Page 66 of Playing with Fire

One of the vampires cleared his throat. He wore the black robes of a state-licensed judge. “Miss, are you actually licensed for the handling and distribution of pixie dust?”

I gave Perky my coffee so I could dig out my CDC card for the judge to look over. He read over my long list of permit codes and chuckled. “Very nice, Miss Gardener. Should you decide to turn my courthouse into a rave, do handle your substances with the appropriate amount of caution—and send someone for me. Some things simply can’t be missed.”

My mother whirled around and her eyes widened. “You wouldn’t dare!”

Damn, she had a piercing voice. I rubbed my ear against my shoulder while returning my identification card to my wallet. What had possessed me to call her when I had been ill?

Quinn grunted and shot the angel a glare. With a shake of its wings and shoulders, the angel made a disapproving clucking noise. “No, little one. That is not a polite thing to say. I’m sure this can be handled without Miss Gardener resorting to her secret stash of pixie dust, especially as I believe she has special plans for that vial. It would be a pity to ruin her plans, wouldn’t it?”

Crap. Angels were mind readers, and it must have been picking my brain when I had been outside. My entire body flushed. Tricky, sneaky angel.

The angel’s laughter sounded in my head, and I got the feeling I was the only one to hear its chiming amusement.

“Mr. Gardener, Mrs. Gardener. All they need is the birth certificate. It is in your possession. I can hear you thinking about it.”

“You filthy, headless blight,” my mother hissed through clenched teeth.

I took my coffee back from Perky, drank it down, and launched the empty cup in the direction of the nearest trash bin ten feet away. It bounced off the rim, teetered, and fell inside. With my hands free, I turned to Quinn’s officer and used his shoulder to hide my face. “She just called an angel a blight, Perky. We’re going to get smited.”

I didn’t want to be smited again. Smitings hurt.

“I think you mean smote.” Perky patted my back. “It’s okay, Gardener. Some people are just too stupid to live. We’re very grateful this pair lived long enough for you to be born.”

The angel’s amusement rang out, the sound so full of warmth and joy my entire body relaxed against Perky. Without his help, I would have melted to the floor and been happy about it. “No, little one. You can’t strangle your friend.” The angel turned to the human woman standing off to the side. “Darling, how ever did you manage to birth such a troublesome child?”

She laughed and flipped her dark hair over her shoulder with a smug smile. Yep. I’d seen that smug smile plenty of times on Quinn’s face. “Careful planning, Dad.”

Wait, what? Dad?

I stared at the angel. If angels had eyes, I’m certain it would have been staring back. Wait. Him? Did angels have gender? How could an it be a dad? How could a human have an angel for a dad?

Nothing made sense anymore.

“Please just give me my birth certificate.” There. I could become a bastion of sanity in a world gone mad.

“Wow, Gardener. You have really aced this being polite thing. Who are you? What have you done with my favorite coffee-making bitch?”

“Perky, I will kill you.”

The angel needed to stop laughing. It—his—laughter made me go all weak in the knees. “She loves you too much to kill you, Mr. Perkins, so don’t worry much. She’ll just make you suffer for a while.”

Damned angel, blabbing my darkest secrets. Perky wasn’t supposed to know I liked him too much to kill him. No wonder Quinn kept telling me angels were jerks.

“Yes,” the angel agreed.

My mother inhaled, and I closed my eyes, leaned against Perky, and braced for the worst. It came when she said, “And to think we were hoping you’d finally gone and gotten yourself killed. No. I don’t see why we should do anything for you. You caused this mess all on your own. Deal with your own problems.”

I’d heard variations of the same thing over and over again, but it still hurt. What had I done so wrong? Why were their shortcomings my fault?

The angel’s laughter stopped, and the world seemed an even darker place for its loss. Perky rubbed my back and whispered in my ear, “Please don’t cry. Chief Quinn loses his shit when you cry, and I don’t want to witness a murder today.”

The angel coughed, an accomplishment for an immortal lacking a throat. “Your Honor, fellow singers of the night, you might wish to turn around for a moment.”

I peeked through my lashes. The vampires cleared out so fast they forgot to take their clothes with them.

With another stretch of his black wings, the incubus chuckled. “This is so much fun.”

The angel smacked the incubus with a white, blue, and golden wing. “Mr. Gardener, Mrs. Gardener, let us try this one more time. You will give my future granddaughter-in-law her papers. You will do so now, without complaint. If you wish for me to be a blight on this Earth…”