“No,” she said softly. “I was the one who hurt her.”
He released her. “We all have our sins.” Wasn’t that exactly why he needed his abraxas? How could he make things right without it?
At least she was silent the rest of the way.
Some of the big homes in his neighborhood were dressed up for the holiday, tasteful swathes of twinkling lights punctuated by only the occasional reindeer, which was amusing since most of his neighbors were the conservative sorts who would shoot anything with a rack that impressive or call the exterminator if their holly bushes were nibbled by the real thing. No plastic, blinking nativity scenes though; that would be totally against HOA rules.
Behind the security fence—which he’d installed after being broken into by a certain stripper talya—his house was dark, without even a wreath on the front door. For an instant, he imagined all the baby Jesuses adorning his yard.
So wrong. He punched in the security code at the gate, and the wrought iron rolled aside. He steered the Porsche around the half-circle drive, pointing it toward the gate in the event a quicker-than-usual getaway was needed.
Bella swiveled to keep the house in view. “Will the sphericanum shields let me in?”
“No one else figured out what you are. I’m guessing the safeguards here will be equally clueless. I think you’re one of a kind.”
“It really is a wonderful life.”
He waved away her sarcasm. “Great idea. You can watch holiday movies until we end Thorne. I think Nanette brought me all of them when she was still a ward in my sphere. She tried to use them to explain divine possession after my angel came to me.” He shook his head and reached for his door.
Bella made a small sound of surprise. “Nanette taught you? I would have thought it was the other way around.”
“The angel that came to me is more powerful, but she’s had hers since she was a child. Mine came…later.” He pushed out of the car and went around to open her door, but she was already out and walking toward his front door.
He followed, a little suspicious of her sudden willingness. But maybe she’d just accepted she had no other options. He knew the feeling.
She paused on the front step, and he reached around her to unlock the door. He flicked on the interior foyer light, and the crystal chandelier sent glitters of light across the marble tile and over their feet.
But she lingered a moment. “I’m not sure I feel anything.”
“I should have brought the little bomb and cracked it open here. Not even the stink of sulfur would remain.”
She tilted her head. “Couldn’t we use that against all the tenebrae?”
He hesitated. “The sphericanum does. But there’s a price.”
She took a breath, as if she was about to ask more, but then she let it whistle out of her on a sigh. “Isn’t there always?” She walked in, holding her coat tight around her.
He hadn’t noticed before how chilly it was. He didn’t spend much time in the house. He had his business to run—the cleaning company had been scheduling red wine removals since Thanksgiving—and the sphericanum to avoid and now the league and Thorne… All of which seemed much more welcoming in some weird way than the big, empty house.
Except now Bella was here.
He went to the central wall unit to reactivate the external alarms and crank the heat.
“You’re freezing. Let me get you something warm to drink.” He held out one hand toward the hallway stretching back to the kitchen.
His guest drifted past him, still clutching her coat. Were the sphericanum safeguards somehow bothering her?
Down the hall, she trailed one fingertip along the picture frames. He turned his head to study the images since he couldn’t remember what they were. They’d been included with the house. Did she see the black and white images, or since photographs would lack all meaning to an imp, were the squares little more than empty space?
As they crossed into the kitchen and he hit the light switch, she said, “I thought you were married.”
He stumbled, though he knew the mahogany was glossy smooth. “What?”
“I thought you were married.”
The words burned worse the second time. “Why would you think that?”
She waggled her left hand at him. “Duh.”
Reflexively, his hand tightened into a fist, driving the edge of the gold band into his palm. “So you thought that and you still…”
“I figured if an angel-man was willing to leave some of his shine around my place when I needed it, I wasn’t going to say no.” She leaned her hip on the counter. God, she must know the pose made him think of that night. Of course, his head hadn’t gone there a hundred times without any prompting whatsoever. “But there aren’t any signs of a wife and family. No woman—even a stay-at-home wife—keeps hallway frames so dust free, which means you use your cleaning service. So maybe you’re just like a priest, wedded to your holy war.”
“Maybe not.” His voice sounded hoarse to his own ear. “I was married once. She left.”
Bella’s jaw dropped. “She left you?”
“With a quickness.” He turned away to open the cabinets and stared blindly within. Even when he was home, he didn’t cook for himself, so he barely knew what he’d find. Tabasco, sugar, WD40… Ah, instant coffee. He grabbed the packets like a lifeline.
“What was her name?”
“Does it matter?” He filled two mugs with water and put them in the microwave.
“Presumably to her it does. And to you at one time. Now I’m wondering what kind of woman leaves an angel-man.”
“I wasn’t one then.”
“Ah.”
He punched the timer with more force than necessary, but he couldn’t stop himself. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means ‘Oh, I see’.”
“You don’t.”
She pulled a face at him. “No need to remind me.”
“Nobody saw, which is why our baby died.”
For a long minute, only the molecules of the coffee, viciously pushed by the microwaves, moved in the room. Fane realized he was holding his breath, as Bella was too.
He let it out with an explosive burst just as the microwave dinged. He snatched open the door and grabbed the mugs, stupidly. Scalding coffee slopped over the backs of his fingers.
He hissed out a breath.
“Cyril…” She whisked to the freezer and triggered the door. Ice cubes rattled into her palm.
He fumed. She was a blind demon, never in his house before, and she knew his kitchen better than he did.
She reached for his hands. “Where?”
“Everywhere.” The note of despair in his own voice shocked him. “Never mind.”
“Just…shut up.” She pushed him onto one of the high stools tucked up under the counter and smoothed the ice over his knuckles, her thumb brushing his ring. “Not as bad as birnenston. You’ll live.”
Birnenston—the toxic ooze left behind by the tenebrae—burned like napalm, nasty, clinging and seeping ever deeper. Of course the thin coffee wasn’t that bad. Except…why did the throbbing in his hands seem to be sinking through him, making its way to his heart?
He stared down at their joined hands, hers pale and slender, his big and flushing angry red where the coffee had spilled. “Her name was Nicole.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
“Everyone called her Saint Nic.”
“For putting up with you, no doubt.”
“Maybe she had an angel in her, and I never knew. She had our angel—our child—and we didn’t know…” He flexed his hands against the spreading ache. “We didn’t know until too late about his heart defect. There’s wasn’t anything we could do. Except pray.”
“If there wasn’t anything you could do, why do you still feel responsible?”