CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Tamatsu barged through the doorway of Gulielmus’s room at Clarissa’s house and grabbed his maybe-ex-friend by the wing. “Where the fuck is she?”

Gulielmus knocked his hand off with all the grace of an unperturbed duke and turned to face him. He put his hands to Tamatsu’s cheeks and grinned seductively. “I missed that voice.” He kissed Tamatsu’s forehead and whispered against the flesh, “Aren’t you going to welcome me back?”

Tamatsu reached for his katana at the exact moment Gulielmus pulled his sword out of thin air.

“Drat.” Gulielmus clucked his tongue with disapproval. “I thought we were better friends than this.”

“So did I. Don’t toy with me. This blade is as sharp as you remember, and my patience didn’t increase any in the time your memory was gone. Where. Is. She?”

“I’m appalled that you’d assume I know.”

“You must. I don’t doubt for a minute that you wouldn’t know where your son is. You put a demon’s mark on him. You can track him.”

Gulielmus’s smile shrank in as fast as a snipped rubber band. “In case you’re the one who’s suddenly developed memory issues now, here’s a reminder. I’m no longer counted as a demon. I don’t have a demon’s power. The marks that I put on my offspring are gone, and any magic they may have been granted, from me being what I was, has been stripped away in varying degrees. If I want to find my children, I have to do it the mortal way.”

Tamatsu cocked his chin. “Then perhaps I’ll ask his wife.”

“You could certainly waste the breath and frighten poor, skittish Ariel, but she knows nothing. So you’re angry right now? She is as well. He vanished on her without a word, and apparently that’s quite unlike him. In spite of his genetics, John actually prefers to be at home with his family.” Gulielmus made a moue of disgust, and then shook like a duck ridding its feathers of extra water. “I’d aid you if I could, but I know nothing.”

“Bullshit. You know something.”

Gulielmus shrugged, and the ambidextrous bastard passed the hilt of his sword to his other hand. Still pointing the tip in Tamatsu’s direction, he turned to his bed where several fine suits were laid out at the end. “Always so precise, aren’t you? All I did was told her that there was a solution. Everything else was up to her.”

“An incubus’s solution, right? Is that what’s inside me right now?” He pounded his chest. “Part of what makes her heart tick? Part of her will and magic?”

Gulielmus shrugged again. “Sue me. I learned some useful things when I was a scourge.”

“You still are one. You had no right to meddle,” Tamatsu spat.

“No?” The corners of Gulielmus’s lips tilted upward as he rubbed his chin with his free hand. “So I imagine that like Clarissa, you’re going to go on, spouting that nonsense.”

“Clarissa is a wise woman. Far too good for you.”

Gulielmus narrowed his eyes to slits. “Who said she was for me?”

“I’m not playing this game of words with you. Tell me how to find Noelle.”

“I can’t, which isn’t to say that I won’t, only that I lack the ability to do so. If John shows himself, you may ask him, but being the disgustingly noble sort he is, he may choose not to speak.” On his guard again, Gulielmus thrust his sword closer, forcing Tamatsu to deflect with a turn of his own. “You’ll not bother my son,” he said.

“Since when did you care about any of your sons beyond what they could do for you?”

“My relationship with my sons is none of your concern.”

“Truly? Because I seem to recall Tarik and I constantly running to the rescue of the oldest of your offspring when you had your back turned.”

“I have no idea what you’re referencing.”

“Of course you don’t.” Tamatsu scoffed. He had no room to judge Gulielmus for his past when his own wasn’t spotless, either. Insolent creature that he was, he still had time to change. Immortality was useful that way. “Give me your word that if you learn where she is, you’ll tell me.”

Gulielmus’s lips stretched into that smile again. “An oath between friends?”

“Are we friends?”

With their swords touching and gazes locked, Tamatsu didn’t doubt for a second that if either were insulted enough, they’d try to make mortal wounds. Few things could kill fallen angels. Their most common enemies were each other.

“Don’t be like that,” Gulielmus said. “Our history is too long for this petty squabbling. Do you doubt that my mind is as good as it was? Do you doubt that I thought through every action when I put this mess into play? All I did was gave her the ability to make a choice, and don’t you feel wonderful that she did?”

“I feel fine, and that means she probably feels like hell.”

Gulielmus rolled his eyes and lowered his sword. “She’s probably not feeling anything. She’s asleep and will be for the foreseeable future. That’s why you can’t sense her—why you can’t home in on her well enough to teleport to where she is. When she wakes, you’ll be able to find her, but by then, it’ll be too late for you to reverse what she’s done.”

