Conspiracy of Angels (11 page)

“What else you got back there?” I asked, craning my neck to see over the lid of the trunk. “A James Bond Do-It-Yourself Spy Kit?”

She chuckled despite herself, using her free hand to shut the trunk as quietly as possible. “The trunk of a lady’s car is a lot like the contents of her purse. Mysterious to menfolk like yourself, and intended to remain that way.”

She began striding smartly toward the other side of the street. She’d parked so close to the car in front that there was barely enough room for me to fit through. By the time I jigged past, Lil was already halfway across, but I easily caught up to her.

“Seriously, Lil. What if you get caught with that thing stowed in your trunk? Isn’t it illegal or something?”

She laughed openly at this. It was a warm throaty sound and she only remembered we were trying to be quiet about halfway through. Stopping with one foot on the curb in front of my apartment, she turned to me.

“On the rare occasions that I have been pulled over, I have never,
ever
gotten a ticket. No one has asked to look inside my…
trunk
.”

As if to elaborate, she pitched her shoulders forward ever so slightly, tilting her cleavage into full view. Then she lifted her storm-gray eyes to mine, regarding me from under her thick nest of lashes. With a coy tilt of her head, she gave me her best come-hither. That warm spice and vanilla scent rolled off of her, and her very female-ness seemed like a palpable force clawing at me.

“I bet that works on all the lady cops,” I choked.

Lil batted her lashes and it felt like the temperature of the chilly fall night rose to something measurable in Kelvin. I took a judicious step back, even though my body was screaming that closer would be better—and much more fun. Lil eyed me for a few moments, the curl to her lips unmistakable.

On the other hand, maybe it does
, I thought.

“Uh, ladies first,” I said with an awkward and exaggerated bow.

“Always,” she replied primly, and continued toward the apartment building. I made sure she got a head start, then followed cautiously behind. It was a good bet Lil put the fatal back in
femme fatale
.

As it turned out, we didn’t need the lock-pick gun. The door sagged partly open. I nudged it the rest of the way with one elbow, moved into the living room, then automatically reached for the light switch on the inside. A brass pole lamp leaning across a pile of books flickered once then burned out with a sizzling pop. All the other lamps in the room were similarly toppled.

“Perfect,” I grumbled.

Lil was still in the outside hallway, checking to see if we were alone. I took several more steps into the mostly darkened room, trying to assess the chaos. It was a nice apartment, as such things go—or at least, it looked like it might have been nice before the hurricane blew through.

The living room had a central tiled area in front of an inviting stone fireplace. An overstuffed couch and matching loveseat had been arranged in front of the hearth. The couch was tipped on its back, cushions scattered and upholstery slashed. Bookcases that had once lined the walls were toppled to the floor, their contents spilling everywhere. Picture frames had been torn from the walls and tossed haphazardly among the piles of books. The desk and filing cabinet tucked in one corner had been thoroughly ransacked, drifts of papers spilling from manila folders everywhere.

A conspicuously empty section on the desk suggested that it had once been home to a computer.

Lillee whistled sharply. “Jeez, Zack. I knew you were a bachelor, but this is excessive even for you.”

I glared over my shoulder. “Very funny. The place has been tossed.”

“No shit,” she said, carefully stepping around the scattered piles. She toed one of the books that lay open, pages torn by a hasty hand. “They were hot to get their mitts on something.”

“Yeah,” I responded glumly, “and I’ve got to figure out what they wanted, when I don’t even remember what I owned.”

“You got gloves?” she asked. She set the lock-picking gun on a clear patch of beige carpet, fished in her purse, then produced a pair of blue nitrile gloves. Slipping one on, she gingerly picked up one of the picture frames. Glass tinkled as she shook little slivers onto the rug. Her delicately plucked brows went up and she made a little “hrm” sound in the back of her throat. “I didn’t know you were still a collector,” she observed.

“Let me see that.” I reached out and took it from her. She started to object, but I shook my head firmly, making a sweeping gesture with my free hand. “My place, remember? My prints are all over.”

“Good point,” she said, and she relinquished the frame.

