Angelic Avenger (3 page)

“He really plans to use her and discard her, Bella, love,” he insisted and I frowned into my pillows. Why did I get the feeling rescuing his little songbird might not be in her best interest?

“And your plans are…what exactly?”

“To give her wonderful memories to tell her grandchildren about when they’re curled up at her knee, of course,” he replied with the total aplomb of the very, very old.

“This is the twenty-first century.” I grinned into the down pillow. “We don’t talk to our grandparents. We think they’re senile.”

“Yes, but by the time…”

“
Stop
!”

I didn’t roll over as I yanked the pillow down around my ears. “No forecasting, I don’t want to know. I want to live it, not know about it.”

His laughter brushed over my skin like a breeze, raising goose bumps under my silk pajamas. I learned a long time ago that you don’t wear lingerie when the locks on your doors don’t even make your visitors blink.

“Fine—” I conceded with a sigh as I rolled over, the pillow still over my face, “—one conversation, with her and not him. I’ll not meddle any further nor will I do anything more than pay her a visit. One visit and that’s it. If she decides this clown is worth her time, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

I felt him spring off the dresser, and peeked out from the pillow in time to see the air around him shimmer as clothes manifested on him. He waved his hand and the birds were abruptly gone back to whichever rainforest he’d spirited them out of. I glanced at the clock and shook my head. I remember when eight was late and I would have been in a panic, but now that I didn’t work for a living beyond the collecting souls gig, I had found a luxury I’d not enjoyed in life. Sleep.

In my former life, I used to be a television producer for the WSB news team here in Atlanta. That was until a man wrecked my thinking. The day I came home from the bank after finding out he had taken all my money with him on the way out the door was the day I got royally drunk and jumped off a bridge. Literally.

Thus began my new life. I did have the satisfaction of finding out that the new wife took him to the cleaners quite publicly while I was being inducted into my new profession. I still had a lingering cause for helping other women escape men like Chris before they had a chance to do to them what he had done to me. Most of the angels knew the circumstances behind my suicide, so when things like this came up, they knew I was a soft touch.

Orifiel smiled at me as he bounced on the balls of his feet. I’d thought by agreeing to talk to her, he’d pop off and let me get my day started. Obviously, he had other ideas.

“You meant tonight, right?”

“Actually—” He smiled at me with a smile that only a true blood angel could master because it made his face glow with good will. Even dead, I wasn’t any more immune to it than the next person on the street was. “Honora is working her day job at a nursery in Kennesaw.”

With anyone else, I would have asked if it was babies or plants, but with Orifiel, there was no question. His songbird worked with plants. I honestly think that the idea of children scared him to the point he would have bolted the other way despite her voice if it were the other kind of nursery. I sighed and crawled out of bed.

“Fine, you make the bed while I take a shower, and no peeking. I’ll know and I won’t go to see her at all.”

I wouldn’t know if he peeked and we both knew it, but it didn’t hurt to at least attempt to exert a little bit of leverage, even the imaginary kind. It made me feel better about giving in.

I came out of the shower to find he had not only made the bed, but also supplied a vase of flowers for the bedside table as well as laid a breakfast of exotic fruits on the table for me. I smiled as I put the rubber band around the end of my French braid, having decided that I wanted to look somewhat respectable as I went about my day.

Did I need to eat? No. I was dead for all practical purposes, but that didn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the taste of food. I didn’t need sleep, either, but I enjoyed the rest. I think what I enjoyed most was the routine of living, though. Some of the denizens I worked around understood it while some of them didn’t. Orifiel either got it or was humoring me to keep me on the side of cooperation. Somehow, I thought he understood it.

He hummed as he waited for me to eat, not invading my space as he roamed around the apartment straightening and putting things to rights. He was a soothing presence, unlike some I could mention. With an effort, I pulled my mind away from my boss. Whatever had made Gavreel so sullen lately wasn’t my fault, so there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. With that resolution firmly in my mind, I finished my breakfast and stood up. Orifiel came to immediate attention and I couldn’t resist a chuckle at the eagerness on his face. Sometimes, even the very old can be childlike. That’s a lesson we could all learn. Enthusiasm isn’t only for the young.

