I stopped when there were just a few inches between us, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his body. I laid my hands very gently on his cheeks, and looked into his starlit eyes. “But what I do know, what I can see, is that you are no monster.”
He said nothing, but the muscles beneath my fingers jumped. His skin was hot, like he was running a temperature.
“Why are you always so warm?” I wondered aloud.
“Because angels, even fallen ones, are born of the sun, and we carry a tiny piece of it inside us. You do, too, but it is tempered by your humanity and your inexperience. When you come to the full maturity of your magic, you will not be as aware of the differences between us.”
I had leaned closer to him without realizing it, mesmerized by his eyes and his voice. His breath was sweet, like cinnamon and cloves, and it brushed across my face, featherlight.
My lips touched his, for an instant, and then I stepped away and smiled down at him. I wasn’t ready yet for whatever else might come, not ready to answer the tension I’d felt thrumming through his body. He watched me warily as I stepped away.
I sat on the bed again, and we just watched each other for a few moments. I considered what Gabriel had said about being born of the sun, and it reminded me of my dream.
The magic inside me surged up, warning me not to tell Gabriel. I wondered why my magic was so vociferously arguing against sharing the dreams with anyone else. It was almost like the power inside me was its own being.
“Gabriel, do you remember when the nuvem attacked me?”
He raised an eyebrow. “How could I possibly forget such a thing?”
“Well, you asked me what happened when the nuvem was inside me.”
“And you never answered me.”
I gave him a dirty look. “I wasn’t the only one around here keeping secrets.”
He lifted his shoulder in acknowledgment and indicated that I should continue.
“It was weird. I had a kind of vision, or a dream, about a girl named Evangeline,” I said. “It was like I was there, in her body. I saw her in love with a fallen angel, and she was pregnant.”
“Evangeline,” Gabriel whispered, and he said it like her name was holy.
“What about her? Is this something else I should know about before another demon shows up to kick my ass?”
“She is the Lost Mother,” Gabriel said.
“Refresh my memory?” I said, giving him an exasperated look. “Just because you’ve decided to let me into the club doesn’t mean I know all the secret passwords.”
“She was Lucifer Morningstar’s bride,” Gabriel said. “Evangeline carried his children, the first he had successfully gotten upon a human woman.
“But the Morningstar’s enemies stole her from him before the children were born, and he never found her again. It was as if her existence had never been,” Gabriel finished, and he looked troubled.
“And the children?” I asked, and I thought I felt the fluttering of tiny wings inside my own body.
“Also lost. How the Morningstar raged when she was taken from him,” Gabriel said. His eyes looked haunted. “The nuvem is just a minor demon. It should have tried to bind your magic or suffocate the life from you.”
“Well, to be fair, I think it was probably doing that, too.”
“I am disturbed by this vision of the Lost Mother,” Gabriel said.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s the least disturbing thing that’s happened to me all week.”
“Tell me what you have seen, exactly, down to the last detail,” he demanded, and there was an urgency in his voice that hadn’t been there before.
So I told him of Evangeline, and how she had loved Lucifer, and how she had escaped the house of her enemies and destroyed them, and given birth to her children.
“Are they nephilim?” I asked. “Is that why I’m seeing these visions? Is Ramuell trying to manipulate me?”
“I do not believe Ramuell has this kind of power. In any case, the children of Evangeline were not nephilim. That is why Lucifer cherished her above all others.”
“Not nephilim? But how?”
Gabriel shrugged. “We do not know. I do not believe Lucifer himself knows. But there is this, Madeline—there has been no trace of the Lost Mother since she disappeared. There have been no dreams or visions, no evidence of any kind. If there had been, the Morningstar would have heard of it and used it to try to discover her.”
“So you’re saying ...”
“That your vision has endangered you further. Once the Morningstar discovers that you have had this vision of Evangeline, you will become as valued to him as she once was.”
“And that will mean his enemies will find me just as interesting.”
Gabriel nodded. “Yes.”
As if I didn’t have enough on my plate, I was now Lucifer’s most wanted. Hooray.
11
“I CAN’T SLEEP ANYMORE,” I SAID, PUSHING OFF THE bed and going to my dresser. I yanked a pair of raggedy gray sweatpants from the bottom drawer and pulled them on underneath the nightgown. I felt exposed in my virgin-sacrifice garb. I didn’t want to be caught wearing nothing but a cotton nightgown when the demonic hordes came for me.
I found a heavy blue Cubs sweatshirt and pulled it over my head. Gabriel watched all this with a bemused expression on his face.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said shortly, and headed into the kitchen, flipping on lights as I went. The overhead glare nearly blinded me but I plowed forward. I sensed rather than heard Gabriel following me, a dark shadow in his omnipresent overcoat.
“What are you doing?”
“Making cocoa,” I said, pulling out two cups and a pan. I grabbed the milk out of the fridge and poured it in the pan, and then set the pan on the stove.
“Madeline, you need to sleep. Your body needs to rebuild itself. You used too much magic on Ramuell. When I awoke I found you nearly dead. Your life force had dwindled to nothing. When I tried to heal you, it was like touching the fluttering wings of a moth,” he said, and I thought his voice trembled a little. I turned to look at him, but his face was as impassive as ever.
“Thank you,” I said, looking at him steadily. “Thank you for saving my life, again. But I don’t want to sleep anymore. I feel like I want to get out and run a few laps, actually.”
He frowned at that. “My healing should not have restored you so quickly. You have only been sleeping a few hours.”
I held my hands up in an I-don’t-know gesture. “And I feel a little nauseous.”
