They’d put Egan into a hospice for the dying.

I suppose it must be pretty rare for anyone to try to break in to a place like that, unless they’re looking for painkillers. There was only minimal security here at Our Lady of Mercy and patients’ relatives came and went at all times of the day. Nevertheless, I was scrupulous in my reconnaissance. And I made sure to turn up during the dinner shift, when most staff would be busy shuttling trays to the rooms. I even dressed like one of the nuns to get past the elderly security guy on reception—a frumpy gray tunic dress from a thrift store underneath the coat I wore against the November wind, and a black wimple I’d sewn myself in my rented room. It covered my long, dark, plaited hair.

They’d moved Egan out of St. Joseph’s Hospital in the center of the city once his legs were pinned and splinted. Why here, to this hospice full of the elderly and dying, I couldn’t imagine, except that even the Catholic hospital in downtown Saint Paul was overwhelmingly secular these days, crucifixes notwithstanding, and presumably they wanted him to convalesce somewhere directly under Church control. Which meant they’d shifted him to this slightly dilapidated building full of efficient nuns and teary relatives, its tiled corridors squeaky with the sound of shoes and wheelchairs and ticklish with the mumble of lowered voices.

It wasn’t a bad place, as far as I could tell, for those with nowhere further to go. The staff seemed kind enough.

My luck’s unnaturally good when it comes down to the small specifics. I don’t think anyone looked at me twice as I ascended to the second floor. Unfortunately, I knew where my luck would run out; they kept a 24/7 watch on his corridor.

Sister Carmel was on duty that evening. That was an essential part of my plan too. There was nothing wrong with her memory; she recognized me immediately from my earlier attempt to see her patient and her round face creased along its pincushion folds.

“Oh no!” she said. “You’re not permitted to see him, you know that.” She reached across her desk to the phone but I pressed my hand down firmly on hers, pinning it to the cradle.

“Do you want the roaches?” I said. “Every night, for the rest of your life?”

The lines almost fell out of her skin as her eyes widened. “What?”

“You know. Cockroaches. Coming out of the sink. Between the sheets. In your food.”

“Holy Mary—”

“Let me go see him.”

Her face had gone the yellow of dried peas. “What are you?”

“One who has seen.” And I can play their game too.

With a convulsive movement, she pulled her hand out from beneath mine and stood. Turning on her heel, she snapped her way up the hall like she was hammering the tiles into submission. When we reached the heavy, varnished door at the end of the row she glared at me and knocked upon the wood. “Father Kansky!”

“So help me, if you open that door, Sister, you are getting the bedpan at your head,” Egan’s voice called back.

Sister Carmel pursed her mouth into a grimace. Maybe she’d already weathered that experience. I was a bit shocked; Egan was not in my experience a man who issued coarse threats.

“Egan, it’s me!” I shouted, leaning into the door. “I’ve come to see you.”

There was no crash of flying bedpan, just an ominous silence. I pressed down on the handle, but the door did not give.

Wordlessly, Sister Carmel produced a ring of keys.

“You locked him in?” I hissed through my teeth as she turned the key.

She pulled another face, and then gestured me to try the handle once more.

The first thing I noticed when the door opened was an overpowering reek of bourbon whiskey and masculine sweat. The second was Egan sitting up on the raised bed, wearing only a T-shirt and briefs, both legs in plaster to mid-thigh.

My heart jumped painfully.

“Milja?” he said hoarsely, and without the joy I might have hoped for.

“Right,” I said, snatching the keys off Sister Carmel as I stepped inside the room. The curtains were half-drawn, dowsing the place in a sepia light, and the heat made the smell worse. “You’re going to let us talk in private for a while. And if you call security you know what the consequences will be. So just go sit at your desk and do a rosary or whatever.” My eye fell on the Jim Beam bottle in Egan’s hand. It wasn’t even half-full. “Egan, where the hell did that come from?”

“Wouldn’t we all like to know that?” sniffed the nun.

“Out,” I ordered. As she retreated I let the door fall shut behind her. Then I turned back to the patient. “Egan… You shouldn’t be mixing that with painkillers, should you?”

He put the bottle on the bedside locker, looking a little shamefaced. “I’m fine,” he muttered.