“Are we going to be seen today or lurking?”

“I think I’ll be lurking. She’s much more likely to speak openly with another woman without a man about.”

“The invisible man it is.” I grinned as I grabbed my purse and keys on my way to the front door.

The drive to Kennesaw Nursery took a little over half an hour. Not because the distance was all that great, but because the DOT never seemed to get over the whole “let’s rip up another section of I-75” mentality. It gave me a chance to catch up on Orifiel’s songbird’s drama. It was the standard, I suppose, and I found myself wondering when women were going to wise up and realize men weren’t worth it.

Wait, this is me talking. Never mind.

I will say one thing about modern technology, not a single person blinked at watching me talk to myself as I drove. In the days of hands-free headsets and cars wired with cell phones, it wasn’t anything unusual. Sometimes, it’s good to remember things that are normal for some are extraordinary for others. The tiny innovations I discovered always managed to surprise me. I was smiling over that little quirk as I parked my second-hand sedan.

Granted, my bank account was paid whenever I needed it, but I saw no reason to squander the funds on flashy things. My Toyota was perfectly acceptable for what little toying around I needed to do. It wasn’t as if my commute to work was fuel driven, after all.

I was still smiling when I headed to the main building, only to hesitate as I heard a sultry voice coming from one of the greenhouses.

“She likes to sing to the trees.”

My invisible companion smiled widely, knowing I couldn’t answer him out in the open like this. Since I wasn’t looking forward to the odd looks I got when I talked to myself, I strolled off in the direction of the voice. I had to admit she did sing with an undercurrent of joy that would attract people to her like moths to flame. She was the first person I’d ever heard who could claim a voice like an angel and be honest about it. Glancing around quickly and seeing no one, I decided to take the risk, anyway, as I headed toward the doors of the greenhouse.

“Laugh it up, big guy, and we’ll see how much further I take this beyond the letter of the promise. Oumph.”

I blinked as I staggered backwards and looked up at the chest I’d bounced off. My gaze wandered over the man, taking in his conservative suit complete with a silk tie in a double Windsor knot, and moved on up to the sharp cleft in the perfect chin and the dimple winking out of an extremely kissable face.

Hubba hubba didn’t even begin to cover it.

Now, it takes a guy who tops over ten on the scale to set me back, so that should tell you where this one ranked. What knocked me over, though, wasn’t his debonair persona, but the magic aura fairly oozing off him. It was very nearly a tangible thing. There are few things the soulless can count as a weakness, but for me, it was the force of that magic as it shimmered with all the force of his life essence. He had to be at least a half-breed, if not more. The shock of touching all that force told me that.

Blue eyes stared into mine and I fought back all sorts of embarrassingly stupid comments. I was opening my mouth to spout one, without a doubt, when he spoke first, thus saving me from myself.

Oh yeah, Bella, impress the man by gawking like a schoolgirl. Good job.

“You know, they lock up people who talk back to the little voices in their heads.”

I blinked and snapped my mouth shut. Stepping back from him, I frowned as I pulled my self-respect back around me.

“Yeah, well, sometimes it’s nice to talk to someone who’ll listen.”

A smile tugged at his lips and I found myself smiling back. It had been a long time since I’d had a man tease me. Well, a man that I could do something about, anyway.

“Maybe you need better friends, then.”

He winked as he leaned forward. I had a brief moment of insanity where I thought he was going to step into me. The thought made me freak a little and I jumped backwards. He froze and frowned at me. The sight of his hand reaching down to pick up a large document-sized envelope made me blush crimson. He wasn’t leaning in to steal a kiss; he was reaching down to pick up the envelope I’d been too distracted to even notice he’d dropped. Two inches had never felt so tall.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I do that?”

I closed my eyes and prayed real hard. Somewhere, up there, the entire angelic world was watching me turn into a twit right before their eyes. I hoped to hell they were enjoying the show. I opened them to see the man smiling brightly back at me with a teasing glint in his eyes.

