“I did not expect you to remember so soon. Truthfully, you should not have remembered at all. Your mind is very strong.”
His face was very close and I was careful not to look directly into his eyes. I did not want to fall into starshine again and have my will sucked out of me. The pressure on my wrists was firm, but he wasn’t hurting me. I struggled even though it was clear he could hold me there all day without sweating.
“Didn’t expect me to remember that you violated me?” I spat.
The little crease between his brows appeared again. “I did not mean to violate you. I simply wanted you to . . . accept me.”
“You put a geas on Beezle so that he wouldn’t tell me what you were.” My breath came hard and fast. It hurt to breathe like that, with my ribs bruised from the fight with the demon and all that anger and magic crackling inside me. My skin felt tight and hot. I didn’t know how Gabriel could stand so close to me. The magic surged beneath my skin like a live thing.
He moved closer, to gain a better grip on my struggling, and suddenly the bathroom seemed far too small. My nostrils filled with the scent of apple and cloves. “Yes, I put a geas on the gargoyle.”
“That’s faerie magic,” I accused.
“I am no faerie.”
“Well, what are you, then? And what do you want with me?”
“Your father sent me,” Gabriel said, and the world tilted.
All the magic inside me deflated in a rush, leaving me sick and dizzy, like a hangover. My knees buckled and Gabriel grabbed me by the shoulders before I fell down and cracked my head on the bathtub.
“My father,” I said. “That’s the second time today that someone has mentioned my father. A man I’ve never seen or heard about until today. I thought he was a deadbeat, or maybe just dead. My mother never mentioned his name.”
“I believe,” Gabriel said, “that Katherine Black was attempting to protect you until you were old enough to understand.”
“Understand what?” I asked. I didn’t want to hear the answer. Everything was changing, too fast. But I also needed to know, and I would not allow Gabriel or anyone else to keep it from me. This was not the time to be a scared child, and the magic that had surged inside of me flickered in acknowledgment.
Gabriel shook his head. “It is too soon. You do not trust me. I have failed him.”
“Understand what?” I asked again, and this time there was no mistaking the command in my voice. Gabriel looked up, surprised. He searched my face, and I met his eyes without fear. I saw a star shooting across the deep canvas of black, but I did not fall in. He would not be able to take me that way again.
“You are truly his daughter. It is there in your eyes,” he said, and he turned me gently to face the mirror again, holding me there with his hands on my shoulders.
But he didn’t need to hold me. Shock rooted me in place as I saw the same field of stars in my own eyes that I had seen in Gabriel’s.
“It’s a trick, a glamour,” I whispered, and I reached toward the mirror to touch my own reflection.
“It is your destiny, revealed to you at last,” he said, and his hands fell away from me as I trembled and turned to him.
“Who am I?” My voice sounded childish, afraid.
“You are the only human child of a cherubim of the first sphere, a chief of the Grigori, Lord Azazel.”
6
GABRIEL SAID THIS AS IF HE EXPECTED ME TO KNOW what it meant.
“A cherubim . . . An angel?” I asked. I thought of those fat little angels on greeting cards holding red bows.
Gabriel smiled, the slightest upward quirk of his lips. “Azazel was once an angel. But his fall came long ago.”
“A fallen angel,” I said. I knew I sounded like an idiot, but the revelation was a lot to process. Thoughts bounced around my head at random. Patrick was dead. I had a monster to catch and a concealment charm to pick up. Beezle was sick, maybe dying. And my father was a fallen angel. Plus, James Takahashi’s soul was going to be departing its body around ten forty-five P.M. tomorrow. In all of the commotion, it was easy to forget that I actually had a job to do.
“Yes.”
“And you’re here because . . . ?”
“Your father sent me to protect you until he can call you home.”
“And home would be . . . ?”
“In Morningstar’s kingdom.”
“Morningstar, right,” I said faintly. I had a vague memory from a Sandman comic that I’d read once. My mother had never been big on religious education. “Morningstar is Lucifer?”
Gabriel nodded.
“So his kingdom is Hell?”
“I suppose that is a name that mortals give it. Although mortal descriptions are generally inaccurate.”
“Oh, really?” I raised my eyebrows at him. “There was a guy here earlier—he kicked the shit out of me, by the way—and he looked awfully like a ‘mortal’s description’ of a demon. Horns and claws and everything.”
“I said mortal descriptions are generally inaccurate,” Gabriel murmured.
“I really need a drink of something. Something that has alcohol in it.” I pushed past Gabriel and into the hallway, striding toward the kitchen with my thoughts chasing one another around my brain.
It was hard to come around to the idea that my father, whom I’d always considered your usual deadbeat, had missed my childhood because he was busy doing . . . whatever it is that fallen angels do. Tempt people, maybe? Was my dad hanging on street corners and in bars, holding out an apple to unsuspecting humans?