Angel Tormented (The Louisiangel Series Book 3) (12 page)

* * *

“You’re doing that thing again,” Joshua
sighed.

I blinked a few times. “What?”

Joshua reached over and tapped my
forehead. “Retreating into there.”

“Eyes on the road,” I snapped.

“You’ve just proved my point, darlin’,” he
declared, gesturing to the windshield.

I looked ahead. We weren’t moving. We
weren’t even stuck in traffic. We had actually left the interstate and parked
up at a rest area. I blushed and shrugged. “Sorry,” I muttered. “What were you
saying?”

“I need the bathroom,” Joshua said. “Do
you?”

“No, but I think I’d like to stretch my
legs,” I decided, getting out of the car. The rest area was close to the
interstate with no trees or undergrowth to dull the noise of the steady stream
of traffic. The building, with a “Welcome to Louisiana” sign was only a short
walk away, but I ignored it. While Joshua headed into the building, I walked in
the opposite direction, heading past several covered seating areas and towards
a small lake at the back. The border between Louisiana and Texas was perhaps
less than a mile away, so we were still too far from New Orleans for the heat
to have reappeared. The skies were clear, though the wind was strong and
chilled.

It was probably because of the weather
that the outside area was pretty deserted, which brought my attention to a guy
sat on a bench, staring out across the lake. His back was to me, but the way he
was sitting, his back straight, wearing a slightly disheveled dark suit…
“Michael?” I called. “Michael!” I ran over to the blond as he turned around.

He looked startled, tilting his head in a
way which was painfully familiar, but not the same. “Oh!” he exclaimed.

I was seeing ghosts. He wasn’t Michael. He
was a good looking blond, and he even had similar brown eyes, but he wasn’t
Michael. “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else,” I hurriedly
apologized, flustered.

“You have no reason to apologize,” he
assured me.

“Angel?” I heard Joshua call. I turned
back, spotting him heading over. “Hi,” he said, greeting the blond.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized again. “I didn’t
mean to disturb you.” I gave Joshua a smile and took his hand, lacing my
fingers through his. I started to lead Joshua away, looking back to the guy. He
was staring at my hand holding Joshua’s, frowning.

“Who was that?” Joshua asked, once we were
far enough away.

“No one,” I admitted. “I thought he looked
like someone.”

“Michael,” Joshua said, simply. I must
have failed at keeping the surprised expression from my face, because he
shrugged. “There’s a resemblance, I guess.” He wrapped his arms around me,
drawing me back against his chest. “You’ve been quiet since we left Crown Security,”
he said. “You want to tell me what’s up?”

I leaned back into him as I gazed across
the water. I didn’t think he was right, but the more I thought about it, there
had been barely any conversation since we had left Houston, and what little
there had been, I couldn’t really remember what it had been about.

“It’s okay to admit that you miss him, you
know,” Joshua said. I turned around to face him. “Michael,” he said, as though
I wouldn’t know who he was talking about. “He was the one that saved you, and
he was your mentor. And he was killed in front of you,” he added.

“So much has happened in such a small
space of time,” I muttered as the wind whipped my hair around my face.

Joshua reached up, trying to tuck the hair
behind my ears, and when that didn’t work, held it back, his hands cupping my
cheeks. “How are you doing?”

I shrugged, even though the action was
hampered by Joshua’s grip. “Cupid’s probably going to be wondering where I am.”

“I’m not asking about Cupid, darlin’. I’m
asking about you. How are
you
doing?” Joshua corrected me.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “Not great.
I’d be lying if I said I was, but I don’t know how I feel. There’s a lot going
on.” I chewed at my lip, trying to think of the way to put it into words.
“Guilty,” I started, finally. “Michael wouldn’t have been at that port if it
wasn’t for me. He pushed me out of the way, you know. Valac was charging at
both of us, and I didn’t see it. I should have seen it. But I didn’t, and
Michael is dead. I feel lost without him,” I continued, cutting Joshua off
before he could even start to say that it wasn’t my fault. “I mean, I have so
much to learn and I was not learning it as fast as I should have. And I cared
about him, Joshua,” I finally admitted. “Not in the way he wanted me to, but I
did care. The fact he’s gone hurts. I want to curl up in a ball and cry, all
the time. I thought getting out of New Orleans would help, but it hasn’t. Not
for this, anyway.”

