Rob Thurman - Grimrose path

He studied me impassively, then smirked. I hadn't ever, in our long, long years of knowing each other, seen Leo smirk. He didn't do it. It wasn't his new, improved, laid-back yet solemn and kick-ass self, and it definitely wasn't his big bad "a frown is just your body methodically broken to bits and turned upside down" former self. This could, in no way, be a good thing. "I'm going to the office. I have some calls to make. You two catch up."

"Don't you dare call my mama! Don't you even think about it, Leo!" I called to his back right before the door shut behind him. Although she had to already know. There was hardly a trickster alive who didn't, but she'd love the opportunity to verbally smack my ass over it. "Oh, goddamnit, I'm dead as they come."

Ishiah coughed behind a balled fist and said mildly, "Blasphemy. Some old habits die hard."

"You've been a peri forever now, so get over it," I grumped. "Do you want to go down to the diner and get some breakfast? I'm starving."

"More like lunch, but, yes, that would be acceptable if…"

I raised a hand as I answered my ringing cell. I recognized Zeke's number immediately when I pulled the phone from my jeans pocket and held it up. "Kit?" I answered. "Is everything all right? How's Griffin?"

"Fine, fine, everything's fucking fine," came the dismissal. "How do you say asshole in German?"

"Arschloch, and you'd better tell me you didn't call me just to ask that," I demanded, but it was too late. As I'd cut off Ishiah, so had the click of a disconnected cell phone done to me.

"Problems?" Ishiah raised his eyebrows. Ishiah was the peri who probably did know about Zeke, who'd become a peri by virtue of not retiring but by telling Heaven to kiss his ass, but he certainly didn't need to know about Griffin, the only peri with demon wings. He might be all right with it; he might not. It didn't matter. Tempting fate was something I did with my own life, not my friends'.

"Actually more of a daily routine." I grabbed my small leather backpack and jacket. I already had my gun on me. It was time for about three pounds of biscuits and gravy. Carbs were good for the brain. Bad for the ass, thighs, and heart, but good for thinking, and with Ishiah here, there was bound to be serious thinking ahead. "Let's go eat and you can tell me why you're in Vegas, how you got here… I know it wasn't with those wings of yours. Was it by bus or plane? And how did you get that sword through security?"

He had flown… by plane. The wings did work, but flying across country would take a while, and he'd bought the sword once he arrived in Vegas. It didn't do for peris outside New York City to go unarmed. Demons liked killing them as much as they liked killing angels, only peris were more vulnerable. When they retired, they could keep the wings and transform to a human body, but that was it. No zipping up to Heaven, no flashing in and out of existence, no changing from flesh to a crystal statue that was the true form of an angel, one that looked like it belonged in an art gallery and not moving around in real life. Ishiah had been one of the very high and mighty in his day, so he had a difference of such to him. Give him a few weeks of storing up energy and he could give a light show like he'd given me last night. But that was it. A Vegas magician could do a hundred times better. I told him so. Leave the shows to the experts, I'd advised.

He'd have puffed up those feathers like an outraged rooster if we hadn't been in public. Keeping them invisible for the moment, he finished up with his food and told me why he was here. I was on my second helping and had a ways to go, but Ishiah was an efficient creature, always had been, and I listened to him as I kept scooping up some gravy with the softest of biscuits you could imagine-the cook had to be from the South. No Vegas cook could make biscuits worth a damn.

"Heaven sent me," Ishiah said. He paused-I didn't know if he expected me to fall to my knees at the privilege or if he was expecting a choir hidden in the diner's back kitchen to burst into song, but neither happened and he went on. "After what happened last year, they thought you'd be more willing to listen to me than an angel still in good standing." He frowned. "Though the higher-ups don't seem to know what exactly did happen three months ago. They know Oriphiel"-now there had been a snooty dick and a half-"never came home and a powerful demon named Solomon was killed. There were some rumors about an artifact of some sort, but Oriphiel didn't share much about that. He seemed to think that was his mission and his alone. Ah, and someone outed you and Leo as tricksters."

That would've been Eligos, the only one besides me and mine left standing at the final battle for the Light. "No, Ori wasn't a pigeon who played well with others, and that's saying something. Good at bossing, sniffing around where he shouldn't be, saying what he shouldn't say, but cooperation-there was a word that escaped him." I took a swallow of juice and raised it toward the waitress for a refill. "And Upstairs is right. I wouldn't listen to another of their kind after him. He was such an ass that I didn't mind watching Eligos play a few head games with him." I caught a last dab of gravy on my plate with my thumb and studied it. Humans in all their imperfections had created a food so perfect that if a heavenly choir was around, they should be singing about that.

"Eligos told me once Solomon couldn't play in his league. Neither could Oriphiel. If he hadn't wanted a certain something all to himself… power all to himself… maybe things would've turned out differently for him." I mirrored Ishiah's frown back at him, but mine was with an eye to a past longer than three months ago. "Your kind, Ishiah, your kind isn't nearly as careful as they ought be about that. The power. It's in all of you, that itch. That need. One-third of Heaven falling wasn't some fluke." I went on before he could deny it. I'd given him a truth. What he did with that truth was up to him. "So what's almighty Heaven want to pass on that needed sending you here? Think they could throw a little Aramaic message in some holy ice cubes in my fridge. A postcard from St. Peter at the pearly gates. Something I could sell on eBay at least."

He pretended to have not heard my warning or my desire to make some cash on eBay-guns and boots aren't free, boys and girls-and went to the heart of the matter. "Eligos is here, then." The long scar on his jaw whitened. "Wonderful. I'm not surprised he'd be involved in anything that had to do with angels dying. And I came because we know about Cronus. Heaven isn't blind. When more than nine hundred demons die that quickly, Heaven keeps an ear open. Demons talk, so the fact that the wings were being taken wasn't a secret long. All angels know what can be done with those wings. Cronus wants Hell and Lucifer, but we don't know why. But nothing good can come of it. I'm here to find out what I can and to let you know that now, in this particular case… Heaven and paien can stand together on this-to stop Cronus."

"Cronus is paien. What makes you think the rest of us don't stand behind him?" I asked. "Would rather stand behind him any day than have anything to do with a bunch of cloud squatters, present company excluded."

"You bunch are crazy, but none of you is as crazy as Cronus," he answered. It was a valid enough point, except that I didn't think Heaven would be much help.

"Maybe." I held up my glass for the waitress. "It's a nice gesture and all, much obliged, sugar. I just don't see that your former place of business has anything to offer. I wish they did, but unless we get…" I stopped and let a thought somersault around my brain for a second. It might not work. Ninety-nine point nine percent it wouldn't. Talk about your real hate-hate relationship. No, no bookie in Vegas would take that bet, but it was worth thinking on a little more.