“Where did she go?”

The crowd disperses slowly around us, the curious onlookers searching for their amusement elsewhere as soon as it becomes apparent that the scene has ended.

Phenex arches an eyebrow at my question. “That little blonde? She ran off.” He nudges the unconscious lump of a man crumpled on the ground with the toe of his boot. “So this is what we have to look forward to then?”

I nod. Physically he’ll be fine, but mentally is another story. Possession always leaves scars on the host, but at least demons know how to worm their way into a victim slowly.

These trapped souls have all the finesse of a jackhammer. Those scant few minutes trapped inside his own head with that soul will leave him with a case of PTSD that will haunt him for the rest of his days. And there will be others.

I scan the crowd, searching every face for the tell-tale blackness that covers the infected like a haze and see nothing. It’s just beginning, but even I can’t be everywhere at once.

I spare one last glance for the man on the ground.

Greed. Short-changing a few tourists.

Lust. Telling the wife he was working late while sneaking off for a lap dance.

Envy. Laughing when his neighbor’s shiny little convertible was stolen.

Before today, his sins were small time, barely a blip on the celestial radar. His halo might not have been the brightest, but he certainly wasn't one of mine yet, but I can already see the changes in him.

Humans have tried to describe the soul for as long as they’ve had language, but Pulp Fiction came the closest to getting it right. Every angel, Fallen or otherwise, can see into a mortal’s soul with just a touch, but none with the clarity that I can. Sins, memories, their most naked desires – they’re all laid bare before me.

I am the Lightbringer, and those souls are brighter than the sun until evil creeps into them and slowly blackens that purity. Veins of blackness are already twisting through that unfortunate mortal's soul, far darker than his petty sins would have caused. It will only spread more as time passes, infecting him with the violence and cruelty of that broken spirit that wore him like a cheap suit.

Michael just damned another human to my realm.

“I hope it was worth it,” I mutter bitterly before turning back to Phenex.

“It’s going to get worse. Exponentially worse.”

Phenex stands stiffly next to me; his perpetual humor finally silenced as the soldier in him waits for orders.

“Find Michael.”

Silence.

Nothingness.

Just pure white light.

I thought nothing of the diminutive blonde frozen in terror at the sight of my lovely possessed friend until my fingers closed around her arm. I expected to hear the same sins I hear from every privileged American college girl – binge drinking, cheating on exams, maybe an illicit affair with a married professor.

I expected her to be nothing more than a pretty diversion to while away my downtime as I searched for Michael.

I didn’t expect this.

This is something new.

I have to find her.

With Phenex scouring the city for any sign of Michael, I can afford to indulge my curiosity. If I run across a few more errant souls in my search, even better.

This part of New Orleans is a maze of narrow side streets and wider thoroughfares, all choked with humans eager to glut themselves on everything the city offers. I weave my way through the crowd, a shark among minnows, my mind idly ticking off petty crimes.

Sloth. A young man with bloodshot eyes, lazing away his 20s in a cloud of marijuana smoke.

Wrath. A clean-cut preacher with a broad smile who beats his wife every night.

Pride. A trophy wife sneering at a panhandler.

Cataloging humanity’s failings is as unconscious for me as breathing, but unless I run across something particularly nasty they barely register on their own.

The preacher will end up as one of mine someday. Cruelty and hypocrisy always come to the same end.

I can feel her. She’s close.

I follow my instincts, oblivious to humans jostling each other around me, their forgotten sins not even registering in my thoughts anymore as the beacon draws me closer.

I end up outside yet another bar, one of those terminally hip locations where this decade’s version of yuppies go to preen and pound back $16 cocktails.

She sits perched on a stool at the end of the bar, her head in her hands, a mass of golden curls obscuring her face. Her purse is flung carelessly on the stool next to her, an obvious ploy to prevent the middle management lotharios prowling the room from sitting next to her. The simple leather tote hangs open, and I see a small red flannel bag poking out the top.

Of course. Voodoo. When in New Orleans, after all.

I sit down on the next stool, and a shiver goes through her small frame as I draw closer.

Perceptive, this one.

Slowly she lifts her head, resignation written across her pretty face.

“You found me,” she says dully.

“You wanted me to.” I reach into her bag and snatch the little flannel pouch out, tearing the hastily stitched closure open.

“Don’t!” she protests, “I need that!” I pause, curiosity getting the better of me. She obviously has no idea what’s inside this bag. “It’s supposed to protect me. From you.”