“Getting away wouldn’t solve anything,”
Joshua told me, gently. “You’ve lost someone important. Distance isn’t what
heals: time heals; time, allowing yourself to heal, and allowing people to help
you. You can and you will get through this, and I’m going to be right here
while you do.”

I could feel the tears starting to well up
as he drew me closer, wrapping his arms tightly around me. I would’ve stayed like
that, but a gold flash from the corner of my eye – sunlight glinting off a car
as it drove past – brought me back to the rest stop. “I’m so glad I still have
you,” I muttered into his shoulder.

By the time we arrived back in New Orleans,
it was late afternoon and already the sun was starting to head closer to the
horizon. As Joshua needed to get back and see to his cat, Dave, he dropped me
off at the convent. This was the first time I had left the car since returning
to the city and I was surprised at how noticeably warmer it was. The small
crowd still lingered in front of St. Mary’s Church, and I was certain the
weather was keeping the crowd there – if it was as cold and wet as it was in
Houston, they’d be at home right now.

I slipped into the convent grounds
unnoticed and hoped I would be awarded the same luxury when I walked inside. I
wasn’t… Pascal was manning the front desk. “Cupid wants to see you,” he said,
before I’d even shut the door. “He’s in the library.” Well, at least he still hadn’t
resorted to using the bells Michael favored. I thanked Pascal and headed
straight to the library, as requested.

Cupid seemed to be in the same position I
had last seen him in. He was certainly wearing the same clothes. In fact, the
only thing that seemed to have changed was his expression. No longer angry, he
just looked tired. There were bags under his eyes, the brown of which seemed to
have dimmed. Cupid met my gaze when I sat down at the table opposite.
“Houston?” he asked, wearily.

“I went to see Darell Ford,” I told him.

“How is he?” Cupid asked, after a moment’s
pause.

“He seemed to be alright,” I shrugged. “At
least he was, until I told him about what had happened to Lilah.”

“Michael said he called in on him, but I
didn’t think he’d ever told him what happened,” Cupid agreed. He let out a long
sigh and then slumped forward, resting his elbows on the table to prop his head
up. “Can we be friends again? I can’t run this House by myself and I don’t want
to.”

“We were never not friends,” I assured
him, as I mimicked his posture. “I don’t want you to have to run this house by
yourself, but if you want my help, you have to at least listen to what I’m
suggesting and try to find a way to compromise.” I sighed. “If you can’t
compromise, you know, because there are actual angelic rules, then you need to
tell me, because I don’t know them.”

“That sounds fair,” Cupid agreed. He broke
into a grin. “Can we do something fun? Like a movie?”

I opened my mouth, ready to agree, but
found the words caught in my throat when Veronica flashed into the library. My
mouth hung open in shock.

“Hi,” she said, giving us both an awkward
finger wave.

“You can’t be here,” Cupid blurted out.

The glimmer of hope that had been in
Veronica’s eyes was extinguished in a flash. “Oh,” she said, slumping her
shoulders. “Yeah… sorry.”

“Wait!” I cried, before she could
disappear. I looked over to Cupid. “Just listen.”

Cupid stared at me, tensing, and then he
turned to his friend. “Veronica,” he said, coolly. “What are you doing here?”

Veronica winced. “I wanted to see how my
friends were doing. How you were doing.” As Cupid narrowed his eyes, she took
to chewing at her lower lip. Veronica was a number of things: cocky, brash,
stubborn… But nervous and unsure?

“Do you even care?” Cupid asked her, his
tone becoming harsh.

“Of course I care!” Veronica cried.
“You’re my oldest and best friend!”

“Then why did you abandon me?” Cupid asked
quietly.

Veronica’s eyes went wide. “I never
abandoned you.”

“You left the convent and this is the
first time any of us have heard from you. Did you know that Michael had been
killed?”

Thankfully, Cupid’s attention was on
Veronica and not me as I deftly averted my eyes to my lap while trying to will
my cheeks to return to their normal color. As she and Garret had asked for my
silence, she didn’t give any indication that we had seen each other. “That’s
why I’m here,” Veronica told him. “I heard you had been left in charge of the
House.”