Moving to the front windows where a patch of light shone from a nearby streetlamp, I squinted down at the picture in my hand. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this. The roughly nine-by-twelve frame housed not a picture nor a photo, but the page of a book. It was very old, with a stylized drop capital, florid calligraphy, and an illuminated panel at the top. The rich pigments of the illumination took on a dark and velvety texture in the weak spill of light, accented with the unmistakable glint of gold leaf. The parchment had a rich and creamy texture, glowing with a depth you just didn’t get with ordinary paper.

“It’s from a psaltery,” I muttered. “Latin—probably thirteenth, maybe early fourteenth century. France, I think.” I looked around the room again, taking things in with a new set of eyes. There were more framed pages. “I study this stuff,” I said, and almost remembered it. I tried to catch more, but it slipped my grasp. For a moment, I considered unclenching that fist in my head and seeing what impressions I might pick up from the place, but I still didn’t have a handle on those powers. I really didn’t want to end up twitching on the floor—especially not around Lil.

So I went for a more conventional approach, digging through the untidy piles of books and reading the spines. Lil didn’t move from her relatively clear spot just inside the entrance. With her gray-eyed gaze, she watched me curiously.

“
Ancient Near Eastern Languages
,” I read. “
A History of Sumer, Babylon, and Akkad
.” I grabbed the next one. “
Ugaritic Culture and Its Impact on the Abrahamic Faith
.” And the next one. “
Sons of Ur: the Sumerian Roots of the Book of the Watchers
.” Pretty soon, I stood in the midst of a growing pile of thick, obscure tomes, only some of which were in English. “I study this!” I declared with mounting excitement.

“Well, of course you do,” Lil purred, “but you cheat. You spoke most of those languages back in the day.”

I dropped the book I was holding and goggled at her.

“Uh, Lil,” I said, “that was like, six thousand years ago.”

“So?” she asked archly. “You’re immortal. Don’t tell me you forgot that, too.” At that I flashed back to my very first memories of the night.

Struggling to keep my head above water.

Swimming, then face-down in the sand.

Coughing up lake water.

Wondering why I hadn’t drowned.
What if I did?

“Six thousand years?”

The other vision came surging back. Ancient temple. Rough spun tunics. Bronze—
not iron
—blades. It had felt like a memory, but how long ago had it been? My head felt too full and I sat down heavily, scattering books.

“What the hell, Zack?” Lil cried.

Then she did the most humane thing I’d seen out of her since our introduction in the Flats. She sidestepped the piles of books and knelt down by me, reaching a comforting hand toward my shoulder. All I could do was flinch away.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” I cried.

She scowled, but kept her hands to herself. Perching in front of me, she easily balanced on the balls of her feet.

“All right, then,” she said, “but you need to get a grip.”

I pressed the palms of my hands against my eyes, trying to breathe through the panic.

“Just don’t talk about the weird shit right now, OK?” I muttered. “This is a lot to take in.”

“Fine.” She smirked. “I won’t even tell you you’re being a pussy. How’s that?” she added with a sarcastic grin.

I glared at her and actually took a swing in her direction. I didn’t intend to hit her too hard—just cuff her on the shoulder for being such a snot. She saw it coming and nimbly danced away, laughing in her maddeningly sexy way. I tried to scramble after her, but between the books and my size thirteen boots I got all tangled up on myself. Tumbling onto the nearest upended bookcase, I smacked my elbow and very nearly whacked my chin.

After such an impressive display, I felt my ego swell. Though maybe it was my elbow. I lay nose to nose with a Starbuck action figure flung atop one of the framed pieces of manuscript. Lamely, I tried to recall why Starbuck was a woman with a bitching blonde bob—when my eyes focused on the framed piece beneath the figure.

It was caught under a half-toppled bookcase. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking at, but every fiber of my being clamored that it was important.

“I got it,” I said, reaching for the frame.

“You got it all right.” Lil laughed, wiping tears from her eyes. “Showed that bookcase who’s boss.”

“No,” I snarled as I pulled the picture frame free. “I found something they missed.”

Lil was standing over me as quick as that. She peered down at the framed vellum page in my hands.

“All right. What is it?”

The answer poured from my lips before I could think about it. “This is an illustration from the
Celestial Hierarchy
of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Venice. Fifteenth century.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” she said a little skeptically.

