Kingdom of Lies (Imp Series Book 7) (16 page)

“How are things with Jay?” Nyalla asked. I felt like a total shit of a friend for not being the one to inquire. I knew Candy had been keeping her werewolf identity from her boyfriend for over a year, but the deception was wearing on her conscience, and the strain was causing problems between them.

Candy sighed, slipping the photo album in her purse. “I told him. I showed him. And ... we’re taking a bit of a break while he processes the whole thing.”

I yanked my feet free from the pedicurist and reached over to give my friend a one-armed hug. “He’ll come around.”

“He will or he won’t.” Her eyes were haunted as they met mine. “He was hinting at marriage, and I really wanted to get this all on the table before.”

“Would you have said ‘yes’?” I asked.

Candy’s jaw clamped firm. “I would. But not to a man who doesn’t love the entirety of me.”

I knew exactly what she meant. Nearly a thousand years it had taken to find someone who truly loved the weird combination that was me. Dar, as my brother, had come close, but even he struggled to understand the strange human-like emotions and urges I had. Even Wyatt, saint that he’d been, hadn’t fully reconciled himself to my demon half.

Gregory loved me. He loved a little cockroach of an imp with a whole lot of potential, but not a lot of skill. He’d loved a foul-mouthed, sensation-loving demon who held enough raw energy to blow up an entire state, who devoured, who did foolish reckless things and didn’t always put two-and-two together. He loved the only Angel of Chaos in two-and-a-half-million years, the imp who’d seized a part of his angel-essence, who’d defied him and mocked him at every turn. He loved me.

And, damn it all, I loved him too. My own asshole-angel. I only hoped Candy got that chance. She’d loved once, but deserved to have someone who could partner with the person, the wolf, she was today. She needed another alpha to match her, and Jay might be human, but from what I’d seen, he was defiantly an alpha and her equal.

“If you need me to smack some sense into the man, let me know,” I told her, letting the esthetician once again take control of my feet.

“I don’t think this is a situation that calls for duct tape.” Candy lifted one eyebrow at me then turned a critical eye on her newly minted manicure.

“Every situation calls for duct tape,” Nyalla announced. That girl was beginning to scare me. She’d been so innocent and afraid when she’d arrived from Hel, but each month peeled back another layer to reveal a confident, oddly psychotic individual. Still innocent, but with a cheerful pragmatism when it came to the need for violence in certain situations. I liked to blame the ghoul incident, but I had a bad feeling my influence had weighed heavily on the woman she’d become.

Terrelle ignored the duct-tape and baby conversations, soaking in every bit of the spa experience. She’d been particularly fascinated by nail wraps and waxing. I swear there probably wasn’t a scrap of hair left on her body after that tiny dark-haired woman in the back had finished with her. I suspected the demon had a dinner date later with her.

“Harper is bringing baby Dallas by later,” Nyalla told me, her smile radiant.

Shit. I totally needed to find something to do for the rest of the evening. A baby in my house wasn’t my idea of a good time, even a Nephilim baby.

“Good to know.”

I relaxed back into the chair and scrolled through my texts and e-mails, trying to keep my mind off a baby potentially puking up breast milk on my oriental rug. Delete. Delete. Not delete. There was an e-mail from Wyatt, and I sucked in a breath, my hand shaking slightly as I hit the button to open it. I hadn’t heard from him in weeks.

Sam—there are unicorns in Lancaster, and a buddy sent me the attached picture
.

Unicorns. I ground my teeth together, barely hearing the woman who was exfoliating my feet scold me in a blend of Korean and English. Taking a deep breath, I clicked to download the photo and crossed my fingers.

“Damn.” I stared at the photo. Candy leaned over my shoulder to eye my phone. “Brownie,” I told her.

“Oh, I love those,” Nyalla chimed in. “Are they the ones with walnuts? Brownies with walnuts are the best.”

Not those kind of brownies. Wyatt’s picture showed a winged creature in mid-flight, wings a blur of speed, abnormally sharp teeth in a fierce snarl. The brownie’s limbs were like twigs, brown and thin with knobbly joints. His hair was walnut colored, caught in motion in an upright spike of brown. There was either a gateway to Aerie besides the one that Gregory and I had closed, or this nasty little guy had slipped through when Zalanes brought over the Melusine.

