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Joriel dropped into a chair beside me, settling in for a long night of listening to the demon haunt.
After combing through more than twelve hours of audio, all we’d really learned was that there was one person leading the low-ranking demons and that person was ashe.
“Any hints as to who she is?” Joriel asked when I came up to the gym.
“Not even any hints as to what rank she is.”
“At least we know she’s not a grand prince. That’s a good sign.”
I unbuttoned my shirt and let it drop behind me before heading to the mats with Joriel. “What’s with the gloves?” It’d seemed odd when he first showed up in leather ones, but these were tan latex gloves that made him look like the world’s most obsessive germophobe.
Joriel glanced at his hands. “I’m trying an experiment.”
“How disgusting your hands can get after a day in nonbreathable gloves?” And now I sounded like Nathaniel. I wished he were here even though I knew he’d never come visit Youngblood if he could help it. Nathaniel hated cities more than anywhere else on Earth.
Joriel ignored my question. “Nacio invited me to his parents’ for dinner tonight.”
I froze. “Interesting. Are you going?”
“Seemed kind of rude to refuse.” That was Joriel. He actually cared what people considered polite. Nathaniel and I assumed it was a seventh-order thing. Being born and working as a messenger of Heaven for centuries had to require endless patience for human traditions and customs. “Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”
I didn’t like the way Joriel was looking at me, like he was searching for that part of my soul that I’d been suppressing for nearly a decade, the part that called to Piper’s soul.
“You tell me.” I didn’t know the details of his deal with Lucifer, but this was Jor. No matter what he’d promised the Devil, he’d find a way to protect us as much as possible. If it wasn’t safe for him to be around, he’d find some way to warn me.
“I’m not on the brink of any killing sprees. I’ve got some time before my debt is due.”
I quirked a brow. “How much time?”
Joriel’s blue eyes met mine, filled with honest pain. “I don’t know.”
He made it sound as if he had cancer, like his debt was a disease he could feel closing in on him. Only with a human illness, the body was the only thing the person had to lose. Joriel wasn’t a human fighting a sickness. He hadsomuch more to lose.
I shoved those thoughts away where they couldn’t get in the way of my judgment. “I’m coming with you tonight.”
Joriel’s lips lifted slightly in the corners. “This should be a nice evening,” he said with heavy sarcasm and a surprising amount of amusement.
Nine
Piper
I didn’t getanother eight years without seeing Samuel. I didn’t even get eight days.
Friday afternoon, Mamma announced Nacio was bringing guests for dinner. I didn’t think much of it. I’d met a number of my brother’s friends over the years. He’d stopped bringing girls around afterthegirl, the one who broke his heart possibly beyond repair. But he never had a shortage of friends to bring to things.
I was sitting in the kitchen with Mamma and Remy when the doorbell rang that evening.
“Piper, can you get that?” Mamma asked, moving to the closest sink.
Through the bump-out window in the dining room, I saw a sleek car with heavily tinted windows pulled up outside the house.
I continued to the entryway and flung open the door to find two men standing on our front stoop. Unsurprisingly, neither of them was my brother.
Samuel was lounging against the railing of the stoop, typing away on a phone. He was dressed in suit pants and a dress shirt, the silver chain of his necklace glimmering where it disappeared into his black shirt.
The man with him looked closer to my age with long brown hair and light eyes. He wore dark jeans with leather boots and a light blue button-down. I was willing to bet he was the one who’d knocked.
I kept my eyes on the stranger as I smiled. “Welcome.”
