Still, two relatively decent relationships hardly made me a virgin. But compared to Raziel’s thousands of years of sex and marriage, I most assuredly came up short. So how dared he have that “You’ve had sex” attitude? Typical of this patriarchal place, but I had no intention of putting up with it.

At least sex was a weapon I could use when I was feeling far too defenseless. I could get rid of Raziel simply by envisioning having sex with him, and he wouldn’t linger to see the truth behind the erotic fantasy, see just how pathetic a lover I really was. Not that it mattered—I was getting the feeling that I was looking on an eternity of celibacy, just like Raziel. Except in my case, it wouldn’t be by choice.

Who would I have here if I could have anyone? That was a no-brainer. Azazel was nasty, and I’d learned to avoid self-destructive relationships.

Sammael was too young, even if he was millennia older than I was. I just got a wrong feeling from him. There was Tamlel, who seemed quite sweet, but I didn’t want him either. If I was forced to have sex with anybody I’d met so far, I’d choose Raziel. Like it or not, I felt bonded to him, even if it only went one way. He was my man, the only connection with my old world, and I was holding on for dear life.

That bond was going to break, of course. It was temporary, just long enough to get me through to the other side. Hey, maybe I’d get to go to heaven after all, despite what he’d said, a sunny, happy place with angels who actually played harps. I could live among the clouds, visit my dead relatives, and look down on the poor foolish mortals with compassion.

Though an eternity of that could get old pretty fast. This was no trip to Hollywood, but the alternatives weren’t that appealing. As long as I could keep Raziel out of my brain, I’d be able to figure out a way to deal with all this. Or a way to get out of it. There was always some kind of loophole. These things weren’t written in stone.

Well, come to think of it, they probably were, literally, somewhere. And my efforts to keep Raziel out of my brain had only resulted in his abandoning me, which wasn’t particularly helpful. I was probably going to need him if I wanted to get out of here, and making him crazy might not be the smartest thing to do. He might get pissed off enough to agree to the Grace, which was more like a curse. If he was really motivated, he might be able to return me to the one place he said he couldn’t. Home.

Oh, I wasn’t picky. It didn’t have to be the same life, the same job, the same face. I could go back as anyone. I just wanted, needed, to go back.

On the other hand, my only defense was thinking about having sex with Raziel, and I found it . . . distracting. Disturbing. Arousing. Okay, I had to admit it.

He was inspiring some wickedly lustful thoughts, whether he was around or not. I could spend a perfectly delightful afternoon doing absolutely nothing but indulging in sex fantasies about my beautiful, angry kidnapper and enjoy myself tremendously.

Unfortunately, that might leave me a bit too vulnerable, and I couldn’t afford to let him see that. If he saw weakness, he’d exploit it without hesitation.

At least I was alone, with no one watching me. I didn’t have to make conversation, be perky, put on a cheery face. All I had to do was try to make sense of what had happened to me. I didn’t need to be distracted by a blood-sucking angel with the face of a . . . well, of an angel and the personality of a puff adder. Whom I somehow, inexplicably, longed for.

There, I’d admitted it. The 12-step groups were right—admitting it was the first and hardest part of owning a problem. Raziel was most definitely a problem, as far as I was concerned.

He didn’t like me. I shouldn’t find that particularly distressing. Yes, I was counting on him to protect me when my case was brought before the tribunal or whatever the hell it was, and he’d promised he wouldn’t let them Grace me. Still, he’d made it clear that he thought women should be seen and not heard.

Fat chance of that. I’d never been the silent, docile type and even the fear of God, or Uriel, wasn’t going to get me started now.

If it weren’t for Sarah, I’d be feeling completely defeated. I liked her, even if her husband seemed like an even bigger asshole than Raziel. Azazel was tall, dark, and grumpy, his body radiating a kind of bleak disapproval that made Raziel seem warm and fuzzy in comparison. Even Sammael hadn’t been a barrel of laughs. I didn’t know the names of the others, except Tamlel, of course, though I’d seen several of them. There had been at least a dozen men in the room where I’d seen Raziel at Sarah’s wrist. Would Sarah and Raziel and maybe Tamlel be enough to sway them?

Suddenly I could see that strange scene all over again, the odd, unearthly light, the chanting, the smell of incense and something more elemental: the coppery scent of blood. I shuddered, feeling warm and slightly faint. I would have given a lot not to have walked in on that. Knowing about it would have been difficult enough; seeing it gave me a strange, edgy feeling. Like I’d watched someone having sex, or accidentally witnessed something slightly perverse but . . . arousing.

Slightly perverse? He was drinking the blood of his friend’s wife. No wonder I was left with an unsettled feeling every time I thought of it. It felt almost as if someone had touched me.

I wouldn’t make that mistake again. No flinging open doors—I’d knock first and wait for someone to open them. What these . . . these people did in the privacy of their own rooms was fine with me. I just wanted to get the hell away from here.

Though not literally. Being a reasonable, twenty-first-century woman, I had never believed in hell. It seemed to me that there was enough horrific punishment meted out on earth to satisfy the most vengeful god, and why should the universe duplicate efforts? Hell was warfare, children who died before their parents, drug addiction, poverty, violence. It always seemed to me that if someone screwed up big-time, it was simpler just to send them back for another go-round.

Then again, I’d never believed that people who suffered had brought it on themselves, so that sort of shot a hole in my cosmic theory of justice.

Nevertheless, some fiery pit with a chortling devil holding a pitchfork had seemed more of a twisted Disney fantasy than anything else.

Apparently I was wrong.

Though no one had said anything about Satan. Come to think of it, some of the biblical propaganda posited that the first fallen angel, Lucifer, was Satan, king of hell. Which didn’t really jibe with what was going on here.

I was curious, but truth be told, it wasn’t just intellectual curiosity that made me determined to stay right here.

Raziel had something to do with it.

Okay, he was way too gorgeous, and gorgeous men made me feel like a troll. I could make an exception. Whether I liked it or not, I felt drawn to him, tied to him, turned on by him; and while I was putting out a lot of energy fighting it, I was losing the battle. It didn’t matter—he was more than capable of resisting me, and I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself. It wasn’t the first time I’d suffered the adolescent pangs of unrequited, er, lust.