Fae generally stayed put, but brownies liked to roam, and they weren’t the most sociable of creatures when it came to other races. I wondered how many fingers and other body parts the amateur photographer had lost to grab this amazing mid-action shot.

I sent a quick text to Wyatt, feeling guilty. I shouldn’t. He e-mailed me, clearly wanting my input. It wasn’t like I was pestering him, using him for his skills and knowledge while running off with Gregory and leaving my ex—damn, it still killed me to even think that preface—ex-boyfriend behind. He’d reached out to me. This was the mature, polite, adult thing to do.

Candy caught her breath. She was the only other one who could see the picture on my screen. Nyalla and Terrelle were debating blondies or brownies and whether chocolate chips or nuts were a better addition to the baked good.

My phone chimed a text response, and I angled the phone so Candy could read it. She was one of the few of my friends I trusted with all the bad shit. Candy had amazing strength and leadership ability. The werewolves and Nephilim were mine to protect, and I was stretched too thin not to accept highly qualified help when it was offered.

“Richmond.” Candy’s eyes met mine. “Can we help?”

I appreciated the offer, but I didn’t want to put my furry friends to chasing tiny, flying, brutally vicious brownies around Richmond Virginia. Because, yes, there were more than one, and they’d appeared out of nowhere, which put the theory that they’d come through with the melusine to rest. No, this was another gateway. Either Orias was still having some fun, or we were facing a global disaster.

“Not now, but I’ll let you know.” I tried to convey nonverbally how much I appreciated Candy’s offer while forwarding the pictures and details to Gregory. Nils was out looking for Swifthethian and the gem. I’d brought over two additional Lows from my household to scour Pennsylvania and the Amtrak stops for signs of the elf or the demon accompanying him. As soon as my polish dried, I was off to tear Dar away from his angelic lover to help with any other gateways that needed closing. I’d put out a call to Leethu, which had gone unanswered. Grimacing, I eyed down the pedicure line at my friends, wondering who could assist in closing gateways and/or rounding up brownies and unicorns. Terrelle was up next, and I could put Nyalla on Internet research duty. As much as I didn’t want to risk them among angels who still might not respect my authority, Candy and her werewolves could track down unicorns. They’d probably never scented one before, so a unicorn should stand out like a beacon if one crossed within nose range of a werewolf.

I clenched my jaw, took a deep breath and texted Wyatt—he’d sent me the pic of the brownie, gave me a heads-up on the unicorns. Although I wouldn’t directly ask for his help, I wanted to let him know about the issue regarding the gateways.

I counted to ten and heard the chime of the incoming text as it shot across my screen. It was the Wyatt equivalent of a ‘what-the-fuck?’. Then my phone rang.

“I’ve got it,” I told him in lieu of a greeting. “If you could keep your ears open for brownies, unicorns, trolls, or drop bears, I’d appreciate it.”

“Sam, you could have given me a head’s-up on all this.” Yep, Wyatt was pissed. “They still haven’t caught that little flying terror in Richmond, and the unicorn—wait, what’s a drop bear?”

“Think murderous koala. And I didn’t have a spare second to tell you. I’ve been balls-to-the-wall since I found out.” Well, except for now. I couldn’t exactly tell Wyatt I’d found time for a mani-pedi with the girls but not time to clue him in about a dead elf, and a troll still hanging out somewhere in Pennsylvania.

“So, what, you don’t need me now? Just a casual text and a request to keep my ears open? That’s it?”

I couldn’t seem to do anything right when it came to Wyatt. I’d distanced myself, tried not to embroil him in all this supernatural shit in an effort to give him space to create a life without me. I wanted to beg him to hold this conversation until later, when we could be alone and not eagerly overheard by my friends and the entire staff of Heavenly Hands Spa. Instinct warned me that if I put him off, things would only get worse between us.

“I do need you.” I glanced over and saw Candy wrinkle her nose in sympathy. “But you’ve been busy these last few months, and I didn’t want you to think I was using you by calling for help all the time.”

“There are unicorns practically in my backyard, Sam!” I winced and held the phone a few inches from my ear. “I think I have a right to know about these kind of things after all we’ve been through together.”

This was starting to piss me off. If he wanted distance between us, fine. He could hardly expect me to do all the heavy lifting in our ‘friendship’ if all I was getting was radio silence on his part.