There seems to be some sort of cosmic law that whenever he says that, he is flat-out wrong. I took a deep breath, tugged off my fake wimple, and walked to the side of the bed. “Really?”

This wasn’t the reunion I’d pictured. I’d imagined him weak, but grateful to be alive, and more than grateful to see me. Smiling wanly from where he lay back on white pillows, not sitting up, avoiding my gaze like this. He didn’t even look like I remembered; his hair was an uncombed thatch and he was more than half-way to a blond beard. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I reached out to touch his arm, only for him to flinch away.

“Are you okay?” he countered. “They wouldn’t tell me where you were.”

I nodded, knotting my fingers together and trying to keep my voice calm. “They kept me for a few days while you were in post-op. They asked me a load of questions about Azazel. Then they just let me go. Dropped me on the street, actually. I’ve been in a rental ever since.”

“Why on earth did you call them, Milja?”

“Come on. I didn’t have much choice!” I thought of the broken hillside, and his gray unconscious face. I felt again the emptiness of abandonment—not just Azazel turning his back, but even Michael and Raphael leaving us to our fate. “I had to get you into hospital. You wouldn’t have lived otherwise.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“No.” After all I’d been through, that particular interrogation had been laughably restrained and civilized. Threats, shouting, hours of solitary confinement without food or toilet facilities—and more hours of theological barracking. But no actual violence. And I’d revealed nothing they didn’t already know.

“Good. I told them that you were no longer the Fallen’s mistress.” Egan’s gaze kept sliding off my face. “I explained that you weren’t of use to them anymore. So there’s nothing to fear now.”

That hurt. It shouldn’t have—I should have been relieved to be of no more interest to the Vatican, given its previous horrific plans for me. But the reason they didn’t care about me now was because Azazel didn’t. I was nothing but trash in anyone’s eyes these days.

I bit the inside of my lip. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get here,” I said softly. “I tried, but they wouldn’t let me in here to see you.”

“How’d you persuade the sister this time?”

“She’s got a real horror of cockroaches.” I wet my lips and confessed, “I’ve been torturing her with nightmares for weeks.”

Egan screwed his eyes shut for a moment, then just looked bleakly past my head. I wanted so badly to reach out and touch him. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and kiss his face.

“I tried to talk to you in my dreams,” I said, feeling shy. “But you wouldn’t come to me, and I couldn’t get close enough to see you. I could go all over the hospice here, but when I got to your door, you always pushed it shut in my face.”

“You keep the feck out of my dreams!” he snapped. Then as I jerked to my feet he slumped back hard against his stacked pillows, panting with distress. “I’m sorry!” he rasped. “Ah shite, Milja, that was brutal—I am sorry. Please.” His eyes met mine properly for the first time. “Forgive me, please.”

My heart was pounding so hard I felt sick. “Of course,” I said, my voice shaking. “Remember when I got all pissy with you because you wouldn’t put out? We’re even now, aren’t we?”

He laughed once, in shock. “Oh Christ.”

I couldn’t bear it—to see him sitting there, drunk and sweating with fear. “Egan, what on earth’s wrong?”

He just rubbed his hands over his face as if trying to wake up. “I need to get out of here.”

“Well…”

“You have to get me out of this place now. I have talked and talked to the ones that Vidimus sent, but they’re not listening to me. I have been compromised by my actions—” The word sounded so ugly on his tongue “—and it seems I’m no longer considered loyal to the organization. I need to speak to Father Giuseppe in person. They’ve taken my bloody phone. They’ve locked me in and I can’t walk. I need you to help me into that wheelchair there and get me the hell out of here. Now.”

“Where to?”

“Rome.”

“What?”

“Okay, back to Minot anyway. I can catch a plane from there. If we’re going to do this we need Vidimus onside. It’s not a solo job.”

“Do what?”

“Negotiate. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

Negotiate peace with the Fallen Angels. I had given up on that idea so profoundly that I’d all but forgotten it. I was no longer privy to Azazel’s plans, after all. I was no longer part of his life. How could I be involved in negotiations with someone who despised me—someone whom I’d already betrayed?

My heart felt like it was withering inside my chest.

“Egan, you can’t travel like this. You’ve got to heal first.”

“Sure, I’ll be fine.”