I chuckle as I pour out the bag’s contents.

Just as I thought.

Instead of the usual jumble of herbs and stones, only a heavy iron coin falls into my palm. I turn it over, my thumb tracing the sharp angles of the sigil carved into both sides.

“What is that?” she asks. Barely a quaver in her voice this time. The proximity of so many others lessens her fear bit by bit, and she reaches across the empty seat and plucks the coin from my hand. She narrows her eyes as she examines the symbol. “What does this symbol mean?”

“It’s my sigil.” If this girl is a witch or a medium, she’s certainly not very good at it.

“And who are you?”

“Lucifer,” I reply, smirking inwardly as her eyes widen at my utterance of the word that froze the blood of untold amounts of mortals.

“Wow,” she murmurs. Despite the oddness of our initial meeting, I prepare myself for the usual onslaught of fear tempered with just the perfect amount of lust.

Instead, laughter bubbles out of those lacquered pink lips, and her deep grey eyes hold a note of desperate amusement.

She doesn’t believe me.

“Your parents never even gave you a chance did they?”

"You're right about that," I reply dryly, signaling the bartender for a drink. An instant later a heavy tumbler of top-shelf whiskey appears in front of me.

Bit by bit, the smile fades from her face as her mind no doubt ticks off every observation in the brief minutes she’s spent in my presence.

“You’re serious?”

“As a heart attack.” I turn in my seat, leaning back against the edge of the bar and survey the room as I sip my whiskey. Fight or flight wars with each other inside this inquisitive girl. She isn’t making a move to run just yet so I soldier on.

"You seem to have me at a disadvantage. You know who I am, but I find myself at a loss to figuring out who you are. And I don't much care for not knowing."

“I’m Grace.”

“Of course you are.” Dropping my glass on the bar with a heavy clunk, I grab her arm without looking at her, catching her with the speed of a striking snake.

Nothing.

I press deeper into her mind, searching for the walls that the more powerful out there might put up to block my presence. Those walls always have cracks that I can tear through with enough pressure, but there is nothing. No walls. No hidden doors. Just pure white light that I haven’t seen since-

Heaven.

“What are you?” I hiss.

She jerks her arm out of my grip, and I let her. "I'm not anyone," she snaps.

"I very much doubt that. You couldn't keep me out if you were no one." At her searching look, I scan the room settling on a tall man in an off the rack suit flirting heavily with a busty blonde in a yellow dress painted onto her generous curves. Without contact, I won’t get quite the same Technicolor detail of their lives, but it’s close enough to paint my new friend an acceptable picture of my abilities.

“See those two over in the corner table?” Grace casually looks over her shoulder, her nose wrinkling at the sight of the man. “You know him?”

She shakes her head. “I know the type. Entitled. Thinks he can buy whatever he wants, including her.”

“Well, he’s correct there. She’s an escort. She’d do well to avoid him though. He’s cheap. He’ll find a way to weasel out of paying her, even if he has to rob her after the transaction is completed.” The girl tosses her head back, fake laughter ringing across the bar as she squeezes her companion’s arm. “Theft isn’t very high on the list of sins, but you’re right about the entitlement. The world owes him as far as he’s concerned, and soon enough he might get the balls to take what he thinks he deserves. It won’t end pretty for whichever girl he sets his sights on then. He’ll be one of mine.”

Grace falls silent next to me, her fingers tearing the bar napkin into damp confetti. "So you can read people's souls just by looking at them?"

“Physical contact gets me more detail, but I can see the gist from here.”

I can see the implications of my words swirling in her head. Abruptly she asks, “Why are you telling me this?”

Something about this young and very human-seeming girl make me want to eschew the usual deceptions. I actually find myself wanting to be honest with her.

“Because you’re something new. When I touched your arm earlier, I saw nothing. No past, no future. Just white.” I reach up and push an errant curl behind her ear, letting my fingertips brush her cheek just to reassure myself for the third time of the truth.

“So does that mean I don’t have a soul?” she blurts out, her brow creasing as she ponders the implications of lacking something she likely didn’t believe in a few hours ago.

"I very much doubt that as well. You have divine blood somewhere in your line, powerful enough that thousands of years of dilution with mortals hasn't erased it."

I pause, studying her face with an intensity that clearly makes her uncomfortable. The flush in her cheeks has very little to do with the heat outside or her frantic attempt to escape me. I follow that heated skin to the hollow of her collarbone and lower, to where it disappears under the brighter red of her sundress.