“I can’t change anything, Veronica,” he
stated. “I would go against Michael’s wishes and have you back, but you left as
a collective. If you wanted to come back, it would have to be as a collective.”

Veronica wrapped her arms around herself
as she stared at her feet. “I know,” she muttered, eventually. “And I know I’m
not coming back, but I miss my friend. I would like to be able to check in
every now and then and see how he’s doing.”

“Too much doom and ‘woe is me’?” Cupid
asked. “Or do you simply miss my charming personality and rugged good looks?
Or
,
does Garret keep stealing your eyeliner?”

I blinked, looking up at him. There was a
hint of a smile there.

“Actually, Garret keeps stealing my skinny
jeans. It’s April who has taken a shining to my eyeliner,” Veronica retorted
haughtily. “Rugged good looks? There’s nothing rugged about your face. Babies
have got more hair on their faces than you.”

“Still got more than the other cherubim
combined,” Cupid shot back, before the stern expression was replaced with a
wide grin. Veronica’s smile was just as big. “I feel like we should hug it
out.”

Veronica wrinkled up her nose. “What is it
with you and hugging?” she asked, as he got out of his chair and started
towards her. She held up her hands and tried to back away. “Ew!” she squealed,
but given that she had the ability to move much faster, I knew she wasn’t
really making too much of an effort to escape his massive bear hug. Cupid
caught her and wrapped his arms around her, and for a while, she hugged him
back, but when he didn’t let go, her attention was on me. “Angel, help? I can’t
breathe.”

I shrugged. “You’re an angel: you don’t
need to breathe,” I pointed out, grinning smugly.

Finally, laughing, Cupid set her down. “Angel
and I were planning a movie night. Want to come?”

Veronica eyed him suspiciously. “Is it
going to be one of those mushy romances you like?” she asked him.

“Probably,” Cupid shrugged.

I decided now was a good time to bow out
and leave them to hopefully repair their friendship. I returned to my bedroom,
feeling the need to shower, which was when I discovered the messages on my
phone.

I hadn’t bothered to take the phone to
Houston with me. The only people who had the number were Joshua and Sarah. Or,
I thought it was… I had forgotten that Ty had the number too. I had eight text
messages from him, all begging for me to call him.

I did what any sane person would have done
and deleted them. The only reason I had been at the Port of New Orleans was
because of Ty, and Michael would still be here if I hadn’t gone. As far as I
was concerned, ignoring the texts was letting him off lightly.

Wrapped in a towel, after my shower, I
once again found myself staring at the contents of my small wardrobe, frowning.
The angels on earth were completely unprepared for the possibility of coming
face to face with one of the Fallen, and the clothes hanging in front of me
were proof enough.

I was well aware that nothing short of a
suit of armor was going to protect me from a sword, but as I’d previously
concluded, some form of protection could help with recovery times, and any
shoes, other than the heels I had for my uniform, would help movement.

If Michael’s death had highlighted one
thing, it was that the Fallen were no longer content with blending into the
city, unnoticed. They were starting to attack and if they could take out
Michael, then no one was safe. The least we could do was prepare ourselves for
that, starting with the clothing.

Then it was time to look at the actual angels
in the House. Sure, they weren’t trained to fight, and they weren’t guardian
angels, so it wasn’t their job, but there was no harm in them learning some
basics in self-defense if they were to continue in their duties. Not that I was
qualified to train them, but Cupid had to have some tricks up his sleeves.

* * *

The weekend passed in a blur. I kept
myself busy around the convent, trying not to think about Michael, or replay
the conversation with Darell, or the conversations with the higher ranking angels…
basically, I was trying to do as much as possible so I couldn’t think at all.

I pulled open the wardrobe and plucked out
an outfit. Clothing was one of the things I made myself think about in the
morning. Not just because I was getting dressed, but because, the more I
thought about it the more I started to realize that this House and the angels
in it simply weren’t used to doing anything themselves. They had always relied
on Michael or Cupid to do the fighting, and the cherubim to do the housework.

Honestly, they were clueless and didn’t
know the basics of cooking and cleaning. I wasn’t great. Sarah can attest to
that. She’d certainly agree that I may have tried to avoid doing chores for
many years, but at least I knew the difference between a washer and a dryer.