“They can’t even let you on a plane, can they? I mean, we can’t risk your knees getting twisted out of true. All the pins and plates…”

He clenched his fists. “My legs are okay.”

“You need bedrest! Unless you want me to…you know.” To heal you. Which would mean sex.

“No!” he growled, and before I could think how hurtful that was, he rushed on; “They’re fecking okay.” His lips writhed back from his teeth. “If I wasn’t covered in plaster I could walk out of here. I just need a saw to cut myself out.” His eyes were blue, bloodshot points of desperation. “She fixed me.”

She? Penemuel? “No, she didn’t, I saw…”

“She came back.”

“Here?”

“Just once,” he said with emphasis, then pointed at the bare toes he wriggled in demonstration. “She fixed me. She was that grateful for being released.”

“Right. I see.” I wasn’t sure I believed him; something felt wrong. No, something was wrong—but I didn’t know what. Egan wasn’t the sort to tell flat-out lies, but he didn’t have a great track record for being candid with the whole truth. On the other hand, Penemuel did have every cause to be grateful to us. “Well, if you’re sure?”

“Please, Milja. Trust me.” He held out his hand for the first time, and I clasped it in both of mine. His fingers felt cold, but they knotted tightly with my own. “Get me out of here.”

“Okay, I’ll help you,” I said when I could find a voice again. “Let’s get your stuff.” I pointed at the whiskey bottle and added, “But you are not bringing that.”

“That’s grand.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed, then watched as I hurried around emptying out the plastic trash bag and then filling it with the clothes and bits of things they had left him with.

“What’s this lot?” I asked, uncovering a loose stash of pills at the bottom of the drawer that held his wallet and credit cards.

“That’s the pain meds that I’ve not been taking.” He was tense, but seemed to have perked up a bit. Hope had bloomed at last. “Sister Carmel tried to force me. There was a bit of a fight.”

I shook my head. “Okay, let’s get you into a coat. It’s cold out there.” The camouflage jacket I recalled from the Minnesota woods was hanging on the back of the door and I tossed it to him before wheeling the chair closer. It was a clunky thing with a red frame, not at all modern or streamlined. “How do you want to manage this?”

“Hold it steady.” He swung himself off the bed and into the chair using mostly the strength of his arms, just pivoting a little on his plaster-encased heels. He couldn’t bend his knees of course, but there was a sort of platform sticking out the front of the chair to support his legs.

I dumped the bag of clothes into his lap and we headed out of the door. Sister Carmel was standing in the corridor, hands clasped, waiting for us. “He’s checking out,” I announced, tossing her keys back to her.

“You mustn’t go,” she said in a tight voice, scurrying to keep up with us. “You haven’t been cleared by the doctors. Or the fathers.”

“Sister, I will explain everything to them in person,” Egan said over his shoulder. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

“You will cause irreparable damage to your legs!”

“I’ve got private insurance.”

“Father Kansky!”

“Pray for me, Sister.”

I punched the elevator button and backed the wheelchair in, thankful as the metal doors slid shut to separate us from the world. “They don’t know that you’re better?” I asked, looking down at the back of Egan’s head.

“What do you think I could have told them? That there’s been a miracle?”

“I guess Vidimus wouldn’t approve?”

“No, they sure as hell would not.”

* * *

We drove to the house where I’d rented a room, with Egan stretched out across the back seat of my second-hand Ford. From that position, he demanded that I talk him through exactly what had happened in upstate Minnesota, since he’d spent parts of it passed out. He did remember me killing Roshana, though he hadn’t seen her incorporeal counter-attack afterward.

“What should I have done?” I asked. “How do your lot deal with disembodied Nephilim?”

“Exorcism,” he said grimly. “I’m sorry; maybe if I’d left the spear in place…”

“What did you do with the relic?”

“There was a pile of bones and stuff. I just sort of shoved it under there.”

Well damn. “Is it still out there? In the woods?”

“No.”

I adjusted the rear-view mirror so I could look at his face. “So you were planning to stab Azazel?”

He looked dog-weary. “I thought about it.”

You bastard.

“Then I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt. Stuck to Plan A.”

I swallowed hard. “Have you told your people what you did?”

“I had to. I was rather hoping someone would listen.” He shook his head.

