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"We could try. There's no harm in trying, is there?"
"There is, if it gets your hopes up. I--I'm sorry. I have to..."
She mumbled something, and darted away. I followed her through the next room and out the back door. She hurried past those gathered on the deck, and walked into the empty yard, pausing only when she reached the back fence and could go no farther, then leaned against it, shivering.
"That must be a shitty thing to have to do," I said.
Her head jerked up, then she saw me. I walked over.
"You know you can't help her. I know you can't help her. But nothing you say is going to convince her of that. You did your best."
Jaime wrapped her arms around her chest and said nothing.
"Got rid of your headless stalker," I said. "If he ever comes around again, give me a shout, but I don't think he will."
She nodded, still shivering so hard I could hear her teeth chatter.
"You want to go someplace warmer?" I asked.
"Not cold. Just..." She shook her head, then gave herself a full-bodied shake, and straightened. "Thanks for the help. With the stalker. I owe you."
"And I'm sure you'll get the chance to repay me soon. I don't know exactly what I'll need or when I'll need it, but we should set up something, so I can find you when I need to."
She agreed. The Fates gave me just long enough to make arrangements for contacting Jaime again, then sent the Searchers to retrieve me.
The Searchers dropped me off in a foyer the size of a school gymnasium. It was white marble, like the throne room, but without any decoration or furnishing--a room for passing through on your way someplace else.
Lots of people were passing through it at that very moment. Wraith-clerks, those who kept our world running smoothly. Wraiths are pure spirits, beings that have never inhabited the world of the living, and they look more like classic ghosts than we do. Everything about them is white. Even their irises are a blue so pale that if it weren't set against the whites of their eyes, you'd miss the color altogether. Their clothing and skin are almost translucent. If they cross in front of something, you can see the dark shape pass behind them.
Wraith-clerks can't speak. Can't or don't--no one is sure. They can communicate telepathically, but never telegraph so much as a syllable if a gesture will suffice.
As I walked through the foyer, wraith-clerks flitted past, pale feet skimming above the floor. They smiled or nodded at me, but didn't slow, intent on their tasks.
From the center of the room, I surveyed my directional choices. Too damned many, that was for sure. At least a dozen doorways off the foyer, as well as a grand arching staircase in each corner. No helpful building map to show the way. Not even discreet signs above the doors.
"Okay," I muttered, "what am I doing here and where am I supposed to be going?"
Without so much as a hitch in their gait, the four wraiths closest to me lifted their translucent arms and pointed at the northwest staircase.
"And what's up there?" I asked.
An image popped into my head. A winged angel. Whether the wraiths had put it there or I'd made the mental jump on my own, I don't know, but I nodded thanks and headed for the staircase.
The staircase ended at a landing with three doors and another, narrower set of stairs spiraling up. As I stepped toward the nearest door, a passing wraith-clerk pointed up.
"Thanks," I said.
I climbed the next staircase, found three more doors and another, still narrower staircase. Again, a wraith showed me the way. Again, the way was up. Two more landings. Two more sets of doors and a staircase. Two more helpful wraiths. I knew I'd reached the angel's aerie when I had only a single choice: a white door.
Beyond that door was an angel. A real angel. I'd never met one before. In the ghost world, angels were rarely discussed, and then only in tones half-derisive, half-reverent, as if we supernaturals wanted to mock them, but weren't sure we dared.
Angels are the earthly messengers of the Fates and their ilk. Every now and then we'd hear of an angel being dispatched to fix some problem on earth. Never knew what the problem was--probably some tear-jerking misfortune straight out of a Touched by an Angel episode. The angels went down and flitted about, spreading peace, joy, and goodwill like fairy dust, realigned the cosmos before commercial break, and winged back up to their clouds to await the next quasi-catastrophe.
Why the Fates would dispatch an angel to catch that murdering bitch of a demi-demon was beyond me. Like sending a butterfly after a hawk. The Nix had done exactly what I'd have expected, chewed the angel up and spit her out in pieces. But, as the Fates admitted, they'd had no idea how to handle the Nix. When she'd escaped, their first reaction, understandably, had been to send their divine messengers after her.
As I reached out to knock on the door, a jolt of energy zapped through me. When I caught my balance, I looked down at my hand and flexed it. No pain...just surprise. A mental shock.
I cautiously extended my fingers toward the door again, braced for the jolt. Instead, a wave of some indefinable emotion filled me, amorphous but distinctly negative. A magical boundary. Instead of physically repelling me, it triggered a subconscious voice that said, "You don't want to go in there."