I headed down to the kitchen, walking
through the dining area, and stopped short at the sight of an angel mopping the
floor. Well, he was either mopping the floor, or trying to turn the dining room
into a swimming pool. “You need to squeeze the excess water out,” I told him,
taking care not to slip as I walked over, trying to avoid the puddles. This
one, if I remembered correctly, was Eugene. He was tall and good looking
(shocker), with a vessel that looked around my age. He had very dark skin, and the
corn rows in his hair were braided into neat lines with an inch long tail at
the bottom.

“It’s wetting the floor,” Eugene frowned,
looking at his handiwork. Of the thirty angels that lived in the House, it was
still just the four that were cleaning and cooking. Or, at least, attempting
to.

I took the mop from him and stuck it in
the soapy water. “Wetting, yes,” I agreed. “Cleaning, not so much. Like this,”
I said, putting the mop head into the wringer and pulling the leaver. “You need
to drain the water off.”

“But how does that clean the floor?” he
asked, the frown remaining. “It’s too dry to do anything.”

“It’s not
dry
,” I assured him,
staring down at the wooden floor. It was covered in dust, crumbs, and under one
table, what looked like half a bowl of cornflakes. “Did you even sweep it
first?”

“Sweep it?” the angel repeated, slowly.

I spent the next hour explaining, showing,
and then helping the angel sweep (okay, in the end we cheated and vacuumed) and
mop the floor. By the time we moved out into the hallway, I had switched to
showing another, Jordan, how to dust! I knew they’d never done a single chore
in their thousand-plus year lifetime, but this was sad. I felt sorry for the
cherubim.

Eventually, I left Eugene and Jordan to
tackle the main entrance and walked into the kitchen. Once again, I stopped in
my tracks – this time at Nyle who had tears streaming down his face. “Has Sarah
been telling her jokes again?”

Nyle hurriedly shook his head. “No, it’s
the onions,” he said, holding up half a white globe he had been chopping.

“I know,” I sighed. “One day, you’ll
laugh.”

“One day you’ll tell a funny joke,” Sarah
snorted.

“My jokes are funny,” I objected.

Sarah arched an eyebrow. “Has anyone ever
laughed at your pink gorilla joke?” she asked.

I folded my arms and nodded.

Sarah, who had been kneading what looked
like pastry, paused, skepticism lining her eyes. “Has anyone other than
you
laughed at your pink gorilla joke?”

“I would like to hear this pink gorilla
joke,” Nyle said. I beamed, giving Sarah a pointed look.

“Nyle, you may be immortal, but I am not,”
Sarah sighed. “I neither have a lifespan long enough to hear it, nor the
willpower to survive it,” she informed him.

I poked a tongue out at her, and then
turned back to Nyle. “I will tell you later, but only because you’ll be
laughing so hard, you might cut your finger off.”

“I suppose that’s one way to get away from
it,” Sarah muttered.

“You know, I came in here to help,” I shot
at her.

“You came in here to see what you could
eat,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes. “I know you, remember.” I shrugged,
scanning the kitchen tops. She was right, but I had timed my visit to the
kitchen wrong. There was nothing worth eating just yet. “But while you’re here,
you might as well help with those potatoes,” she said, pointing at an enormous
pile Nyle had yet to get started on.

I found a peeler and did as requested.
Sarah and Nyle picked up their conversation – apparently she was teaching him
the trick to perfect pastry – while I listened in silence.

I was about halfway through the pile when I
realized I couldn’t put off emptying the trash can I was using any longer.
After the look my aunt gave me at the fourth time some peelings fell from the
top of the pile to the floor, I sighed and tied the bag off, heading outside to
the dumpsters.

The dumpsters weren’t really near the
kitchen. They lived in a little side alley, out of the way, but in an area they
could be emptied easily. It was a quick walk through the gardens, past the
white nun statues. I slung the bag in the closest dumpster and made my way back
when someone saying my name had me squealing in shock. I leaped around to seek
out the source of the noise – spotting Paddy curled up under a tree with a
book. “What are you doing here?” I asked in surprise. I honestly thought she
had left with Raphael. I hadn’t seen her for a week. “Is Raphael back too?”