“Anywhere.”
A jerky nod. Not saying another word, she flared out those wings of midnight and dawn, and they flew out toward Brooklyn, landing beside a quiet row of storage units. She’d come here with the Guild Director earlier, and now she came with him. When they’d first met, he may well have taken that choice as an insult. Now he understood that Elena needed her friendships if she was going to survive and thrive in this new life into which she’d been thrown. “I’ll do that.” He pushed up the door for her when she unsnapped the lock.
Taking a deep breath, she took a single step inside, and he could almost touch the conflicting emotions tearing at her. When she turned and held out her hand, he allowed her to tug him into the small space, nothing an angel would normally even countenance entering. And when she asked him to close the door, he did so without argument.
She switched on the single yellow bulb an instant later. “See this?” Her fingers lingered on a faded orange blanket. “It was my blankie.” A tremulous smile. “I wouldn’t go anywhere without it.” Sinking to the floor, she let her wings trail on the cold concrete.
He went down on his haunches beside her, listening and watching as she carefully folded the blanket, put it on her lap and opened a cardboard box overflowing with her childhood. She showed him drawings she’d made in school, toys she’d played with as a babe.
“We will keep this for our child,” he murmured, holding a solid wooden bee meant to be pulled along on wheels.
Elena gave a shaky laugh. “We’re having children are we?”
He’d never asked her before, but now, he raised his head. “Would you wish for a babe, Elena?”
“I’d be afraid for him or her all the time.” Nightmares whispered in her eyes. “I can’t imagine the terror.”
He thought of her childhood, thought of the blood that had christened her. However, when he would’ve spoken, she surprised him. “But you’re the one man I could see myself having rug rats with—you’re bad-ass enough to reassure me.”
Cupping her cheek as she rose to her feet, he rubbed a thumb over her cheekbone. “It will likely take a long time.” Angels were nowhere near as fertile as humans. “We will have a chance to get used to the idea.”
“I’ll practice on Zoe. Poor kid.” With that laughing comment, she walked to another box, opened it.
And froze.
Coming to stand by her side, he saw her lift up an intricately patterned quilt to her nose, breathe in deep. “If I think hard enough, I can still remember her scent as she used to kiss me goodnight.” A whisper so quiet, he almost missed it. “Gardenias stroked with a hint of a richer, more sensual fragrance.”
Reaching out, he touched the quilt, felt a quiet hum of power. “Elena.”
Elena looked up at the strange tone in Raphael’s voice, the heavy weight of memory easing for a fraction of a second. “What is it?”
His eyes turned a stunning cobalt as he rubbed his fingers across the soft old cotton. “There is power in this, the kind of power that comes only with blood.”
“This was on my bed,” she said with a frown. “Until Jeffrey packed away everything of my mother’s one winter while I was away at boarding school, this quilt covered my bed. Slater never went into that room. There can’t be blood on here.” She didn’t want the evil to have defiled this, too.