CHAPTER FOUR

Tamatsu closed his eyes and twined his fingers atop his lap. He was in his favorite seat for recharging after a teleport—a large, tufted fanback chair in the salon of Lola Perez, Maria’s resident goddess.

She wasn’t home, which, in Tamatsu’s opinion, was a good thing. The immortal meddler had a way of asking questions without actually saying anything, and he didn’t have words to answer.

Words for anything, technically.

“So, you’ve got nothing to tell me?” Tito asked.

The last time Tamatsu had looked, the demigod was leaning against his mother’s ancient stereo system and staring at him in his usual fatherly way. Tito wasn’t Tamatsu’s father, of course—no one could make that claim. Angels like Tamatsu weren’t born. They were created.

Tito came by his habit naturally. He was the father of a kindergartener who was due to get off the school bus sometime in the next twenty minutes.

“Not gonna give me any hint whatsoever, huh?” Tito rolled his sleeves up his forearms and shook his head. “Come on, man. All I know is what Noelle says. I’d like to know what your side of the story is. You’ve got to tell me what I’m getting tangled up in.”

If only Tamatsu knew.

He rubbed the pad of his right thumb into his itchy left palm. He hated that fucking itch. So inauspicious. That prickle of skin always preceded the proverbial shit hitting the fan. That or snow. Given the time of year and their location in the New Mexican desert, the latter was exceedingly unlikely.

“That lady was mad, man,” Tito stated. “When did you burn her? Had to be recently.”

“Recent” was relative for an angel who’d had a corporeal form for longer than mankind had wielded fire. Tamatsu grimaced and shoved a finger into the top of his tight braid to loosen the plait. He couldn’t think when his scalp throbbed. He might not have been able to speak, but the people around him had a pesky habit of reading his body language. He needed to be more careful in choreographing his movements.

“You know what?” Tito said with a scoff. “I already know. Tarik would say ‘What’s time to an angel?’ or some such shit.”

Tarik would have, so Tamatsu nodded.

Soft footsteps were approaching from the direction of the kitchen. Tamatsu noted the cadence of the steps and the heaviness of the footfalls. December. Even without listening so intently, he had other ways of identifying an approaching person. Some required more energy than others, so mostly he resorted to human means of observation. She was close enough, however, that he could feel the cool energy of her aura without effort. Psychic auras were like faces to him—another means of recognizing someone. December was one of the easiest people in his network to be near because she was human. Her energy wasn’t showy or demanding. She was a palate cleanser for supernatural beings—someone they could be at ease around.

“Tarik’s here,” she said. “He teleported into the back yard.”

“Why didn’t he come straight in?” Tito asked.

“I’m guessing because of the Coyotes. I think checking the property for trespassers has become habit for him since they’ve started getting weirder. They’re stalking me, remember?”

“Stalking is a strong word, Dee.”

Her right cheek shuddered in several rapid spasms in the cartoonlike way it always did whenever she was tempering her words. Given the indelicate company she kept, Tamatsu didn’t know why she bothered.

“What do you call what they’re doing then? Every time I go outside, there’s one waiting and staring at me in that pathetic, needy way. They don’t say anything. They stare at me as if they were brainless revenants or something.” She shuddered and put a hand to her twitching cheek.

“Well, maybe you imprinted on them.” Chuckling, Tito walked to his wife, removed her hand from her cheek, and rubbed her spasming facial muscle. “You know. Like baby birds or something.”

December looked to Tamatsu as if for moral support.

He raised both eyebrows. As much as he wanted to take her side, his estimation was that baby birds sounded about right.

She heaved a sigh, kissed Tito’s hand, dropped it, and began to pace. “For heaven’s sake, we’re talking about grown men. They need an alpha, not a mommy.” She stopped moving and turned back to Tito. “Are you sure you don’t want the job?”

“Dee.”

“What?”

“You know better.”

Everyone knew better, but that didn’t stop half the paranormal element in Maria from suggesting the same. Tito was Cougar-affiliated, and the local Cougars and the Coyotes had a long history of rivalry.

Tito’s family might or might not have had something to do with the removal of the last Coyote alpha. Due to interference from a recently extinguished pack of free-shifters called Los Impostores, no one could say for sure if the man who’d died near the Coyote meeting rock a few months back had been pretending to be Jimenez or if he was the only Jimenez the pack had ever known. Los Impostores had a reputation for infiltrating shifter packs and looting them. Jimenez had been in the pack for decades, but that didn’t mean he was a legitimate Coyote. They might never learn the truth.

“Willa will step up and lead them,” Tito said. “Or else find someone who can. Just give her time.”

“I hope time is all she needs.”