“Why would you do this to her?”

Gulielmus shook his head and pushed down Tamatsu’s extended sword arm … or rather, Tamatsu let him. “I didn’t do anything to her. I didn’t compel her. I doubt a woman such as her could be compelled to do anything she doesn’t want to do.” He scoffed. “Of course you’d find yourself an elf who can’t be manipulated.”

As had Gulielmus, whether he wished to admit that or not.

“This was her choice,” he said, squeezing Tamatsu’s shoulder. “Why does that bother you so much? She only gave you back what was yours.”

“By divesting something that’s hers.”

“Apparently, she …” Gulielmus grimaced. “Loves you.”

For a moment, Tamatsu’s brain tried to defy the word because it was so potent—too powerful to be applied to him—but he already knew it was true.

She’d better. She had fucking better.

Balling his free hand into a fist, he calmed at the sting of his nails against his palm. “You choke on the word,” he said, trying for a less hostile tone, but there was so much tightness in his chest. Shaping the words was difficult. “Have you stopped understanding love? Have you forgotten what you are?”

If Gulielmus heard the question, he didn’t respond. He’d turned to face the garments on the bed again and rubbed his chin. “Back to work tomorrow. I mean, work-work managing my businesses. I’m sure Charles did a fine job in my absence, but I really need to get back and see what hasn’t been done in the past two years. Which of these suits do you think will lend the best impression?”

Tamatsu stared at the angel, waiting for the rescission of the trifling question.

But he was talking to Gulielmus. The things that were important to Gulielmus weren’t always so important to Tamatsu, but they made him who he was. They made him his friend.

“The dark blue would be most flattering on you,” he murmured. “As if you needed any help with that.”

“The blue it is, then.” Gulielmus grinned, the cocky bastard, but then the grin fell away.

He’d always been a mercurial sort, prone to flitting from one emotion to the next without fully processing the previous one. “I should leave, right? This …” He gave a demonstrative sweep of his hand to the room and ostensibly the property beyond it. “This place? I have an apartment. I should be safe enough there.”

“There are few places as safe as this property. Your sons would remind you of that.”

And his mate was there. Had Tamatsu been him, he wouldn’t have left. He would have stood his ground and claimed what was his … in spite of how pissed Clarissa might have been at him. But the fact that Gulielmus even had to ask hinted to Tamatsu that, for the first time, his friend didn’t really understand why he was there.

Tamatsu sheathed his katana and sucked in a bracing breath. “You named her as the chief contact on all your emergency information and gave her power of attorney authority should anything happen to you. Why do you think you did that?”

“I did it because in spite of her being insufferable, she’s fair.”

“She’s a queen.”

Gulielmus shrugged. “Was.”

“Is.”

“Fine,” Gulielmus demurred softly. “Is.”

“Don’t make the mistakes I made. Don’t fool yourself into believing you can do without the person Fate put into your path to unhinge you.”

“I don’t need her.”

“Mmm. No, you don’t need anyone, and certainly not the woman who’s become a surrogate parent for many of your children. She could have hardened her heart toward every one of them, but she didn’t. Why do you think she would do that?”

“You want me to make sense of an elf’s folly?”

Tamatsu grunted and jammed his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “You’re a piece of work, you know that? You’re a selfish, despicable bastard, and you have your head so far up your ass you could see your heart beat, but I love you, and I hurt for you.”

“Don’t pity me.” Gulielmus scooped up the two rejected suits by their hangers and walked them to the closet.

“I do pity you. I’ll pity you until you have the decency to pity yourself. Then, you’ll be getting somewhere.”

“Go away.”

“I will. I need to find my woman.”

“You won’t, but good luck anyway. Leave.”

“Fuck you.”

Growling quietly, Gulielmus turned slowly on his heels and set his deep blue gaze on Tamatsu.

He didn’t say anything. Neither did Tamatsu. He stared for a minute or two in the way he had when he’d been newly Fallen—back when nothing made sense to any of them except how to find each other. Back when they were trying to figure out whether or not Earth was the angel version of hell.

“Gulielmus. What is it?”

His friend looked out the window. “You’ll return? I don’t … know these people here.”

Ah.

“Yes. I will return.”

Tamatsu headed toward the hallway. He’d talked to Jenny first and Clarissa. If they had no ideas of where their friend might be, he’d teleport back to Noelle’s. There’d have to be clues there of where a woman with extensive knowledge of real estate might hide herself. He was counting on it.