I had no idea a faery spell could smell so putrid. If I hadn’t been in the penthouse suite of my building, I believe I would have had several neighbors knocking on my door and asking what had died in here. And how long had it been decomposing in my house. It wasn’t the dried rat or the egg that stunk, it had been the tree root and the liquid essence of a dragonfly that pushed the whole sloppy mix into rotten body territory. Ashby would have hated this.
I smiled, thinking about my sister. But then I just got angry again because she’d left me to deal with this all on my own. While she was living it up in New Zealand on her honeymoon, I was being forced to kill someone to avoid becoming enslaved. Maybe her getting married was the best thing that could have happened to her. It certainly took her off the radar of Leviathan, and Mammon seemed to forget that my sister even existed.
Maybe I should get married, too.
Or maybe I should swallow this damn potion myself and die a putrid death. It would probably be less torturous in the end.
I dropped in the last of the ingredients, a pair of ladybug wings, and waited for something to happen. A pop or a sparkle or maybe even that blue lightening? But instead I got nothing. Not a damn thing told me this was ready to go, and I had no idea if I’d prepared it correctly.
“Fucking faeries,” I muttered to myself. They loved playing tricks on people and I really hoped I hadn’t put my faith into the wrong one tonight. I was down to my last twenty-four hours to kill Jericho. If this didn’t work, my whole life would change. The whole world could change.
I hated this kind of pressure.
Pouring the concoction into a glass, I did my best to try not to breathe in the fumes. I would dump the pot in the dumpster and I planned on getting outside with the glass as soon as I could. Slipping on a pair of jeans and a sweater, I stepped into my boots and held the potion and piece of paper with the incantation in my hand, and transported to the alleyway next to my building. Being on the ground level, and in the alley, I realized that the smell of the potion wasn’t much worse then the stench of urine and trash. This city had always smelled, and I briefly wondered if letting demons reveal themselves may actually do more good than harm.
“It might help clean this place up,” I muttered to myself.
Setting the glass and the dark brown, thick liquid on the ground, I opened the paper and started the ritual. Four steps west, three to the east, one north, one south and repeat ten times. With each step, there was a faery word I needed to speak and I hoped my pronunciation was good enough that the great fae magic gods would let this spell work. By the time I finished the ritual, I sucked in a deep breath and spoke the last word.
And then I waited.
Again, there was nothing.
I waited some more.
“Sonofabitch!” I spat, ready to throw the glass against the wall. “You fucking—”
A light started to glow from the glass and then shot up into the air like the beams that came out of Jericho’s hands. It danced around about my head for several seconds before shooting up over the building and taking off into the city. Thinking quick, I blinked onto the balcony of my apartment and searched the sky for the beacon of light. It took a few minutes, but from my perch above the city, I could see most of it.
“Where are you, Jericho?”
A light off to my left caught my attention and I smiled. There, dancing above the Brooklyn Bridge was my tracking light, meaning Jericho must be somewhere on the bridge.
“Gotcha,” I whispered. Now I just had to get myself ready for a fight. Without the dagger, I would have to rely on my own strength to kill the angel. It was possible, but only if I caught him off guard.
Transporting to the bridge, I made sure to stick to the shadows. Traffic was backed up on both sides due to an accident in the center lanes, and I just had a feeling that was where I was going to find the angel. Horns blasted through the evening sky, bright red and blue emergency lights dancing across the impatient drivers. A few of them yelled at me as I walked past, but I did my best to ignore them.
Halfway across the bridge, I stopped. Several police cars had parked themselves sideways to block traffic, allowing only three ambulances to pass. I stood beside one of them, watching the scene in front of me. Two cars and one SUV had collided. One of the cars was flipped on its roof, the other two vehicles smashed against the barrier. The air bags had been deployed but the EMTs were still working on the people inside. Except for the car that had flipped.
A body lay on the ground in the middle of the chaos, and hovering over him was Jericho.
With the way the humans were rushing back and forth, I suspected Jericho had himself shielded from their view. He hunched over the teenage boy, resting his hand on the boy’s chest, head hanging like he was in prayer.
This wasn’t like with Otis. No, Jericho was doing that thing all angels do—he was trying to save a life.
I could see the boy’s soul floating a few feet above his body. A blurred piece of him was still attached to his leg, but most of the soul had started to move on. The ghost-like form snapped his head and stared directly at me. Then he focused on Jericho and back on me again. Back and forth. Back and forth. I never knew how much awareness a soul had when it detached, although Sophia had once told me that she knew about everything going on just before I’d shoved hers back into her pitiful human body when she’d almost died. I suspected this boy was aware.
