Archangel's Consort (Guild Hunter #3)(19)

Nodding, she stepped out into the cold, crisp light of the corridor, and col apsed against the wall . The shakes took time to pass. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to the girl who would never again laugh or cry or run ... and to the one who would soon be told that her best friend was dead.

Then she stiffened her spine and used her cel phone to cal a number she’d avoided since waking from the coma. Her father picked up on the first ring.

“Yes?” A curt demand.

“Hello, Jeffrey.”

His silence was eloquent. He didn’t like it when she used his name—but he’d lost the right to any familial address the day he’d told her she was an

“abomination,” a pol utant in the il ustrious Deveraux family tree. “Elieanora,” he said, his tone pure frost. “May I assume the unpleasantness at the girls’

school today had something to do with you?”

Guilt twisted her stomach into knots. “Evelyn may have been the target.” Hand pressed hard against the chipped paint of the wall , she told him the rest.

“Her best friend, Betsy, was murdered. You must know how alike they look . . . looked.”

“Yes.”

“Evelyn needs to be told. The names will leak to the media soon enough.”

“I’ll have her mother speak to her.” Another pause. “The girls will be tutored at home until you sort out whatever mess you’ve created this time.”

It was a direct hit, and she took it. Because he was right. The two youngest Deveraux girls were in the line of fire because of her. “That’s probably for the best.” She didn’t know what else to say, how to speak to this man who had once been her father and was now a stranger who seemed to want only to hurt her.

In the days after she’d woken from the coma, she’d remembered forgotten pieces of her childhood, remembered the father she’d loved all those years ago. Jeffrey had held her hand in the hospital after her two older sisters had been murdered in that blood-soaked kitchen, led her down to the basement in spite of bitter opposition so she could see Ari and Bel e again—she’d needed to be certain that her sisters real y did rest in peace, that the monster hadn’t made them like him. He’d cried that day. Her father, the man with a stone-cold heart, had cried. Because he’d been a different man.

As she’d been a different girl.

“From your silence,” Jeffrey said with cutting impatience, “I take it the Guild Director didn’t pass on my message.”

Jeffrey had never liked Sara, being as she was part of Elena’s “filthy” profession. Elena’s hand tightened on the phone, until she was sure she could feel her bones crunching against one another. “I wasn’t able to meet Sara this morning.” They’d been meant to have coffee, catch up. Elena had been looking forward to kissing her goddaughter, Zoe, seeing how big she’d grown.

“Of course. You were at the school.” Rigid and unbending as granite. “I need to speak to you face-to-face. Be here tomorrow morning, or lose your right to take part in the decision.”

“What decision?” Jeffrey and she hadn’t had anything to say to each other for ten years before Uram invaded the city. Even now, the only words they exchanged were well -honed weapons, designed to inflict maximum damage.

“All you need to know is that it’s a family matter.” He hung up, and though it frustrated Elena until tears—stupid, unwanted—pricked at her eyes, she knew she’d turn up at his office as ordered. Because the family he spoke of might be splintered, but it included not only Amethyst and Evelyn, but also Marguerite’s youngest daughter, Beth.

None of the three deserved to be caught in the crossfire of the endless war that raged between Jeffrey and Elena.




Having spent two hours in the Tower with Jason, talking through the information that had brought the black-winged angel to the city, Raphael now came in for a silent landing in the woods that separated his estate from the home Michaela used while in his territory. As he walked to take a position in front of the small pool his gardener had created in a grotto he’d shaded with vines and tucked in among the solid bulk of the larger trees, Raphael wondered if Elena saw more than he did.

He knew he was arrogant. It was inevitable, given the years he’d lived, the power at his command. But he’d never been stupid. So he heeded his hunter’s words, augmenting his mental shields with care before he stared down at the placid waters of the darkened pool and said, Lijuan, “pushing” the thought across the world.

There was a chance he’d fail to reach her, for he had no intention of undertaking a true sending. The price demanded was too high. In the Quiet, he became monstrous, stripped down to the lethal cold of power without conscience. It was during such a state that he’d terrified Elena so much she’d shot him, the scar on his wing a stunning reminder to never again walk that road.

If this did not succeed, he would have to send Lijuan a handwritten message—the oldest of the archangels eschewed modern conveniences like the phone. However, the water rippled an instant later, far faster than he’d expected. He’d known Lijuan’s strength had grown exponential y, but the rapid response, coupled with the fact that he’d used a minute amount of his own power, argued for a strength beyond anything the rest of the Cadre had imagined.