CHAPTER SIX

The last time Tamatsu had watched Noelle sleep had been during a snowy winter in Dewa Province. They’d been traveling together for weeks. Initially, she’d kept up with him, trouper that she was, but as the weather turned colder, she’d become more sluggish.

He’d finally made her rest, and that was his first big mistake. If they hadn’t stopped, he might never have touched her.

He put his feet up on the bed and crossed them at the ankles.

Back then, she’d slept on her belly and often with her head hidden beneath a pillow. She still did.

He’d always thought that was charming, though the soft obstacle made looking at her as she rested somewhat more difficult. He wasn’t one of the rare angels who could see through things.

He peeled back the wrapper on the protein bar he’d found in his coat pocket before he’d taken the thing off. The bars were bland, but they were filling … at least for a while. He’d need a good meal before teleporting anywhere or he wouldn’t have the energy to move efficiently. He could usually manage to get himself where he needed whether or not he’d eaten, but if he had to carry others, he’d have to push his power outward. He avoided doing so as much as he could. The exertion made his hungers flare, and no one but Tarik—and perhaps Gulielmus—understood. It was hard to speculate anymore on what Gulielmus knew and what he didn’t. He’d lost most of his memories.

Tamatsu chewed in silence for a while. He watched her strong but delicate limbs twitch beneath the covers and listened to her amusing mutters. There had been nights that he sat quietly, listening to her talk in her sleep all night. She’d tell stories—entire histories of some elf or another, complete with magical dueling and sword fights.

He didn’t know if the tales were fiction or truth, but they seemed plausible enough while she was telling them, and she always woke before finishing them.

There in Lola’s house, she didn’t seem to be telling a story, though. She was talking about Las Vegas burlesque shows, missed coffee, and real estate. An odd combination for sure, but she’d always been unpredictable. That was probably why he’d been so drawn to her early on. He’d craved new experiences, and she’d given him plenty.

He raised the phone he’d pilfered from Tarik’s pocket to his eyes. He barely knew how to work the damnable thing, but the humans around couldn’t seem to separate themselves from theirs. They even slept with them. Tamatsu could divine some necessary uses for the devices, but all the rest—he didn’t understand. The plinking electronic games. The apps that told people how many steps they’d walked. The email and social media apps so people were connected all the time via airwaves and electrons, but never in person.

Texting might have been useful in some situations, but for the most part, Tamatsu didn’t see the allure of being so connected. All that typing would just remind him that he couldn’t communicate in the way that typical people did. It’d remind him of everything he’d lost.

He could, however, see the benefits of having a world of information at his fingertips. After checking forecasts for the states along the Mississippi and ensuring there was no extra rain forecast for the upcoming week, he opened a search engine and grunted as he tapped his thumbs against the tiny screen. He was frustrated that the device only read his touches half the time. Angel energy apparently wasn’t compatible with touch screen technology. Normally, he would have done his due diligence much sooner, but he’d convinced himself he was too busy. He’d found Noelle after centuries of searching thanks to the power of the Internet, but he hadn’t actually dug into what she’d been up to. Once he’d found her real estate ads, he’d stopped digging, perhaps afraid of what he might find.

He needed to know.

He tapped in her name in quotation marks the way December had shown him and watched the search results pop up.

More real estate listings. Lots of real estate listings. She kept busy. She was respected, from the looks of things.

He snorted.

Respectable was another word that should have gone into quotation marks. “I’m not decent, my love,” she’d said more than once with a grin, and he’d never believed her until …

Well. Until she’d proven that she’d told the truth all along.

At the bottom of the second page of search results, the data became less business and moderately more personal. Her LinkedIn page was there, which listed all the companies she’d worked for in the past ten years, but no history before that. She had a Facebook page with very little content—mostly pictures of houses and “Did you know?” factoids about the state of the housing finance industry. Scrolling further down the list of search results, he found articles.

