“She’s going to find Gabriel,” Alek said in a placating tone.
“Oh! Good old leather feathers. Would be nice to have his help. He usually comes in clutch when we need him.”
Goddess, Kingston was the definition of a himbo. Pretty, kind, allegedly good in bed, but not a lot going on upstairs.
“Okay, I’ve got at most a few minutes left before this celestial event is past its max power surge. If I’m going to do this, it has to be now.” I returned to my seated position and extinguished the candles before preparing to start the ritual again. “Everyone shut the hell up and let mama work.”
“Should we chant or something?” Alek asked.
“Are you deaf? I said shut the fuck up.”
Alek winced and mimed zipping his lips. The men stood in a loose circle around me, Tor and Kai eyeing the surrounding area like a couple of secret service agents, while the others watched me reset the spell for Gabriel.
I felt it the moment something changed. Instead of the sensation of coming up against a wall, my power kept moving, riding the energy like a wave or the tide as the spell searched for the wayward angel.
“Are the candles supposed to do that?” Kingston whispered, prompting me to open my eyes and observe the change in the flames. Where they’d once been a happy orange, they’d changed to pure white.
“Did it work?” Gavin asked.
“Beats me,” Asher said with a shrug.
“I thought there was supposed to be a portal?” Alek asked, looking between Kingston and Tor. “I thought you guys said there was a portal the last time she did this spell.”
“There was,” I muttered. “But Gabriel is different from you. He’s not a Novasgardian. He’s a fucking angel.”
“So . . . did you find him?” Asher asked.
“Kind of.”
“How does one kind of find an angel?” Kai asked.
Reaching into my bag, I pulled out a clear crystal ball. “Very carefully. I’ll need a few days?—”
“We don’t have a few days to sit around out here and guard you.”
“Yes, Captain Obvious, I am well aware,” I said to Kingston with a roll of my eyes. “Thankfully, now that the locator spell has been put into motion, all I have to do is transfer it to this orb. Once we have our answer, it will change color, and boom, we can go find him.”
“Oh! So it’s like baking sourdough.”
We all looked at Kingston.
“What? You have to get the starter going before you can bake the bread. Everyone knows that. The orb is the starter. We have to wait for it to be ready. I have one at home. I named it Bread Sheeran. You know, like Ed Sheeran, but Bread.”
“You’re cute,” I said with a shake of my head.
“So that’s it?” Asher asked. “We just wait for the magic ball to finish baking and then we can poof off?”
“It’s less of a poof and more of a shwoooop, but sure. Something like that.”
“And it’ll bring us to his doorstep?”
“Theoretically. It might be more like the neighborhood block, but you know, beggars can’t be choosers. If we’re lucky, though, it might place us quite literally on top of him. Which will be super fun to explain.”
“I bet he’d love that,” Kai muttered.
Gavin snickered. “Would serve the pompous arse right for all the times he’d barged in on us.”
“Ohmygod, what if we catch him jerking off?” Kingston asked.