I shifted my eyes back to the traffic for a while. My next question was much meeker. “Do you think Roshana was right? Do you think I was just jealous of her all along?”

“I think your lack of hesitation saved my life,” he answered, dry as toast. “Thank you.”

I stayed silent.

“Milja,” he said after a while, “we have to make the best of the situation. The deck’s been reshuffled, but we have to play on.”

“I’m playing without the Ace of Spades in my hand though, now,” I said sourly. “And to be honest, I’m not sure what I’d be playing for anymore. I was trying to help Azazel. What do I do now he doesn’t want me?” My voice betrayed me with a rough little catch.

Egan put his hand up on my shoulder. Not quite a caress. “You can still play to save him. And I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. I get that it hurts.”

“Really?” I shot him a hard look in the mirror. “I thought you’d be delighted.”

“What sort of a bastard d’you think I am?” He frowned. “And you did what you had to, to save us all. Don’t blame yourself for that. He’s the one that’s wrong.”

“I killed his little girl, Egan.”

He squeezed my shoulder again, gently, as I let out a dry sob. “It’s hard, Milja, I know. If it wasn’t hard then there’d be something wrong with you.”

“I don’t want to be a killer.”

“I know.”

“You made it look easy.”

“Did I ever say there was nothing wrong with me?” He sighed. “You build walls, Milja, in time.”

We said nothing more until we reached the low-rise street where I parked up in front of a shabby clapboard house.

“This is it,” I said, unbuckling.

“Not the Hilton then?”

“The Hilton wants a credit card on file. This guy takes cash.”

We hadn’t stolen the wheelchair from Our Lady of Mercy, so Egan scooted right to the edge of the car seat and then pulled himself up onto my shoulder, deluging me in the scent of hospitals and bourbon. His plaster-clad legs did take most of his weight, to my relief, or at least enough of it to allow us to stagger like drunks across the dead grass to the door. Once he could get his hands on the porch balustrade he made a lot better use of his upper body strength.

“I should get you crutches,” I said.

“Just get me a saw.”

Letting him into my room, I helped him over to the single bed. He lay back on the comforter, gasping as he straightened his spine. “Nice place,” he said.

It wasn’t. It was barren and colorless and the drafts came in around the rattling window, and I had none of my own belongings to make it homely. All my household possessions were probably in a skip in Chicago now, it occurred to me. Photos, certificates, college projects, mementoes of my childhood and my late father. But I’d lost so much, so often, that I’d stopped caring. The only things in the world that mattered to me were my ex-lover—who might not be in the world at all—and this messed-up man on my bed, who seemed to be dozing off already. His face had relaxed, smoothing away the lines, and his eyes had drifted closed. I paused to look.

Black T-shirt, soft grey cotton briefs that were a bit too clingy for his own good, and those white plaster thigh-high stockings. There was something oddly perverse about the sight.

His eyes opened, and tried to focus.

“Coffee?” I asked quickly.

“Yes. Have you got any caffeine tablets?”

“Why?” I looked around from the cupboard. “Do you need to stay awake or do you just hate your heart?”

He shook his head, lips compressed.

I made coffee, black and strong, the way we both like it. Egan sat up to take his mug from my hand. He smiled at me then, for the first time—a battered little smile that seemed unsure if it was safe to come out of hiding. “This is not going the way we hoped, is it?”

I don’t even know what I hope for anymore. “I’ll go ask my landlord if he has any tools,” I said.

When I got back a quarter-hour later, my arms full of tools and extension cords, Egan was still sitting up at the edge of the bed, and as I entered I saw him do a sort of reverse-blink; his head jerked up suddenly, his eyes flashing open, before it sank back down again on his chest.

I kicked the door shut behind me and the bang made him start awake enough to look over at me.

“The landlord wasn’t in, but his girlfriend let me borrow his Dremel.” I brandished the drill with its tiny rotary blade.

“I drank your coffee,” he mumbled. “Sorry.”

“How long since you had a proper night’s sleep, Egan?”

“Me?” He shook his head. “Weeks. Bad dreams.”

I knelt on the floor next to the bed, staring up at his face as I reconsidered my assessment. He wasn’t drunk—or at least, he wasn’t just drunk; he was tripping his ass off on exhaustion. And I wasn’t surprised at the bad dreams, given all we’d been through. “For God’s sake, that’s not good for you. Maybe we should leave this until you’ve slept?”

