Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days #1)(63)

Her eyes slide to me as if she wants to say her price is to have me killed. Then she looks back at Raffe, weighing her options.

Someone knocks on the door.

Laylah’s eyes widen in alarm. Josiah looks like he’s just been condemned to hell.

“It’s just my dinner,” says Raffe. He opens the door before anyone can scramble away.

In the doorway stands Dee-Dum, looking professional and detached even though he can’t miss seeing all of us in one glance. He’s still in his butler’s outfit with the coattails and white gloves. Beside him is a cart bearing a silver-domed tray and silverware laid out on a folded napkin. The room fills once more with the scents of warm meat and fresh vegetables.

“Where would you like this, sir?” asks Dee-Dum. He shows no sign of recognition, no judgment about Raffe’s near nakedness.

“I’ll take it.” Raffe takes the tray. He also shows no sign of recognition. Maybe Raffe never noticed the twins at the camp. There’s no doubt that the twins noticed Raffe.

As the door closes, Dee-Dum bows but his eyes never stop tracking the scene in the room. I’m sure he has every detail, every face memorized.

Raffe never turns his back to him to show his scars, so Dee-Dum might still think him human. Although I wonder if he saw Raffe at the club with his wings displayed through his jacket slits. Either way, Obi’s people can’t be happy that two escaped “guests” of their camp ended up in the company of angels at the aerie. I wonder if Raffe were to jerk the door open right now, would we find Dee-Dum with his ear to the door?

Laylah relaxes a little and seats herself on a leather chair, like a queen taking her throne. “You appear uninvited, eat our food, make yourself at home in our place like a rat, and you have the nerve to ask for help?”

I meant to keep quiet. Getting back his wings is as important to Raffe as rescuing Paige is to me. But watching her lounge in front of a panoramic view of the charred city is too much for me.

“It’s not your food, and it’s not your place.” I practically spit out the words.

“Penryn,” says Raffe in a warning voice as he puts the tray down on the bar.

“And don’t insult our rats.” My hands clench tight enough to score nail marks on my palms. “They have a right to be here. Unlike you.”

The tension is so thick I wonder if it’ll smother me. I may have just blown Raffe’s chance to get his wings back. The Aryan looks like she’s ready to break me in half.

“Okay,” says Josiah in a soothing voice. “Let’s just take a time-out here and focus on what’s important.” Of all of them, he looks the most evil with his blood-red eyes and unnaturally white everything else. But looks aren’t everything. “Raffe needs his wings back. Now all we need to do is figure out what Beautiful Laylah can get out of this, and we’ll all be happy. That’s all that matters, right?”

He looks at each of us. I want to say I won’t be happy, but I’ve said enough.

“Great, so Laylah,” says Josiah. “What can we do to make you happy?”

Laylah’s lashes sweep down coyly over her eyes. “I’ll think of something.” I have no doubt that she already knows her price. Why be coy about it? “Come to my lab in an hour. It’ll take me that long to prepare. I’ll need the wings now.”

Raffe hesitates like a man about to sign a deal with the devil. Then he walks back into the bedroom, leaving me to be stared at by Laylah and Josiah.

The hell with it. I follow after Raffe. I find him in the bathroom, wrapping his wings in towels.

“I don’t trust her,” I say.

“They can hear you.”

“I don’t care.” I lean against the doorjamb.

“Got a better idea?”

“What if she just takes your wings?”

“Then I’ll worry about it then.” He puts one wing aside and begins wrapping the other in a matching towel that’s practically the size of a sheet.

“You’ll have no leverage then.”

“I have no leverage now.”

“You have your wings.”

“What should I do with them, Penryn? Mount them up on the wall? They’re useless to me unless I can get them sewn back on.” Raffe rubs his hand over the two folds of wings. He closes his eyes.

I feel like a jerk. No doubt this is difficult enough without me reinforcing his doubts.

He glides around me through the doorway. I stay in the bathroom until I hear the front door close behind the pair of angels.





CHAPTER 33



I stare at the dark windows overlooking the charred city. “Tell me about the Messenger.” This is the first chance I get to try to make sense of the earlier conversation with Josiah.

“God commands Gabriel. He’s the Messenger. Then Gabriel tells the rest of us what God wants.” Raffe takes in a heaping spoonful of his reheated mashed potatoes. “That’s the theory, anyway.”

“And God doesn’t talk to any of the other angels?”

“Certainly not to me.” Raffe slices into his rare steak. “But then again, I haven’t been real popular lately.”

“Has He ever talked to you?”

“No. And I doubt he ever will.”

“But from what Josiah said, it sounded like you could be the next Messenger.”