; he knew that without a doubt. And that was bad. But the real kicker? He couldn’t say, even if he’d known this was going to be the result, that he would have done anything differently when it came to Sissy.

He just really fucking wished that he hadn’t had to trade one for the other. Yeah, he’d gotten the girl out, but the cost had been so much higher than he’d thought.

And now he knew precisely why the drawbridge had been up.

Heaven was not as secure as it used to be, was it.