Wait. What if I hadn’t gone anywhere? What if I’d actually gone back in time? Was that possible? I went over what I knew about dinosaurs, which was basically: Flat teeth, herbivore. Sharp teeth, run.
I made a mental note to run either way.
After another seventeen hours—or possibly thirty minutes—I spotted an isolated house tucked between two rocky hills. Like a haven. Like a sanctuary for lost travelers. Or, more likely, like the den of a serial killer. Either way, it was my only choice. I started toward it.
Two years later, breathless, frozen, and near death, I knocked on the door of the quaintest little serial killer’s cottage I’d ever seen. A woman in her fifties answered, her face round and rosy cheeked from the bitter winds of the strange land.
“Oh, heavens,” she said—at least I think that’s what she said—as surprised to see me as I was to see her. She turned and called out. “Bernie! Got a we’an on the stoop.”
“It’s no a tea leaf, is it?” a male voice called out.
She eyed me up and down. “Don’t look like one. Closer to a drown doo.”
I hugged myself to squelch a shiver as a man around the same age as the woman walked up, his eyes bright with excitement. “Got a lassie, eh?”
The woman nodded. “What’re you doing out in the cold?”
Their accents were so thick, I couldn’t even decipher which language they were speaking. “Um, do you speak English?”
Bernie laughed and slapped his leg as the woman, to whom I’d yet to be introduced, said, “We are speaking English, love.”
“Oh.” I knew every language ever spoken on the planet, both alive and dead. But every once in a while I had a little trouble with accents. The Scottish lilt being one of them. ’Parently.
“Am I…” I could hardly say the words out loud. “Am I in Scotland?”
The woman cackled in delight. “You’re a dear we’an, aren’t ye? Come in out of the cold.”
“Thank you.” I stepped inside as the man hustled off.
He came back with a blanket and wrapped it around me. “That’s a sin about your clothes,” he said, gesturing toward my apparel.
He was probably right. As wet as my clothes were, they probably looked sinful. Showed a little too much. Maybe they were really religious.
“Aye,” the woman said, glaring at her husband. “Downright awful to see a bonnie lass nigh in the skuddy.”
He shrugged. “Tea?”
“Lassie’s American, ye wanker.”
“Oh, right. Caffee then?”
Now that I understood. I was still running on one cup. I wouldn’t last much longer.
A smile blossomed across my face. I hoped. My face was fairly numb, so I could have just drooled. “Please.”
Watching the couple as they worked making “caffee” and biscuits was like watching an American sitcom. They were hilarious, their banter both loving and demoralizing. My kind of people.
After filling my belly with biscuits that weren’t biscuits at all, Bertrice and Bernie offered me the use of their phone.
“Thank you so much,” I said, but I had no idea how to dial to America.
Bertrice showed me how to dial the operator, and eventually, after several attempts and failed connections, a phone rang on the other side of the world. On about the third ring, however, I’d completely lost my train of thought.
I stood in a dark hallway. The cottage was actually round, and right in the middle was a wooden, octagon-shaped closet.
I stepped closer. Examined the carvings. The way the door slid open.
The Brummels were using it as a pantry, but I’d seen a closet exactly like this one in the convent Reyes had sequestered me away in for eight months. The one that took us forever to figure out how to open. The one that, when I stepped inside, made my light disappear from the celestial realm. It just vanished.
Nothing—no room, no material, no bank vault—could block out my light. Even Earth itself didn’t block it. The departed saw it from anywhere in the world. It was a beacon to them. A lighthouse so they could find their way to the portal when they were ready to cross.
The only time I’d ever known it to disappear was when I’d stepped into that closet a few months ago. And this one was exactly like it. Right down to the type of wood.
“Charley?” Cookie said, fairly yelling into the phone. Thank goodness she’d accepted the collect call. I could not imagine going through all that again.
This place was completely rural, so I’d expected the bad connection. I hadn’t expected the terror in her voice.
“Hey, Cook! You’ll never guess where I am.”
“Where are you?” she asked, panicked.
“Right. That’s what I mean. You’ll never guess.”
“Charley,” she said in her mommy voice.
“Gosh, okay. I’m kind of in Scotland. This call is probably going to cost us a fortune.”
“Charley, this is no time to joke.”
“No, really, this is a landline, and since I had to call you collect, beaucoup bucks, baby.”
“You know what I mean. Scotland?”
“I know, right? I just kind of ended up here.”
Reality sank in. “But … but you remember who you are?”
“Yes, Cook. I have not lost my memories. Just my marbles. I have no money, no phone, and no passport. If the coppers get me, I’m screwed. Also, I don’t know how to get back. But whatever you do, you can’t tell—”
“Have you tried clicking your heels together three times and saying, ‘There’s no place like home’?”
“This is serious, Cook. Don’t tell Reyes. I’m begging you.”
When I was met with a thick, drawn-out moment of silence, I said, “He’s right there, isn’t he?”
“Well—”
“Oh, wait.” I closed my eyes and let a wave of both embarrassment and relief wash over me. I felt his heat at my back. His power. His concern. “Never mind.”
