03 Before The Devil Knows You're Dead-Speak Of The Devil (3 page)

“You’re welcome. Personally, I’m glad to see you eating some breakfast. Someone needs to take care of you.” He glanced over at Matt and then shook himself, clearing out the haze in his mind that made him question whether or not he could beat down a guy half his size. Short answer? He didn’t have a chance.

There was a second spike of testosterone, doubled because Stephen had gotten annoyed, and I almost gagged at the smell of gym socks. Great, now I had two of them acting like Neanderthals—just what I needed.

Stephen walked away from us and went behind the counter to start on Matt’s coffee. If I was the nephilim, though, I’d be careful, I wouldn’t put it past Stephen to spit in it—or worse—if he thought Matt deserved it.

“Could you please put your dick away?” I glared at Matt. “Do you know how hard it is to get the smell of nephilim piss out of cotton?”

“Sorry,” Matt said through gritted teeth. “I didn’t realize I was going to come into my local coffee shop and find the owner trying to hump my girlfriend into the wall.”

“First off, this is my local coffee shop. You only come in here because I do and because you have a guy crush on Stephen for winning a Stanley Cup. Second, we were talking—like people do. Third, and most important, I’m a grown woman and you’re not going to go all psycho ex-boyfriend on me, or I will rain hellfire down on your delectable ass. Not to mention—technically I’m not your girlfriend anymore. Got it?”

“Got it. But I’m not giving up on making you mine again, no matter what you say, and I don’t like watching other guys drool over you while we’re trying to work things out between us. It’s one of the stupid parts of being madly in love with you. I don’t like other men sniffing around what I want to still be mine.”

“Yeah, well…” I stopped. There was no real way to answer that. Stephen brought over his coffee and handed me a bag. I found four cupcakes and a muffin stuffed inside. I smiled at Stephen and he gave me a grin before hurrying back behind the counter to restock his baked goods.

“What are you doing here anyway? When I asked you to have breakfast this morning you told me you had plans. Supersecret Angale stuff, remember?”

I hated myself for bringing up the job that kept us apart. The job I loathed. The one that kept us from being together. I hated his job so much and every time we were together I found myself bringing it up, poking at it like a scab that I didn’t want to heal. “Matt and the Angale,” a big mortal wound right into the heart of our relationship.

“Tolliver asked me to stop by and make sure you made it home safely before I went out to the compound for the day,” Matt said quietly and took my hand, like he knew that I was thinking about the wall his new job had put between us and somehow wanted to help me find a way to breach it.

“Oh, you are kidding me.” Lisa dropped her head onto the counter, ignoring our hands. “It’s two damn blocks.”

“He’s being protective,” I said.

“He’s being a pain in the ass,” Lisa said and Matt chuckled, reaching over to pat her hand. “Anyway, why were you meeting with Tolliver?”

Matt glanced over at me. “I met with him and Faith’s dad to discuss building an Angale prison in Purgatory.”

“Why?” I asked. The last time we’d talked about it he’d been sure he could bring the Angale into the modern age peacefully. “Who?”

“Brenda,” he said, his voice barely more than a disgusted mutter. “She escaped house arrest again and was trying to convince some of the former hardliners to back her in a coup attempt.”

“Shit,” Lisa said. “That girl just doesn’t give up does she?”

I was about to say something sarcastic about being young and psychotically obsessed with someone when my phone started to vibrate. I glanced down at my caller ID and saw my mother’s beaming smile staring back at me. Great, exactly what I needed this morning—a soon to be royal pain in the ass.

Chapter Three

“Are you going to answer that?” Matt asked as my phone did the Macarena across the table.

“I hadn’t planned on it.” I sat back and crossed my arms over my chest, trying to signal how much I wasn’t planning on dealing with my mother this morning.

I had ended up working a twelve-hour shift the night before on the pediatric-intensive-care unit as the charge nurse to cover for other nurses, dealt with one death, two cases of projectile vomiting, and one case of explosive diarrhea. Not to mention one pissed off archangel who was trying to off my patients.

