Warrior's Angel (The Lost Angels Book 4) (16 page)

Chapter Eighteen

“I’ll return in a moment for your orders,” said t
he waiter, who, if his name was any indication, was actually the owner of the restaurant.

He left, and Rhiannon sat unmoving, still feeling stunned from head to toe by everything that had transpired that day. She watched the detective leave, her eyes roving over his broad, strong back and long legs and his tight little bubble-like –

She swallowed, closed her eyes,
and put her elbows on the table. Then she placed her head in her hands. Her forehead was hot to her fingertips. Maybe she was running a fever. It would explain her behavior.

Of all of the abilities she’d been mysteriously granted in this life, healing
was the one that drained her the worst. She was so tired right now, she should not have offered to heal anyone who didn’t desperately need it. It would have taken what small bit of strength she had left and turned her into a crabby, sluggish, basically miserable piece of flesh.

And yet, the words had come out of her mouth.
She barely knew the man, and really didn’t have reason to trust him, especially since she now knew he was the masked man from the gala and therefore was keeping secrets from her. But she’d seen him bleeding, and she’d imagined how much it must have hurt, and the healer in her had simply stepped forward. As shameful as it may have been, she was desperately relieved that he hadn’t taken her up on her offer. She had an almost OCD-like desire to spare the last bit of her strength after a fight. She always did this just in case someone had a heart attack near her or she came across a little boy with leukemia or there was a car accident, something like that. She would have hated herself if she’d closed up a scratch and ruined her chances of helping someone who really needed it.

Rhiannon sighed.
She was so confused.

She lifted her glass, put it to her lips, and
was just about to swallow a much needed second sip of her wine when someone suddenly slipped into the chair across the table from her. When she saw who it was, she choked a little, barely got the liquid down, and felt it burn the back of her nose as she narrowly avoided allowing to squirt through her nostrils.

As soon as she could talk, she
leaned forward and whispered, “Mimi! Oh my God, what are you
doing
here? How the hell did you know where I was?” Her inner mommy-ness was scolding her for her language, but she was too shocked to care much.

Mimi grinned from where she sat straight as a bolt in the detective’s chair.
“I put my phone in the upper zip pocket of your jacket when you weren’t wearing it at the studio,” Mimi explained to her and pointed to the leather jacket over the back of Rhiannon’s chair. “Then all I had to do was use the lost phone app.” Her grin broadened and she blinked innocently.

Rhiannon looked from her to the jacket and then back again. Then she set down her wine glass and felt the space behind the zipper of her jacket pocket. Sure enough, there was a very flat rectangular bulge behind it. She never used that pocket, and it was always zipped up. Mimi must have known that.

She unzipped the pocket and extracted the phone, which had been set to
silent
. Mimi continued. “Of course, I asked Angel where you were going next, but she wasn’t sharing.” Mimi’s face contorted into a look of frustrated concentration. “That girl is pretty slick. She skirted all my questions with real skill.”

“Mimi, you can’t be here right now. What about your
aunt? She’ll be worried sick! I have to call her.”

“She’s asleep already,” Mimi said, rolling her eyes. “She got up way too early this morning and now she can’t stay awake
at night, even when we’re playing cards together. Emanuel and I actually beat her and Alex at Bridge the other day just because they were partners and Aunt B was falling asleep on Alex. Mr. V told her to take a vacation, but she thinks she has to take care of him or something.”

Rhiannon
was struggling to find the right thing to say. Mimi was not supposed to be there right now! She was supposed to be at home! Angel had taken her there personally! Mimi must have immediately gone upstairs to her room, then turned around and crawled out through the laundry chute again. She certainly hadn’t wasted any time.

But she must have had a reason for escaping and finding Rhiannon. Mimi wasn’t a hot head. She was a very logical, mature child.
Usually.

And it
was also clear that Mimi was upset about how tired her aunt was. Mimi’s mother, Adrienne, had died when she was just a baby. Mimi’s father, Daniel Tanniym, had died of cancer when Mimi was five. Mimi’s aunt, Bess Tanniym, was the only family she had left.

She also knew why
Bess worked as hard as she did. Bess respected Mr. Verdigri, thought of him as a grandfather to her niece, and she was also worried about him. Mr. V was rather elderly, though he neither showed nor acted it. Bess wasn’t just the cook of the household, she was more or less its mother hen.

There was so much to discuss
with Mimi, and the situation was so unexpected, Rhiannon found herself shaking her head. “Mimi, I have to at least tell Mr. V where you are, just in case your aunt wakes up.”

Mimi bit her lip. “
You
get to stay out late tonight and you didn’t tell anyone you were going to.”

“I’m a big girl, Mimi. I’m allowed to stay up late once in a while.”

Mimi blushed at this, and averted her gaze. It was very, very difficult for nine-year-olds to come to grips with the fact that they weren’t yet adult. Normally, they just chose to ignore that little verity, figuring that it would go away in time – and usually, it did. But every now and then, a reminder inexorably popped up. And those always sucked.

Rhiannon told her phone to “Call Mr. V,” and like the ever-dependable Gal Friday that she was, Siri obeyed. Rhiannon made the call short and sweet. “Mr. V
erdigri, Mimi is with me, and she’s fine. She’ll be staying with me for dinner and I’ll bring her home as soon as we’ve finished.”

Though he was understandably surprised to hear that Mimi had vanished for the second time in one day,
Mr. V said very little as well, obviously trusting Rhiannon to do what was best.

When Rhiannon hung up and re-pocketed her phone, she fixed Mimi with a hard gaze. “Mimi, I don’t even know where to start –
”

“Rhee,
please,” Mimi interrupted. “I don’t have much time to talk to you. I had to wait until Detective Muscles left the table, and I’ve been hiding in the coat check closet for the last fifteen minutes.”