Tamatsu was careful to keep his expression neutral on that. He considered Willa a friend, but she was no leader.

December left the room, footfalls soft and slower than before. She seemed to be moving toward the front door, likely to watch for the bus.

Heavier, thundering footsteps originating from the kitchen door approached.

Then came the familiar scalding at the back of Tamatsu’s neck as if the sun were too close and beat down on him.

Tarik. His old and forever friend. Tamatsu didn’t turn to the door to look. He waited for Tarik to complete his routine. There went the usual thunk of a heavy object being set on a surface. Tarik always found someplace to set down his sword first thing when he entered a domicile.

Then came the loud pop like the cracking of every knuckle at once, but really the sound was Tarik’s crippled wing joint. He always rolled his shoulder after setting down his sword.

“Well?” he asked, walking into Tamatsu’s view.

“Caught up to Noelle,” Tito said. “Talked to her. I understand now why he needed an intermediary to approach her for him. She was doing an okay job of hiding her emotions, but I read a pretty hostile vibe off her.”

Tarik grunted and slid his hands into the pockets of his coat.

Even with his eyes closed, Tamatsu could feel the weight of Tarik’s consideration. He didn’t need to see his friend’s face. There was peace in the dark. Composure came from choosing not to see.

“She refused to meet with him?” Tarik asked.

“No,” December called from the hallway. “She said she would and that she wouldn’t delay for long, but she didn’t seem all that geeked about it.”

Tarik grunted again, probably thinking the same things about Noelle that Tamatsu was.

That she was dangerous. Unpredictable. Capricious.

That Tamatsu had used extraordinarily bad judgment in seducing her.

Tarik and Noelle had met, briefly, soon after Tamatsu had discovered the odd little woman and then again after she’d taken his voice. Tarik had tried to intervene on Tamatsu’s behalf only to be rebuffed. They both knew, though, that Noelle wasn’t a woman who kept people waiting. She didn’t wait to act. Either she’d changed, or she simply hated him so much that she sought new ways to frustrate him. She’d once been so watchful, and so careful not to inconvenience him. Apparently, she’d ceased to give a damn sometime between leaving their bed for an errand and returning.

Before being with her, he’d heard that elves were notoriously volatile. He’d lived a long fucking time, and he’d never encountered any other woman whose mood changes were so dangerous. She’d given him permission to sate his sexual cravings, only to rescind it later without warning. She’d punished him for doing what she’d told him to do and finding release with other lovers. Not even Mother Nature was so wildly unpredictable.

His belly was predictable enough, though. The reverberating growl of it served as a conspicuous reminder of his earthly afflictions. Amongst the angels, he’d been too hungry for human experiences. The punishment he’d bear until he decided to return to the angelic host was persistent cravings.

Eating. Killing. Fucking.

If he starved one craving, the others were worse. After Noelle, he’d taken up killing again. Satiating his urge often paid well, but he’d never lie to himself. Hurting people never felt as good as touching.

He opened his eyes, thrust his weight forward onto his feet, and picked up his katana from the coffee table. Food was a priority, and the bus was on approach, anyway. He had to go. Cruz was uncomfortable around him because he didn’t talk, and she was a talker.

He sheathed his blade at his back, nodded at Tarik, and then teleported to one of downtown Maria’s back alleys. He could usually determine in advance of landing if there was anyone standing nearby, but he’d made a habit of looking both ways upon landing anyway.

Tarik appeared at his side at the moment Tamatsu decided conclusively there was no one there.

Nodding, Tamatsu walked toward the diner. The food there was good and cheap, not that he ever paid. If the waitress Alex was working, she took the meal—however large—out of her giveaway ration for the day. The owner had allowed for such charity, intending that the diner staff would feed the occasional needy customer. He likely hadn’t had customers like Tamatsu in mind. Tamatsu was always hungry.

He ducked into the doorway of the diner, and let Tarik—Tamatsu’s mouthpiece, of sorts—stride ahead of him.

“Hail, all,” he said.

“Oh, look,” Alex called out from behind the counter. “The trench coat giants have graced us with their company.” The cheeky mischief-maker plopped her hands onto her hips and tipped her head teasingly. “Hey, you know, I think that should be the name of your boy band.”

Tarik took the chair at his usual place, at a small, square, four-seater table. That location would require neither squeezing himself into a tight booth or sitting on a stool at the counter.

Stools were actually better for winged angels, but Tarik hated having his back to an entire room. Due to an injury he’d sustained eons ago, he couldn’t drape his wings over the top of the seats. Instead, he sat tensely on one of the backed chairs and held his wings tightly against him.