I needed coffee, a shower, and to possibly rethink my current positions on not getting naked with the nephilim beside me because my current horny to resolve ratio was starting to tip in favor of debauching him. Nowhere on that list did dealing with my parents come into play. That had fallen off the table after the first round of nausea.

“Fine.” Matt snatched up the phone and answered it. “Hello?”

“What the hell are you doing?” I looked first at Lisa and then at Matt. When I said that I didn’t want to talk to my mother I didn’t mean I wanted Matt to take a message—I wanted to pretend that my mother lives on the other side of the planet and wasn’t calling to act as my own personal plague of Egypt.

“Faith is indisposed right now.” Matt held a finger up to shush me. “What is it that I can do for you, Your Esteemed Majesty?”

I rolled my eyes. My mother’s coronation as Queen of Hell was to take place next week. I wasn’t really sure that it mattered all that much since she’d been battering everyone over the head with her ascent into royalty from the moment she’d finally gotten my dad up the aisle and firmly locked into matrimonial sorrow three months earlier.

Not that I’m against marriage. I’d even planned on trying it once but fate, and the unfortunate appearance of my father in his twelve-foot tall, fire-breathing form had squashed that possibility.

Meanwhile, my mother had decided that her marriage meant she could be even more silly, vain, and demanding than she had been previously—which was sort of amazing if you think about Roisin Bettincourt becoming even more of a diva than usual. From what I understood she had my father’s entire staff hopping from morning till night now that she was set to become the Queen of Hell, and those guys never hop.

“No, Roisin,” Matt said, his voice bored. “Your daughter and I are not having sex right now.”

There was a brief pause and he let out a loud, dramatic sigh. “Why not? Well, because now doesn’t really seem like an appropriate time or place. Especially since we’re in a public coffee shop and Faith is busy taking care of Lisa.”

Matt blushed and I could tell that my mother had said something inappropriate. Not surprising—she was probably offering to chant for our libidos or something. Instead of waiting for their conversation to drift into something even worse I grabbed the phone and pressed it to my ear.

“What do you want, Mother?”

“Faith?” she asked, her voice high and breathy sounding. “Is that you, dear?”

“Yes, Mom, you did call my phone after all.”

“Well I know I did, dear,” she whined, “but Matt said you were indisposed caring for Lisa. Is she ill?”

“She’s pregnant Mom. Pregnant.”

“So she’s not sick?”

“No she’s not sick. Unless she sees food, smells food, hears about food, or thinks about food, and then she’s miserable. It’s called morning sickness. You’ve been pregnant twice; I think you’ve heard of it.”

“Of course I’ve heard of morning sickness, but I’ve never suffered it. I’m not that delicate.” Mom sniffed and I knew she was preening.

Mom had a competitive streak a mile wide and for some reason had set her sights on Lisa. Why, I don’t really know, but it seemed like she wouldn’t be content until everyone considered her more regal than the woman her stepson, the Crown Prince of Hell, had married.

“Naturally you’re not but I’m sure you didn’t call to talk about Lisa. What do you need?”

“Who says I need anything?”

“Mom.”

“Fine,” she huffed. “I need you to take me shopping.”

“Why?”

“Why do I need you to take me shopping? Well, because I need to buy some clothing for various coronation related festivities and general everyday wear. Apparently Hell has become a bit more fashion-conscious than I first thought.”

“So?”

“Do you know during my last royal tour Lilith was wearing Armani? Armani. Meanwhile, I was wearing that cute, cruelty-free cotton gypsy skirt I got on Etsy—you know the red one with the green-apple print?—and a pair of Toms espadrilles.”

“Oh boy.” I closed my eyes before rubbing a hand over my forehead. If there were anyone she wanted to compete with more than Lisa, it was Lisa’s mother-in-law, and Dad’s ex-wife, Lilith—the Archdemoness of Lust—otherwise known as the world’s first hardcore fashionista.

