The darkness pressed in on the windows of her car. Christopher Daniels had been signing autographs for hours. It was eight o’clock and the store would close at eleven. She wondered where he would go then. To his hotel? Where was his hotel?
A multitude of questions were chasing one another through her head at that moment—all of them unanswerable. She blew out a big sigh and laid her forehead on the steering wheel. Then she closed her eyes.
If she left, this would be the thirteenth time she’d moved in the last four years. She was beginning to have dreams about houses that were bizarre amalgamations of the different places she’d lived, various styles and cultures all lopped together like some sort of leaning, precarious Dr. Seuss dwelling. They were always fragile and rocked a little in the wind.
And they made her feel that way, too. Fragile.
“What am I going to do?”
Was Christopher Daniels worth another move? Did he really pose some kind of threat to her? Even if he did somehow know that she was the one who had caused the storm and even if he had figured out that she could heal, it wasn’t Daniels himself she was afraid of. It was the fame that came with him. He was forever being followed, always in the public eye. If he brought this kind of attention upon her, it could be disastrous.
Eleanore blew out another sigh and squeezed her hands into fists. She could call her parents. But if this really was the beginning of yet another dangerous situation, then her mother and father would be better off not hearing from her about it. She didn’t want to get them involved anymore. They’d earned the right to keep out of it. And it would do them some good to believe that their daughter had finally found a place where she could reside peacefully.
God knew that they’d done their own brand of time with her. When she was little, she’d spent kindergarten in three different cities before her parents had realized that they were going about things the wrong way and decided to homeschool her with the help of highly paid tutors. It was difficult back then because she was far less careful about what powers she used and when she used them. And kids like to brag. That was part of it. The other part was that, when she was little, her powers were still developing, and she’d often discovered them accidentally.
And that was always a scene.
Like the time when she was five and had begun placing things in the cart at the grocery store, even though her mother had told her she couldn’t have them. Lots of children did this, of course. But not many use telekinesis to do so.
And when she and her parents had gone camping—and she’d sent the flames from the campfire out into the surrounding brush with no more than a thought. She’d wanted to see the fire dance. It would have been disastrous if her parents hadn’t recognized what was happening by that point and talked her into bringing the fire back under control.
Doing a rain dance with her stuffed animals and actually making it rain was a bit of a scene as well since she did it every day for a week in order to water the wildflowers she and her mother had planted.
Eventually, her parents got used to her surprises—more or less—and chalked them up to the wonder that was their ever-changing daughter. But that didn’t mean that raising her was easy for them.
Eventually, they began to fear that their daughter’s special abilities might be noticed by someone powerful—and maybe not so nice—who would want to use her for their own gain. After a while, they realized someone was indeed after her, but they didn’t know who. They would return home to find locks jimmied. Strange vehicles with illegally dark windows would idle at the ends of alleys. They had their suspicions; Ellie’s gifts were extremely attractive. Were these people government agents? A terrorist group? There wasn’t enough evidence to support any of their guesses. The thought of their daughter being used by someone who would take away her freedom to make her own choices and live her own life was too horrible for them to bear. So regardless of whose attention Eleanore had unwittingly gained, avoiding any further attention became an overriding precaution that wound up ruling their lives.
They moved around frequently, never remaining in one place for very long. They kept Eleanore out of the public school system. They taught her to live cautiously and to always be prepared to have to leave at any given moment.
Now the rain pelted the roof of Eleanore’s car, steering her thoughts toward a similarly rainy day ten years ago. She had been fifteen and fully engrossed in the 3 Doors Down video “Kryptonite,” which had fast become her favorite that year. Suddenly, her father was bursting into her room and tossing her jacket to her.
Strange vehicles had been spotted by friends around the neighborhood. Eleanore’s parents were convinced that their worst fears were coming true and someone was coming to take her from them. And so it was with a strange and numb resignation that Eleanore had quickly pulled her “escape” bag out from under her bed, swung it over her shoulder, and followed her parents out the back door of the house and down the mud-soaked alley to the backyard of an unoccupied house on the same block.
Her father kept a car parked in the abandoned house’s garage. It was a gray SUV with dark tinted windows and out-of-state license plates. It would have made the perfect, nondescript getaway car if it hadn’t been for the dogs.
When the animals heard her family making haste down the alleyway in the rain, they did everything they could to draw attention to them. The barking was loud and furious. Eleanore couldn’t make out their furry bodies through the slats in the wooden fences, or she would have used her telekinetic powers to slam them into one another. Anything to shut them up.
Within breathless seconds, a white van pulled up at the end of the alley and two men got out. Eleanore remembered one of them starkly. He wore a tight gray T-shirt over massive muscles and black army fatigues. In his right hand, he carried a needle. The wet metal glinted menacingly in the gray light of the rain.
