What had prompted an eight-year-old to kill his mother? I’d heard Nephilim often lost touch with reality, the pain followed by the absence of their burned wings progressively consuming their minds. Had she become so crazed that Jarod took it upon himself to end hersuffering?
As I moved across his bedroom, the glossy wood creaking under my weight, I let my gaze stray off the letter opener and onto a decorative purple-stingray box that held up a row of leather books, then higher toward the crown moldings of the pale ceiling. This would be my last sight ofLa Cour des Démons, because I couldn’t come back. Not after all Jarod had said, and certainly not after my skin’s humiliating display ofaffection.
Besides, I had nothing to gain bystaying.
My footing faltered.Ugh.Jarod had called my kind selfish, and I’d just proved himright.
But our kindwasn’tselfish. My blood heated with indignation that he’d planted this seed inside my mind and that it had dared takeroot.
Building our wings didn’t only benefit us; it benefited humans. If we didn’t earn our feathers, then we couldn’t ascend to Elysium. Our race would become mortal and perish, and in turn humankind, because no virtuous souls would be harvested and re-implanted into wombs to counterbalance the incessant influx of depraved ones. Not to mention that humans who spent their lives bettering the world would no longer be rewarded, and those who spent their time spoiling it would no longer bepunished.
Without us, the apocalypse humans had feared for millennia would come to pass and ravage the world angels kept inequilibrium.
So, no, Jarod Adler, we aren’t selfish. We arenecessary.
Why couldn’t I have come up with all of this in his presence? Why did my mind work with a broadcastdelay?
Jarod Adler obviously didn’t understand our system. How could he, though? He hadn’t grown up in a guild. Perhaps, his scorn for angels stemmed from that. Perhaps, that was why he’d murdered his own mother. Because she’d robbed him of the opportunity to live amongus.
As my theory solidified, I stepped onto the landing and bumped into a softbody.
“Muriel!” I gasped, reaching out to steadyher.
“Leigh? Is everything all right? I heard doors slam.” She rubbed her eyes, smudging her residualmascara.
“Everything’s . . .” I’d been about to say fine, but that would’ve been a lie. I sighed. “Jarod and I got into a fight, and heleft.”
She frowned, her navy eyes running over my face as though to decipher the reason for our fight. Then she sighed. “And I suppose you did not resolve it since my boy’s weapon of choice is alwaysflight.”
Herboy. Hadshehad sexual relations with an angel? “Is he . . .yours?”
Her forehead grooved. “I raised him from the time he slipped out of his mother, screeching at the top of his little lungs, so yes, in a way . . . in many ways, I consider himmine.”
“You were there at hisbirth?”
“Mikaela decided to have it at home, and I assisted themidwife.”
How was this possible? How could a fallen angel create life in her womb? Was it a fluke, or was what I’d been told about Nephilimuntrue?
It must’ve been a fluke, because Ophanim didn’tlie.
Mikaela.I rolled her name around on my tongue. “Was she a goodmother?”
Muriel’s pupils eddied. “There’s a bite to the air tonight.” She tightened the belt on her blackberry-colored cashmere bathrobe. “How about we continue this discussion over atisane?”
I desperately wanted to say yes, but remembering the late hour and my manners, I said, “You’d surely rather return tobed.”
“And I will. After our tisane.” She smiled. “Come.”
I trailed her back down to the marble foyer and through a door carved into the wall beside the base of the stairs. A narrow passageway opened onto a pantry organized around an oval table cinched by six metal chairs and a wall of glass cupboards filled with finechina.
Muriel pulled a kettle off its base and filled it in the coppersink.
“Can I help?” Iasked.
“Just take a seat,chérie.”
I pulled out one of the chairs, its legs grinding against the yellow tiles beneath it. As the water heated, Muriel extricated a polka-dot porcelain teapot from a cupboard, then bent over a drawer filled with colorful canisters. She selected a yellow tin box festooned with lavenderlines.