“That is a common side effect of overuse of magic. You have thrown your body out of balance and you may feel a little sick until the balance is restored. But you should not feel so energetic.”
I stirred the milk on the stove, watching the heat carefully so that the milk didn’t curdle or boil. I voiced a concern that had been troubling me for some time. “Gabriel, I don’t understand the magic that’s inside me. When I have tried to use it in the past as an Agent, I felt like my magic came only reluctantly and with great exertion on my part. But now it seems like it wants to leap out of me. Earlier today, with Ramuell, it came pouring out of me and I couldn’t control it. I don’t understand what happened at the end at all.”
“At the end?”
I tested the milk with my finger. It was hot enough for cocoa but not so hot that it would scald. I poured two packets of instant mix into the cups and added the milk. I opened a cabinet and began rooting around for the mini-marshmallows.
“After you were knocked out, Ramuell got ahold of me. My magic was pretty tapped out at that point, and he was doing his evil villain thing, telling me horrible things to make me even more upset before he ate me.” I found the bag of marshmallows and added generous amounts to both cups.
“One does not generally refer to the threats of a nephilim as an ‘evil villain thing,’ ” Gabriel said dryly as I handed him one of the cups.
I waved my hand at him to indicate that he should follow as I went into the living room, turning on more lights. I curled up in my favorite chair and pulled a crocheted blanket over my legs. I wasn’t tired, but I was very cold, cold in my core, like I’d been out running in freezing rain.
“Anyway,” I said, dismissing his commentary, “Ramuell was threatening me, and I thought I was going to die. And then all of a sudden, some kind of force came out of me.”
“A . . . force? What kind of force?”
It sounded really goofy when Gabriel repeated it in that dry-as-dust tone. “I had no magic, and then all of a sudden I felt something enormous surge out of me, like a bomb going off. There was this burst of white light that sort of burned through me and out through my skin. Ramuell dropped me, and when I looked up at him I saw that whatever had come out of me had melted away his skin.”
The look of astonishment on Gabriel’s face would have been hilarious if it wasn’t so terrifying. Whatever I had done, it was clearly something Gabriel had never seen before, and that frightened me. I did not want to be any freakier than I already was.
“This is not good, is it?” I asked. My hands trembled and a little cocoa spilled from my cup onto the blanket.
“It is unexpected,” Gabriel said.
“A very careful answer.”
“I am not sure what to say to you. From the beginning, there have been events surrounding you that I did not expect.”
“Such as my vision of Evangeline?”
“Yes. And now this power that can harm the nephilim. As I have told you before, it took the power of every one of the fallen to bind the nephilim. The strength and invulnerability of these creatures is legendary. For you to manifest a power that can do such damage to them is unheard of, especially since you are part human. I wonder ...” Gabriel trailed off, looking thoughtful.
“You wonder what?” I asked.
“Perhaps your mother was not simply an Agent,” Gabriel said. “Perhaps she had some other supernatural lineage in her blood that she passed to you, and that mixed with your father’s power in a way that we have not seen before.”
The idea disturbed me, not least because it would mean that my mother had kept yet another secret from me. But there was one creature living who would know the truth. I pushed the blanket off my lap and went to the front window. Sure enough, Beezle was crouched just below the sill, listening to my conversation with Gabriel. He gave a guilty little start when I appeared at the window. I lifted the screen and crooked my finger at him. He flew into the room, scowling at both of us, and perched on the arm of my chair.
“I didn’t know of any magic in Katherine’s blood other than her powers as an Agent,” he said immediately. Then his face took on a hangdog expression. “You made hot chocolate without me?”
Wordlessly I passed my cup to him and he downed the remains in one long gulp.
“Can I get back to my job now, please?” he said.
“Only if you promise not to lurk under the sill like a creepy stalker. Otherwise you may as well stay in here where you can contribute something useful,” I said.
In response he settled more comfortably on the chair.
“I thought so,” I said dryly. “Do you have any theories about this strange power of mine?”
“Perhaps it is simply Azazel’s power and Katherine’s mixing inside you. I do not know of any other Agents who are also the children of fallen angels,” Beezle said, and he looked questioningly at Gabriel.
“No, I do not believe that there are any others,” Gabriel said. “But I would have to confirm this with Lord Azazel. Additionally, this power is significantly greater than that of a mere Agent, or even Lord Azazel’s. I have never heard of this . . . What would you call it?”
“It was almost like a star bursting inside me, like a sun,” I said slowly. “A tremendous buildup of heat that happened all at once, and then exploded out of me without focus.”
Beezle looked disturbed. “We have to start teaching you how to control your powers. This starburst didn’t harm you—this time. But who knows what may happen next time? The power may be so great that the force of it could hurt you, or even kill you.”
“I’m all for the controlling of the powers,” I said. “I’m getting more than a little tired of feeling like my magic is jerking me around on a chain.”
“Tomorrow, when you are more rested ...” Gabriel said.
He wasn’t able to finish his thought. The doorbell rang, and we all looked at one another in confusion.
“Who could that be?” I asked, as I glanced at the clock and stood up. Gabriel followed suit, coming to stand at my side. “It’s nearly four in the morning.”
“I’m going to see,” Beezle said, alighting from his perch.
“Be careful,” I hissed after him. “Remember what happened when Antares came by for a visit.”
He flapped his claws at me in a don’t-remind-me-I’vegot-it-covered gesture.
The few moments that Beezle was gone seemed interminable. Gabriel quietly took my hand and I laced his fingers tightly in mine. We said nothing and waited for Beezle’s return.