Eleventh Grave in Moonlight (Charley Davidson #11)(41)

“What’s so different about Shawn? I didn’t notice anything unusual besides the pureness of his aura.”

“Because you never look beyond what meets the eye. You rely too much on reading their emotions.”

“It’s worked pretty good for me so far. And looking beyond? You mean like when I shift onto the other plane?” I took his silence as a yes. “Okay, so if I’d looked harder, what would I have seen?”

“The opposite of me.”

Fine. He was being Cryptic Man, which meant he was nowhere near comfortable talking about it. “Opposite. Like dark versus light?”

He finally met my gaze again. “He is Nephilim.”

“Nephilim? You mean…” My jaw dropped open, and I sat there, stunned speechless, for about an hour. That a Nephilim—part human, part angel—was even possible. That it could actually happen. “They’re real?”

“He is descended from the union of a Grigori and a human.”

“Does he know that?”

“I doubt it.”

“Holy cow.” I walked back to the brook. “This is big. This is like discovering Noah’s ark. Or the Holy Grail. Or a crashed UFO.”

“There are more than you might think.”

I spun back to him. “There are more? How do I not know these things?”

“You should come here again.” A whisper of a grin played on his mouth.

“We should get back.”

“In that case, you’ll definitely have to come here.”

I walked back to him and let him wrap me in his arms.

“Hold on tight,” he said, humor in the warning.

“Wait. Would you really have dropped me this morning?”

He bent closer to whisper in my ear. “Right on your ass.”

Before I could reply, the celestial world slammed into us. Whipping and howling and coursing. And then it was gone, and we were in Reyes’s office.

I swayed as I got my bearings, then glared up at him.

“That’s awful,” I continued, picking up where we left off and wishing I had that kind of control over my destination. “You’re supposed to care for me and protect me and make me tacos.”

“Please.” He sat behind his desk, leaned back, and watched me. Again. “The day you need anyone’s protection is the day … well, the day hell freezes over. I don’t think dear old Dad is going to take that lying down. I should probably have your back. But until then…”

Fine. I’d go along with it. “Any idea when I’m scheduled to transform his dimension into Ice Capades: Hell on Ice?”

“Hey, boss.” Sammy poked his head in. “Fryer’s on the fritz again.”

I perked up. “Did you check the carburetor?” Gawd, I was so helpful.

He laughed softly and shook his head. “Davidson, did you stop taking your medication again?”

“Why? What have you heard?”

“I’ll call Saul,” Reyes said.

Really?

Sammy gave him a thumbs-up and me the crazy sign. I felt very judged.

I had Reyes talking. I wasn’t about to give up on this conversation just because he had to call Saul.

As he picked up the phone, I continued my rant. “So, I had an idea about the god glass.” I waited for his reaction. Got none. “So, there are rules, right? I don’t know the names of the people the evil priest sent there, and I’m not the one who sent them, anyway. So I figure I can go to hell. I can get him back.”

He shook his head, then left a message on Saul’s phone.

When he hung up, he said, “You don’t understand. People don’t really burn for an eternity. That’s a myth. He’s long gone.”

“But the people in this dimension are still alive. What if we just broke it?”

“The god glass, from what I can tell, is a gate. A portal to the hell dimension. What if instead of freeing the people inside, we locked it forever? Or if the entire dimension collapsed and trapped them for all eternity?”

He had some really good points. I sat across from him, defeated.

“Besides, if it really is god glass, I doubt you can just break it with a hammer.”

Another good point.

“Does it bother you that I have it?”

“Should it?”

I draped my body over his desk. He could be so frustrating.

He laughed under his breath.

“I suppose you have to work.”

“Nothing urgent. Do you want to tell me how you ended up stranded in Scotland?”

I shrugged, his coat heavy on my shoulders. “I just got angry.”

“At me?”

“At men in general.”

“Ah.”

“Do you know when I was born?”

“Come again?”

“You know. Like what era? How old am I? Are we talking the Mesozoic, or do we have to go back as far as the Paleozoic?”

“I don’t know. Your dimension is much older than this one.”

I bolted upright. “Older?”

“That’s not how it works, anyway. Time isn’t the same on every plane. This plane’s chronological structure doesn’t mesh with the one from your dimension. It would be impossible to tell.”