“A right to know? Like the way I found out about the genie in Chicago? I haven’t heard from you in three weeks, Wyatt, and the first text I get is about unicorns and brownies. The first call I get is you bitching to me because you’re out of the loop. You can’t have it both ways, buddy. You’re either in this mess, or you’re not. Girlfriend or just friends—that’s your call, but if you want to be part of the magical-gem-unicorn-hunting party, then you need to give me a clue. Decide, Wyatt. Get in the pool, or get the fuck out.”

I heard the click of him hanging up and barely restrained myself from throwing the phone across the room. “Fuck him,” I muttered.

The woman painting my toenails said something in Korean indicating agreement with my expletive. There was a moment of silence as I studiously ignored all the sympathetic eyes turned my way.

“Who’s Wyatt?” Terella asked, cheerfully oblivious to the mood in the room.

“A man,” Candy answered, patting my arm. “And I think we could all use a few more glasses of wine right now.”

I was halfway through my third glass of pinot noir when Gregory appeared out of nowhere, frightening the spa staff and causing Terrelle to reflexively kick her esthetician in the face. I was about to suggest a manicure, but one glance at the expression on his face drove that idea right out of my mind.

“You,” he announced, pointing at me. “And you.” The index finger on his other hand stabbed toward Terrelle.

“Me?” she squeaked.

We appeared in a field. When my vision cleared, I saw two angels hopping about and waving their arms as they shooed a giant bird away from something. I assumed that something was dead since the bird looked like a giant vulture with a woman’s head, complete with long, stringy, blond hair. I would have thought her a demon except for the absence of any kind of demon energy.

“A harpy.” Terrelle gasped.

That’s what a harpy looks like? “Damn.” I nudged Gregory with my elbow. “I don’t think this is Orias’s fault anymore. He can’t be three places at once.”

“Cockroach, you have no idea. As we speak, your brother and Asta are attempting to take care of a pod of sea nymphs on the shores of Lake Superior. Twenty campers and fishermen have followed them into the lakes and drowned.”

Shit. “Did they bring a siren with them? They sometimes work together. Oh, and did you get my text? There’s another gateway to Aerie around Richmond, Virginia. At least one brownie sighting there.”

“And unicorns, and harpies.” Gregory gestured.

And trolls, and drop bears—oh my. “She get a human?” I nodded toward the corpse on the ground.

“No. A demon.”

Damn, indeed
. Now I knew why Gregory had brought me. Part of my enhanced job duties included a stack of reports for each demon death that I needed to sign-off on. ‘A professional courtesy to give me the details regarding the demise of any of my people’, Gabriel had informed me.

“Let’s go check it out.” I was curious what level of demon could have been killed by a harpy. That thing had to be pretty badass if it had taken out anything higher than a Low. I was also curious why Gregory had insisted Terrelle come along, but I figured we’d get to that eventually.

Checking out the dead demon was easier in theory than in practice. Evidently harpies are very possessive about their kill. I tried to sneak in to see the smear of blood and flesh that had once held a demon, but even with two angels trying to keep it back, the bird-woman prevailed. With the agility of a professional running back, she darted around them and raced toward me, teeth bared and shrieking a noise that set my hair on end. Her wings doubled as hands, and the claws on the end nearly got me twice before I managed to duck away. Terrelle danced around the outside edges, trying to look as if she were helping when it was obvious she was keeping safely out of the way. Gregory didn’t even pretend to help. He stood back with arms crossed, a little smile betraying just how amusing he found the whole situation.

I’d just taken an ostrich-sized foot to the stomach when I conceded defeat and turned to Gregory. “Can I kill her?”

“No.” He wiped the little smirk off his face and regarded me with placid calm. “We need to return her to her home through the gateway as soon as you identify the demon for the report. Then we’ll seal the rift.”

I glared at the shrieking, nasty monster chasing the angels around. How the fuck we were going to get her through a gate was beyond me. I’d rather wrestle a dozen durfts. Still, getting rid of this harpy was the only way I was going to get within five feet of the dead demon.

“Let’s deal with her first,” I told my angel. Terrelle had given up all attempts at looking useful and had come to stand beside us. “You grab the harpy. I’ll find the gate, and then you can toss her to the other side. I don’t think it’s going to be easy to get her away from her dinner, so you’re probably going to need to exert force, or whatever angel mojo you’ve got going on.”