“Nope. I did it all by myself. It’s not every day I get run over by a beautiful woman talking to herself.”

I glared over his shoulder to where the hidden angel was laughing at me. Oh, whoever said revenge is sweet hadn’t reckoned on me. It wasn’t going to be sweet; it was going a candy store. I wasn’t able to pull back the grin to Mr. Flirtatious, though. Something about this man made me feel giddy and a little bit as crazy as he thought I was. Too bad I was on a mission today.

“Yeah, well, sorry I wasn’t looking where I was going, sir. Have a great day.”

With my head held high, I swept past him and through the doors preparing my lines as I went. Once inside, I came to a grinding halt with my smile fading a bit around the edges. In that immediate heartbeat, I saw things that set even me on my heels. Maybe it was the brush with the halfling outside that set my senses on alert, but I saw what I saw without having to look for the usual subtle details. The first two points, I’m sure Orifiel expected from the smug expression on his face as he drifted by me to stroll along the bank of trees inside the doorway, but the third I think was going to surprise him.

The brunette in front of me was very obviously a half-blood. Equally as obvious was that her gifts stemmed from the angel that sired her. Female angels tended to consort with their own kind, so that limited my guesses about her parentage. I looked over at Orifiel, shining with the same light as the woman and obviously the source of her gift, with a sour expression, which he blissfully ignored.

In the perfect world, women weren’t allowed to look like her. It made the rest of us look bad. Of course, this was far from the perfect world so five foot ten brunettes with flawless skin who could sing with the angels were perfectly legal. She fairly radiated angelic magic to the point my skin tingled with it. I tried very hard to keep smiling and not hate her for it.

Let me backtrack a moment. However mankind has deified them, angels are not gods or demigods or anything more illustrious than what they truly are. A magical race of sentient beings, like pixies, sprites, shifters, trolls and the rest of the beings that occupies the seven layers of Earth. The one thing angels have that the rest of us don’t is the fact they are the ones charged with overseeing the day-to-day maintenance of the children of creation. We’re a full time job for most of them.

Lust is not uncommon among any of the sentient races so it’s no true surprise half-bloods are running about. The ones who inherit gifts or characteristics from the fathers are rare, but all of them shine out to people like me. Orifiel’s daughter was truly a gifted woman. Her voice carried the wealth of the angels, but her touch showed the love of nature as well. She was in the right field, I thought and envied, for a moment, her green thumb. It made me wonder what her mother was like to have attracted him to begin with.

Thinking back to the conversation in my bedroom, I realized he had not lied to me. He’d said simply that he’d planned to give her memories to tell her grandchildren. I’d been the one to imply the undertone to that with my own lewd assumptions. Something told me Orifiel was spending far too much time on this plane if he was walking the lines that closely, but it made me smile ruefully, nonetheless.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” I blinked when she started across the greenhouse toward me with an open smile. She was tall and lean with an inherent grace that would have looked far more suitable for a runway than a greenhouse. It was the kind of grace plain women like me hated because we couldn’t pull it off. “I didn’t see you come in. Can I help you find something special?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that I already had, but I bit it back with a grin.

“Actually, I’m a fan. I heard you sing at Down the Hatch the other night and wanted to meet you. I overheard Tommy and your manager at the door talking about your day job, so I hope you don’t mind me dropping in. I’m looking for something to brighten up my apartment and thought it would be the perfect opportunity…”

I allowed myself to stammer off as if embarrassed and began to wander down the aisle of small trees. I stopped in front of one of those things you see in doctor’s offices and smiled as I ran my finger over the leaves. I’d kill it in a week, but it was still nice to look at.

“I’m glad you liked my music.” She smiled at me shyly as she fell in step. “It’s only a hobby, but I enjoy it.”

She seemed embarrassed that I had complimented her and it made me smile even wider. Most half-bloods, even the ones who didn’t realize what they were, had a tendency to be cocky and brash, so finding one who wasn’t was, well, just strange.