She did manage to yank the needle out of his slippery grip and send it flying with her powers. But then her father wrenched her to the side and shoved her through an opening in a gate in the alleyway. They half dragged her through the yard, and in the distance, she heard men shouting. She heard the sound of tires tearing at wet asphalt and gravel.
She and her parents made it to the garage and her mother pushed her down on the floorboards of the backseat just as her father muscled the garage door open.
Eleanore’s memory became fuzzy after that. She remembered that the car started up and she was slammed from side to side. There was a lot of sound—violent and chaotic. Glass breaking. Metal chinking like the sounds dishes make in a dishwasher.
And then darkness.
Eleanore came to understand on that day just how dangerous her abilities were—and realized fully just how much trouble they caused her parents. No, raising her wasn’t easy for them.
But fortunately for her, they accepted her powers as a part of her and loved her anyway—endlessly and deeply and unconditionally. Jane Granger swore up and down that her daughter had some purpose on this planet and that it would make itself known when the time was right. Walter Granger was a bit more on the scientific side of the argument and wondered whether his wife shouldn’t have had so much artificial sweetener while she’d been pregnant with Eleanore. Either way, though, they were okay with it.
Her father was a professor, and professors went wherever universities were hiring, so it was easy for him to move around the country. Her mother was an attorney in her own practice, so she was mobile as well. And the two of them working together were affluent enough that they were able to protect their daughter with a fair amount of efficiency, which Eleanore had been well and truly grateful for on that fateful day.
It was a given that Eleanore would never be able to use any of her homeschooled education for a career that required her to stay in one place. Hence, she was damn lucky that her family was wealthy enough to provide her with an ever-full emergency fund.
Eleanore thought of this now as she listened to the sound of the rain pelting the top o
f her car. She wondered if she would have to use that fund in order to escape one strangely determined, dangerously handsome Christopher Daniels.
None of her abilities would help her with this particular problem. They were no good when it came to keeping her from being found out. That was the curse part of the gift—as Adrian Monk would put it. She could do loads of very impressive things, yes. But each of them was so impressive that she couldn’t really do them at all. Because when she did, she gave herself away.
As she possibly had done tonight. With the storm. And the little girl.
So now she had another choice. Leave? Without a two-weeks’ notice or any indication of where she was headed? Or stay . . . and take her chances with the incredibly hot actor who cornered her in the bookstore—and might be the one who was about to give her away.
She blew out a sigh and lifted her head to stare out the windshield. “I can’t do this anymore.” She shut her eyes again and shook her head. “No more.” She made her choice then and there, in that moment, as lightning flashed in the distance and thunder once more rolled over her car.
Whatever danger Daniels might or might not pose, she would face it and figure it out. It wasn’t that she was opposed to moving out of Texas. That wasn’t it—at all. It was that she was tired of running altogether.
The next time she picked up and moved, she wanted it to be because she liked the place she was moving to. Not because she was desperate or afraid. Besides, she might be wrong about the actor. Maybe he hadn’t put two and two together and figured out that she’d healed Jennifer. And maybe his comment about the storm was existential. Maybe she would never even see him again and he’d just been toying with her.
Asshole.
With that liberating thought, Eleanore shoved the key into the ignition and turned on her car. As she drove, she willed the storm away, and within a few minutes, the clouds dissipated and a few stubborn stars reclaimed their places in the heavens.
When she got to her apartment, she parked under her assigned awning and headed up two flights of stairs to her door. Then she went inside, shutting and locking the door behind her.
Down below, in the quiet courtyard, a tall figure slid his hands into the pockets of his expensive trench coat. He nodded once, to himself, and then strode through the grass and out into the parking lot without making a single discernible sound.
Uriel was going crazy. He was certain of it. For two thousand years, he’d managed to keep his wits about him, through disease and famine and wars and a world culture that was changing so rapidly, it literally boggled the mind. He’d taken it all in stride and tried to remind himself that he was there for a reason. And a good one.
It was more difficult some days than others. He’d learned the hard way that being down amidst the pain was a hell of a lot different from experiencing it from up above. Up there—out there—he’d been disconnected. Detached and withdrawn. Truth be told, he’d always wondered why humans whined as much as they did. Apathy was the way of the archangels. How can one possibly empathize with something that they possessed no means of feeling themselves?
But once they were living with the humans, all that had changed. Uriel had felt anything but apathy when he’d helped pull bodies out of floodwaters or when he’d walked alongside Michael as the poor man had tried to be everywhere at once when the plague had killed so many, or more recently when he’d handed out bread and cheese in government lines.
And he sure as hell wasn’t feeling it now.
Right now, he was anxious and frustrated enough that he actually contemplated calling his brothers to help him get out of this signing. He’d already been there for hours—and from the look of the line of fans, he had hours to go. He would be there right up until the damned store closed. Now that he’d found his archess, he was wasting precious time.
When he looked up from yet another “Best wishes” and spotted Max in the crowd, he signaled the man over and asked the next person in line if he could just have a moment. The girl nodded and smiled, probably feeling just as anxious as he did at that moment.
