“You are ready?” Gabriel asked.
I grinned at him, eager to be away. “There’s no place like home.”
Beezle was on me the second I landed in the backyard. And I do mean “on me.” He fluttered to my shoulder, dug in his claws and started firing off questions about what had happened and what had Azazel said and had anybody been rude to me and so on and so on and so on.
Gabriel emerged from the portal and helped me up.
“Beezle, calm down. I’ll tell you all about it later. Right now I’ve got to find my list.” As we mounted the porch and went up the inside back stairs to the door that led into my kitchen, I asked Gabriel, “What did Azazel say to you?”
“He said that I was not to leave your side under any circumstance until Ramuell is re-bound in the Valley of Sorrows. If you come to harm, it will be on my head.”
“Or off with your head, as the case may be. He’s got quite a Red Queen streak, does dear old Dad,” I said dryly.
“Red Queen?”
“From
Alice in Wonderland
? The Red Queen was always coming up with excuses to have people’s heads chopped off.” I started rummaging in the pile of mail on the sideboard. I knew I had left my list there somewhere.
“I did warn you that you needed to be careful.”
“What happened?” asked Beezle, who had been sulking because I’d put off describing the trip.
“Azazel had Greenwitch’s head cut off for no apparent reason,” I said, distracted. That was all I needed—to miss a pickup and have J.B. on my ass.
“Greenwitch? The crazy lady who sold you the charm last night? The one who tried to blast you into oblivion?”
“That’s the one,” I said. “Oh, and did you know that she was Antares’s mother?”
Beezle flew off my shoulder and fluttered around, looking anxious. “No, I didn’t know that. That means that she was a demon.”
“Yeah, that’s what Azazel said.” Where was that list?
“But I didn’t see that when we went to her house.” He sounded so distressed that I stopped searching for the list and glanced up at him.
“What’s the problem?”
“I should have been able to see that she was demonic. I should have been able to see through every layer of reality to her core essence. That is my gift as a gargoyle. But I couldn’t see her.”
“So Greenwitch has discovered a way to disguise her true essence, not simply her physical appearance,” Gabriel said slowly, meeting Beezle’s frightened eyes. “If this is true, then others could have discovered her trick as well, or borrowed the way of it from Greenwitch.”
I was tired and distracted, and had difficulty grasping the import of this discussion. “So what?”
“So if what you believe is true—that Ramuell has another half-nephilim child—then that child or his mother could have disguised his essence and his presence from Lucifer. It would mean that your theory is correct, and that there is only one puppet master for Ramuell—his own child. My half sibling.”
“So if we can find the master, then we can find Ramuell, and shut down the whole operation,” I said. “And I still think the key to finding Ramuell is tracing his victims.”
“I agree,” Gabriel said.
“I’ll get J.B. to let us into the Hall of Records. He should be a little more amenable to it now that he’s had a close encounter of the demon kind.”
I glanced down and realized I held my list in my hand. I had to pick up three souls at two thirty-seven on Lake Shore Drive. All the souls had the same last name. That meant it was probably a car accident, and that I would be picking up a family. On the one hand, families tended to like to stay together, so they usually all chose the Door and made my job as an Agent a lot easier. On the other hand, the human in me was always a little upset by these deaths. It was difficult to take kids to the Door, knowing all their promise had been snuffed out and it was the last choice they would ever make.
Beezle still hovered anxiously, his eyes huge and worried.
“Hey, Beezle, hey, it’s all right. You’re still the best guardian a girl could ever have,” I said, and held out my hand so that he could land on it.
He was heavier than he used to be. He needed to lay off the popcorn and chocolate or his wings weren’t going to be able to hold him anymore.
“What if I can’t protect you?” he whispered. “What would Katherine say?”
“Beezle,” I said. “Greenwitch was an exceptionally powerful demon—Azazel told me himself. I’m certain that there are very few creatures who could disguise their essence the way that she could.”
“But what if there is another nephilim out there, hidden from us? That nephilim is not included in Katherine’s circle of protection. It could walk up to the front door and I would never know it wasn’t human.”
I thought of Ramuell’s burnt cinnamon smell and how the smell had warned me in the alley of his presence just in time. “Would you be able to smell it?”
Both Gabriel and Beezle did the blank-stare thing.
“You know, that cinnamony smell that anything angelic seems to have.”
“Madeline, what are you talking about?” Gabriel said.
“Azazel smells like cinnamon, and so did Nathaniel. Ramuell smells like burnt cinnamon and sulfur. Antares smells mostly like sulfur with an undertone of cinnamon. You haven’t noticed this?”
Gabriel looked intrigued. “And myself?”
I felt blood heating my cheeks. “Apple pie, more or less. Cinnamon and sugar and cloves.”
“I have never noticed a particular smell of angelic beings before,” Gabriel said. “Gargoyle?”
“Me neither. Are you sure it’s not in your head?” Beezle patted my forehead. I wasn’t sure if he was checking for a fever or for signs of the crazies.
I pushed his hand away, annoyed. “It’s not in my head.”
They both looked doubtful.
A thought occurred to me. “Gabriel, if there is another nephilim child, and that child’s essence is disguised, isn’t it likely that Greenwitch helped hide the child from Lucifer?” I asked. “Like I said, there can’t be that many creatures that could disguise their essence the way she could.”
“I suppose it is probably so. But what would be her motive for doing such a thing? She was Antares’s mother, and as such held a place of status in your father’s court.”
“I don’t know why she would do it. I just want to know if it’s likely.”
Gabriel nodded. “Very likely, I would think.”
