See You in Hell (Mel Goes to Hell Series Book 2) (18 page)

Zaq laughed, lifting his head so he could look at Mel again. "Better you than her. Will you help me with the presentation? I'm terrible at them."

"Of course. Helping people is what angels do," she responded with one final smile, before turning to go.

Lord Lucifer, she mused. So it was true and Gabi was right. Luce was the Lord of Hell. She'd expected him to be darker inside, to be honest, but she only knew what she'd heard of the demon – Mel had never spoken to him before she'd set foot in the HELL Corporation offices. He just didn't seem as dangerous as Raphael and everyone else had warned her.

Ah, he was known as an expert in deception – perhaps he was capable of using that demonic deception on her, Mel decided.

She carried the report to her desk and swapped it for her mug. A tisane today – preparing a presentation on birds sounded like fun.

Mel was almost done with the presentation, which was full of pretty pictures of planes and the wildlife that did live at the airport, including some unusual orchids they seemed to be going to great lengths to protect. She couldn't work out how one of them could be called a praying virgin orchid – it looked more like a bird bending over to drink.

After checking the brief summary on the cockatoos in the report, Mel decided she needed more detail. She dug the expert's report out of her email and took a sip from her second cup of tea. It looked like he'd done a complete biological survey, counting birds, snakes, lizards and even moths.

Mel headed downstairs to pick up some lunch so she could eat while she read the lengthy report. She glanced at her phone and noticed the missed calls from earlier that morning. Raphael had some urgent issue again, she saw – three calls and a misspelled text message told her so. Alone in the lift, she dialled and held her phone to her ear.

Mel only waited for Persi's greeting before interrupting the girl to ask for Raphael. Persi's switchboard skills had improved – she managed to put the call through to Raphael on her first attempt.

"Why the barrage of messages?" Mel asked.

"Where are you? It sounds noisy. Can you come to the office this afternoon? I'd prefer not to be overheard," Raphael said.

"That's all? You want to see me? If you want privacy, come to my place. I'm cooking tonight – I'll make sure there's enough for you. I'll pick up fresh mushrooms on my way home for the risotto, if you bring some wine. I'll probably use all of mine in the cooking."

She stood in front of the Yummi sandwich shop and counted. As she expected, she didn't get past three before he said, "All right. What time?"

"Make it seven, just in case I get caught up at work," Mel replied. A Turkish bread caught her eye. Chicken, pumpkin, feta, baby spinach…her stomach rumbled its agreement.

Raphael agreed and they ended the call. Mel slipped her phone back into her pocket, caught the shop assistant's eye and claimed her sandwich. She waited while it toasted and carried the hot, papered bundle upstairs, her mouth watering all the way.

With every delicious bite, she learned more about the birds the biologist called forest red-tailed black cockatoos. He stated three times that the birds were native to the southern part of the state and rarely appeared on the Swan Coastal Plain, which Mel knew was where she stood. She paused in her reading to pop a few cockatoo facts into the presentation, including the expert's adamant statement that the birds didn't live, eat, sleep or breed at the airport.

She skimmed the rest of the report, hoping she'd see more pictures of the wildlife the eminent doctor and his team had encountered during their survey. She admired the pretty pictures of the tawny frogmouth and the legless lizard that looked like a snake, before opening to a large spread on cockatoos.

She was arrested by the detailed pictures of a small flock of the black birds. They seemed to hang effortlessly in the air, not a single one flapping its wings when the shot was taken. She counted them – nine, no, ten of the birds. Another shot showed the same birds soaring in front of a building that looked suspiciously like an airport control tower. She looked more closely – it definitely did look like the blocky tower at Cockburn. The caption beneath confirmed it.

So much for the cockatoos never coming to the airport. Perhaps they were holidaying – without eating, sleeping or breeding, she mused. The biologist dismissed them as an unusual occurrence – ten birds was hardly a viable population – and they'd never been seen before the 2009 survey. He considered it unlikely that they'd return, especially with the trees removed. They'd most likely move on to better places to feed, breed and whatever else they did in between.

Mel finished her lunch and her presentation before emailing the link to Zaq. She headed for his desk to ask if he needed any more assistance before she left for the day, and found him avidly reviewing her work.

He glanced up as she approached, but his eyes drifted back to the screen. "I love it! This is perfect," he gushed. "I know why Lord Lucifer's so in love with you. I'm more than halfway there myself. You're an absolute angel!"

Mel carefully kept her face blank as she considered his strange choice of words. Demons didn't – couldn't – love. It was against their very nature to do such a thing. Even the thought of a demon fancying himself in love with an angel was a crazy concept. Zaq must be more overworked than he appeared. "Well, that's what I am," she said.

"I owe you dinner. What are you doing tonight?" Zaq asked. His eyes shone with a fervour that Mel might have called lust, then amended it to excitement. He was staring at her face, after all, and not the rest of her body.

"I already have plans," Mel said gently. "I'm having dinner with a friend of mine tonight."

"Oh." The light in his eyes died, but then a tiny spark kindled again. "I still owe you one. If you ever need a favour, anything at all, just let me know. I'm your man." He grabbed her hand and kissed it.

