Angel in Training (The Louisiangel Series, Book One) (22 page)

“Look,” he said suddenly, once again breaking
me free from my own thoughts. “I'm not saying I believe in heaven
and hell, and angels and demons, and I'm not saying I'm ever going
to believe any of that. But you’re alright.”

I looked up at him, wondering where he was
going with that statement.

He sighed and ran his hand through his hair.
“Just don’t go getting another charge just yet.”

I watched him for a moment. He seemed
sincere, and yet, with everything he did, he would contradict it as
soon as I started believing him. Hell, he’d just contradicted
himself then – I don’t believe in angels, but I don’t want you to
go?

“
Fine,” I agreed. “
However
, you have got to stop saying you don’t believe in
angels then using it against me.”

“When have I done that?” he asked me,
incredulously.

“Oh, I don’t know – yesterday?” I suggested.
“Five minutes after yelling at me that you didn’t believe in
angels, you were asking me to protect you from skin cancer?”

He had the decency to nod in agreement with
me. “Fine.”

“And you have got to stop using your bedroom
eyes on me,” I added, hurriedly.

This caused him to turn and smirk at me.
“Bedroom eyes?”

“Yes,” I told him, feeling my face heat up.
“You’re doing it now. That thing you do with your eyes makes me
feel like you’re undressing me. Stop it. And stop with all the
flirty comments. The only kind of relationship we are ever going to
have is a professional one.”

“Who said I ever wanted a relationship?” he
smirked.

I leaned over and smacked his arm. “That is
exactly what I'm talking about. When you can’t get rid of me with
disbelieving comments about angels, you try to use sex. Behave and
act the gentleman I know you can be and that Maggie wouldn’t be
ashamed of.”

His fingers tapped a rhythm on the steering
wheel and he nodded. “You’re right. And I apologize for my
behavior. Strictly professional from here on out.”

I settled back into my seat. I should have
felt satisfied with the result. I had just made some form of
headway with him. Yet, even though it was forbidden, the thought of
only ever having a professional relationship was soul crushing. I
liked him, I realized. Despite
everything
, I was freaking falling for him. Maybe a strictly
professional relationship was for the best.

* * *

Despite the fact it was pushing nine, it was
still reasonably busy in the precinct. As well as Leon and Leanne
who I recognized, there were a couple of other faces I didn’t, who
all looked up as I followed Joshua back to the desk he shared with
Leon.

“How on earth can you work on such a
cluttered desk?” I asked Joshua as he took a seat.

“Organized chaos,” he muttered, leaning
forward to pull his notebook from his pocket and threw it on his
desk. “So, going on the theory that I believe you were murdered,”
he said in a low voice. “You believe that you were murdered by the
same person as Emily Montgomery.”

“And Callie Edmunds,” I added.

Joshua looked back at me with a frown.
“Callie Edmunds was found off St. Joseph Street: the Warehouse
District,” he added at my blank look. “Early evening. The MO’s are
completely different.”

“Just don’t rule it out too soon,” I told
him, reaching for the file.

He made an impatient sigh and took the file
from me. “Look, don’t touch.”

I held both hands up and backed up a step.
“Fine, no touching,” I sighed.

Joshua ran his hand over his stubbly jaw.
“Follow me,” he said eventually, stacking Emily’s file on top of
Callie’s. He paused for a moment and then started collecting some
blank pages from a drawer. “Leon?” he called.

“Josh?” Leon returned.

“Have uniform given us their reports
yet?”

Leon barked out a laugh and walked over.
“Uniform? Reports already? Have you been drinking?”

“Fair point,” Joshua muttered. “I take it
asking about the coroner’s report is out of the question too?” At
the look Leon gave him, Joshua nodded. “Fine. I will be in room
three if you need me.”

“With Lucy?” Leon asked, a little
puzzled.

Oh crap. I had forgotten I had given the
police a false name when I had been arrested.

“Her name’s Angel,” Joshua told him, shooting
me a look.

“That’s not the name she gave us,” Leon said,
folding his arms as he stared at me.