“Sorry, Charley. He’s been pacing around and—”
He reached from behind me and disconnected the call. Then he stepped closer, drowning me in his warmth. Saturating every cell. Filling every dark corner.
He leaned into me. Pressed his mouth to my ear. Whispered, “Care to explain?”
I turned to him at last. He towered over me. Curious. Worried. And a little angry. I didn’t know what to say. I’d exploded and ended up thousands of miles away. So I decided to change the subject. “Does that closet look familiar?”
He didn’t turn around. Didn’t take his eyes off me. Didn’t change his expression in the least.
“It’s just like the one at the convent.”
“Is it?” he asked, still refusing to look. “There’s an angel with a sword wound explaining to Jehovah right now how he got it.”
“Reyes,” I said, alarmed. “What did you do?”
“What did I do?” he asked, deathly still.
“Well, yes.” I pushed against him. He didn’t budge. “You got into a fight with an angel?”
“Three. I thought…” He bit down but didn’t give up his position. “I thought they took you.”
“You thought they took me?” I asked, both stunned and flattered. “Why would they take me? Wait, no, where would they take me?”
“It’s not important. Why are you here?” He glanced around the cottage just as Bernie came up behind him, his expression grave as he said, “Grab me a chib, wifey. Shite’s about to get real.”
“Bernie, wait,” I said, pushing past Reyes and holding up my hands. “This is my husband. He came to get me.”
Bernie continued to glower as Bertrice ran up behind him with a knife. “A good nip is all this’ll take, I imagine.”
“It’s okay, really. He’s a good guy.”
Bernie relaxed, but just barely. “He’s no right to pin ye against your will.”
I turned back to Reyes. “Bernie has a point.”
Reyes glared at me, then crossed his arms over his chest. Wha
t he said to the man, in a perfect Scottish accent, floored me to no end. “I wouldnae refuse a square go, but I’d best warn ye, I’m solid.”
It was at that point that I melted. Only a little. Mostly in the knees.
10
Thank God I don’t have to hunt for my food. I don’t even know where tacos live.
—MEME
Bernie stepped closer to my husband, his chest puffing in a display of strength and fearlessness. “Solid or no, ye pin her like that again, ye’ll find yourself covered in your own blood.”
He and Reyes stood nose to nose for a tense minute before Bertrice slapped her husband on the back. “Let it go, Bernie. That one’ll see ye to your grave afore ye ken he even moved.” She looked at me and winked. “He’s a braw one, aye?”
“Yes,” I said, wrapping an arm in Reyes’s. Since I didn’t know if she meant beautiful or brave, I just agreed. “He is definitely a braw one. This is Reyes.”
Bernie took Reyes’s hand. Amends were made. Biscuits were eaten because who doesn’t like biscuits that taste like cookies?
* * *
We said our good-byes and promised to visit again. I couldn’t get the closet out of my mind. That couldn’t have been a coincidence.
We walked in the dark a ways, the chill less chilly with Reyes near. It was like having my own personal traveling heater and latte maker. The man could make a latte.
Also, he’d given me his jacket. It was like a huge, comfy blanket, and it smelled like him. I struggled to keep from molding it to my face and breathing him in.
Since I had no idea how we were going to get home—Reyes basically teleported over—I turned to him. “So,” I said, my breath fogging on the air, “any idea how we’re getting back?”
We’d stopped in a grove of trees, and Reyes was leaning against one, watching me. Studying.
When he spoke, it was with that same Scottish lilt. The one that melted my knees. And my panties. Mostly my panties.
“Come here, lass.”
I did. How could I not? He pulled me into his arms, where it was warm and safe.
“Care to tell me what happened?” he asked in his normal accent. Oddly enough, it still worked for me.
I shrugged. If he wanted a conversation, he’d get one. “Care to tell me why you want me to drop the Foster case?”
He tensed and looked off into the distance but said nothing.
“How about the fact that you’re a god. I mean, you just found out. What do you think? What do you remember?”
Silence again.
“What about the god glass? It’s clearly upsetting you that I have it.”
Nothing.
I pushed out of his arms and walked to a brook. The moon overhead glinted on the bubbling water. “Okay, we can always talk about the promise you made to Michael. Do you remember that?”
When I turned back, he was watching me again, his dark eyes glistening as though the moon danced inside them.
“You promised him you’d get all three gods of Uzan off the plane. He tricked you, since you had no idea at the time that you were one of the three. But is there like a loophole? How are we going to get around that?” I waited, but not long. “And speaking of the god glass, there are innocent souls trapped in there. Now they are trapped with an assassin demon named Kuur and a malevolent god, Mae’eldeesahn. I have to get them out. I’ve been racking my brain, but I don’t know how. I don’t know what a hell dimension is like.”
At that point, I was more or less voicing my stream of consciousness. If he didn’t want to chat with me, I’d chat with me. I was excellent company.
“And, according to Kuur, the only way to get a soul out is to open the pendant and say the person’s name, but only the one who put them in there in the first place can release them. If that’s the case, we are seriously screwed. Not to mention the fact that we don’t know any of their names.”
I cursed the sadistic priest who’d condemned all those people to a hell dimension in the 1400s. What would they be like now? Would they even still be there? Would there be anything left of their sanity to salvage? I had no idea what six hundred years in a hell dimension would do to one’s psyche, but it couldn’t be good.