Just like Luce – no sparks, no electricity.

The momentary contact was all Mel needed to see the man's soul – or the darkness surrounding it. His was a deep, velvety black – so dense she couldn't pierce the shroud at all. He may as well have had no soul, for all she could perceive. Yet the darkness seemed to be stretching, as if some tidal force dragged it toward her. Shaken, she pulled her hand out of his grasp.

Mel heard Zaq's mumbled apologies and thanks as he blushed profusely, but she was too lost in her own thoughts to do more than acknowledge him with a nod as she headed back to her desk.

She dropped into her chair and tried to sort through her findings in her head. The CEO was a demon, the Lord Lucifer she'd been warned about more times than she could count. But his soul and its demonic shroud were lighter and less dense than those of the demons he commanded. Was he a demon at all? How could the ruler of Hell be anything but a demon? And this talk of demons and love. That she knew to be impossible. Zaq's demonic soul-shroud had brooded with menace as she'd approached it for a closer look. Even the love in her soul had irritated it – love in a demon's soul would have the shroud attacking the soul it was supposed to protect. A cold soul, untouched by any outward emotion, locked in with itself. So lonely…was that why Luce had allowed her in?

HOW had Luce allowed her in?

The calendar on her computer trilled, telling her it was time to go home, so Mel shook the strange thoughts from her head and packed her bag to go. She powered down her computer, shouldered her bag and strode out. She needed to get this new information straight in her head before she shared it with Raphael. It wouldn't do to be uncertain – Raphael shied from risks, and letting her get this close to Luce looked like the biggest one he'd taken in a long time.

Time to catch the train, she reminded herself. Then get the best mushrooms and start dinner. Mushroom risotto was enough to make her night – and tonight she'd get to share the pleasure. What more could an angel ask for?

It never ceased to amaze Mel how the crowd on the train could disperse so quickly once they'd left the station. It was less than a hundred metres from the station platform to the other side of the road, yet a hundred people were reduced to two – and then, just one, as Mel's fellow passenger disappeared down a side street.

She crossed the tiny park, where a dozen residents seemed to be exercising their diminutive, yappy dogs and casting dirty looks at the family who were playing with their golden retriever. Perhaps it was because the retriever's size and bark dwarfed their precious pets into insignificance. Actually, the fat tabby cat regarding the animals warily from a nearby fence was bigger than most of them.

Mel stumbled over a pile of gumnuts in the grass, only just catching herself before she fell. It looked like someone had stripped the little marri tree of its nuts and just left them lying there. All the nuts looked strange, though, as if someone had shredded the flared end of them with a sharp pair of pliers.

A nut landed beside her foot, so mangled that only a shallow bowl was left of it. Mel looked up in time to see a large, black bird spread its wings and soar, kaa-raaking as it fanned out the bright red feathers in his tail. He settled in another tree a few metres away and selected a nut, delicately holding it in one claw as he attacked it with the sharp tool that was its beak.

Another raucous call sounded from the other side of the tree, but Mel couldn't see the second bird. She kept walking.

She paused to wait for traffic before crossing the road to the tiny strip of local shops. A chorus of kaaa-raaks was all the warning she had before the birds skimmed over her, all ten…no, eleven of them, Mel counted. Solid red fans and striped red-and-yellow tail fans, marking them as both males and females. Six females. They rode the sea breeze erratically – some sideways, some so close to the road that a car almost hit one before it lazily flapped and rose above the ute's roof and roll bar.

Perhaps the biologist had miscounted the cockies or his photos hadn't captured the whole flock, Mel reasoned. She threaded through the parked cars to the grocer's, loaded a bag with their award-winning mushrooms – as proclaimed by the row of Royal Show ribbons pinned to the wall above the mushie fridge – and added a small box of shaved parmesan. With her arms full of food, Mel headed for the counter to pay for her purchases. After an exchange of money and pleasant words, Mel tucked her purchases into her canvas shopping bag and headed for the small supermarket next door.

She stopped at their display of garden and pet supplies, spread across two shelving units on either side of the doors. 'Your garden can never have enough sun,' proclaimed one sign, illustrated with a line drawing of the harsh summer sun beating down on a line of daisy-like flowers. Beneath it was a shelf stacked with bags of sunflower seeds.

Mel considered the sign for a moment, then gave in. It would be lovely to have the gold flowers adorning her garden bed along the fence – and she'd probably be in the house long enough to enjoy them. At least working in HELL had some compensations. She slung a bag of seeds over her arm and headed into the shop in search of rice and pine nuts.

Her arms weighed down by two well-matched shopping bags, Mel left the shopping centre for the trek up the hill to her house. The cockies looked like they'd preceded her – they were making a racket and dropping gumnuts from the tree on her neighbour's lawn when she unlocked her front door.

Dropping her food purchases on the kitchen bench, Mel hefted the bag of sunflower seeds and took it out to the backyard, placing it carefully on her little outdoor setting table. She'd scatter the seeds in the morning – tonight, she had dinner to prepare for herself and Raphael. She hoped he wouldn't forget the wine, for it looked like she barely had enough for the risotto and it didn't taste the same without it.