“My name’s Angelina,” I confessed. “I might
have panicked slightly when I was arrested.” Not strictly a
lie.

“And your brother?” Leon asked, pressing his
fist against his mouth.

“Half-brother?” I offered. Again, not too far
from the truth. “I moved here a few years ago, although I’m
actually a US citizen now. I live with my aunt up on Lakeview,” I
told him with a weak smile. “I played the tourist card in hopes
that you might be lenient on me.”

Leon removed his fist, placing his hand on
my shoulder. With his other hand, he grabbed Joshua and pushed us
out of the room and down the corridor to an empty conference-style
room. He closed the door behind us and turned to face us. “Do you
have any idea how much trouble you should be in?” he asked me. “How
much trouble you
should
be in?”
he asked Joshua. He shook his head. “How much trouble
I
could be in?”

“I'm sorry, Leon,” Joshua apologized. “I
didn’t know she had given a false name.”

“Josh, I let you out before I got that
assault charge dropped. And you,” he said, rounding on me. “I let
you out before I knew who you were. And now you’re wandering around
the precinct.”

“We can trust her, Leon,” Joshua told
him.

“Really?” Leon asked, talking to Joshua as
though I was no longer in the room. “What makes you so
certain?”

Joshua let out a deep sigh and raked his hand
through his hair. “Angel’s an-”

“Joshua!” I cried in alarm. “That’s supposed
to be a secret!”

Joshua stared at me, puffed out his cheeks
and exhaled slowly. “You’re helping out on the investigation,
Angel. He’s going to find out eventually.”

“Joshua,” I pleaded. “Please don’t.” I felt
sick – I was going to be in so much trouble with Michael.

Joshua gave me a brief apologetic look and
turned his full attention on Leon. “She’s a psychic.”

Leon looked from Joshua, to me, and back
to Joshua. Then he burst out laughing. “A psychic? And
you
believe that?”

It took everything I had not to let my jaw
hit the floor. Joshua shrugged. “I know how it sounds, but that’s
how she found me in that bar – and she knew who I was. She knows
information about the Emily Montgomery homicide that hasn’t even
been released yet, and when we went to see Emily’s parents, she
knew the mother’s name.”

“You took her along for a notification?” Leon
asked in disbelief. Suddenly it was hard to believe he had just
been laughing. “Have you run this past Asmodeus?”

Joshua pulled a sheet out from amongst the
pile in his hands. “I’ve got the forms here.”

“I'm having nothing to do with this,” Leon
muttered, quickly storming out of the room.

I turned to Joshua, ready to start demanding
explanations, but he thrust the contents of his arms into mine and
dashed from the room, calling, “Wait here,” over his shoulder.

I glanced down at the top sheet – the one
Joshua had pulled out for Leon – and was surprised to find that it
was only a blank statement sheet. I moved over to the table and
sank down in one of the plastic chairs with a sigh. A psychic? A
freaking
psychic
?

Sweet Dreams

A good forty minutes passed before Joshua
re-entered the room. By then, I had grown fidgety waiting and had
spread the contents of the case files over the desk.

“What are you doing?” Joshua demanded,
glaring down at me.

“Using my psychic ability to find a
murderer?” I suggested, sarcastically.

Joshua just rolled his eyes at me. “You asked
me not to say anything, and I didn’t, but I couldn’t just have you
walking around here. I figured that this would be the closest thing
and it’s about the only way I can give you access to the case.
Which is supposed to be limited, by the way,” he said, giving me a
pointed look.

“I don’t understand half of this,” I told
him. “But these two pictures look the same.”

“I’ve told you, the two cases have completely
different MO’s.”

“Which, as I don’t really know what an MO is,
means nothing too me,” I shrugged.

“
Modus
Operandi
,” Joshua
muttered, sitting down beside me. “It’s about finding the
consistencies between crimes to link them. Victims, weapons,
location, time. They just don’t add up.”

“But all the victims are female, in their
late teens to early twenties, and they’ve been stabbed.”