There were newspaper stories about Noelle and Jenny, or Noelle on her own doing community service work, mostly related to housing. He found several of those going from Vegas, to Seattle, to Sacramento, and one from New Orleans. She fell off the internet beyond the decade, probably having changed her name. Name-changing and moving were a near-immortal’s periodic chores, much the same as going to the dentist or replacing one’s roof. Angels didn’t generally bother. They never fully integrated into society, but people like Noelle, who lived and worked amongst humans, had no choice.

December had also taught him how to search for similar images, so he started a new query using one of Noelle’s headshots.

He found one image that was a best guess by the search engine, but posted under the name “Elle Marks.”

The woman was Noelle. An inattentive human might have disregarded the hit, but Tamatsu would have recognized her anywhere—even with the falsely red hair and the big round sunglasses that obscured half her face.

He did a search for Elle Marks in New Orleans and immediately wished he hadn’t. Elle had been a social creature. Almost every article had an image of her with some businessman or other, and they were all smiling, their hands out of range of the camera’s lens. On her ass, probably. She didn’t seem to care.

There were message board posts and public Facebook messages asking things like, “Whatever happened to Elle?”

Tamatsu ground his teeth and set down the phone.

“Elle” was asleep in front of him. She’d likely touched and been touched by so many lovers in the centuries since he’d last seen her, and that was her right. She could do what she wanted. She wasn’t his and couldn’t be. No one could be, because he couldn’t touch people the way they wanted to be. Still, knowing that she’d been able to move on from him so easily would wound any man’s pride.

The door creaked open. Tarik appeared in the gap with brow furrowed.

Grunting softly, Tamatsu held out the phone to him.

Take this damnable thing.

“What are you doing?” Tarik whispered.

Tamatsu rolled his eyes. It was obvious that he was torturing himself. Angels were better at self-flagellation than any other creature on the planet.

“Use wisdom,” Tarik whispered. “Don’t do this.”

Tamatsu set down his feet and stood. The floorboards creaked as he moved across the room, but she didn’t stir.

Tarik closed the door and folded his arms over his chest, staring at him.

Tamatsu shook his head.

“Fine,” Tarik said. “I mean only to spare you pain. I don’t wish to see you suffer, and certainly not at the hands of someone who obviously has little regard for you.”

Tamatsu headed to the stairs.

His friend often misjudged him. He thought Tamatsu was far nobler than he actually was, but if Tamatsu were so damned righteous, he wouldn’t have Fallen in the first place. He’d been so hungry to experience the things humans did, and he’d made his choice. He suffered for his choices every day when he starved. He couldn’t stop feeding himself unless he wanted the pain to come back. He’d endured so much pain after Noelle had left him. He’d stopped feeding one hunger “cold turkey” as the humans might have said, and a year of crippling pain to certain male parts of his anatomy followed.

A carnal touch could ignite the hunger again. He couldn’t let that happen. “Better safe than sorry” had been his mantra. He let few people near enough to touch him.

Tarik clasped Tamatsu’s shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze. “Have a meal. Take a walk and clear your head before we go. I’m certain that whatever’s unsettling you will unfurl in time.”

Tamatsu hoped he was right.

Nodding, he made his way silently down the stairs. He lingered in the kitchen long enough to make a sandwich of odds and ends. Lola kept a container in the refrigerator for exactly that purpose, and he didn’t feel like such a parasite when he limited his scavenging to it. He carried his food out the front door.

By the time he was through the gate, he’d gained a tail.

He sighed, but of course, the expulsion of air had no sound.

“You know, I was still in Ireland when Noelle was in her exploration phase,” Jenny said. She was in pajamas and pink sneakers that were probably in a little girl size. He’d met very few elf women who were over five feet tall, but they looked grown enough. They had curves in all the places they should have. “So I wasn’t around when whatever happened to you two happened.”

Tamatsu took a big bite of sandwich and rounded the corner.

“I imagine you can’t tell me your side of things, huh?”

He gave her a look.

She put up her hands. “Okay. Okay. I understand. I guess I didn’t think that one through before I asked. But listen, I know how she is … at least, as much as anyone can know her.” Jenny cringed. “She misreads situations sometimes because she can’t always remember things.”