Gillihan moved to the table and then met Uriel on the other side.
“Well?” Uriel prompted.
“Her full name is Eleanore Elizabeth Granger,” Max supplied.
“Is she okay?” Uriel asked.
“She got home safe,” Max told him, whispering as he turned his back to the crowd. “And I have her address.”
“So get me out of here. I need to see her again.”
Max considered this a moment. “I know you’re anxious. It’s understandable. But I highly recommend waiting until morning. She wasn’t in the best mood when she left here and if you go knocking on her door tonight, you’ll most likely frighten her half to death.”
Uriel’s gaze hardened. “You want me to wait?” The thought was more than distasteful for him.
Max sighed, shrugged off his coat, and pulled off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Yes, wait. We can have Azrael watch over her tonight if you’re worried about her.”
“Why would I be worried?” Uriel’s no-nonsense look had intensified, his eyes now sparking with warning.
Max’s eyes widened defensively. “I don’t know.”
“What aren’t you telling me, Max?”
Max shook his head and gave up. He pulled Uriel a little farther from the waiting crowd and lowered his voice. “It’s just a feeling I have. I saw the interior of her apartment through her windows just before she arrived. It’s rather minimalist. As if she’s the type who doesn’t like to be tied down. I think the girl scares easy.” He shrugged. “Which is why I suggest you wait until morning.”
Uriel sighed heavily, turned way from Max, ran a frustrated hand through his hair, and then put his hands on his hips. He turned back to Max. “It’s also why I probably shouldn’t wait.”
“You can’t go into her apartment, throw her over your shoulder, and expect to have any kind of lasting relationship with her.”
“She’s my archess. This should be easier.”
“Nothing is easy, Uriel. Especially nothing that counts.”
Again, Uriel sighed. “Fine. At least get me out of here so I can speak with my brothers about this.”
Max looked from him to the line of fans waiting to get his signature. Uriel knew what he was thinking. Normally, Max would demand that Uriel face up to the life he had chosen and see it through to the end. It was part of his job as guardian—making sure the boys behaved. However, this was clearly different. Eleanore Granger was the entire reason Uriel was here on this planet to begin with.
“Very well. Just this once.” Max adjusted his glasses and went on. “And since you’ll be speaking with him anyway, have Azrael track Samael’s current location. I’d like an idea of how far ahead of the game we are.”
Uriel was reaching down and pulling his jacket from the back of his chair before Max had even finished speaking. “I’m out of here.”
Behind him, he heard a sharp intake of breath. He turned to see the girl who was next in line clutching her book tightly to her chest. Her cheeks were red and her eyes were shiny with unshed tears.
Oh, Christ, he thought. I’m such a bastard.
He forced a warm smile to his face and reached a hand out to take her book. “One more,” he said softly.
The girl blinked and swallowed audibly and then she, too, smiled. “Thank you so much, Mr. Daniels. This one’s not for me; it’s for my niece. She’s thirteen and has strep, so she couldn’t be here.”
Uriel glanced up at her, and, as he often did when faced with news that surprised him, he scanned her soul for any trace of a lie. It was something all archangels could do if they thought to concentrate on it; it was a little like possessing a sixth sense. He studied the woman closely and found that she was being genuine. And he really was the biggest bastard in the world.
“It’s my pleasure,” he told her sincerely. “What is your niece’s name?”
As Max Gillihan prepared to ma
ke excuses for Christopher Daniels’s sudden departure, Uriel penned a heartfelt get-well wish and slipped a photograph of himself in between the pages of the autographed book. Then he handed the book back and thought of Azrael, the archangel with fangs and glowing gold eyes.
“Don’t let the vampires bite,” he told the girl. “They really do exist, you know.”
The layout of the archangels’ mansion had changed many times over the years, as the tastes of the men who lived within it seemed to alter according to boredom, convenience, and style preferences. It could look like anything, really. It had been sent down along with their guardian, Max, when the angels had first come to Earth in search of their archesses. It was a living space and a transportation device rolled into one. Its superdimen-sional properties allowed travel through its doorways as if it were a teleporter, which allowed them to go nearly anywhere at any time they desired.
However, just as the archangels had been separated during that first descent, Max and the mansion were lost on the wind and it wasn’t until many years later that the five of them and the mansion were reunited.
At the moment, the four brothers were gathered in a relatively small, utterly normal-looking kitchen that sat just off a likewise normal-looking living room. The archangels all preferred their living space on the more modest side these days. Having been around for as long as they had, they already felt as if they’d literally seen everything.
Uriel had given them each a buzz on his cell as soon as he’d left the signing and, through the use of the mansion and its magical properties, they’d all managed to head home right away. Any of the archangels could call up a portal to the mansion from anywhere in the world, so long as they were standing before a door. It didn’t matter what kind of door it was. Even a car door or the door to a refrigerator would work.