Hannah Jayne - Under Attack

Alex raised his eyebrows expectantly and I flipped the sandwich, sighing. “Because the Vessel is charmed,” I said, answering my own question.

“Even the angelic plane uses magic. They like to hide things in plain sight.”

“Really?”

Alex nodded and took a swig from his bottle. “Yeah. Last I heard the Holy Grail was actually a tanning bed in Manhattan Beach.”

I narrowed my eyes at Alex’s little-boy grin. “Really, Lawson. You’re the only one I know who will be able to see through the charm.”

Along with my superior pizza-eating and state-reciting powers, I am also magically immune. My grandmother was a seer, my mother was a mind-melder, and my specialty? Nothing. In a good way. Nothing magical can be used on me. Veils, charms, spells, happy endings—anything that could be conjured, wanded, or abracadab-raed was lost on me. The magical immunity helped working in the Underworld. The occasional fire-breathing dragon singe or High witch explosion rolled off me like water off a duck’s back. Warlocks couldn’t use glamour spells to make me fall in love with them and give them extra magiks freedoms or process their paperwork any faster, and I could share a cup of coffee with Medusa and stay perfectly, humanly pink.

I flipped the second sandwich onto a plate and handed it to Alex.

“Okay,” I said. “Where do we start?”

I was sprawled on the couch, eating the peanut-butter part of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when I heard the lock tumble and Nina walked in, dropping her shoulder bag in a heap. Vlad loped in behind her, his shoulders slumped in his black velvet sport coat, earbuds securely clipped in his ears, iPod turned up so loud we could hear the white-noise whir of his music.

“Turn that crap down!” Nina snarled.

Vlad rolled his eyes and snatched his laptop from the kitchen table, then slunk off to the fire escape.

Nina wagged her head as she looked after him, then rubbed her temples. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do with him.” Though Vlad was technically one hundred and thirteen, he was forever sixteen.

He poked his head back into the living room and eyed Nina and me. “Do we have any of that AB negative left?”

Moody, grunty, hungry sixteen.

“Check the fridge,” Nina said to Vlad without taking her eyes off me. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said to me with a frown.

Nina was my coworker, my roommate, and my very best friend. She was ballerina slim and elegantly tall, with waist-length gorgeous black hair that tumbled over her defined shoulders and highlighted her deep, coal-black eyes. She was the kind of friend I could tell anything to, the kind of girl who always took your side, would stay up nights sharing secrets with you.

And also, she was dead.

Well, undead.

Nina was a one hundred and sixty-eight-year-old vampire and had the pale complexion, penchant for type O neg, and the pointed incisors to prove it.

She was born—the first time—in 1842 and as a twenty-nine-year-old party-girl heiress, she climbed out her bedroom window one night to meet a dark-eyed stranger. Three days and two punctured arteries later, she caused the massacre of the Elpistones army. That was a long time ago and her bloodlust had long ago subsided, being replaced by an insatiable urge for high-end couture. Tonight she was wearing a vintage Guy Laroche cocktail dress with a pair of nosebleed-high leather boots, paired with an Old Navy hoodie and a felt cloche hat. She looked like a page out of Vogue ; in the same outfit, I would have looked like a college kid on laundry day.

“No ghosts,” I said, still studying my sandwich. “Alex.”

Nina sat down with a start on the coffee table. “Alex Grace?” She whipped her head around. “Where is he? Is he here now? I want to kick that son of a bitch’s—” She paused. “Unless you’re back together, then we should all go out and get drinks.” She grinned, her small fangs pressing against her bloodstained lips.

I clicked off the TV. “He wants my help.”

Nina’s eyebrows shot up. “Another mystery? Ooh, I want in.” She clapped her hands. “What’s going on now? Murder? Mayhem? General mystical unruliness?”

“Heaven stuff.”

“Boo.” Nina cocked her head, considering. “Well, I guess that could be fun. So, where’s Alex now?”

I shrugged. “Wherever angels go when they’re not here. Or, back to the police station. I don’t know.”

Being a fallen angel came with all sorts of otherworld perks, but it didn’t come with a paycheck. To keep himself in cloud pillows and ambrosia (okay, beer and pizza), Alex kept his bank account padded with occasional work with the San Francisco Police Department. To them he was an undercover FBI field agent whose long disappearances were chalked up to hush-hush cases in the field; to me he was just annoyingly undependable.

Currently, San Francisco was Alex’s home base. His paychecks and credit card bills went to an apartment he kept in the Richmond district; I happened to notice the address on a piece of mail that was inadvertently left in my apartment (after it fell out of Alex’s office). When I happened to drive by the Turk Street address, I found it was an empty storefront with newspaper-covered windows and a heap of Target ads and Safeway circulars jammed in the mail slot. I hadn’t gotten around to asking Alex about his fake address—mainly because he never asked me if I’d stolen any of his mail.

“I just don’t know if I want to get involved,” I said.

At one time I had considered Alex and my dead/undead relationship passionate and romantically star-crossed; now I considered it hopelessly dead-end.

Mostly.

There was something about his sexy half-smile, his lush, pink-tinged lips, and my dating drought that made me swoon in a way that brought a blush to my cheeks, a tingle to my nether regions, and made me deeply consider the benefit of one-night stands.

I readjusted myself on the couch and tried to remind myself that losing Alex the first time was gut-wrenchingly, Lifetime-television bad. I didn’t know if I could—or wanted to—go through it again.

Nina cocked her head, picked a glob of jelly off the lapel of my bathrobe. “You mean because you’re so busy here.”

I tried to glare. “I mean I’m not sure if I want to get involved with Alex again. The last year has been so ...” I let the word trail off and tried to avoid Nina’s annoyed stare as self-pity ballooned in my chest.

“The last year has been so what? Ordinary? You may not have been hung up by your ankles lately, but you’ve also managed to watch the entire seven seasons of The Golden Girls multiple times. And”—Nina held up a single index f inger—“you’ve alphabetized our spice rack. Twice. If that’s not a body calling out for a little extracurricular activity, I don’t know what is.”

I remained unconvinced—and gun shy. I had fallen hook, line, and sinker for Alex’s baby blues once, and after a few steamy scenes he disappeared for six months without a word. When I finally got over the heartbreak and stopped listening to mopey love songs, Alex popped back into my life—this time, with bad news.

“It’s not like the relationship is going to go anywhere. He wants to go—” I paused, looking for the right word. “Back.” I sighed miserably. “Last I heard Heaven-to-Earth long-distance relationships didn’t ever pan out too well.”

“So it’s destined to be a dead-end relationship?”

I nodded.

“Even more reason to jump in with both feet and no panties on!”

I licked some peanut butter off my index finger and blew out a tortured sigh. “Why even bother if you know a relationship is doomed from the get-go? It’s just asking for heartbreak.”