Angel Tormented (The Louisiangel Series Book 3) (22 page)

“So we have auras?” Leon asked, looking
dubiously at his own hands.

I could sympathize with him – no matter
how hard I looked at myself, I couldn’t see my own aura. “Yours is…” I was
about to say his aura was the color of honey, but as I squinted and his aura
suddenly became visible, I discovered it had changed. “Parmesan,” I blurted
out.

Joshua laughed. Leon looked like he was
trying to decide if that was a good or bad thing. Henry was arching an eyebrow.
“That’s probably not the word I would have used, but surprisingly accurate.
It’s a pale yellow, which tells me what I already know: that you know what
Angel and I are.”

“What about Joshua?” Leon asked,
suspiciously. “Is he some shade of yellow as well?”

I felt Joshua’s eyes on mine and I knew
what I would see before I looked at him. “Mostly silver,” Henry said, but he
was staring at me when he said it. He could see what I could: that hot pink.

“And Angel?”

“Gold,” Henry responded. “Mostly.”

I looked down at my feet, feeling
increasingly uncomfortable under Henry’s scrutiny. “I have a question,” Joshua
rasped. I released a breath as Henry’s focus switched back to him. Joshua cleared
his throat, earning an unimpressed look from Henry.

“Wait here,” Henry sighed. He disappeared
from the room, returning only moments later with a glass of water. “You may
still be alive, but you need to rest those vocal chords before you end up with
too much damage to them and that rasp is a permanent feature.”

“Thank you.” Joshua took the glass and
took a sip. “Angel said she may have to change vessel, so what happens to her
aura then?”

“Whenever an angel must change their
vessel, they do not use the living,” Henry said, sharply. “We would never take
that freedom away from a human. Never.”

“So really, what you’re saying is that it
isn’t the body which has the aura, but the soul,” Joshua concluded.

Henry gave him an impressed smile.
“Exactly.”

“But that also means that the Fallen have
souls,” I scoffed.

“Yes,” Henry agreed. “But having a soul
does not equate to having that connection, hence how the Fallen do not have an
aura.”

“Cupid once told me that the longer the
Fallen possessed a human, the more unlikely it became that you could get them
out,” Joshua said. I frowned, trying to work out where he was going with this.
Again, Henry nodded. “Well, what happens to the soul then?”

Henry folded his arms and exhaled heavily.
“In theory, a strong soul can remain trapped in the body long after the body
should be dead. I hate to say that a positive to being possessed is that the
body can recover as quickly as a vessel; however, the answer is unquantifiable
– it depends on the atrocities caused by the Fallen, and how strong that soul
is to survive it.”

“Okay, so we can assume that a couple of
years is the best case scenario?” Joshua suggested. I was still struggling to
see where he was going with this, especially as Leon was looking a little gray.

Henry nodded, thoughtfully. “I guess,” he
mused. “Though I think that might be optimistic.”

“And either way, in order for the Fallen
to create a nephilim, they must be the only soul in the body,” Joshua
continued. “And by that reasoning, we can conclude that the body of the Fallen
who has an offspring is in fact dead.”

“That makes…” I trailed off. “I didn’t
kill Mr. Ramsey,” I realized, unable to keep myself from staggering backwards.
Joshua’s arms shot out to steady me.

“Obviously,” Henry said. “You still have
your wings.”

“There’s a problem with that logic,” Leon
spoke up. “You say that the Fallen possess humans for their auras, but if their
soul is gone then the aura is gone too.”

“They must have found a way to counteract
that,” Henry said. He was trying to be casual, but his tone had turned guarded.
I glanced at the two detectives and realized that either they hadn’t noticed,
or they’d chosen not too. I narrowed my eyes at Henry, trying to work out what
he was hiding, and then, I had my lightbulb moment. My relief was short-lived.
He did know. He, like Mama Laveau knew exactly who the Fallen were, but judging
from the fact that he and the other Angels of Death were still doing their job,
and that the number of Fallen in the area seemed to be increasing on a daily
basis, they hadn’t advertised that fact.

Drumming up every bit of acting skill I
had in me, I forced myself to remain poker-faced. I glanced at Leon, trying to
look like I was paying attention to what he was saying about the Fallen being
more powerful than he thought – he didn’t seem to have picked up on what I had,
but he hadn’t met Mama Laveau and witnessed her reaction. I casually looked to
Joshua. As far as I could tell, he hadn’t worked it out either, and then he met
my eyes. His expression didn’t change but I
knew
he had.

