Page 10

Her store was a problem. It had been marked by demons thanks to her explosive transformation into the next Guardian. The glass that remained after she and Amelia had repaired and reinforced the picture window was in a pile behind the counter. After that, Amelia had stitched the doorframe with her magic. She couldn't go back down into the basement without her body remembering what she experienced when she touched the relic. Six generations of Morgan women had held the location. Eight hours ago, she had sworn to Amelia that she didn't run. And now she was packing.

"The Codex is staying," she insisted, because she had to win one thing tonight or she'd come apart at the seams. "It's warded and magically connected to the studs. If this place is going to be a base, the book needs to be here."

"The book will stay." He hefted the bag of relics as if it weighed nothing, which, to him, she supposed it didn't. "You aren't. That's my line in the sand. Don't make me argue with you when Rami is in the room."

Rami was by the door and had the decency to look up at the ceiling. The grin tugging at the corner of his mouth said he'd lost this exact argument to his mate and enjoyed watching it happen to another angel for a change. "I can wait outside," he offered.

"You can carry something," Sarah told him before she shoved the canvas bag of journals into his arms. "Careful. That's hundreds of years of knowledge from women who didn't get to retire peacefully."

“That’s a sobering thought,” Rami muttered as he held the bag as if it was made of delicate crystal.

Sarah finished packing what she'd need from the shop. Her bag was stuffed with grimoires, a change of clothes, her toothbrush, and a photo of her Nana. She zipped the bag, trying to figure out a way out of being forced to go with Abraxos. The tension between them would only get worse. And she wasn’t sure she could stop herself from jumping him. After the day she’d had, she needed the distraction.

"You ready?" Abraxos asked from the doorway, all six feet of him filling the frame like he meant to block out the night itself.

"No." She slung the bag over her shoulder and glared at him like the broken glass was somehow his fault. Okay, fine, it wasn't. But she needed somewhere to put the emotions. "But I don't see where I have a choice, so let's get this over with."

"That's the spirit." He didn't bother hiding his smirk. It did something annoying to her pulse and lady bits. "Come here."

"Why?" She eyed him with the kind of suspicion she usually reserved for armed maniacs. "Camael said you'd drive me."

"I’m not going to risk you in a car that long." He reached for her, and before she could so much as squeak a protest, his arms closed around her. It was like being in a vise made of muscle. The ground dropped away from her feet in a single, gut-lurching flap of his wings.

"Abraxos!" She grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt. Her stomach was somewhere back on the sidewalk where her shoes used to be. "Put me down, you absolute lunatic, I didn't agree to this."

"You agreed the second you walked into my world and flipped it on its head." His wings unfurled overhead with a deep, leathery snap. They were red as old blood and tipped in black. They were also stark against a sky still dark and crowded with stars. The city spread out beneath them in a glittering, dirty sprawl of rooftops and river. His arms tightened around her, just enough to say what he wasn't about to put into words yet. "Hold on."

"I am holding on, you giant—" The wind ripped the rest of the insult right out of her mouth. She buried her face against his throat instead, both furious and helplessly, ridiculously thrilled. That was not how she saw her night going.

The French Quarter unspooled below in strings of gas lamps and wrought iron. The Mississippi was a dark ribbon cutting the world in half. For one suspended second, she forgot to be angry at all. It was a stunning way to see her city.

"Scared?" His voice rumbled against her ear. He sounded smug as a cat that had already eaten the canary and was working on dessert.

"Of you? Please." She made herself look down at the drop instead of at him, which was a mistake on multiple levels. "I've dealt with worse than an overgrown pigeon with a god complex."

"Pigeon?" He laughed, and the sound vibrated straight through his chest into hers. She felt it everywhere it had no business being felt. "Careful, female. Keep talking like that, and I'll drop you somewhere inconvenient."

"You would never." She tipped her chin up to glare at him properly, and that turned out to be the second mistake. It put her mouth about four inches from his.

"Wouldn't I?" His eyes had gone dark. The playful edge sharpened into something hungrier, something that made her stop breathing entirely. "Say something else smart, Sarah. I dare you."

"Make me," she shot back. Yeah, self-preservation had taken the night off.

He stole her ability to think when his mouth came down on hers mid-flight. His kiss was hard and certain. One hand fisted in her hair to angle her exactly where he wanted her. Every smart remark she'd been loading up died somewhere in the back of her throat.

The kiss was so much hotter than the one earlier. It was thorough. It was patient in the way only something with millennia behind it could be patient. He devoured her mouth as if he had all the time in the world to take her apart and intended to use every second of it. Her fingers curled into his shirt as she met his passion.

When he finally lifted his head, she was breathless, furious, and entirely too pleased with herself to pretend otherwise. "There," he murmured with his lips still close enough that she felt the word more than heard it. "Quiet at last."

"You, absolute menace⁠—"

He cut her off with a maneuver that had her heart in her throat. He was grinning, and with one hard beat of those massive wings, he banked sharply and shot higher into the sky. All she could do was hang on and let the wind steal whatever she'd been about to say.

The Garden District rose up out of the dark a few minutes later. It was full of old oaks and iron gates. The mansion the angels had claimed swallowed them whole the second Abraxos touched down on the lawn. Sarah peeled herself out of his arms the instant her feet found solid ground. Looking around, she smoothed down her shirt as if that might erase the last twenty minutes from existence. The house in front of her looked like something out of a plantation fever dream. There were large columns and a wraparound porch. Yet, not one single sound came from any of it.

"It's quiet," she said, tipping her head back to take in the size of the place. "My shop never shuts up. The bell, the music, the tourists. This place is creepy-quiet."

"Angelic wards do that." Abraxos folded his wings down with a snap that startled a bird out of the nearest oak. "Sound doesn’t cross them. Neither does much else."