He straightened his neck. “Ah, no. I need out of these things now, Milja.” He grimaced. “I want to be able to walk to the john.”

“I just don’t think this is a good idea.” I looked down at the drill. “I could really injure you with this!”

“I trust you. You’ve got a steady hand. C’mon, it’s not rocket science.”

“Can’t I take you to a hospital? They’ve got the proper equipment there.”

He touched my hair, gingerly, as if he thought I might bite his fingers. “If we get blood on the duvet, I’ll pay the laundry bills.”

I breathed out hard. “Right, fine. Open your legs.”

He wisely chose not to mock me for that. He pulled himself further onto the bed and settled his back against the wall, his feet spread enough to allow me access between them. I tried not to look anywhere in the vicinity of the button-up underpants curtained by his loose hands.

Once I’d pinned my hair up safely out of the way, I took a magic marker and drew lines on the plaster of both legs—one right up the outside of each thigh and one up the inside. “This is where I’m going to cut,” I said. “Don’t you dare move once I’ve started.”

“Go for it.”

His faith was almost alarming, I thought; there couldn’t be many men who’d let a woman work a rotary saw that close to their crotch. I took a deep breath. At least my engineering background meant I had no nervousness of tools. Bending over the plaster cast, I started on the inside of his right leg at the big toe, and took a sharp angle around the ankle-bone. The tiny circular saw-head bit into the plaster easily, spitting out white dust. I was very careful not to let it slice too far into the padding beneath the stiff crust.

It’s working, I told myself.

Egan didn’t obey the stricture about not moving, though. When I reached the level of his knee, he reached out very carefully, picked up one of my pillows and pressed it down over his groin. At first I thought, naively, that this was some sort of gallows-humor attempt to shield himself in case of a really bad slip of the wrist. A glance up at his glassy-eyed expression taught me better, though, and I blushed redder than him.

But that was the only move he made, and the only interruption to my concentration. He watched me work carefully up the length of his inner thigh, my head bowed over my hands, without comment. Then I switched to the outside of the leg. When I’d created splits on both sides, I took scissors to the wadding in the cut, snipping delicately at the layers of cotton wool and stockinet. Only then could we slowly lift the lid of the cast.

I still didn’t entirely believe him, I think. My heart was in my mouth as his leg was revealed, and the first glimpse wasn’t encouraging—it was smeared yellow and red with some hospital gunk that looked horribly gory and smelled vile.

Egan bent his knee and wriggled it out of the bottom half of the cast. Then he gasped in pain.

“What?” I yelped.

“Pins-and-needles!”

“Godssake, Egan, you nearly gave me a heart attack!” I complained, while he completely ignored me and clutched at his thigh, hissing with discomfort. I took a break from the job then, flounced off, and returned with a basin full of soapy water and a face-cloth to wash him down with.

The pins-and-needles seemed to have settled down by then; he only winced a little as I cleaned his foot and calf and knee, wiping the stain away and probing gently at the meat of his muscle as I sought for any injuries. I found scars, yes—all around the knee area there were silver curlicues and puckered indentations like the imprint of kisses. But they all looked old, and completely healed. He hadn’t been lying. This was a full-on angelic miracle.

Well, thank you Penemuel. I’d been scared he’d never walk again. I’d been scared he’d lose both legs.

My fingers drifted across the little cicatrices, fascinated, tracing their secret sigils.

“You like scars, do you?” he asked, his voice a rumble in his chest.

I blushed again, and withdrew my fingers quickly. “Sorry.”

“Your man Azazel has a particularly big one, I couldn’t help noticing.”

I was a little startled, but there was a twisted, self-deprecating smile on his face so I answered, “That’s where the eagle ripped his liver out. If you’re actually talking about scars.”

He snorted.

“I didn’t ever dare touch it much,” I confessed. It was easier to look at Egan’s bare leg than his bloodshot eyes. “He gets weird if I…like things that remind him of his imprisonment.”

“He’s an arse.”

“You jealous?” I said, a little cruelly, as I went back to washing his thigh.

“Me? Of him?” His tones were looping, incautious, like drunken outflung gestures. “Of course I’m jealous. He had everything I wanted, and then he threw it all away.”

