an asset rather than a liability.
The pants in the pile were a prosaic black and brown respectively. She hugged them close, not too proud to accept gifts given. Even if it was Titus who must’ve arranged those gifts.
Scowling, she nonetheless took the clothing back into her bedroom and found fresh underwear. At least she’d packed extra there. Deciding to wear the black pants with the dark green top, she left her hair down so that it would dry more easily, but pulled a hair tie around her wrist for later use.
The woman who looked back at her from the mirror was fresh-faced, no artifice or age to her. “Foolishness,” she said with a laugh and walked out onto the balcony that flowed off her bedroom.
Activity buzzed in the courtyard and in the skies, Titus’s people using the final hour of light to prepare for the night. She searched the courtyard . . . and realized she was looking for one particular warrior with wide shoulders, skin of ebony, and a smile that knocked the breath out of her.
30
Sire, I write to you from the home of my eldest. You and I, we have spoken our good-byes, but I wouldn’t go without this final message: It is my time to Sleep, but my children will forever be your allies. Call them if you ever have need, and they will come.
Until soon, sire.
—Letter from First General Avelina to Archangel Alexander
31
Flushing as she realized she was looking for Titus, Sharine nonetheless didn’t step back inside. She needed to speak to Tanae or a senior vampiric commander, find out how best to assist.
That was when her eye caught on the wings of an angel who’d just landed, his feathers brown but for small splashes of a familiar wild blue. She looked at the sky again; she had time. Taking out her phone, she pressed the number that would link her to Illium.
It rang multiple times before he picked up. “I’ve been hefting debris,” he said, his voice a touch breathless, and his sweat-damp hair pushed off his face. “Galen says I’ve become soft, but I’d like to see him lift the wall I just did.”
Sharine smiled, well used to the byplay between Tanae’s son and her own. She had the faint idea that it was the weapons-master who’d given her son the nickname of Bluebell. “Galen’s in New York?” She knew he was based in Raphael’s Refuge territory.
“Raphael’s recalled all of us but for Aodhan.” He looked to the right. “Barbarian! My mother asks after you—though I don’t know why!”
Pale green eyes set in a square-jawed face entered the frame; Galen’s dark red hair hung shaggy and thick around his features. “Lady Sharine,” he said with a smile, “it’s good to see you.” He frowned before she could answer and then was gone in a sudden flurry of gray-and-white wings.
“An angel lost his grip on a big piece of wreckage,” Illium said, his gaze upward. “Galen has it.”
“Your city is grievously wounded.” Sharine had glimpsed a little of it when Illium moved the phone.
“Yes.” A bleak confirmation. “We’re finding that some of the areas Raphael had to scorch are reading as poisonous—it looks like there was something special about the insects Lijuan loosed in that direction, and their poison burned itself into the soil.”
The sheer scale of Lijuan’s and Charisemnon’s power-hungry evil continued to shock her. “Is there a solution?”
“Our scientists are working on it,” he said. “But for now, the entire area’s under quarantine. We’re also having to constantly monitor the situation to make sure that nothing from that sector is seeping into the groundwater or into the river. Even dead, Her Batshitness continues to haunt us.”
She had no idea what “Batshitness” meant but, from context, guessed it must refer to Lijuan. Listening as he filled her in on his other news, she noticed one omission. “Are you still feuding with Aodhan?” It would not do. “You know now that life isn’t guaranteed, even for an immortal. Don’t be so stubborn.”
“I’m not the stubborn one.” He sounded so like the little boy she’d propped on her hip as a babe that she smiled.
“I’m quite aware Aodhan is your equal in stubbornness.” Her memories from her lost years continued to be problematic, but she remembered sitting and painting with Aodhan for hours at a time when Aodhan had been swathed in broken darkness. Even in the fog, she’d known that the small, quiet, loyal boy she loved was hurting and she’d gone to