The Demon's Song - By Kendra Leigh Castle Page 0,67
I am. Glad you noticed.”
Gadreel stepped in, big and gorgeous and still far more obnoxious than his angelic looks let on. There didn’t seem to be any hard feelings on his part from their first meeting, but Sofia had a tough time getting comfortable around him. However difficult Phenex was to read, Gadreel was a thousand times harder. And unlike Meresin, he always seemed to be underfoot.
“Hi,” Sofia said. “Everything okay?”
“Better than okay. We’re a threesome tonight.”
Sofia looked at Phenex, who just shrugged. “We’re all going up today. Justin’s not going to be happy when he finds out, but he’s pretty used to us making him unhappy.”
She looked between them. “All of you? You’ve finally heard from Uriel.”
Most of what she’d heard about the archangel assigned by Heaven to deal with the pack of renegade Fallen had been bitching about his lengthy absences between meetings with them to dole out assignments and insults about what a Goody Two-Shoes he was. Sofia had decided it was best not to express how interested she was in meeting an actual, white-winged angel. Raum sort of counted, but he still had a foul mouth when he wanted to.
Gadreel grinned. “You catch on more quickly than most humans, I’ll give you that. Beautiful, perceptive…shame about that mortality thing, or I’d have stolen you from Phenex already.”
Sofia snorted. “You could try.” The only way to deal with him, she’d noticed, was to play along and not take anything seriously. Phenex seemed to forget that long enough to punch him, not at all playfully, in the shoulder. Gadreel glared at him and hissed.
“It’s Uriel,” Phenex agreed, ignoring the display of temper. “We’re actually meeting him at the hospital, so you won’t be on your own. I’ll be close by.”
“Archangels. Always so accommodating,” Gadreel muttered. “This had better be as urgent as it seems, now that he’s kept us waiting so long over this. I hate hospitals. They’re full of the dead.”
His words sent a queer chill down Sofia’s spine, but he didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t really think she wanted him to.
“Ready to go?” Phenex asked. He looked tense, Sofia saw as she got closer. Worried. She wondered why…and knew that if she asked, she wouldn’t get an answer. For as much as he let go in bed with her, the rest of the time he was just as inscrutable as he’d been from the start, giving her little but fragments of himself before backing away again.
Maybe eventually, Sofia thought, suddenly wistful. Maybe someday he’d let her know him the way she wanted to. Or maybe he would walk away as much a mystery as he’d always been. That was one of the things she brooded over the most in her quieter moments.
“Okay,” Sofia said, pushing all her worry back into the shadows where it belonged. “Let’s go.”
…
Gadreel wasn’t the only one who hated hospitals. Still, Phenex thought as he stood near the emergency entrance watching Sofia go inside, he was glad Uriel had been paying enough attention to know that this would be the best place, maybe the only place, for a daytime meeting. At least if he wanted to get Phenex there with a minimum of bitching.
Sofia turned back right before she went in, giving him a small wave and a smile. He lifted a hand and was rewarded with a flash of her grin before she vanished through the doors. Phenex simply stood there for a moment, staring after her as a chill wind ruffled his hair. Everything out here was gray and cold without her.
And there was an irate spirit standing by the ER doors repeatedly attempting to clock people in the head with his immaterial walker. The more he missed, the more pissed off he seemed to get.
Hellfire, he hated the wandering dead.
Phenex turned and walked toward a tree around the corner of the building, which at the moment was full of a motley assortment of creatures. A thrush squatted irritably on one branch beside a large crow. An immense snake had wrapped itself all the way up the trunk and then down around a couple of branches, where it sat flicking its tongue at the thrush. Beneath the tree lay what appeared to be an extremely lifelike sculpture of a griffin, a mythical beast with a lion’s body and an eagle’s head and wings. It rested with its head in its front paws, still as stone. Then it saw Phenex and blinked. Beside the griffin sat a man with long black