“
Both
of the victims,” Joshua corrected me. “Emily’s
wound was small. I haven’t got the medical examiner’s report yet,
but I had a look. It’s a small blade. Callie’s was something much
larger. The ME suggested that it was probably a sword. That’s two
different weapons, Angel. On top of that, Callie was killed in the
Warehouse District, and the ME put time of death between nine and
eleven pm. If you really were there when you say you were, the
times are nowhere near each other.”

I slumped back in my chair and pursed my
lips. “I get that, but the thing is, I went to visit both victims
with an archangel and the same archangel visited me. Surely that’s
too much of a coincidence.”

“Coincidence or not, that is not going to
hold up in court,” Joshua pointed out. “I'd get laughed off the
force. It’s bad enough there’s a psychic helping me.”

“Only I'm not a psychic,” I returned through
gritted teeth.

“No, I know, but a psychic is slightly more
believable than an angel,” Joshua said, dryly.

“Fine,” I agreed, but not before shooting him
a dark look. “Then this psychic would like to know if you’ve
checked other homicides within the last six months?”

“Do you know how many murders we investigate
a year?” he asked in disbelief.

I shrugged. “Probably far more than I would
like to know. But I don’t just mean your district – I mean, the
whole of New Orleans.”

The disbelieving look remained firmly in
place. “You do realize that New Orleans has an area of about 350
square miles, don’t you?”

I nodded. “That doesn’t surprise me. And
you’d probably best include everything as far west as the
airport.”

Joshua leaned back in his chair and scratched
his head. “Really?” he asked, studying me. “You really think
so?”

At the feeling of that small knot in my
stomach that I was beginning to associate with the fact I had to
trust it, I nodded. “Yeah, I do.”

Joshua sighed and stood up. “Tomorrow.”

I shook my head. “We should get started on
looking at the files now.”

Joshua laughed at me. “Okay, you’re not
supposed to be looking through the files – any of them,” he told
me, scooping up the files from the table. “And more importantly,
have you seen the time? A phone call at this hour will not be well
received, trust me.”

Deciding he was probably right, and that
the trip to Madisonville had taken more out of me then I cared to
admit, I stood and slunk out of the room, Joshua close behind me.
According to the clock in the reception area, it was pushing
midnight, and it was finally cooling off. I glanced around, looking
for the Yukon and realized I had walked.
Great
.

“You need a ride?” Joshua asked me quietly. I
turned and gave him a questioning look, to which he rolled his
eyes. “Angel or not, I’m not about to let you traipse around the
city at this time of night, by yourself. Plus it will take you
hours to get to Lakeview.”

He had a point – if I was going to Lakeview.
“I’m only going to the Quarter,” I informed him.

“And you think that’s going to convince me to
let you head there by yourself?” he asked me, crossing his arms.
“You’re the one who keeps harping on about there being a serial
killer.”

“I’m already dead,” I pointed out. At the
raising of an eyebrow, I just shrugged. “A ride would be great,” I
muttered in defeat, allowing him to steer me in the direction of
where we parked the car.

“So where do you want dropping off?” he asked
me, a while later as we headed down Canal Street. I frowned. Had
Michael said it was alright for Joshua to know about the convent? I
had a suspicion that the answer was no. “Well?” he pressed.

“I can’t tell you,” I admitted – better safe
than sorry. “It’s part of the rules. You’re only allowed to know
what I am, not where we live.”

“I know you live in Lakeview,” he pointed
out.

“
You know that I
used
to live in Lakeview,” I corrected him. “I’m not
there anymore. Here should be fine.”

Joshua pulled over and turned to me. “Cell
phone number,” he demanded, pulling out his own.

“I… What do you need it for?” I asked,
suspiciously.

“So I can call you sometime,” he said,
smirking at me.

That earned him a punch on the shoulder.
“Quit with the flirting,” I told him. “You made a deal.”

“Oh relax,” he muttered, rolling his eyes. “I
want your number so I can call you to make sure you’re alright when
you don’t call me first. Who doesn’t have a cell phone in this day
and age?”

“I lost it when I died,” I admitted. “I never
got around to replacing it, alright?”

Joshua sat back, considering it. “How long
will it take you to walk home from here?”