Quickly, I looked away. “What is the
importance of Alexander?” I asked, interrupting the conversation Henry and Leon
were having. “I know you said he’s nephilim, but is that it? You seemed
surprised when I said his father was Valac, so I assume there’s more to him?”

The men looked at the body in question.
“Of course!” Henry exclaimed. If he had picked up on anything, I couldn’t tell.
“Though, not to Mr. Ramsey here.” He hurried over to a table and grabbed a
folder off it. “This is from a case that one of your colleagues is working on,”
he said, handing the file over to Leon. “Mr. Ramsey is not the first nephilim
to cross my table, nor will he be the last. He is, however, the second in as
many days, and that is unusual.” He gestured to the body that was still open on
the table further from us.

I glanced over, unable to stop myself, but
my eyes landed on the victim’s face. He looked familiar. “You think someone is
killing nephilim?” I surmised, suddenly working out why that body looked so
familiar: it was Ty’s friend, Zeke.

“Surely that isn’t a bad thing?” Leon
asked, his words stopping me from trying to understand what that meant. Leon’s attention
was on Alexander’s body, so he missed the anger that flashed through Henry’s
eyes. It was time to get out of here.

“Serial killer,” I said, quickly. “And it
looks like there’s that Motus thing.”

“
Modus
,” Joshua quietly corrected
me. “Modus operandi, but it’s the signature, not the M.O.” I shrugged, not
really caring at that point. “However, it’s a good lead. Henry, is there
anything else?”

Henry shook his head. “You can keep that
copy. I’ll email you when I’m done with Mr. Ramsey.”

“Do we need to be worried about Henry
too?” Joshua asked me when we were again in the safety of his car. We were
still parked in front of the morgue, waiting for Leon to come out as he had
some questions about another case.

I sat chewing at my lip, but shook my
head. “I don’t think everything is black and white with them. I think they see
the gray,” I said, slowly. “I don’t think we need to worry about him.”
Yet
,
I added, silently.

Finally, Leon exited the building. “Do we
tell Leon?” he asked me.

I quickly shook my head. I didn’t really
think Henry would do anything to hurt anyone, but I wasn’t going to risk it
after Mama Laveau’s reaction. “No, but I think I need to head back to the
convent. I probably should have a conversation with Cupid at some point too.”

“Didn’t you make a promise to Mama Laveau
that you wouldn’t say anything?”

I wrinkled my nose. “Actually, I made a
vow to God I wouldn’t, which essentially means if I say anything, I’m going to
fall,” I reluctantly admitted. “I just won’t mention her.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t mention it at all,”
Joshua suggested, his eyes wide.

“I don’t think it’s our most pressing
concern, but I think it’s something he should know,” I sighed, knowing I did
need to tell him. “I might as well head back there,” I said, reaching for the
door handle.

“Now?”

I gave Joshua a smile. “Yes. I’m sure this
is the point where you need to head back to the precinct and do some detective
work, and work out who killed Alexander. All things considered, I should
probably not do that with you.”

“You still think it’s a coincidence?”
Joshua asked, surprised. “The son of a fallen angel killed not long after his
father, who worked at the same shipping company?”

“Yes,” I agreed, earning myself a
disbelieving look. “I was the one who killed Valac. We don’t know for certain
that Alexander was involved in what his father was.” That earned me a snort.
“Okay, fine, it’s quite likely that he was involved, but then that makes less
sense. Valac is gone, so someone is going to need to carry on with whatever was
going on at that company. If someone was going to go out and kill him, your
suspect should be me. Only I didn’t kill him.”

“So who do you think did?” Joshua asked.

I shrugged. “Hell if I know. You’re the
detective,” I grinned, cheekily. “Now go detect.”

The morgue was only a few blocks over from
the convent and I left Joshua there, opting to walk back. I made the mistake of
not thinking about the route I was taking until I was close to St. Mary’s
Church. I stopped, ready to turn and go the long way round, but it was too
late.

“Praise Heaven, it’s her! The angel!”
someone screamed in excitement.

“Oh crap,” I muttered under my breath,
wondering what the best way to get out of this was.

My brain didn’t put a plan together quick
enough, and before I could get out of there, I was swarmed by the four people
who had been waiting outside the small church. “I need your help,” one of the
crowd, a middle-aged woman, pleaded. “I need him to love me.”

“God already loves you,” I responded
automatically, not knowing what to do as she latched onto my arm.