“So you see, it’s obvious why you have to take me shopping. I can’t go around in stuff from Etsy when she’s in Armani. Think about what people will say.”

“No, I understand why you want to go shopping. What I want to know is why do I have to go with you? More important, why do I have to drive? Dad has six cars. Surely you can use one of them?”

“She doesn’t have a driver’s license,” my dad called out from the background, his voice far away sounding.

“What?”

“It’s no big deal,” Mom said, her voice a low growl, “but it seems that my license expired and I didn’t realize it.”

“Then she failed the test. Before they ever got out of the parking lot,” Dad yelled and I could hear the scrape of my mother grinding her teeth.

“The tester was biased against me,” Mom said, her voice so sharp you could cut souls with it. “He was being unreasonable.”

“You hit a cop car—a parked cop car,” Dad said, “in my brand new Bugatti. The car had temp plates on it and you totaled it.”

“The cop car was illegally—”

“Fine,” I yelled, before Mom and Dad could really start going at it. “I’ll take you shopping. When do you want to go?”

“Well, I made a personal shopping appointment for Nordstrom’s at nine thirty. Its eight thirty now and it will take you twenty minutes to get from your place to mine and then another thirty-five minutes to get to Ross Park Mall, and that’s if we don’t hit traffic. So basically, if you leave now we should make it. That’s not a problem, is it?”

“Mom,” I said and then bit back a groan

“What?” Her voice was transparently innocent. She knew she’d put me in a corner and she didn’t care. Inconveniencing someone else? My mother lived for it.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” I hung up the phone and waved at Stephen before leaving the coffee shop with my muffins clutched tightly in my free hand. Matt and Lisa followed me outside, letting me seethe for a few minutes before either of them even thought about talking to me.

“Everything okay?” Matt wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me into his side, letting his warmth soak into me, and I could feel my toes starting to curl.

“No. I have to hurry home so I can take my mother for a personal-shopping appointment all the way across town and I don’t even have time to take a shower first. I’m tired, sweaty, and you probably don’t want me cuddled in your side with all the gunk that’s on my scrubs.”

“What’s a little dirt?” Matt laced his fingers through mine and pulled my hand up for a brief kiss. “Besides, you’re beautiful.”

“Aww,” Lisa said and I looked up to see her staring at us, her eyes filled with tears. Oh great, we’d gone from morning sickness to emotional train wreck. “That’s so sweet, you guys. She’s been puked and shit on and you don’t even care. Even though you’re sort of broken up you love her enough to cuddle her when she’s covered in germs.”

Matt stepped away from me slightly but kept hold of my hand. I couldn’t help snickering. Before his death at the hands of his mother’s minions, and subsequent resurrection, Matt had been a lawyer. He wasn’t a prissy guy but the dirtier parts of the medical field weren’t something he’d grown immune to, either.

Matt led us into an alley and looked around before opening a phase portal centered on the stoop in front of our building. “Hey, Lisa?”

“What?”

“Could you give us a minute?” Matt asked.

“I don’t have a minute,” I said. “I’ve got to take Mom shopping.”

“She can be a few minutes late.” Matt tightened his grip on my fingers and smiled as Lisa stepped through the portal and started up the stairs to our apartment building. Once she was at the front door, she smiled at both of us.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, kids.”

“Is there anything you wouldn’t do?” I asked and she furrowed her eyebrows together.

“No, not really. Okay, well have fun anyway.” She waved once and then opened the door and hurried inside, not giving either of us another glance.

Matt stepped through the portal and then turned to look at me. “Coming?”

I stepped through the portal and stared at him as reality stitched itself up behind me with a quiet pop.

“I’m sorry,” he said and sat on the stoop. He pulled me down to sit beside him and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “I’m sorry for how I behaved earlier. I don’t know what I’m doing with you anymore. With you and trying to pull my family into the twenty-first century and everything else I’m lost Faith. I really am just lost. I don’t know how to do this. How to do us.”

“There is no ‘us’ Matt. We’ve broken up, that means you’re staying away from me.” I tried to scoot away. “No more kissing. No more touching. No getting jealous of other men who talk to me. We can’t have that together anymore.”