Tamatsu bit down on a juicy chunk of chicken and closed his eyes as the savory flavors of Mexican spices burst over his tongue. Lola didn’t cook often. She far preferred to be the guest of other cooks, but when she did cook, she demonstrated a deftness of seasoning few others possessed.

“She holds onto grudges all the time, but—”

Before she could finish her sentence, a flaming creature with the head of a fish and little else for a body darted down from the eaves of a house on the corner.

Tamatsu drew his katana and smote the creature without losing the rhythm of his chewing.

Fucking things.

The nameless demons were no smarter than lemmings. They didn’t think—they just attacked, and because of a curse he’d inherited, he was their favorite target.

Frozen in place like a deer trapped by headlights, Jenny stared at him.

He shrugged, and started moving again as he sheathed his katana. In his line of work, the occasional demonic attack was expected the same way mosquitoes were expected during a picnic in a swamp. Sometimes, he became a magnet of sorts to certain kinds of disturbances. He’d picked up that particular one during an assassination attempt gone wrong. He’d vanquished his target, sure, but he’d picked up the shogun’s curse upon doing so. He hadn’t been sufficiently motivated to nip the problem in the bud. He’d need to go between realms, and without the use of his voice to open portals, he’d have to expend an exorbitant amount of energy. His bloodlust would be sated, but he’d be exhausted for days upon return. He never wanted to be bottomed out in his energy because he didn’t have the gift of premonition and couldn’t guess when he’d need to quickly intervene on some other disaster.

Jenny caught up to him once more. “Uh. Does that … You know. Happen often?”

He nodded.

“Okay, then.” Jenny scratched her head. “Jeez. Uh. I can’t even remember what I was going to say.” She snapped her fingers. “Oh! So, uh … about you and Noelle.”

Tamatsu gave another silent sigh and pushed the end of his sandwich into his mouth. He slipped his hands into his leather gloves and gestured across the street to the park he often sat in while the locals slept. He tried not to be seen during the day, not because he was so certain that people could figure out what he was, but because the things that liked to attack him didn’t care if there were human witnesses around. He settled onto a stone bench and indicated the other end.

“I want to know,” Jenny said, sitting daintily on the edge, “if you hurt her on purpose.”

Should have expected that.

Tamatsu rolled his eyes.

“Is that yes or no?” She tapped her chin contemplatively. “You know, I don’t think I’ve actually met anyone Noelle’s yanked a voice from who she didn’t give it back to.”

Lucky me.

He closed his eyes and shook his head.

“So, you didn’t hurt her on purpose?”

He scratched his itchy palm. He wasn’t answering that shit. Jenny may have been a nice enough person, but he couldn’t dignify the query with a response. He was as decent as a creature like him could be, and Noelle damn well knew that.

“She’s not so bad, you know?”

Tamatsu opened his eyes and pushed up an eyebrow.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong. She doesn’t need me defending her, but I can’t help myself. She’s taken care of me for ages. If it weren’t for her, I’d probably be in a gutter somewhere.”

Odd.

He’d never heard of an elf who’d confess such weakness. Jenny must have read his curiosity on his face because she let out a breath and put her hands up.

“Look, I’m not very ambitious. I’m the sort of elf who likes to be told what she needs to do, and I go off and do it. That makes me happy—having a routine and knowing what all my tasks are going to be. Noelle keeps me straight and she doesn’t let anyone bother me.”

Satan played favorites, too. Tamatsu wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be appeased.

“She’s a good friend,” Jenny said. “Do you care?”

Yes? No?

He didn’t know if it mattered. She hadn’t been good to him and he’d been more than a friend. He’d doted on the wretch, and angels didn’t generally do “twee.”

“I know you’re probably mad at her. Maybe I would be, too. I also know that she’s all torn up over whatever happened between the two of you, and nowadays, she doesn’t really let anything trigger her like that. She gets angry sometimes, of course, because that’s how she is, but I’ve never seen her so …” She pulled in another long breath and made a noncommittal hand gesture. “Discombobulated? I mean, I don’t know why I’m trying to be her champion. She can take care of herself. I just don’t like thinking that there’s anyone upset with her, because I know that deep down, she’s a good person.”