“Not Him, Malcolm. I need him to love me
and not Brianna,” she said. “It’s time he left her.”

“I’m not sure you have the right person,”
I said trying to extract my arm from her grip, while trying to duck my head
away from the other woman who was stroking my hair.

“You’re her, aren’t you,” the third, and
only male, member of the group said. He was younger than the women – maybe my
age. He was also busy pulling out his phone. “I found you!”

The second he wrapped his arm around my
shoulder and tried to take a selfie with me, I twisted out of the way and
gently pushed the fourth woman at him. “I don’t know who you think I am, but
I’m not her.” I searched blindly down the street, wondering where I could go:
heading to the convent, convenient as it was, would be a mistake. If I went in
there, they would never leave the street.

“But you’re the angel,” the final woman
cried – literally cried. “I have been waiting to see you all my life.”

“I’m not an angel,” I lied.

“No, you flew,” she continued, as I tried
to hide behind one of the others so the guy couldn’t get the picture he was
desperately trying to take.

I was about to tell her that was Veronica
but I realized that wasn’t the right thing to do. “I really don’t know what you’re
talking about,” I tried again.

“No, wait!” the guy cried, excitedly.
“You’re the girl behind it all. The one that was all over the news.”

Whatever the right thing was to do, the
wrong thing was staying where I was. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to end up
drawing a crowd. “I still don’t know what you mean,” I responded.
“But I need to go,” I said, over my
shoulder as I hurried across the street.

“Wait!” one of them yelled.

I didn’t turn to see who it was. Instead I
broke into a run – at a ‘normal’ human pace. I ran straight past the convent
and followed Chartres Street to Jackson Square, taking advantage of the busy
Black Friday foot traffic in an attempt to lose them.

Although I didn’t want the unusually hot
weather to linger, today I was glad of it, even if I did look odd running
around in jeans and boots. Rather quickly, the small crowd following me started
to thin out, unable to cope with moving as fast in the heat as I could. I
wasn’t willing to take a chance and slow down until I hit Canal Street. This
was ridiculous¸ but I finally understood why Michael had insisted I tell no one
what I was. Aside from the guy who was treating me like a celebrity (and that
alone was uncomfortable), having people ask me for things I couldn’t give was
not nice. I headed towards Decatur, the street which ran parallel to Chartres,
so I could return to the convent. I frowned: was one of those women really
asking me to get God to break up a relationship?

People were bizarre.

I took my time walking back. Aside from needing
to keep an eye out for the people who had chased after me, it was nice to just
enjoy being in the city, watching the tourists. In no time at all, I was at the
turning which would take me back to the convent. Instead, I continued on: the
route I was heading ran past the market and I always liked to peer at stalls. I
stopped at one, buying an “I Heart New Orleans’ cap to hide my hair under. As I
went to pay, I realized this store was selling Luke Goddard’s album as well. I
stared at the half-dressed man on the front of the CD. He wasn’t my type, but I
wasn’t going to deny he was good looking. The more I stared at him, the more
difficult I found it to believe that he could be Lucifer. Lucifer, the teenage
pop star? Yet he’d called the album ‘Abandoned by the Angels’… I don’t know
what compelled me to buy it, but I did. Maybe there would be a clue in one of
the songs.

The CD wasn’t the only thing I found
there. I was walking past the Farmers Market, open especially for the holiday,
and spotted a familiar head examining an enormous selection of chilies.
“Eugene!” I exclaimed. Eugene’s back went rigid as a board and he sent several
chilies scattering all over the ground. I hurried over to help him pick them
up. “Nyle has been looking for you. You’ve been gone hours,” I told him.

“Did you know how many vegetables there
are,” he said. “I mean, I knew they existed but I have never seen this many,”
he added, his dark eyes wide with wonder.

“Do you want those,” the stall owner
asked, eyeing us suspiciously.

“I most definitely do,” Eugene told him,
enthusiastically. He took the paper bag the man was offering. “You said the
lemon drops were a good choice, right?” he asked, holding up the handful of
yellow chilies for the man to see.

I waited while he bagged up a rather large
amount of the fruit then paid. “Have you been here the whole time?” I asked him
as we walked back towards the convent.

“Yes,” Eugene admitted, scuffing his feet
along the floor.

“I’m not telling you off,” I quickly told
him. He looked like a small child who had been found guilty of doing something
he hadn’t. “Nyle was worried.”

