Rob Thurman - The Grimrose Path

Because that was who was waiting for me, minus the teen part. Shoulder-length blond hair, white wings barred with gold, and eyes the color of the water where the Titanic had sunk. Dark gray-blue. Oh, and he had a sword.

The angel quirked his lips very slightly. “You wouldn’t believe what a bitch it was getting this through airport security.”

I shot the jukebox with the gun hidden in the dead plant by the door, put the weapon back, and then dropped my face into my hands. I liked Ishiah. I trusted Ishiah to a certain point, which was big for a trickster. But I did not need this. I didn’t want this. I didn’t even want to see it. Not now. I was exhausted. I had too much on my plate and I just wanted to sleep.

“Trixa,” the voice coaxed. “It won’t be like last time, my word, not that you have anyone but yourself to blame for that.” There was that attitude. That disapproving, condescending attitude. “I’m here to assist you. Only that. There will be no last time this time.”

Last time. I didn’t want to talk about the last time. I didn’t want to think about the last time. I wished the last time could be erased from time itself altogether, because I would never live it down. Not until my dying day.

Last time. Why did he have to bring it up? I considered taking out the gun again and doing to myself what I’d done to the jukebox.

Hallelujah, my ass.

More like Hellelujah.

I went downstairs in the morning, late . . . around eleven, but it was a long night and I’d called Zeke around eight a.m. to hear Griffin was doing well, but was still an asshole. Reassured about his physical health if not the lack of improvement in his assholery, I went back to sleep for another two and a half hours. When I did get up, I dressed for success after showering. No sweats or T-shirts for running or the occasional footy pajamas for comfort sleeping. I wanted this particular angel to know I was in business and meant it as well. With a thin long-sleeve sweater in psychedelic swirls of dark red, bronze, and black; black jeans and boots; and a flashy gold and garnet of earrings to match the tiny stud in my nose.

Leo was there . . . at the opposite end of the bar, staring unblinking at the angel who had taken a stool at the other end. He might have spent the night on that stool, or on the couch in Leo’s office, gotten a hotel.... I didn’t know. Last night I’d walked past him without a word and gone upstairs to sleep. Where he did the same didn’t worry me. He more than could take care of himself, the scar on his jaw told you that. Now he was staring as unblinkingly back at Leo, giving just as good as he got until he heard me. Then he swiveled, took me in, and gave a grave nod. “The new look becomes you. And from Mica to Trixa Iktomi. That suits you as well, but a last name? How human of you.”

Mica had been like Cher or Madonna. One name needed only,for the last time I’d seen Ishiah—who wasn’t technically an angel anymore, although I’d known him when he had been one, making his list of who went into the Roman orgies and who walked righteously by. Stick up his ass the same as all of them. Not worth wasting your breath on with his “Thou shall not this; thou shall not that” sanctimonious attitude. But when he went native . . . retired and became a peri, he mellowed. Slowly, but he had. The last time I’d seen him, the infamous last time , he hadn’t been bad at all, especially considering what we’d done to his bar. At the time, although he was retired, I hadn’t considered him on our side by any means. It was one of the few times I’d been . . . not so much wrong, but not quite right either. When Ishiah had gone native, he’d thoroughly done that deal. He tried to stay neutral . . . like Switzerland, only without the corrupt banks.

No, Ishiah wasn’t a bad guy.

“Swoop your feather-duster ass over here and give me a hug, sugar.” I spread my arms and hugged him hard when he stepped up. The wings had been put away and I could feel the muscle of his back under his shirt. Leo snorted. He was either jealous or playing at being jealous. I did the same for him, both kinds. We were good for each other’s ego that way. But, honestly, a peri and me? No. He might be an expatriate of Heaven, but I could still get a whiff of the holy off him and that wasn’t the best of cologne for turning me on. But he wasn’t bad for a peri and a friend to many païen kind, so I hugged him again before stepping back. “Do I look that different? I can’t remember what I looked like during the Exodus.” So many looks, so many outsides; it was what was inside that made you. It was the inside you had to remember.

“Your hair was black and straight, your skin was a darker brown, and your eyes were pale blue-green. The color of glacier lakes, you told me.” He continued while raising an eyebrow, “Shameful that it is, you were still vain then too. And don’t call it the Exodus. It’s disrespectful.”

I was not vain. I never chose cookie-cutter beauty. I chose to be different, exotic, wild, and everything most people saw every day on separate people but combined into one unforgettable whole. Why have a boring vanilla wafer when you can have a chocolate chip-peanut butter-coconut-caramel cookie? Vain. Hardly. But disrespectful, that I was and claimed with pleasure. “Why not? That’s what it was. Why let a perfectly good word go unused because your kind used it once and capitalized it first?”

An Exodus it had been too—seventy years ago in New York City. Eden House New York had still existed and angels and demons were everywhere. Angels had been ordering their Eden House human soldiers to wipe the demons clean from the city, but that wasn’t going to happen—they didn’t have the numbers and angels rarely fought these days when they had their humans to do it for them. The demons were determined to take out Eden House and have one helluva good time in the process. No one knew what made each side take a stand there. There were hundreds of cities worldwide and they had a presence in all of them. Why was each side determined to make New York theirs and theirs only? I doubt they knew themselves. Sometimes there doesn’t need to be a reason, only egos and idiocy.

Seventy years ago those egos and idiocy blew up. It became so blatant that people were starting to notice—even oblivious people living in their mundane, no-surprises-left-in-the-world existences. They began to question. They began to look—they saw miracles and horrors, and while it was written off to religious hysteria for a few weeks, someone else noticed too—noticed the danger.

We did. The païen .

There were plenty of us in New York. An aware human population was the last thing we needed. Our numbers were dropping as the years spooled out and if humans found out about angels and demons living among them, how long would it be until they found out about us? How long would we last if they did?

We hadn’t waited to find out. I hooked an arm with Ishiah and led him over to Leo. “You damn sure missed out, Leo. They bussed in all the païen in the tristate area and some of us came from even farther to get in on the action. We steel-toed their asses out of the city like Adam and Eve out of paradise. Nearly every païen species alive came together. It was unprecedented.” I smiled, warm and happy at the memory. “Every demon who dared poke his head aboveground to shake the sulfur off his scaly feet, we killed. We caught every Eden Houser alive, kept some of the badder of us from eating them, tied them up, and put them on those same buses we rode in on. Sent them out. And after they’d seen us, not a one came back.” Only the head of each Eden House knew about the païen kind—vamps, weres, tricksters, revenants, on and on. The soldiers didn’t know. Demons were enough for them to handle, their bosses thought, and thought right. They not only didn’t return, but a few ended up seeking mental health care . . . of the inpatient-hospital kind. Pretty white coats that tied in the back. Demons they could take, but us? That drove them over the edge. Please. Crybaby candyasses.