Steal the Day (Thieves #2)(28)

His hand tightened on mine. “I don’t know.”

He was getting to be as bad as Daniel. There was no way I could let two million dollars walk out the door without at least listening to the deal. “This is business. We have a deal, Dev. I’m the boss when it comes to business. I’ll be fine. I’ll stay where you can see me, but I need to go talk to moneybags.”

“Fine,” he said with a bite to his voice. He might not like it, but Dev was willing to let me be the boss when it came to this. In the one job we’d run together, he’d been very good, obeying orders and keeping a cool head. In exchange, I let him take the lead in other places. “I’ll be at the bar. You tell her if I see her try anything, I swear I will have Albert take her apart.”

He stalked away, finding a place at the bar as I walked back to the table. Felicity’s face lit up when she realized I was coming back. There was a weird sense of peace that came over me the moment I got close to her, a sense that this was right, that everything would work out.

I ignored it.

“Talk.” I sat down and took another sip of my drink. Maybe vodka helped with angelic communications.

“Okay, first of all, I am so sorry about the way things went with Oliver.” She spoke quickly, as though she expected me to get up and leave any minute. She didn’t know me as well as she thought she did since I wasn’t going anywhere until we talked about those digits. “He won’t be around anymore. I’m going to be the one you deal with so you should feel free to bring your vampire around. I promise he won’t come to any harm.”

I continued to stare because she hadn’t said anything yet that required my verbal response. I knew Daniel was going to be safe because I wasn’t letting her get anywhere near him again. I glanced over at the bar. Dev had a beer in his hand, and he was watching everything that Felicity did. I noticed he’d called some of his security team over.

Her eyes followed mine. “I didn’t mean to upset Devinshea. It really was the last thing I wanted to do. I find this plane very frustrating sometimes.”

“Welcome to Earth.” I held up a hand to let the waitress know I needed another drink. She hurried off. Sleeping with the owner had its perks.

Felicity stared for a moment at Dev, and then blushed and looked down. “What is it like to sleep with someone?”

“You mean sex?” I had an angel asking me about sex? I might need the waitress to bring me a pitcher.

“Yes,” she replied, an eager look in her eyes.

This woman had nearly gotten Daniel killed and pissed Dev off. I wasn’t about to become her sex therapist. “What are we, girlfriends? Do you expect me to sit here and swap sex stories with you? You’ve got like five minutes before I walk out of here, and I will not take another meeting with you, do you understand?”

She nodded, her eyes slipping away from mine. Her hands were threaded together, and she took a deep breath before continuing. “All right. I’m sorry for prying. You just have to understand that one of the reasons we’re having problems with control is the loss of Felix. We balance each other. We watch after our charges and nudge them with our own particular talents. I embody love, you see.”

“Yeah, I got that.” The waitress set another drink in front of me. I lifted it up, giving my hands something to do. It wasn’t a good thing to show the potential client how nervous she made me. “So what’s Ollie embody? Wait, let me guess. Oliver is the embodiment of an *.”

“He is judgment. You might call it justice,” she replied with just a hint of prude. “But normally he’s not so difficult. Everything requires a balance. Love alone can be very destructive without sound judgment. But Felix is the most important of all. He is faith. Without Felix, Oliver and I are adrift, with nothing to anchor us.”

I apparently didn’t understand how Heaven worked. “So, why don’t you just talk to your boss? I hear he’s all powerful. Why doesn’t he just reach into Hell and pull up your boy?”

Her head shook. “It doesn’t work like that. If it were meant to happen that way, it would. Since it did not, I’ve taken it upon myself to save Felix. It is as it should be.”

Her logic was hard to follow, but I pressed on anyway. “So why don’t you and your angel friends just charge the Hell plane with swords ablaze and rescue him?”

She smiled, obviously amused at the image. “That’s what you would do in my position, isn’t it?”

“Damn straight.”

“You would have been an archangel,” she concluded. “I am not. I do not fight in that manner. Besides, we’ve been forbidden to enter the Hell plane. It’s one of our highest laws. I’m not supposed to even try to influence actions on the Hell plane, but Halfer didn’t play by the rules so I shall not either. I won’t go there myself. I must find a different way. I must find a paladin. I found you, Zoey Donovan. You are my knight.”

“Thief is a better classification for me, lady.” I wasn’t a knight in shining armor. I didn’t tend to throw my own needs out for the greater good. I watched my own back and took care of my people. For the most part, the rest of the world could hang.

Her blonde hair shimmered in the low light as she shook her head. “You don’t give yourself enough credit, but I have faith in you. You are a paladin. You’ll always make the right choice in the end. You’re clever, and when the time comes, you’ll use your talents for good.”