“You mean Heaven?”

“That too.”

My ears thrummed with blood and I felt light-headed. I kept my head bowed and my eyes down.

“You said ‘gets’, not ‘got’,” he pointed out softly. “Are you still seeing him?”

I shook my head, my eyes blurring. “Azazel gave me to you,” I whispered. He had, in just so many words: ‘I cannot love her. I give her to you.’ Like I was a pet cat that had turned around and scratched him once too often.

“That’s absolutely not his call, Milja.”

There didn’t seem to be enough air in the room. “The thing is, I don’t think I’m fit to be with you, Egan. Or any other man.”

“Because of him?”

I nodded because in a way, yes, it was Azazel who had engendered my corruption. I didn’t think I could ever escape that mental image of him tied out upon the rock slab under the mountain. It was a part of me from childhood, and it had found a dark and carnal expression.

Egan didn’t answer.

I set the bowl of water aside. “I should do the other leg.”

The left cast seemed to take longer, but in the end we were able to tug and wriggle and prize Egan’s leg out into the free air. I sat back as I waited for him to recover from the rush of blood to long disused muscles. Then he heaved himself to the edge of the bed and bent his knees to let his feet rest on a floor for the first time in weeks.

“Want to try standing?”

He tried, but fell back immediately, pulling a face. A second attempt made him groan.

“Does it hurt?” I asked, anxious.

“No, my muscles are just weak as dishrags. Arse. Give me a hand up, will you, Milja?”

I held an arm to steady him, and he lurched to his feet, but he couldn’t take his own weight properly.

“For feckssake,” he muttered.

“Give it time. You just need to practice.”

“What I need is a shower… And to get this stuff off me. Help me into the bathroom, will you?”

I let him lean on my shoulder as we crossed the room to my tiny ensuite. I had a wet-room—by virtue of the landlord having not installed a shower cubicle, only a flimsy curtain—and I helped Egan brace himself against the tile walls and then slide himself down into a sitting position on the floor.

He wouldn’t let go of me. His hands stayed locked on my upper arms. I was crouched over him, and I bent my face so close to his that I could feel the heat of his cheek against my own. His scruffy beard tickled my jaw. The midnight-dark scents of coffee and bourbon filled my head, and I shut my eyes, breathing in as I let my mouth trace the unfamiliar path to his.

For a long moment our lips touched, feather-soft, while my heart pounded so slow and hard that it hurt.

I could feel it, like some black slick of oil oozing to the surface of the earth. That sick arousal, that cruel desire to take advantage of his physical helplessness. He couldn’t stand, he couldn’t resist. I pictured myself straddling his hips and pushing his hands up over his head against the tiles, and biting his soft warm lips until he whimpered and flinched beneath me. And the thought made me run wet.

I pulled away, breaking his grip—and what I saw in his face was a confirmation of my guilt. Shame, yes, but more than that; fear. He gulped air, twisting from side to side.

“Shite,” he whispered, “oh shite. Don’t touch me.”

I lurched back the one pace it took to the far wall and flinched as he slammed his fist into the floor tiles hard enough to skin his knuckles. “Bitch!” he cried.

I panicked. “I’m sorry!”

“Not you!” His bloodshot eyes struggled to find my face. “Her.”

Red streaked the white tiles under his clenched fist.

Her? “What’s wrong, Egan, please? Talk to me!”

“The succubus.” He thudded the heel of his hand against his temple. “In my dreams. Do you get it?” His words were bullets, fired with merciless precision. “She comes to see me. Repeatedly.”

I understood at last. I put my hand over my mouth so that he couldn’t see my twisted, silent shriek.

‘He is mine!’ Penemuel had said the last time I’d seen her. Claiming Egan. And there’s only one use fallen angels have for humans.

Repeatedly?

“Oh,” I said. “Oh crap.”

His eyes weren’t just glassy and bloodshot—they were leaking blood.

Oh God, Egan. I reached out without thinking to clasp his face, but he recoiled.

“Don’t.”

Because I couldn’t touch him and I couldn’t bear to look at him, I stood up and walked into my bedroom, and ended up just facing into a corner. Because I couldn’t cry I shook, silently.

And I didn’t wonder at the drinking anymore.