He started to drift toward me, his ghostly foot still attached to the human part and keeping him anchored to this earth. I shielded myself from the human’s view as Jericho flared his beautiful white wings, the light casting a glare on both me and the boy’s soul.
“Am I dead?” the boy asked me.
“Not yet,” I whispered. “Do you want to die?”
He cocked his head to the side and looked back at the accident. “I did this,” he answered instead. “Maybe I deserve to die.”
“Are you a bad person?”
He shook his head and wrinkled his brows. “I don’t think so.”
Standing and walking toward the soul, I continued the conversation. “Then you shouldn’t come with me.”
“Are you the Devil?” His eyes widened as he took in my body. “You don’t look like the Devil.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” I said with a smile. “But I am not the Devil.”
“He’s an angel,” the boy said, looking down at Jericho who still hadn’t realized I was here, as he continued talking to the soul he was trying to save.
“He is.”
“My mom always said they were real. But I didn’t believe her.”
“Most humans don’t.”
“But my mom did,” he said quietly. “She said they were going to help her pass peacefully.”
With the way the boy stared at Jericho, I had a feeling he’d suffered enough for now. If he’d lost his mom, he would grow to be strong. It wouldn’t be easy for him, but I sensed that he was a survivor.
His transparent foot started to break away from his solid body.
“No!” I shouted, grabbing onto of his arms and walking him back toward Jericho. “You are going to live.”
“But I…I…”
“You want this, trust me.”
And just as I said those words, Jericho locked eyes on me and jumped to his feet. His wings spread wide as he noticed the boy’s soul in my grasp. “What are you doing to him?” he growled.
“I’m returning him,” I grumbled, pushing past the angel and kneeling on the ground. “This is going to hurt,” I told the boy just before I shoved him back into his body.
Jericho watched for a few seconds as the boy’s soul howled in pain, but then he dropped down beside him and resumed his prayers. Jericho’s light flowed into the boy’s bloodied head and arms. It danced across the ground, circling the teen until it dipped in and out of his wounds as though stitching them back together. As Jericho prayed, I remembered my job.
I needed to kill this angel. And now was the perfect time.
He was distracted and too focused and probably weakened. It might be the only chance I got.
But suddenly, Jericho reached back and grabbed my hand. It was warm and it burned my skin like an electrical shock. He let out a long breath and turned to look at me. “Thank you,” he said.
I yanked my hand away and fell backward. “Don’t thank me, angel.”
His wings were still spread wide, but they’d dulled a little in their luster. “He’s a good kid.”
“Yeah, well. We’ll see what he does with this second chance.” I glanced up to see several EMTs rushing toward the boy and knew we needed to get out of here. “We should—”
My words were cut off when I noticed the darkness rushing out from behind the emergency workers. Jericho was looking at me as I watched the fog of dark smoke snake it’s tendrils out and around the workers and head straight for us.
“Watch out!” I shouted at Jericho, knocking him sideways and slamming both of us into the ground as the smoke shot across the tops of our heads.
“Oh, my god,” one of the workers breathed, and I realized we had both just dropped our cover.
“It’s an angel.”
“They do exist.”
“Who is she?”
The crowd grew, and cameras started to flash. I sat, looking for the demon chasing us down.
“What was that thing?” Jericho asked, sitting up and shaking off his wings.
“It’s a wraith. And you need to pull those things back in.”
“What?” Jericho watched me in confusion for a moment before realizing he’d been exposed. With a quick snap of the air, his wings retreated and sucked in the light that surrounded him. “I’m going to get in trouble for—”
“Get down!” I screamed. We both covered our heads when we were attacked again. The wraith scraped across my back, slicing into my skin and releasing the smell of iron. Jericho must have been hit too, if his curses were any indication.
“We have to get out of here,” I said through gritted teeth, watching in slow motion as the humans around us tried to figure out what was going on and the wraith circled high in the air, readying for another attack.
“I can’t leave,” Jericho said in fear. His panicked eyes found mine. “Why can’t I leave?”
“Demon magic,” I muttered, staring up at the wraith. Someone didn’t want us getting off this bridge. “Grab my hands,” I shouted at him, the noise of the crowd and the whooshing of the wraith growing louder. Jericho complied and my hands instantly started to burn.
Screaming into the night air, I shouted at the wraith to distract me from the pain of touching Jericho and thought about my apartment. “Come on,” I begged, squeezing tight. “Come on!”
The wraith swooped down, ready to slice right through us. With the two of us in his sights, I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable.
But a split second before we were attacked, I blinked us off that bridge and back to my apartment.