“Sarah said we were making sweet chili
chicken and I wanted to get it right,” he said.

I glanced down at the number of bags in
his hands. There weren’t that many there. “Nyle came looking for you hours
ago,” I said.

“The first store didn’t have any, so I
went to one of the bigger ones, and the humans were acting all kinds of crazy,
so I left and went to the next one. This one had some, but there was a lady in
there who said to try the market. It’s been really busy here today with humans
buying all sorts of things and pushing each other out of the way,” he
explained, looking thoroughly perplexed. At that moment, we had to move out of
the way (or be mowed down) by a man carrying a forty-inch flat screen. “See,”
he gestured back towards the man.

“Black Friday has been known to turn even
the sanest of people rabid at the sight of a price reduction,” I shrugged.

Eugene looked up at the sky, then around
at our surroundings. “There is nothing black about this day,” he responded,
puzzled.

 “It’s just the name of the day.” I
smiled, shaking my head. “I don’t think you being gone so long is a problem,
but you should probably let someone know where you’re going and give them a
rough time you’re going to be back: it will stop them worrying” I told him,
then frowned. “I sound like my aunt,” I pursed my lips, recalling the many
times she’d had this conversation with me.

“Normally we go out to deliver our
messages and can be gone for hours at a time. Nobody has been concerned
previously,” Eugene said.

“Maybe, but I would guess that Michael had
told you where to go, and he would know when to expect you home,” I offered.
“You weren’t out delivering messages.”

“Sarah knew where I was going, and that
would not have mattered. My intention was to visit one store, not three and a
market. The time she would have expected me to be back has long since passed.”

“Yes, but at least we would have known
where to look,” I said.

Eugene’s confusion remained. “But I did
not know where I was going, so how would you know where to look?”

“Okay, that’s a fair point,” I sighed.
“Maybe we should look at getting you all cell phones.”

“What is a cell phone?” I sucked in a deep
breath and shook my head. Somehow I had ended up at the most technologically
deficient House. “Besides,” Eugene continued. “Cupid knows where we are. He
would be able to find me if you had gone to him.”

I could sense there was no point in
pressing this further with Eugene. We had turned onto Ursulines Avenue and were
coming up on the convent. “We should go through the back gate,” I instructed
him. “There was a crowd in front of St. Mary’s and I don’t need them to see me
again.” Eugene did as he was told without question. It was when we entered the
grounds and were walking towards the kitchen door that my phone bleeped at me.
I pulled it out, saw Ty’s name, and sighed. “You go on.”

I waited for Eugene to go inside before
reading the message.
A is here. He’s telling dad the last of the stuff is
coming in tomorrow and they need to get it straight back out. Someone called
Alex has turned up dead. Ty.

I read the text a few times, wondering
what was best to do. I decided that whatever I did, I wasn’t doing it alone. I
went straight inside and to the office I shared with Cupid. He was in there,
alone, writing a letter, but he didn’t look up until I was in front of his
desk. “That cap does not match that outfit,” he informed me, bluntly.

“The cap hides the hair and makes me less
noticeable,” I said, sitting down. “Which is not me being paranoid: the crowd
outside the church saw me to today, and it’s safe to say they haven’t forgotten
anything. However, that’s the least of our problems.”

Quickly, I recounted everything that had
happened, leaving out only the trip to Mama Laveau, and where the cherubim were
based. Cupid listened in silence, his face reacting to some of the things I
said, but his mouth remained closed, even when I told him about Veronica and
Garret.

Even after I had finished, he continued to
stare at me, twisting his lips. “I hate being in charge,” he finally muttered,
rubbing at his temples. “So what do you think we should do?”

“I think we should at least do some reconnaissance,”
I suggested. “We should be there, but we shouldn’t be alone.”

“Even if we had an eternity, we couldn’t
train the angels,” Cupid sighed, wearily.

“I wasn’t thinking of the angels,” I
stated.

Cupid’s fingers remained at his forehead,
but he peered over at me. “You have a plan, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said, and proceeded to tell him.

* * *

I contemplated heading for the Plaza
Tower, but decided against it. Doing so would have put the cherubim on the
defensive. There was also something inside me which told me to keep hold of
that card – that I might need it at a later date. I exited via the side gate,
paused long enough that if someone was watching the convent (and I suspected
that was the case), that they would see me, then headed slowly and deliberately
to a nearby alley. “Well, whichever one of you is watching, make yourself
known. I need to talk to Veronica.”