All the magic inside me deflated in a rush, leaving me sick and dizzy, like a hangover. My knees buckled and Gabriel grabbed me by the shoulders before I fell down and cracked my head on the bathtub.
“My father,” I said. “That’s the second time today that someone has mentioned my father. A man I’ve never seen or heard about until today. I thought he was a deadbeat, or maybe just dead. My mother never mentioned his name.”
“I believe,” Gabriel said, “that Katherine Black was attempting to protect you until you were old enough to understand.”
“Understand what?” I asked. I didn’t want to hear the answer. Everything was changing, too fast. But I also needed to know, and I would not allow Gabriel or anyone else to keep it from me. This was not the time to be a scared child, and the magic that had surged inside of me flickered in acknowledgment.
Gabriel shook his head. “It is too soon. You do not trust me. I have failed him.”
“Understand what?” I asked again, and this time there was no mistaking the command in my voice. Gabriel looked up, surprised. He searched my face, and I met his eyes without fear. I saw a star shooting across the deep canvas of black, but I did not fall in. He would not be able to take me that way again.
“You are truly his daughter. It is there in your eyes,” he said, and he turned me gently to face the mirror again, holding me there with his hands on my shoulders.
But he didn’t need to hold me. Shock rooted me in place as I saw the same field of stars in my own eyes that I had seen in Gabriel’s.
“It’s a trick, a glamour,” I whispered, and I reached toward the mirror to touch my own reflection.
“It is your destiny, revealed to you at last,” he said, and his hands fell away from me as I trembled and turned to him.
“Who am I?” My voice sounded childish, afraid.
“You are the only human child of a cherubim of the first sphere, a chief of the Grigori, Lord Azazel.”
6
GABRIEL SAID THIS AS IF HE EXPECTED ME TO KNOW what it meant.
“A cherubim . . . An angel?” I asked. I thought of those fat little angels on greeting cards holding red bows.
Gabriel smiled, the slightest upward quirk of his lips. “Azazel was once an angel. But his fall came long ago.”
“A fallen angel,” I said. I knew I sounded like an idiot, but the revelation was a lot to process. Thoughts bounced around my head at random. Patrick was dead. I had a monster to catch and a concealment charm to pick up. Beezle was sick, maybe dying. And my father was a fallen angel. Plus, James Takahashi’s soul was going to be departing its body around ten forty-five P.M. tomorrow. In all of the commotion, it was easy to forget that I actually had a job to do.
“Yes.”
“And you’re here because . . . ?”
“Your father sent me to protect you until he can call you home.”
“And home would be . . . ?”
“In Morningstar’s kingdom.”
“Morningstar, right,” I said faintly. I had a vague memory from a Sandman comic that I’d read once. My mother had never been big on religious education. “Morningstar is Lucifer?”
Gabriel nodded.
“So his kingdom is Hell?”
“I suppose that is a name that mortals give it. Although mortal descriptions are generally inaccurate.”
“Oh, really?” I raised my eyebrows at him. “There was a guy here earlier—he kicked the shit out of me, by the way—and he looked awfully like a ‘mortal’s description’ of a demon. Horns and claws and everything.”
“I said mortal descriptions are generally inaccurate,” Gabriel murmured.
“I really need a drink of something. Something that has alcohol in it.” I pushed past Gabriel and into the hallway, striding toward the kitchen with my thoughts chasing one another around my brain.
It was hard to come around to the idea that my father, whom I’d always considered your usual deadbeat, had missed my childhood because he was busy doing . . . whatever it is that fallen angels do. Tempt people, maybe? Was my dad hanging on street corners and in bars, holding out an apple to unsuspecting humans?
I stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring blankly at my refrigerator.
“This is why I wanted you to accept me before you learned the truth. Your father said you would react like this,” Gabriel said from the doorway.
I looked up at him and blinked. “I don’t have any wine, or tequila, or anything else with alcohol in it.”
Gabriel sighed, muttered under his breath, did a funny little finger wave and suddenly there was a bottle of red wine uncorked on the counter. He had even put a glass next to it.
I looked at him, then picked up the bottle. “Elysian Fields cabernet sauvignon?”
He sketched a little bow.
“Thanks for the magical bottle of underworld juice, but I have chocolate somewhere, and it will do in a pinch.” I started rummaging in the cabinet above the sink.
He frowned. “You do not want the wine?”
“I’ve read enough faerie tales to know that only the deeply stupid take food or drink from supernatural beings,” I said, pushing aside a couple of bags of granola and cursing. Where had I put that damned candy?
“I told you I am not a faerie,” Gabriel said, and he sounded a little affronted.
“Yeah, but you didn’t bother telling me exactly what you are, did you?” I said, and my voice rose. “Dammit, Beezle, did you eat that chocolate again? I told you, that’s for emergencies only ...”
My voice trailed off as I remembered what had happened to Beezle.
“Can you fix him?” I demanded.
“Fix . . . ?” Gabriel asked.
“Beezle. My gargoyle. The big, horned sweetheart who made mincemeat of my face hurt him, and I can’t tell how.”
Gabriel looked uneasy. “Show me.”
I led him into the bedroom. A couple of hours ago, the mere thought of Gabriel’s presence in my bedroom would have sent me into raptures, but now I could see him only as a Beezle-savior.
Gabriel leaned over Beezle, who was still and quiet on my pillow. The gargoyle had never looked so small to me, or so frail. I ached for his eyes to open so he could give me his best basilisk glare, or to hear him complaining about the sparrows nesting in his perch. I wrapped my arms around myself and watched as Gabriel laid two gentle fingers on Beezle’s chest, then lifted the gargoyle’s eyelids.
Gabriel murmured something that sounded vaguely like Latin. A little ball of blue flame appeared in the palm of his hand. The room suddenly smelled like a freshly baked apple pie. He turned his palm over and placed his hand on Beezle’s chest. The flame slid smoothly under Beezle’s gray skin and for a moment, nothing seemed to happen.
“Well?” I asked impatiently.
“Wait,” Gabriel said. His voice was calm but his eyes looked worried.
Beezle arched his back and took a great gasping breath. His eyes flew open and he coughed so hard that it seemed his chest would break open from the force of it.
“Beezle!” I shouted and took a step toward him, but Gabriel held his arm up to restrain me.
“Wait,” he repeated, and when I started to jostle past him, he grabbed both of my arms and held me in place.
Beezle coughed and coughed, a terrible choking sound, and his eyes rolled in his head. Then a great cloud of black smoke spewed out of his mouth, a malignant thing that seemed to have glowing red eyes in its depths. For a moment it hovered above him.