“If you must?” Sinclair scoffs. “You have free will, Gabriel. If you do not wish to be here, take your kettle corn and fuck off.”
“You invited me. And I have not eaten in two hours.”
Sinclair’s blue eyes flash a darker shade, and I release the tight hold I keep on my angelic powers for a brief moment. He is…amused with me. Not angry. Baffled, perhaps. Also, worried about Zoe.
“Two hours is hardly enough time for you to starve. And if I’m not mistaken, kettle corn is—technically—food.”
I reach for his arm. He stiffens, the muscles tensing under my fingers, and glares at me.
“Zoehasrecovered, has she not?”
A fresh wave of worry washes over him. Strange. The Sinclair I returned to the earthen realm centuries ago cared for nothing and no one. Mating has changed him in many ways.
“Watch yourself, Gabriel. Physically, she is healing,” Sinclair says with a heavy sigh. “But she will bear the scars from those days for eternity.” He shoves at his jacket sleeve, then unbuttons the cuff of his black dress shirt and rolls it up to his elbow. A shimmering tattoo of a masked, winged man carrying a whip brands his skin. “As will I.”
Sinclair spent more than two hundred years as Thorn’s unwilling slave, forced to trap and torture the demon’s victims without mercy. He wears his guilt like a second skin. Or perhaps it is so ingrained in him now, he will never be able to shed it.
What is this sour taste in my mouth? The heavy weight on my shoulders? This twisting in my gut?
Emotions.Humanemotions. I am an archangel. One of the Almighty’s chosen. I do not need emotions. But the longer I spend in the earthen realm, the more of them I seem to experience. And the more I find them utterly…addicting.
Wonder. Frustration. Joy. And now…guilt.
“Enough of this,” Sin says. He fastens the cuff of his dress shirt once more and gestures to the top of the building. “Zoe has not been alone since…” His words dissolve into a growl.
He has not left her side since he rescued her? “I thought you returned to the Bureau this week.”
“We did.”
My brows furrow, another foreign sensation. “Surely she did not allow you to accompany her to the bathroom?”
“Fuck. No. Must everything be literal with you?” He shakes his head. “I am going inside. Follow or don’t.” He stalks around the corner toward the gilded double doors.
I trail after the incubus at a distance. He is still angry. As he should be. My actions—my apathy—allowed Seraphiel to trap Zoe in a prison of her own body for centuries, and could have easily led to her eternal torment had Sin not fallen in love with her—twice—and finally figured out who she had once been.
At the building’s front doors, I pause. Perhaps my presence will be too painful.
But if I do not join them for dinner, what else will I do with myself? My wings have not yet healed, and though there is still much of the world for me to experience, Sinclair will certainly tire of funding my education in humanity soon.
When that happens, I will have no choice but to call Azrael and beg him to carry me back to the celestial realm. The very idea of that leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Seraphiel will never let me hear the end of it.
“You opened a portal to Hell and nearly destroyed your wings? You are an idiot, Gabriel. The Almighty will banish you for this!”
Would she? I suppose itispossible. Seraphiel has her ear. The rest of us are lucky to garner an audience.
“Gabriel?” The deep voice startles me. Pain ripples across my back as my wings beg to be released. But I cannot let them. An angel on the streets of San Francisco would attract much attention. Especially an angel whose wings look like they have been through a wood chipper.
Turning, I hide my wince, and peer up. At a chin. With white fur. Higher still, I find the yeti’s face. Dark eyes, a black nose, and sharp teeth. Dressed in a suit of all things.
Kunchin, one of Sinclair and Zoe’s colleagues at the Bureau of the Occult and the Other, peers down at me. “He wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“It was this or something called a ‘cow pie toss’ at the Akron County Fair. The stench alone was…off putting.” I drop the bag of kettle corn into a trash receptacle and heft my duffel bag higher on my shoulder. “Though I was mildly curious to see how far excrement could fly.”
The yeti chuckles, and I wonder what about my response was humorous.
A car pulls up to the curb, the back door opens, and a strikingly beautiful woman alights. Her gaze darts up and down the street, and I can sense her fear.
“Dion. Are you well?” I ask. The panther shifter was abducted with Zoe, starved, beaten, and held for days in old drainage tunnels far below the city. I cannot imagine the pain she must have endured, yet physically, she seems to have recovered.