Rhiannon’s eyes widened.

“I
saw
something, Rhiannon,” Mimi said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “Back at the warehouse. I
know
I did. But when I mentioned it to Angel, she changed the subject like she hadn’t heard me. And so did Mr. V when I told
him
about it. And there’s no way I’m going to tell my aunt about it. If I do, she’ll know I skipped school.”

Rhiannon closed her mouth and sat back. She
studied Mimi’s face carefully, and she saw something there in the depths of the girl’s eyes that made the base of her skull feel cold. “What did you see?”

“
It was a face. I
know
it was. It was in the bricks of the studio wall, and it was watching me when Angel and I were getting into a cab. We were leaving the smoothie place and I just looked back, and….” Her voice drifted off, and Rhiannon could tell that she was stuck in her memory, and that it was an uncomfortable place to be. “Rhee, please be honest with me. You’re the only one I know I can really trust no matter what.” She waited a minute and then leaned forward. “Did I imagine it? Or was there a person in the rocks?”

Children were wonderful, alien
-like creatures. They were human, sort of, but only in all of the
good
ways. They hadn’t yet learned how to be truly deceptive, other than what little bit of deception would keep them up later at night or help them skip gym class or get them an extra cookie. They hadn’t closed themselves off to the lessons of history and science. They could walk and talk and laugh, and the feel of a small, freely offered hand within your own in times of pain was a great comfort. They could read and write and reason, and in fact they were better at the last one than most adults were. Their minds were open to fact and physics and the wonders of the Cosmos.

But this came with a downside. It was a small down side, and
in general, it was certainly worth the expanding universes of their young minds. It was just that in this specific case, the downside was that because children had open minds and they could reason, they sometimes noticed things that adults refused to. And when they did, you were faced with a choice: Either validate what they had noticed, or lie to a child.

Rhiannon had done a lot of things in her life, and some of them would be deemed immoral by many. But she would die a slow death before she
out and out lied to a child. Angel obviously hadn’t seen the gargoyle for herself, and had probably not wanted to bring any attention to Mimi’s “wild imagination.” But Rhiannon knew better, and she wasn’t going to do Mimi the
Snuffleupagus
-like injustice of not believing her.

“You didn’t imagine it,” she said softly.

Mimi didn’t move. She barely seemed to breathe as she stared at Rhiannon, most likely searching for any hint of artifice.

Rhiannon took a deep breath and leaned in once more. She placed her hands on the table, laced her fingers, and said, “What you saw was –”

“Mind if I join you two?”

Rhiannon stopped and looked up as Detective
Salvatore placed a third chair at their table, turned it around so that the back was facing forward, and sat down, draping his arms over the back of it. “Nice to see you again, Mimi. Have you ordered yet, or should I get the waiter over here?”

Mimi had the decency to look chagrined, despite her youth.
Her face warmed in a way that hid the freckles across the bridge of her nose and the apples of her cheeks, and she averted her gaze.

Rhianno
n tried to school her thoughts as Salvatore waved the waiter over like he said he was going to, and the waiter, who was not Giancarlo but was very good at his job nonetheless, rolled with the punches, accepting the unexpected newcomer without so much as a wayward glance.

“
Veggie pizza for the young lady, please, and a Diet Coke,” Salvatore ordered. The waiter nodded, writing it down, and Mimi’s eyes got wide.

“How did you know?”

“Pizza is what every nine-year-old under the sun would order,” he said, smiling. “I took a chance with the veggie. And at this time of night, no kid needs the forty grams of sugar in a real soda.”

Mimi smiled ba
ck at him, clearly pleased as punch with his decision. Mimi was a vegetarian, after all, and he was right about nine-year-olds and pizza. Rhiannon felt herself smile, and a bit of the cold that had been spreading through her warmed back up again.

She
ordered next, choosing a classic pasta dish dripping in sauce and cheese, and Salvatore ordered the same. He shrugged, claiming it was his favorite dish. Whether that was the truth or he’d ordered it to impress Rhiannon, she seriously couldn’t tell. But she was leaning toward the latter.

The waiter left, and Michael
asked Mimi why Earth and Space Science was her favorite class. The girl’s eyes lit up like supernovas, but then she narrowed her gaze. “Who says it’s my favorite?”

“I’m a cop,” Michael laughed.

Michael
, Rhiannon realized.
I’m thinking of him as Michael now.

“I could tell by the look of regret on your face when I mentioned you were missing it back at the studio.”

Mimi thought about that and finally nodded. Then she dove into an incredibly detailed explanation of why she loved the class, and a table-wide discussion about the wonder of the Cosmos picked up the time and tossed it out the window. They were fully immersed in the mysteries of neutrinos and dark matter when the waiter returned with more bread and salad. Rhiannon had enjoyed several rolls and dipping sauce and was on her second glass of wine. She was beginning to feel much, much better…. She was enjoying herself, in fact.
Truly
enjoying herself. For the first time in a very long time.

Not long thereafter, their food came in magnificent Italian flair, and several waiters filled their table with deliciously loaded plates. Mimi didn’t even wait for them to leave again before digging into her pizza.

“Giancarlo makes the best pizzas,” Michael told her. “He’s Puerto Rican, and his father was a Spaniard, but his mother was Italian.” His smile turned mischievous. “
Deep
Italian. He has an Uncle Vinnie, an Uncle Joey,
and
an Uncle Frankie.”

Mimi was giggling around a mouth full of bread, sauce, and cheese when the waiters left again. The aroma of everything in front of Rhiannon was so mouth-watering, she couldn’t wait either, and before she realized it, she was shoveling food into her mouth right along with Mimi.