Not that most people could see them. They used glamour magic to maintain their mostly-human appearances, so people generally only saw his broad, flat back. They couldn’t see the slits in their coats to accommodate their wing joints or the feathered limbs. Tamatsu could see Tarik’s true nature no matter what, though, and Tarik his. Like always recognized like.

“Boy band?” Tarik asked in a tone dripping with reservation. Tamatsu couldn’t blame him. Alex was one of Maria’s most notorious human eccentrics, but she would have to be. She had a Were-cougar as an ex-roommate and the planet’s most timid messenger angel—Dawn—as her newest one. Dawn was terrified of Tamatsu and Tarik, as were most lower tier angels who’d taken on their heavenly jobs after death. Tamatsu had encountered squirrels less skittish than Dawn. She assumed they—having the actual ability to do so—were going to kill her.

They weren’t.

For the most part, they minded their own business. That wasn’t the case of others of their kind. There were many Fallen ones who’d kill a lesser angel like Dawn or even Cruz’s guardian angel, Mikey, on sight. Jealousy was the worst sort of cancer.

“Yeah.” Alex strode across the diner with her order pad in her hand. “You know, *NSYNC? Or the Backstreet Boys? They’re music groups of a sort. They wear coordinated outfits, sing, and do really schmaltzy dance routines.”

“You’ll not want to hear me sing,” Tarik grumbled.

“Oh, lots of guys in boy bands can’t actually sing, angel-eyes. Really, the only qualifications they need to have are being pretty, and being able to clap on downbeats.”

Tarik raised an eyebrow.

She grinned. “So, what are you having today?”

“I am not hungry,” Tarik said, “but I could tolerate a cup of coffee.”

“When’s the last time you ate?”

“Last Wednesday, I believe.”

“Jeez.” She slid her order pad across the table to Tamatsu along with the pen, and he wrote down a new combination of menu items.

He’d tried everything on the diner’s menu during the year and a half he’d been lurking in Maria, and had learned the cooking times of every item. He needed something fast, and then something heavy, and then something to “top off the tank,” as the humans might have said.

He slid the pad back to her.

She departed after pulling a fistful of pillow mints from her apron pocket and setting them in front of him. “Those ought to hold you over for five minutes.”

Probably not that long, but he immediately started tearing wrappers open all the same. He wouldn’t have been so famished if he’d taken December up on her earlier offer of a meal, but she and Tito were already doing him a big enough favor by corralling Noelle. He wasn’t going to ask them to feed him, too.

Tarik twined his fingers atop the table.

Tamatsu looked up to meet his friend’s curious gaze.

“You have been silent for all these centuries,” Tarik said quietly. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever get your voice back, or the power that comes with it. I have difficulty imagining you made whole.”

Tamatsu had never stopped remembering what wholeness felt like. He’d never stopped aching with impotence because of all the things he was no longer able to do. There was a great magnitude of power he could no longer access, and places he couldn’t go. With his voice restored, he’d have the power he’d Fallen with, and even that was a drop of what he’d had in the Host.

“How long did you need to find Noelle? A year?” Tarik leaned back and let Alex slide a coffee mug onto the table in front of him.

Tamatsu made a wavering gesture. It’d been about that long, and he hadn’t bothered searching for her until he’d found her queen. He hadn’t seen the point of torturing himself with knowing where she was if they couldn’t interact.

He’d stumbled upon Cinnia—now Clarissa—a little more than a year ago. If he’d been keeping better tabs on his other eternal friend—Gulielmus—he might have discovered her sooner, and gotten Noelle in touch with her. Clarissa was acting as something of a babysitter to the amnesiac fallen angel. It hadn’t dawned on him that Cinnia and Clarissa might have been the same person until her daughter had made a throwaway comment about finding an odd, dusty crown in the attic.

Tamatsu could have already been restored, assuming he wasn’t still waiting for Noelle to grace him with her company.

“You usually have no difficulty locating people you’ve interacted with in the past.”

Tamatsu flicked the top of his ear where a point might have been, had he been an elf.

“True. They do tend to be better at disappearing. I suppose that was one of the few things they gained when they integrated into this world.” Tarik leaned back in his seat and folded his arms over his chest. “I’m not certain I remember what you sound like.”

“That fast enough for ya?” Alex set a bowl of oatmeal in front of him and handed him a spoon.

Tamatsu gave a shallow bow of thanks, and dug in, noting the cast of characters in the diner as he ate, hardly tasting. When he and Tarik had first arrived in Maria to assist in the closing of a hellmouth on the Double B ranch, the locals stared at them everywhere they went. Most had abandoned the habit. Either they’d gotten used to them or they simply had much more pressing concerns … such as the Coyotes.

