“Yes.”
“They’ve always known,” Mallory snorted. “Michael’s not stupid, and even if he was, all he’s got to do is look inside her head to find out where she was. He’s just too fixated on Lucifer to give a shit about anything else right now. I don’t blame him, either: it’s the Fallen I’m bothered about for the time being. At least we can count on the Archangels being on our side some of the time.”
“Maybe. But what happened today...”
“What happened happened. We got sloppy. The Fallen punished us for it. It won’t happen again.”
“You sound very sure.” Adriel stared at Mallory with his black eyes.
“I am sure. It won’t happen again.”
Vin interrupted them. “Well. This has all been lovely. And educational. I feel like I’ve grown as a person. But I’m starving, and I get cranky when I’m hungry. You don’t want that. So can we, you know... go?”
“You’re like a child, aren’t you?” Mallory sounded more amused than he looked, and Vin shrugged.
“If that’s meant as a compliment, yes. Yes, I am.”
“You are. And it wasn’t.” He shook his head. “Adriel. A pleasure.”
“Likewise, Mallory. Likewise.” Adriel turned to Alice. “You will always be welcome here, Alice. You have a place here, a role to play. Know that.”
“You say it like I’m not going to see you again for a while.”
“Most people would find that a relief.”
“I’m not most people.” And before she could quite stop herself, Alice found that she was hugging him. Actually hugging Adriel, the Angel of Death. She mostly ignored Vin’s raised eyebrow, only paying attention enough to pull a face at him over Adriel’s shoulder. He pulled a face back, and Mallory muttered, “like a child,” under his breath.
As Alice stepped back from Adriel, he straightened his tie. “I’m unaccustomed to this sort of behaviour.”
“You mean no-one’s hugged you in a while?”
“Or, indeed, ever. No.”
“Well, now they have.”
“They have. Look after yourself, Alice.”
“Hungry, people. Hungry!” Vin was now pacing up and down. Alice grinned, and Mallory shook his head. “Five minutes. Five minutes, and already he’s trying to kill me.”
“Maybe if we feed him...”
“He’ll shut up? Remind me: has that ever worked before?”
“There’s a first time for everything, isn’t there?”
But even though she was back with both Mallory and Vin; even though Adriel seemed to have given her his blessing to go (or sacked her, possibly) Alice couldn’t quite shake the uneasy feeling she’d been carrying with her for days; the sensation that something wasn’t quite right. As she reached the front door, she turned back to see Adriel outlined in the entrance of his office, his shadow ahead of him on the floor. He nodded, once, and was gone. One thing she did know, however, was that he and Mallory had said something to one another in that room – right in front of her. They had told each other something, something important, and she had absolutely no idea what it was.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Just Because You’re Done With the Past Doesn’t Mean it’s Done With You
“GET OFF MY bloody roof.” Mallory had stopped midway along the path from the gate to the sacristy door.
Beside him, Alice cleared her throat. “Your roof?”
Mallory snorted. “My roof, your roof. I lived here first. When you’ve spent three sodding days up there with a hammer in a howling gale putting the slates back on, you can call it yours with my blessing.” He turned his attention back to the roof. “Are you coming down, or am I going to have to come up there and fetch you?”
The angel on the roof stood up and stretched its clipped wings.
As they watched, the Earthbound shook out his feathers and jumped, gliding in a circle overhead before landing in front of them.
It was Castor, and Alice suddenly realised why Pollux looked so familiar; the similarity between them was obvious now, even down to the way they moved. They were brothers.
Castor walked towards them, his face breaking into a smile as he saw Alice.
“Well, well. Look at that. You made it out in one piece.”
“I did. Thanks, by the way.”
“Just doing my job. Both of them.” He winked. “I meant it, though: you should try staying out of trouble once in a while. You might like it.”
“I doubt it,” Alice muttered, and caught the frown Mallory shot at her. “How about you?” she asked, hurriedly.
“Not so bad. Bit bruised after that little skirmish. One of the bastards blindsided me with a brick.”
“Who was it?”
“Not Fallen. Human.”
“Really?”
“Privilege of wearing the uniform, isn’t it?” Castor gestured to the beautiful bruise beneath his left eye. “Mind you, I had it easy compared to some...” He tailed off, looking pointedly at her.
Mallory caught the look. “Oh? We obviously hadn’t got to that yet, had we, Alice?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Nothing?” Castor chimed in. “Nothing? Sure.” Alice gave him what she hoped was a stern glare – her sternest, in fact – and he smirked, but he also shut up. Eventually, he sighed. “Look. This is grand, really, but there is an actual point to my being here, as opposed to, you know, in the pub, which is where I would be if there was any justice in this world. Possibly with a bottle of Scotch.” Seeing Mallory’s eyes light up, he frowned. “I thought you’d given up?”
“Do I look like a quitter to you?”
Castor shook his head, then folded his arms across his chest. “Either way, you’ve got a visitor.”
“Who has?” Alice asked. “Mallory, or me?”
“Well, I’m going to guess he’s here for both of you: he was waiting, comforting as that is. I took the liberty: over here.”
Castor trotted away from the path, leaving the others looking at each other in bemusement. “You heard the nice police officer,” said Mallory with a shrug. Vin muttered something about a sandwich and kicked a stone, while Pollux said nothing, scowling. With more than a faint sensation of deja vu, Alice set off after them.
She had already met more than her share of the Fallen in the churchyard: the first she had encountered, Lilith, had been fairly quickly despatched by Mallory and Vin, but there had been others. Batarel. Goap. Jeqon. It was where Lucifer had spoken to her for the first time; where Mallory had shown her what he was capable of when he tied Rimmon to a tree and tortured him, to teach her a lesson.
Castor had stopped with his back to her, arms still folded across his chest. But she could already tell something was very wrong when Mallory’s gun appeared in his hand, and that was without the look Vin shot her over his shoulder.
As she stepped between them and saw the Fallen leaning back against the tombstone, she understood why.
Xaphan was sitting on one of the newer graves, his legs crossed. The position looked slightly awkward, as he had had to arrange his limbs around the long metal spike which had been driven through one of his thighs, pinning it to the ground. Not that it seemed to bother him all that much; Alice could still hear him humming a tune under his breath. And he appeared to be making a daisy-chain.
He ignored them for a moment longer, then laid his hands in his lap and smiled up at them.
Flames rippled across the top of the headstone, spilling down the sides. The string of daisies in Xaphan’s hands flared brightly, then collapsed into ash. The grass curled and blackened, forcing Vin to hop sideways in an attempt to get clear. It fell to Mallory to step closer to Alice and lay his hand on her arm.
“Alice?”