“You know, I was thinking about my in-laws.” I strolled closer, craving his heat. And his scent. And the power that continuously hummed through him like an infinite source of energy. “You know, from your supernatural side? By being married to you, I am Satan’s daughter-in-law, Jehovah’s sister-in-law, and Jesus’s aunt by marriage. We’re like the ultimate nuclear family. Oh, and do you know what a god eater is? Apparently I showed something to ADA Nick Parker, something prophetical, and he called me a god eater.”
I turned away from him, breaking the spell he was trying to cast.
“Also, hell is going to freeze over, so that’s apparently a real thing.”
“They didn’t deserve me.”
I whirled around. He’d finally dropped his gaze. “Who didn’t deserve you?”
“The Loehrs.”
I stepped closer, confused. The Loehrs were his birth parents. His human birth parents. He’d chosen them out of all the people in the world to be a part of. And now they were Beep’s guardians, caring for her and loving her like nobody else could.
“Reyes, they’re good people. They’re going to take care of Beep as if she were—”
“Exactly. Good. They didn’t deserve me. Bad. The Fosters did them a favor.”
As his words sank in, I began to understand his misgivings about my taking the case. “So, you think that what they did was okay?”
“I think they did the right thing.”
“The right thing?” I put my hand on his chest. “Is that what this is all about?”
He didn’t answer yet again. His jaw flexed under the weight of his stress.
“I think they have the ability to see into the supernatural realm. Not totally, but just enough to—”
“Know evil when they see it?”
He stuffed his hands in his pocket. “No. I just think that’s how they target their victims. You’ve talked to them, I take it? To Mr. Foster, too?”
“Yes. I went to his office this morning.”
“They’ll adore you,” he said. “Like they do Shawn.”
“Shawn? Why? What does he…?”
He’d turned away from me. His profile with its perfect angles and sensual curves almost glowed in the warm light of a yellow moon. It cast shadows where his lashes fanned across his cheeks. The effect was stunning.
“What’s so different about Shawn? I didn’t notice anything unusual besides the pureness of his aura.”
“Because you never look beyond what meets the eye. You rely too much on reading their emotions.”
“It’s worked pretty good for me so far. And looking beyond? You mean like when I shift onto the other plane?” I took his silence as a yes. “Okay, so if I’d looked harder, what would I have seen?”
“The opposite of me.”
Fine. He was being Cryptic Man, which meant he was nowhere near comfortable talking about it. “Opposite. Like dark versus light?”
He finally met my gaze again. “He is Nephilim.”
“Nephilim? You mean…” My jaw dropped open, and I sat there, stunned speechless, for about an hour. That a Nephilim—part human, part angel—was even possible. That it could actually happen. “They’re real?”
“He is descended from the union of a Grigori and a human.”
“Does he know that?”
“I doubt it.”
“Holy cow.” I walked back to the brook. “This is big. This is like discovering Noah’s ark. Or the Holy Grail. Or a crashed UFO.”
“There are more than you might think.”
I spun back to him. “There are more? How do I not know these things?”
“You should come here again.” A whisper of a grin played on his mouth.
“We should get back.”
“In that case, you’ll definitely have t
o come here.”
I walked back to him and let him wrap me in his arms.
“Hold on tight,” he said, humor in the warning.
“Wait. Would you really have dropped me this morning?”
He bent closer to whisper in my ear. “Right on your ass.”
Before I could reply, the celestial world slammed into us. Whipping and howling and coursing. And then it was gone, and we were in Reyes’s office.
I swayed as I got my bearings, then glared up at him.
“That’s awful,” I continued, picking up where we left off and wishing I had that kind of control over my destination. “You’re supposed to care for me and protect me and make me tacos.”
“Please.” He sat behind his desk, leaned back, and watched me. Again. “The day you need anyone’s protection is the day … well, the day hell freezes over. I don’t think dear old Dad is going to take that lying down. I should probably have your back. But until then…”
Fine. I’d go along with it. “Any idea when I’m scheduled to transform his dimension into Ice Capades: Hell on Ice?”
“Hey, boss.” Sammy poked his head in. “Fryer’s on the fritz again.”
I perked up. “Did you check the carburetor?” Gawd, I was so helpful.
He laughed softly and shook his head. “Davidson, did you stop taking your medication again?”
“Why? What have you heard?”
“I’ll call Saul,” Reyes said.
Really?
Sammy gave him a thumbs-up and me the crazy sign. I felt very judged.
I had Reyes talking. I wasn’t about to give up on this conversation just because he had to call Saul.
As he picked up the phone, I continued my rant. “So, I had an idea about the god glass.” I waited for his reaction. Got none. “So, there are rules, right? I don’t know the names of the people the evil priest sent there, and I’m not the one who sent them, anyway. So I figure I can go to hell. I can get him back.”
He shook his head, then left a message on Saul’s phone.
When he hung up, he said, “You don’t understand. People don’t really burn for an eternity. That’s a myth. He’s long gone.”
“But the people in this dimension are still alive. What if we just broke it?”