I smirk as I ponder just how far down I’m making her blush.

“I wonder,” I murmur, thinking out loud as Grace squirms under my scrutiny. “I’d almost think you were an offshoot of one of my brothers, but you don’t have the touch of madness about you. Nephilim never last for much time in the world. A bit too crazy to keep a low enough profile to survive.”

She stays surprisingly calm through my narrative, and for the first time, I find myself wanting to know what is swirling inside a human's brain.

“Definitely not Nephilim. Even if you managed to be the first in history that wasn’t utterly batshit, you still would have been hunted down already, especially with Archangels skulking around the city.”

Her entire body goes still at the word hunted. So then, I’m not the only person intrigued by this little blonde.

“Someone is hunting me. Or something.” Her slender fingers still toy with the iron coin, nervously tracing and retracing the sigil carved into it.

I wonder if any part of her notices the shiver of power that comes from her fingertips each time she draws my symbol.

She continues on, oblivious to the slowly warming coin in her hand. “When I saw you in the square, I thought it was you. But I think you’re someone else.”

She tries futilely to signal the bartender, the rocks glass at her elbow holding nothing more than watery dregs, her voice lost in the crowd of alcohol-seekers.

Sighing, I push my nearly full glass towards her. This one needs some liquid courage.

She smiles gratefully and takes a delicate sip of the smoky bourbon, her eyes fluttering shut for just a moment as the savors the drink.

“I think we were supposed to meet. Someone made sure that I would find you. . . or that you would find me. She told me, ‘The blackest evil can be the only light that can cut through the shadows.’” Grace laughs, a bitterness in her tone that sounds wrong on someone so young.

What damage has Heaven already done to her?

“Somehow I didn’t expect the Devil to be the one who’s supposed to protect me. She certainly left that part out.”

My suspicions grow as she describes the riddles she’s been fed about our foretold meeting.

“I think we might have a mutual acquaintance,” I say, stealing my drink back from her hand for a long sip as I recall those ageless eyes and the words she hissed at me in the middle of the street.

I fucking hate prophecies.

"‘He's coming for her. And you aren't strong enough to stop him. He'll tear you apart, one feather at a time if you get in his way. And you'll get in his way,'" I parrot. “I thought the old woman was just another charlatan fortune teller at first, but she knew who I was. And I think she knows you as well.”

The color drains from her skin at my words, replacing that enticing blush with an unhealthy pallor. I press the drink back into her palm, my fingers steadying her trembling hand as she grips the glass.

“She wasn’t old,” Grace replies, fighting to keep her voice even. “She barely looked 30, but she said she knew my mother.”

Unsurprising. Someone playing with these kinds of forces wasn’t just another witch. “Did she tell you her name? I never got the pleasure.”

Grace hesitates, and that momentary distrust makes me respect her just a bit more. Divine blood or not, she is a young, breakable mortal. Her very life is being toyed with by forces that vastly overpower her, but she still isn’t about to hitch herself to the first potential protector that might come along.

“She said her name was Erzulie.”

I snort. “I don’t know what else I expected in New Orleans. She’s a loa. The spirit of beauty, luxury and love and the protector of women and children, if I recall.”

I notice that my hand is still covering Grace's, even though hers has long since stopped shaking. I jerk my hand back abruptly. "I'm not surprised she's irritated at the Archangels stomping around her territory," I add.

“I still don’t know what this all has to do with me.” The fear drains out of her, replaced with a weariness that I recognize all too well. She picks up the coin from the bar again, turning it over in her hand as though the sharp angles of my symbol hold the answers she needs. “I’m no one. I’m just a girl working at a shitty bar with dead parents and too much student loan debt. And now I can’t even go home because whoever is following me was in my house." She looks up from the coin, her eyes shining when they meet mine, but she blinks the tears away before they can fall. "But along with all that, apparently I'm the Last, whatever that means."

Time freezes around us.

Not really, of course. The bartender still pours drinks, twisting fruit into elaborate garnishes and handing them off to the doe-eyed waitress who fantasizes about leaving her husband for him. Directly to my right a couple is on a first date, all giggles and furtive glances at each other. Across the bar, the lovely escort in the yellow dress is inches from throwing a drink in Mr. Entitlement’s face.

But all of it fades into silence around me as I realize just why the Archangels want this girl and just what they will go through to obliterate her.