Tamatsu closed his eyes and shook his head. There was one pressed against the glass, peering in.

“I’ve never seen a pack as disordered as they are,” Tarik mused.

Tamatsu shook his head yet again, and then opened his eyes. The level of his oatmeal was getting lower and lower, and he needed to actually see where he was putting his spoon so it didn’t make that infernal squeaking sound. It made his feathers stand on end when scraped against the bowl.

“You do not think Willa will get them in order?”

Tamatsu lifted his gaze briefly to Tarik and kept eating.

“I suppose that glare is your way of saying no.”

Willa wasn’t a Coyote, or any sort of shapeshifter at all, but the Coyotes were hers to organize. Her father was some bored god she refused to identify, and he’d given Willa oversight of the pack as a gift during the stagecoach era. The woman had been in way over her head ever since. She was an immortal with no magic. She couldn’t control the beasts the way a dominant Coyote would be able to, and she’d given up on trying.

“I’m surprised no other alpha has come in and taken over.”

Tamatsu glanced out the window. The Coyote on the other side of the glass was a boy of around fifteen. He should have been heading home to Maria Heights because he was technically grounded, but his mother couldn’t rein him in because she was at work. Tamatsu minded his own business, but he knew all their stories. People liked to talk, and since he couldn’t talk, he listened.

Tarik pushed his chair back, muttering, “I’ll return shortly,” and he strode outside.

The boy started to bolt as soon as Tarik got close, but Tarik had a long reach. He grabbed the child by the collar and walked him toward home. He returned three minutes later, sat, and picked up his coffee cup as if nothing were amiss.

Tamatsu raised an eyebrow and pushed his empty oatmeal bowl aside.

Starving.

“Teleported once I got him into the alley,” Tarik said. “When I left his house, he was searching futilely for his homework. Perhaps he’ll find it.”

Tarik rubbed his chin. “I should speak with Willa again, though I don’t imagine she’ll have changed her mind.”

Tamatsu shook his head.

“Perhaps she could, at the very least, start the search for a replacement, or help coordinate the transfer of the Coyotes to the other packs. They can’t remain in Maria without an alpha, no matter how long they’ve resided here. They’ll become nuisances.”

And speak of the pretty devil …

Willa Matheson skulked into the diner and slumped into a chair at their table. She looked shiftily from Tamatsu to Tarik, then over her shoulder.

Tarik grunted.

She wagged a finger at him. “No. Don’t start that with me. I’m a grown-assed woman and you’re not my father. I swear, what do I have to do to get folks around here to use some manners every now and then?” She furrowed her brow at Tamatsu.

He was staying out of it, whatever it was.

Alex set Tamatsu’s turkey with sides special in front of him along with a basket of rolls.

He hated turkey, but there was no better vehicle for gravy, in his opinion. Except for mashed potatoes. He started with those.

“You need to get your Coyotes in check,” Tarik told her.

“They’re not my Coyotes.”

“Your father gave you the pack.”

“And I assure you, that’s the last thing he gave me. He gave me a pack of Coyotes knowing full well I didn’t have the magic to do anything with them. I’m no better than they are.”

“Then find someone who is. They’re disruptive.”

“They’ve always been disruptive.”

“Yes, but the locals are starting to complain now. They were disruptive but predictable before. Now, they’re just in the way. Lola nearly drove over one last week. He ran out into the middle of the road and stared at oncoming traffic.”

“They get confused sometimes, is all.”

Tarik twined his fingers and ground his teeth.

“Okay,” she muttered. “Sheesh. I’ll make some calls. I haven’t finished cleaning out the old alpha’s house, so I’m still looking for all the pack stuff. He’s got to have a list or an address book somewhere with all the information about the other Coyote packs.”

“Do you require assistance?”

“I hate asking, but who else is there to ask?”

“We’ll assist you,” Tarik said.

The search shouldn’t take them long. Angels were generally far more efficient at finding missing things than humans … assuming those missing things weren’t elves who, by default, made themselves very difficult to find.

Tamatsu stabbed his fork into his potatoes and shoved them into his mouth before he could start grinding his teeth. They squeaked when he did that, and the sound made the humans uncomfortable.

“Day after tomorrow, then?” Willa asked. “I’m not even supposed to be here right now, but I stepped outside the band room over at the middle school to shake out the rug, and saw you guys coming in. I’m supposed to be in planning time right now, photocopying watered down arrangements of Katy Perry songs.” She closed her eyes. “I can’t believe this is my life. I was a protégé to Vivaldi. How did I get here, teaching middle school band?”

Tamatsu laid his head on the side of his fist and stared at her until she opened her eyes.

