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“I heard you had a little problem with a rogue angel?”
He’s got a Texas drawl and a ten-gallon hat. He’s dressed fully in black, with a red neckerchief around his neck as the only splash of color. His hair is long and dark and his eyes are pale blue. I expect to see pistols at his hips, but he appears to be without weaponry, unless you count cheekbones you could cut yourself on. He’s very good looking. Very movie hero handsome. He also could not be more out of place if he tried.
I am confused.
“You sent for a cowboy?”
“They sent for a sheriff, little lady,” he drawls with a wink.
“Thank you for coming,” Bryn is saying, getting up and extending a hand to the ultra-American. Cosmos and I are exchanging confused looks. Apparently, Bryn’s plan for Katya has not been arranged democratically. Why am I not surprised.
“Everybody, this is Sheriff Keith Starlight.”
“Sounds like a 1980’s cartoon,” I whisper to Cosmos. He smirks. Anita grins too. She has good hearing. Thor looks generally concerned, and Crocombe and Crichton have taken their leave, sort of melting in the way good servants and demons do when they sense their presence is a problem.
“Keith has proven experience in angel wrangling,” Bryn explains. “He runs a private facility in Texas where some incredible research is being done on manifestations of the divine.”
“Sounds like you have a real wild one down there. I’d like to get started with her, if it’s all the same to you, Father Bryn. I reckon we get her transported out of your fine establishment here as soon as possible and back to a containment unit.”
“A containment unit?” I ask.
“Sure. See, an angel’s inevitably going to break out of human, even demonic-built vessels. Just a matter of time. But we’ve got some enclosures that won’t allow any angel out until Armageddon comes.”
“So you build jails. For angels. Angel jails.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s terrible. Why would you do that?”
“Well, I’d say the rogue angel you have down in the basement answers that question pretty well, wouldn’t you?”
“Not really. She’s not that dangerous. She just wanted to negotiate with Bryn, and that’s practically impossible to do without a gun.”
I don’t know why I am defending her. There’s something in my gut telling me this isn’t right. It doesn’t even make sense. We’re basically holding the head of a major international corporation hostage, and yes, sure, she also held Bryn up at gunpoint, but she was defeated by Crocombe’s rolling pin, so how dangerous can she really be?
“Wasn’t the whole point of her visit here that she wanted to do business without having her people killed? Wasn’t she trying to avoid bloodshed?”
“She was trying to abduct you,” Bryn reminds me. “And Nina.”
“Sure. But that was more a means to an end thing. Her predecessors just sent men with knives to carve me up. In comparison…” I make that open palmed waving back and forth motion you do when you’re trying to say six to one, half a dozen to the other without actually saying it.
“Well, I reckon you lot can discuss this for as long as it pleases you, but I have a flight for Texas leaving just as soon as I can board a plane. So, if you don’t mind, we’ll sedate the angel and…”
“How do you sedate an angel?”
Sheriff Starlight gives me a look as if my questions are starting to wear thin.
“Well, it’s a proprietary blend of what I guess you might call highly concentrated holy water, and…”
“I don’t like this,” I interrupt him.
“Cosmos, now might be a good time to take your wife upstairs,” Bryn suggests firmly, in that jaw-clenched, tight-lipped way he has when he really wants to beat someone who isn’t his wife.
“Come on,” Cosmos says. His arm was already around my waist. All he has to do to pick me up is snug it a little tighter and stand up. I am carried out of the room like a petulant child trying to meddle in affairs bigger than she can understand.
“He’s an asshole,” I growl in Cosmos’ ear as he takes me out, quiet, but not so quiet that everybody can’t hear me.
“Cosmos. I think we should help Katya escape and run away with her.” As soon as we’re out of earshot, I tell him the plan that’s been percolating in my mind since I talked with her down in the cells.
He looks at me like I just told him the world was flat.
“She knows so much more about becoming angelic than anybody here. Nina knows nothing. Bryn only cares about keeping everybody in line. And I don’t like this Starlight guy.”
He opens his mouth, but I keep talking because I don’t want to hear the no that I know is coming.
“You hate it here. You bicker with Bryn constantly. He treats you like a second-class citizen. There’s only room for one couple here at Direview, and that’s Bryn and Nina. Everyone else is like furniture for him to arrange.”
