Succubus Dreams Page 0,65

a Scrooge. It was signed by other store workers, as well as Seth.

I looked back and forth between the boxes. "It's a Christmas miracle. I had no tree. Now I have a forest."

"C'mon," said Yasmine. "I'll help you set them up."

I looked at her in surprise. "Aren't you here to meet up with Vince or something?"

She shook her head. "I'm here to talk to you."

Uh-oh.

I didn't really want to set up the Christmas trees, but a being vastly more powerful than me did, so I set to it. Carter's tree was the easiest since all I had to do was plug it in. I placed it in a window sill, one with an outlet right underneath. The tree's fiber optic needles lit up to pale pink, then purple, then teal, then white.

"Good God," I said. "It's the Christmas tree equivalent of a lava lamp."

"I like it," declared Yasmine. "It's got moxie." She looked really excited. She could have been a kid on Christmas morning. You'd think after seeing so many Christmases (and trees) in her existence, they'd get kind of old. She pointed at Peter's tree. "Let's do the prissy one now."

We were stringing purple lights on the 'winter moss green' tree when she finally started The Talk.

"So. Vincent told me what happened." She paused as she looped the lights over a branch. "I'm glad your guy is okay."

"Me too. He was lucky...if Vincent hadn't been there..."

More silence. I didn't entirely know where Yasmine was going with this. My guess was that she was concerned I'd tell someone about Vincent. I felt absolutely certain, however, that she wasn't going to threaten to break my kneecaps or anything to keep me silent. In fact, I realized then that what she wanted was reassurance. It was a crazy and startling idea. She was an angel, after all. A being of hope and peace, a being that others prayed to for comfort. Yet, here she was, seeking it from me - a creature of Hell.

"I meant it," I told her. "What I said to him. I'm not going to tell anyone."

"I believe you," she said, confusion all over her face. Angels knew when others were telling the truth. "But I don't understand it. Why? Why wouldn't you? You could get into big trouble if your superiors - if Jerome - found out you knew and weren't telling." Vincent had said the same thing. It was true. "Your people tend to get pissed off over stuff like that."

"What, and yours don't? Would they be forgiving if they found out?"

She looked away from me, diverting her attention to hanging a pink glass dove.

"Look," I said. "I work for Hell, but I don't, like, delight in others' suffering. Especially since I like both of you. I don't want to see you get into trouble. I don't even think what you're doing is wrong. Dangerous, maybe, but not wrong."

"Which part? The loving part or the nephilim part?"

I shrugged. "It's all risky."

She smiled at me. "You talk about nephilim pretty calmly. Most people - in our circles - go running for the hills."

"I met one once. Dated him." I hung a bejeweled purple orb on the tree. "He was scary as hell, yeah. Had this whole homicidal revenge thing going on, which kind of negated his sexiness a little. But at the end of the day...I don't know. He wasn't much of a monster. He couldn't help being born what he was."

I was glad to be free of Roman, glad he was somewhere far away from me. He'd posed too much of a threat to both me and those I loved. Still, there had been something in him I found appealing. It was why we'd connected before things literally blew up. I understood his weariness with the games Heaven and Hell played. He'd offered to take me away and free me from it all, and there were days I would still wake up and long for that.

"No," Yasmine agreed. "They can't help what they are. And it's not their fault. But their existence is a reminder of our faults...of our weaknesses." She held her hands open in front of her, studying them as though they held answers. "None of us higher immortals want to be shown that we're weak. That's our hubris, I guess. Especially the angels. No one's perfect, but we like to play that we are." She sighed and let her hands drop. "I should walk away from this. I should have a long time ago."

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