“Then would we be able to trace the mark of Greenwitch’s magic? Couldn’t we find this disguised nephilim that way? Since my cinnamon-scent test appears to have gained no votes,” I said, sticking my tongue out at Beezle.
Gabriel smiled at me. “Yes. Yes, we could. It would take some doing, but if I had the sense of her magic, then I could use it to trace anyone she had hidden. Madeline, that is brilliant.”
I shrugged, all false modesty. “I know. Now I’ve got to go. Beezle, it’s going to be okay. Guard the domicile, and I will see you in a little while.”
Beezle said nothing, just flew down the hall and out the front window with a frown on his face. It wasn’t like Beezle to send me off without a word, and I stared after him.
“The gargoyle is taking the truth of Greenwitch very hard,” Gabriel observed. “This has cut him to the core of his existence. If he cannot see through the layers of magic, then his life is meaningless.”
“His life is
not
meaningless,” I said heatedly. “He’s my best friend, and he’ll always be that, even if he isn’t my guardian. Let’s go.”
I thought of the office downtown and felt my wings expand on my back. I flew from the kitchen without another word. I didn’t need to see him to know that Gabriel was right behind me.
The office was busier than usual when we arrived. It seemed that while I was at Azazel’s court, there had been a train accident that left several souls to take. Several souls equaled more paperwork, so it took J.B. a while before he could see us. When we finally managed to get into his office, I told J.B. what I thought he needed to know—that Ramuell was a nephilim, that nephilim were the children of the Grigori and human women, that my father was a Grigori, and that it was my job to track down Ramuell. He expressed a lot of disbelief, and more than a little annoyance, when I explained that I was going to need six days off each month, and that I couldn’t tell him exactly why but that it was a family matter. I was subjected to a little rant about the importance of my responsibilities as an Agent.
“Why is it your job to track down this monster?” J.B. asked. He leaned forward in his office chair and fiddled with some papers on his desk, making marks here and there with a pencil.
“You know, that’s a very good question. I started to track Ramuell myself because I wanted vengeance for Patrick and my mother. But Azazel could probably take care of this problem more efficiently than I could.” I looked questioningly at Gabriel.
“Ramuell’s freedom appears to be largely unknown in Lucifer’s kingdom. Lord Azazel is not certain why this is so, but he feels that Ramuell’s puppet master wants to maintain secrecy regarding the nephilim’s status, perhaps to use Ramuell as a surprise weapon during a gambit for power. Because of this, Lord Azazel is watching and waiting. He feels that Ramuell’s puppet master will be more easily discovered if the truth of the nephilim is not widely known. Additionally, hunting the nephilim presents a delicate problem for Lord Azazel.”
I thought of something that Azazel had told me in his receiving room. “Because if he harms Ramuell, it could be interpreted as a move against Lucifer.”
“Precisely. So Lord Azazel has entrusted you with this task, and I am to assist you, in hopes that we can quietly discover the traitor and return Ramuell to the Valley of Sorrows.”
“And what is it that
you
can do?” J.B. asked Gabriel, a sneer in his voice.
Gabriel got that steely look that told me there was going to be another stupid testosterone-fueled argument, so I quickly cut in.
“His powers are beyond your understanding. Listen, J.B., can you get us a pass into the Hall of Records? I want to see if I can trace Ramuell’s victims.”
J.B. and Gabriel shared a manly if-she-wasn’t-here-I’dkick-your-ass look. I rolled my eyes.
“J.B.?”
“Yes, yes,” he said. “But I’m coming with you. Until you catch this soul-sucking thing, I’m glue and you’re . . . something that needs to be glued.”
“A construction-paper turkey?” I said, thinking of a second-grade art project. “Look, J.B., I appreciate your offer to help, but you really don’t know what your dealing with here. Your powers as an Agent mean nothing to a creature like Ramuell.”
“What do you know about my powers? I could have unsuspected depth.”
“Right. You’ve never seen Ramuell. There’s no way your depths are that unsuspected.”
“I’m with you or you get nothing from me,” he said. “I could have you barred from the building if I wanted.”
He would do it, too, just to be a pain in the ass. I thought that Gabriel and I could probably let J.B. feel like he was involved and still keep him from the worst of it.
“Fine, let’s just get to it,” I said.
A couple of hours later the three of us were dusty and irritated and not a bit closer to finding Ramuell. We’d decided to narrow our search to the year that Katherine had died and the last six months. Gabriel and J.B. had split the files of the general populace and I had taken the Agents, which were in a different section. The records of each death were kept on typed index cards. The index cards were sorted by date and kept in long thin drawers, like the cards for the Dewey decimal system at the library—before libraries had gone digital. We each pulled several drawers from a cabinet and sat down at a table that would seat eight, and began the laborious process of flipping through each card.
We’d discovered that twelve Agents had died without showing a record of their choice, and there was no discernable pattern or link between them. None of the Agents was directly related. Ten of the deaths had occurred the year that Katherine had died. Patrick and one other Agent had died in the last six months.
“I don’t understand,” J.B. said. “If ten Agents in the Chicago area died without showing their choices, wouldn’t their supervisor have noticed?”
“Not every supervisor is as anal as you are,” I muttered.
“You know, Black, I am really sick of your attitude. You may think that paperwork is just a chore, but it is necessary to the functioning of this business,” J.B. snapped.
“Yes, because soul-collecting just couldn’t happen unless paperwork was filed afterward,” I said sweetly.
J.B.’s face turned red and he opened his mouth—no doubt to remind me of my place—when the building suddenly shook, like an earthquake had struck. The lamps swung crazily from side to side, the drawers of index cards shook from the table and plaster dust fell from the ceiling.
My chair tipped to one side and I landed heavily on my elbow, crying out in pain.