I gestured with mounting excitement as my knowledge of the piece came flooding back. “See these three circles, twined together? They represent the three tiers of heavenly hierarchies—and the three circles inside each of them are the three choirs, or orders, assigned to each tier.”

Holy crap
, I thought. I’d actually remembered something.

“It’s pretty much just circles and funky letters, Zack. Compared to some of the others, with the gold and all, this piece is kind of dull.”

“That’s not the point,” I grumbled. “I think I picked this one because it’s not flashy. It’s just black ink. Easy enough to reproduce something that doesn’t stick out.”

She leaned closer, squinting at the illustration, and made an irritated little noise in the back of her throat. “You’re going to have to spell it out for me. All that Latin and angel stuff is your gig, not mine.”

“The ring of numbers just inside each of those big circles,” I said, tapping the glass. “Those aren’t supposed to be there.
None
of those numbers are. It’s a code.”

She frowned, shook her head and wandered over to the front window, looking up and down the street.

“Great,” she said without bothering to turn back. “So what does it say?”

I looked back down at the carefully inserted rings of numbers. The surge of elation crashed suddenly back to reality.

“I have no fucking clue.”

She smacked her forehead with a groan.

“Mother’s tears,” she said.

“I’ll figure it out,” I insisted.

“Sure—once it’s no longer useful.” She waved with an impatient gesture. “Make it portable. I don’t think we should stay here much longer. Morning traffic’s starting up, and if there’s a police bulletin out for you, we can’t count on this place staying off the radar forever.”

I began removing the vellum sheet from its gilded frame. As I got the glass and matting off, a small white envelope fell out from behind the cardboard. I wasn’t sure why, but I glanced over to see whether or not Lil noticed. She was leaning on the sill, a crease of worry marring her brow as she tracked some car or another on its journey down the street. I snatched up the unmarked envelope and stowed it in the interior pocket of my jacket. With the extra socks from Wal-Mart, it was getting kind of crowded in there.

“Hey, Lil,” I said, rolling the antique vellum and looking around for a poster tube or something. I settled on the empty tube from a roll of paper towels. The edges poked out, but it was better than nothing. “At least let me grab some clean clothes.”

“Sure,” she said distractedly, “but make it quick.”

I headed for a short hallway leading away from the living room. The bathroom door was partly open, and I was reminded of yet another thing I hadn’t done all day, in addition to sleep and eating. An extra minute or two wasn’t going to kill me—assuming
anything
could kill me. I cast the thought from my head almost as soon as it manifested.

Basic needs now, weird shit later.

I flicked the light on, did my business, then paused in front of the mirror to wash my hands. It was the first time I’d really had a chance to look at myself, and Lil was right. I looked terrible. Abrasions scabbed my jaw underneath at least a day’s worth of stubble. A little cut crusted above one eyebrow. The bruises didn’t hurt as much as I thought they should. Maybe there were upsides to being immortal.

As I tried to comb my tangled hair into some uniform direction, I caught sight of half a dozen grays scattered among the brown. Briefly, I wondered if immortals were supposed to get gray. If it was about not aging, then I wasn’t doing a very good job. Not that I looked bad or anything, but there were laugh lines around my eyes and a kind of starkness to my jaw that I took for another sign of wear and tear.

Gazing into the pale blue eyes that peered out of the mirror at me, I could see the resemblance to Remy, if not Saliriel. With that thought in mind, I checked my teeth, still feeling peculiarly paranoid. They were neither perfectly straight nor perfectly white. As I grimaced at myself, I even spied a couple of fillings back in the molars. As far as I could tell, I looked like your average, thirty-something guy.

“Zack?” Lil called back from the front room. There was an edge of impatience to her voice that reminded me of my mother. Which was a curious thought. Did winged immortals even
have
mothers?

“Hang on!” I called back, grabbing a little brown leather travel case from the back of the toilet. I snatched up a razor, comb, and toothbrush. There were two in the cup. One was purple, one was blue. I took the blue one, instinctively knowing it was mine—which left me wondering about the other one. Still pondering it, I flipped off the light and slipped back to the apartment’s single bedroom.