She growled and pushed back her chair. “Oh, shut up. You don’t even have to say anything, but I can hear the chiding.” She affected a nasal, high-pitched, scolding voice. “This is all your own fault, Willa. What did you expect from getting on that boat?” She sighed. “I thought emigrating was a good idea at the time. America was where all the action was.” Shrugging, she stood. “So. Meet you day after tomorrow at Jimenez’s house?”

Tamatsu nodded and held up five fingers to indicate the time.

“Yeah. I can do five. I’ll bring donuts.” She took her leave, and Tamatsu sopped up what was left of his gravy with a soft roll.

Tarik patted his chest, which was buzzing.

He likely had one of those frustrating mobile phone devices hidden somewhere on his person.

After finding the blasted thing, he stared at the screen. His jaw was tight and the line in his brow was deep. He didn’t look up when Alex swapped out Tamatsu’s plate for a slice of some sort of seven-layer cake.

Tamatsu kicked his friend’s foot under the table.

Tarik slid his phone across.

Tamatsu squinted at the little screen and tried to make sense of the order of information. The message was from Tito.

Tamatsu read the words once more before pressing the phone back to Tarik.

And so she comes.

The relief he should have felt at the prospect of finally regaining his voice couldn’t quite overcome the long-simmering resentment he harbored. He couldn’t be happy about being given a gift that should have never left his possession in the first place, especially when that gift had been stolen by someone who fell asleep at night to the sound of him speaking all his secrets.

As he tucked the phone into one of his inner pockets, Tarik said, “You don’t seem pleased.”

Tamatsu poked at the cake. Lemon, he guessed, with cream cheese frosting if his nose was picking up the right notes. He didn’t want the cake, but he still picked up his fork. If he didn’t top off the tank, he’d be enduring crippling starvation again in an hour.

“You never told me the whole story of what happened between the two of you.”

Tamatsu didn’t look up. He shrugged and scraped some of the sugary frosting off the top of the cake slice.

He’d been in his old stomping grounds in Dewa Province, revisiting his old haunts from the time after he’d left the angelic host. She’d been on horseback, approaching the temple where he’d been resting and the animal had gotten spooked—likely by his energy.

The horse had run off, bucking and rearing back, trying to throw her, but she’d gripped his neck so firmly that Tamatsu had figured her for a man, at first. Her clothing was masculine— trousers and an odd cloak, and with her blades strapped to her back. With her black hair loose and whipping against her pale face as her horse railed, she could have passed for local, but her clothes were foreign. She was not only not a man, but an outsider as well.

He had no special abilities to soothe the horse, except to go away. He’d teleported himself half a field away, and she’d turned toward him, staring for a while before hitching the beast to a sturdy post.

He’d stood still, waiting as she walked over, one hand fondling the hilt of her knife and her expression neutral. He hadn’t moved a muscle, not even when she stood in front of him and stared up at him through silver-blue eyes that were too iridescent to be human.

Nothing about her had been quite human enough. Most humans wouldn’t have noticed the subtle pearlescence of her skin, though, or the way she turned toward even the smallest of sounds.

Or the way hearts beat faster when she was near. She wasn’t just an elf. She was one born to raise hell.

“Why are you here?” he’d asked, not that he had any room to query. He was a sort of outsider, too, but he at least looked like the locals. He’d been molded into their image to fit in, though much larger. At seven-and-a-half feet tall, he was a freak amongst them, but they didn’t know the full extent.

She’d grinned then. Pink lips curved at one corner and a delicate eyebrow hooked upward. “I go where my heart leads me,” she’d said simply in her own tongue, and of course he’d known it. He knew them all without trying to.

“Go back to your realm,” he’d said coolly. “You don’t belong here.”

Her grin had flattened and her throat had convulsed with a swallow as she nudged her hair behind her rounded ears. “This is my place now.”

The cake in his mouth might as well have been sawdust. He could hardly taste the flavoring.

“What did she do to you?” Tarik asked. “Besides taking your voice, though that was certainly enough.”

Tamatsu shook his head.

She hadn’t done anything else, besides accusing him of doing something he hadn’t. She’d said he’d replaced her, and he hadn’t understood that. Yes, he’d had other lovers, but so had she.

When his hungers surged, one of anything was rarely enough. His drives were insatiable, and she’d gone away. He’d had no choice, but she’d declared his act a betrayal. She’d snatched his voice, and demanded that he find her queen, knowing that such a search could take even a creature like him centuries.

Well, he’d finally found her queen.

If he were lucky, he could finally start to put the past behind him. Angels generally had impeccable memories, but some things simply didn’t pay to remember.