“What about her?”

“I should have been harder on her. I shouldn’t have let her treat you that way. But I could sense her fear. She believed, Charley. She always believed in you. For her, that was the problem.”

“Denise and I are finding our way.”

“And I want to thank you for that. You have a bigger heart than people give you credit for.”

“Right?” I said in complete agreement. “Now, who actually pulled the trigger? And who is this businessman?”

“No. And I mean it. Your uncle is closing in, thanks to you and that anonymous tip. You’ve done enough.” He smiled down at the little princess, and a soft squeak sounded.

“Uh-oh,” I said to her, unlacing my hand to pat her mouth with the blanket. “Someone burped.”

“Don’t worry, Beep,” Dad said. “What happens in the closet stays in the closet.”

The door slid open then, and Spanky and the Gang stood in the exact same positions as when I’d closed it.

“We were getting worried,” Angel said.

I turned, but Dad was gone. I could smell him on my clothes and on Beep’s blanket.

Osh stepped inside and turned full circle. “Seriously, what the hell?”

“I don’t know, but we need to have a powwow.”

*   *   *

This time I hunted Denise down and gave her Beep for a while. She was more than happy to take her while Osh and I went hunting.

We went into the office, where it was quieter. No need to alarm Denise.

It didn’t take us long to find him, since I could summon him right to me. I did so and immediately grabbed his wrist so he couldn’t vanish.

“Wh-what’s going on?” Duff asked, his eyes wide behind the glasses.

“How does this work?” I asked him.

“Wh-what?”

“And you can stop stuttering now,” I added. “How does this work? Who do you report to?”

He looked down at his wrist, then back at me. “You don’t know what it’s like down there,” he said, vying for the sympathy angle. “You are burned alive.”

“I know. I visited recently.”

He had the decency to look shocked.

“Don’t pretend you didn’t know that.”

“I haven’t been able to hang around much,” he said, scowling at Angel. “Rey’aziel caught on. Sent the kid to babysit. Can’t turn around without him watching me.”

I turned to Angel. “Is that what all that was about?”

Angel shrugged. “We’re also watching a few more.”

“We?”

“Rey’aziel has a whole army of spies watching other spies.”

“Why didn’t he just tell me?” I asked, appalled. “I thought this was something horrible like you two were trying to figure out which asylum to have me locked in once Beep was born.”

He snickered. “We decided that months ago.”

Garrett walked in then. “Got him,” he said, carrying a tablet. “Duff Newman, executed for killing a woman and her daughter in 1987.”

Osh tsked. “Duff. That’s not very nice.”

Focusing on Duff again, I said, “Once more with feeling. Who do you report to?”

“If I tell you, he’ll send me back.”

“To hell?” I asked. “You’re going back there anyway, sport. It’s hot. You might want to plan for that. Take an ointment.”

Osh spoke up again. “Why let him live at all? I could use dessert.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.” That wolfish grin was back, and Duff tried to jerk out of my grip, suddenly terrified.

“Wait,” I said; then I turned to Angel. “No really, why not just tell me?”

He lowered his head. “You’re too reckless.”

“What?” I asked, completely offended.

“You’re too careless,” he said, unable to meet my gaze. “You risk too much for people you barely know. We couldn’t—”

When he didn’t continue, I finished for him. “Trust me. You couldn’t trust me.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

“Well, that little decision almost cost me my life, thank you very much.”

“Sorry.”

Fury overrode every other emotion as I marked Duff. One thought was all it took, and the symbol appeared instantly. “He’s all yours,” I said to Osh.

The Daeva walked up to Duff, who decided right then to fight. He managed to slip from my grasp, but Osh had him around the throat in the blink of an eye. He pushed Duff against the wall, the exact same way he had with Sheila.

Osh squeezed Duff’s jaw, doing some Vulcan mind meld thing to get him to be still. He froze as though he could no longer move.

“It’s better than being burned alive,” he told Duff.

Apparently, Duff didn’t agree. He shook his head, fear consuming him. “Not this,” he pleaded, and I couldn’t help but wonder why. I’d been to hell. Why was this worse?

“I wonder if those people you killed said that.”

Before Duff could answer, Osh braced a hand above the wall over Duff’s head, pressed against him like a lover, then covered Duff’s mouth with his own. And while the soul-sucking thing with Sheila had been hot, this was even more so. I felt a warm rush wash over me. It pooled in my abdomen as Osh kept a hand locked around Duff’s throat, his mouth on his. Then he pulled back, just a little, just like before, and the light, a light blue glow, shone between them. Duff splayed his fingers and stared at the ceiling as Osh took everything he had to offer. Slowly, Duff dissipated, cracking and drifting away until there was nothing left.

Osh pressed his forehead against the wall, his chest heaving, his muscles weak, while I stood in a convent, in a house of God, with the most impure thoughts I’d had in a while. Boy-on-boy action.

“I need a shower,” I said, suddenly warm.

Osh glanced over his shoulder at me. “You know what goes well with shish-kebabed Duff?”

“I don’t want to know,” I said as I started for the door.

“Cherry pie,” he called out after me, laughing softly. “Tart cherry pie.”

“Asshole.” He knew how sexy that was. He was freaking doing it on purpose.

After about five seconds in the shower, I started groaning. Out loud. I really did need one, if for no other reason than to work the kinks out of my muscles. I couldn’t help but wonder where Reyes had gone off to. Maybe he was talking to that older couple again. Angel couldn’t have meant the Loehrs. They weren’t that old. Angel made the couple Reyes was talking to sound ancient. And he couldn’t possibly know about the Loehrs. I’d only just found out about them myself, and he’d told me months ago he didn’t want to contact them.

I turned off the water and wrapped a towel around me. Then I did the all-important phone check. No calls. No texts. Probably a good thing.

Hoping Reyes was okay and wondering if he would suck a guy’s soul like Osh so I could watch—because, day-um—I wiped steam off the mirror and was just about to blow-dry my “in bad need of a trim” locks when my phone chimed.

The fact that it could have been Reyes made me a little too enthusiastic. I knocked the phone off the counter and watched as it headed right toward the toilet.

Without blinking, I slowed time, fetched it, then let time bounce back into place.

Being a god definitely had its perks.

Swiping a finger across the screen, I brought up the text and my world fell apart at the seams.

Do not move.

The first line of the text read like it’d been sent by some harmless creep playing a joke. That wasn’t the part that slid the world out from under me.

Do not say anything.

The sender was unknown, a blocked number.

Do not alert your friends to this message.

Dread crept up my spine to settle at the nape of my neck.

Control your emotions or Ms. Kowalski and her daughter die.

Whoever was sending the texts knew enough about me and my friends to know that any spike in emotion could summon the cavalry. Not many people knew that.

But the next text contained an image, and the dread scratching at my neck exploded, awakening every nerve ending in my body as a sharp tingling sensation washed over me. My knees gave beneath me, and I sank onto the side of the bathtub.