“Why? Why can’t we be together anymore? You’re the only one who’s hung up on all this.”

“You’ve almost died twice because of me, Matt. Twice. Don’t you understand? Do you have any idea what it will be like for me if you die because of me? I couldn’t live with that. I couldn’t live with the knowledge that your own people could, and would, hurt you for loving me, that they would try to kill you to keep us apart.”

“I can’t die,” he
said
. “I will never die unless someone finds a holy relic and jams it in my chest and we both know the likelihood of that is about ten billion to one. So why are you really doing this? It’s not because you’re afraid I’m going to die. Why won’t you let us be together?”

“Why? Because I’m a demon and you’re the Supreme Leader of the Angale. Any sane person would know that means there is a huge line dividing us and we can’t breach it. That hallway up there is our version of the Berlin Wall. Why can’t you see it?”

“Because I’m in love with you.” He grabbed my face, pulling me close. He pressed his lips against mine and the entire world fell away, letting me get lost in the feel of home. He wrapped his arms around my back and pulled me into his lap.

“Don’t do this to us,” he
said
against my mouth and my resolve began to crumble. “Don’t ruin what we are because you’re afraid. Trust me. I won’t let you get hurt.”

“I can’t,” I said before he kissed me again, silencing my protests. I wanted to. Alpha protect me from harm I wanted to make it work between us. I wanted to be in love and maybe get married and I wanted to be the one annoying Lisa with what it was like to have morning sickness, which terrified me more than everything else combined. I wanted all those things that mortal women my age wanted and I couldn’t have them. I wasn’t stupid. I knew what happened when someone like me tried to overreach. People ended up dead or suffering or trapped in a life they never intended.

“Yes you can.” He pulled my face down, kissing my eyelids and running his fingers over the contours of my cheeks. “You can trust me with everything, Faith. I won’t let you get hurt. Believe in me.”

I did believe in him. That was the problem. I believed in how good he could be. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. The problem was, I knew what I was. What I could do and how it would destroy him one day. How it would wear him down, trying to juggle his responsibilities to them and his life with me. He’d look back one day and he’d see all he had to give up to make it work between us and he’d realize I wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t worth all the pain and suffering he would have to endure balancing a life leading the Angale against a life with me. I never had been. Then he’d leave and what would I do?

“Trust us,” he said.

“I do,” I
said
and felt tears forming in my eyes. “It’s stupid and probably suicidal but I do trust you. I want this but—”

“Forget about everything else,” Matt said and then pressed a kiss to the tip of my nose. “We’ll take it as it comes; all you have to do is keep trusting in the two of us.”

“What if this is too much for us? This life? This craziness? How are we supposed to survive this together?”

“Our lives were a lot simpler before we were together. Or at least mine was. Boringly simple.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

“Do you think you’ll regret it? Later?”

“Will I regret us? No. Not in the slightest. My life was boring before you, endless days of nothing but surviving and trying not to draw attention to myself. Then there was you, so bright and vibrant and I fell in love with you the very first time I saw you. Did you know that?”

“No.” I shook my head and sniffled, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes.

“Don’t cry.” He wiped his thumb under my eyes. “This isn’t a sad story. It was the day I moved in and I was inside that tiny moving van, trying to figure out why the Hell I hadn’t splurged for a professional mover and how I was going to get my couch up the stairs alone.”

“Oh God,” I said as I remembered what had happened the day he’d moved in.

“Then,” he said, “I heard this crunch of metal on metal and I knew. I knew it was my eight hundred dollar mountain bike. It was less than six months old.”

I bit my lower lip and looked down at the sidewalk, my eyes stinging even as I thought about the memory of our first meeting. I’d been laughing at something Lisa had said about her date the night before and hadn’t been paying attention. I’d pulled into the spot behind the moving van, intending to run my groceries upstairs before parking in the lot behind our building. I didn’t even know there was a bike there until I heard it snapping underneath my tires.