He wasn't in his Michael-as-Adam human body, he was ethereal. An Archangel once again. "What did you do?" I hissed and shoved him backward into the house. I looked around his front yard to make sure a random stranger hadn't happened into his yard and witnessed him in all his glowing glory. When I was sure nobody had seen him, I slammed the door shut. "Did you kill yourself?"
That would've been bad. One of the few rules we had was not to commit suicide. God had done some of his special magic to make sure that we wouldn't be likely to decide to do it when human. An angel could die: A direct hit to the heart with Light, suffocation by Darkness—a Fallen's weapon. Or suicide.
"Of course not." He took my hand and kissed it. "Gabriel did it while I slept."
Panic swept through me. "While you slept?"
He nodded. "Yeah, the crazy guy stabbed me not thirty minutes ago. I just got back from Heaven. But it's okay, I paid him back."
"What did you do?" I asked.
"Tied him up and put him in a locked box at the bottom of the ocean. It'll take him a few hours to get out of that."
I sighed in relief. "Good. Then we have time to talk."
He cut me off by sweeping me off my feet and into his arms. "You could give me a proper welcome." I slapped his arm. "I'm pregnant with Lucian's baby!"
He shrugged. "So? If you have this baby and we work out the details, I'll help raise it as, I am the uncle, right?"
I nodded. He damn well better if he knew what was good for him.
"Then you're pregnant withmynephew or niece."
It was strangely good to hear him talking about the baby like this.
Laughing, I wrapped my arms around his neck. "He’ll be gone for a few hours? Are you sure?"
He closed his eyes and focused. "He hasn't even woken up yet and started trying to untangle himself. I layered some good spells on the ropes. We've got time."
"We have to figure out what to do. He keeps trying to kill Lucian, and it can't happen yet."
Suddenly, Gabriel appeared.
Michael groaned. “I thought that would take you longer.”
Gabriel, dripping wet and looking pissed, glanced between us. “So, I’m at the bottom of the ocean, and you guys are just enjoying the day?”
"Yes,” I said, an edge to my voice as I drew back from Michael. “Because he hasn’t tried to murder my husband and father of my child. He also wants to help raise the baby and had just said as much."
Gabriel blinked at me. "Well, of course, it's my niece or nephew too."
My jaw dropped. "That's not how you've been acting!"
He shrugged. "I'm not as emotionally invested as you are, of course. When you have the baby, if anything is wrong, we can heal it and deal with it."
"Gabe, you're too analytical. This isn't a math problem to solve." Michael sighed and sat on the couch as if realizing our moment had fled. "You can't just figure this out on a whiteboard and then get a gold star."
I raised my eyebrows at Gabe. That was exactly how he'd been acting.
He shrugged. "I'm sorry, it's how I am. You know that. I see a problem. The Gates of Hell are crumbling. The solution is to get Lucifer back in Hell. Everything else can be figured out because demons being loose in the world is the worst-case scenario."
"Okay." I understood the gravity of the situation. "I get it. Can we put a pin in killing Lucian until the last possible second? It only takes him minutes to shore up the gates."
"Well, now that we're being rational, I killed you, Mike, so that you'd go figure out what's wrong with Luc."
Realization dawned on Michael's face. I hated when Gabe called him Mike. I liked Gabriel's and Lucifer's names shortened, but disliked the name, Mike. They used it anyway, despite my protests. "Of course."
"He's asleep in our bed," I supplied. "Go check him out. Gabriel can walk me over there."