Tamatsu stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles.

If he’d had a voice, he might have told Jenny that good or bad didn’t matter to him. Even if Noelle had been “mostly evil” at the time of their encounters, he probably still would have slept with her. Angels weren’t always as discriminating as people made out, and especially Fallen ones. They had needs and did what they had to for satiation.

“I feel silly yammering away when you don’t talk back,” Jenny whispered to the ground. There was a note of humiliation in her voice that made Tamatsu sit up a bit straighter and turn to her. He didn’t like hurting people.

He gave her arm a gentle nudge.

Go on, elf.

“How … do you usually respond? Pen and paper? Text message?”

He shook his head.

“You don’t respond.”

He nodded.

“How’s that supposed to work? People have to guess?”

He canted his head. She was smart. She’d get it.

She grimaced. “Oh. That’s I’m doing right now, idnit? I could see where that would work, especially if you’ve got Tarik around all the time doing translation for you.”

Tarik was his mouthpiece. Tarik didn’t find the title amusing, but Tamatsu certainly did. Tarik hadn’t volunteered for the chore. Tamatsu stayed in and around Maria because the place was quiet, and Tarik was always nearby because of Lola. The two of them put off enough power that other high-energy beings chose to stay away from the area. Tarik had a tendre for Lola. He appreciated her having fewer frustrations in her stomping grounds, even if she wouldn’t let him do anything proactive about them.

“So how is she?” Jenny asked.

Not understanding the subject of her query, Tamatsu raised a brow.

“Cinnia.”

Ah.

“You really found her?”

He hated to take credit because the discovery was accidental. A little over a year ago, he and Tarik had been called on by Gulielmus’s son to help his friends in Maria close a hellmouth. There were few angels with the ability to do so, Gulielmus being one of them. Unfortunately, Gulielmus had been in a coma at the time. They’d gone to see what they could do to help, and there he was—being watched over by Clarissa.

The elf queen was slumming it on a little farm in eastern North Carolina.

He couldn’t say all that yet, so he just nodded. Jenny could get the story elsewhere.

“She’s okay? I mean …” Jenny shuddered and shook out her hands. “Haven’t seen her in so bloody long, you know? I’m sure all of us who worked closely with her worried about her. She didn’t want any of us near. She told us not to clump too much so we didn’t get found. I need to know that she’s okay so I won’t be nervous when we get there.”

He flicked his hand as if he were plucking away some annoying crumb.

“Oh, good.” Her exhalation came out in a singsong moan. “I feel much better. I wonder if she’ll even recognize me. I mean, there were so many more of us than her. She was so patient when we swarmed her for attention all the time. Not everyone who’d been in her position before was. She hated that sodding job.” Jenny turned her wrist over and peered down at her watch. “I best go get dressed. Can’t very well go see the former queen of elves wearing my pajamas.”

She patted his shoulder, slid off the seat, and shuffled back toward the house.

He followed, and something she’d said stood out in his mind.

Noelle had insinuated a similar thing about Cinnia—Clarissa, as he knew her—long ago. Unfortunately, at the time, Tamatsu had been too addled to give the matter much thought. She’d said that while Clarissa had been an extraordinary match to the king, she hadn’t wanted the job. Tamatsu wasn’t entirely sure she’d even wanted the king. Knowing what he did about the woman, she didn’t seem to be the sort who’d appreciate the notoriety.

He fondled the hilt of the dagger he kept at his waist and followed the chatty elf.

He hoped that fulfilling his end of the bargain with Noelle wouldn’t create problems for Clarissa. There were often unpredictable consequences to bargains. Most of the time, they were minor, but every now and then, a whisper of trouble could cause a tornado of confusion.

Moving ahead of Jenny, he opened the gate for her and let out a breath.

He’d had to take the risk. He was tired of being a ghost. He was done with not being able to intercede in critical matters in the ways that angels could and should. There was power in his voice—so much power that a whisper could have killed if that was what he wanted. For eight hundred years, he’d been at half capacity. Without his voice, he’d never be whole again.