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

It took me all of thirty seconds to work
out where I had been dropped off – right outside the Superdome. It was still
early morning and I had a clear view of the I-10 from my spot outside. Great…
if my picture ended up on the front of another newspaper, Michael really was
going to kill me.

I pulled my cap down, hoping that the
passing traffic would have been too preoccupied to notice a figure appear from
thin air, and set off walking back towards the Quarter. I had to keep my pace
at a ‘normal’ speed and I was a good half hour walk away from the convent.
Thankfully it was a dry day; too hot for the middle of November, but certainly
manageable for someone who didn’t feel the heat.

By the time I had bought the onions, and a
few other supplies, I had calmed down from my encounter with the cherubim.
Calm, or losing my mind, I wasn’t sure. When I stepped into Qube, I figured the
latter was certainly a realistic possibility.

Qube was a small bar on Bourbon Street. It
was home to delicious crêpes during the day and above average cocktails on the
evening. (Actually, both were served all day long, but many an hour spent
upstairs on the bar’s balcony had taught me that crêpes were where their sales
lay).

It was also the home to Tyrone Hamilton.

I’d thought Ty was my friend. Initially, I’d
wanted a fake ID from him so I could get into Bee’s. In exchange, he’d wanted
my help with a project for his photography class – or at least, that’s what he had
claimed. As I’d spent time with him, I’d realized that actually, I kind of
liked him. And then I found out that Ty had been using me.

Ty was a nephilim – the offspring of a
human and an angel. In Ty’s case, his father happened to be Beelzebub, one of the
most famous fallen angels after Lucifer. Now don’t get me wrong, the fact he
didn’t tell me that had upset me, but my biggest resentment came from the fact
he had gotten me into Bee’s. It had been a trap in order for his father to
literally throw me (and Joshua) out of a window, so that Ty could take
photographs of it. The same photographs that had accompanied the news article
which had announced the existence of angels in the world and consequently had
me under house arrest.

So why exactly was I here?

“Angel?” Ty’s voice startled me from my
thoughts. I looked up and found him staring at me like I was a ghost, frozen,
mid-conversation with someone sat at the bar.

My eyes scanned the otherwise empty bar,
falling on the one person in there beside Ty. I barely acknowledged the dark
haired guy before I looked back to Ty. I sighed. “This is a mistake,” I
muttered, more to myself than to him. I turned on my heel and marched towards
the door.

“Angel, wait!” he called after me. I had
no intention of waiting, but he ran, cutting me off at the door. “I never
expected to see you again.”

“Neither did I.” I folded my arms across
my chest. “What do you want?” I demanded.

“You came here,” he pointed out, though he
kept his distance like I was a cat ready to attack.

“And I have no idea why,” I shot back at
him.

“I’m glad you did,” he said, before I
could step around him. He frowned, glancing over his shoulder at the guy at the
bar. “Zeke, could you give us a minute?” I waited until Zeke had gathered his
things and exited the bar, leaving Ty and myself alone. “I wanted to call by
the convent.” When I narrowed my eyes, he shifted his weight. “We know where
Michael’s House is,” he admitted, sheepishly.

“Of course you do,” I muttered with a
sigh.

“I did want to call by,” he repeated. “But
I also didn’t want Michael to kill me.”

I glared up at him. “I can assure you,
Michael would be the least of your problems.”

“I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “I really am.”

“Sorry is not going to remove me and
Veronica from any newspaper archive,” I told him.

“I know,” he acknowledged, sadly. He
glanced over my shoulder at the bar, before looking at me. “Can I start to make
it up to you with a chocolate crêpe? On me?”

If it wasn’t for the fact I’d had to put
up with my pitiful cooking for the last few weeks, I would have turned him down,
but I was as desperate as the other angels in the convent for something decent
to eat. “Fine,” I conceded, begrudgingly. I stalked over to the bar and dumped
my groceries on the barstool next to me. I paused before sitting. “Does your father
own this bar too?” I asked, the thought suddenly occurring to me. “Am I about
to get pounced on by a dozen different fallen angels?”

I probably should have asked that first.

“No,” Ty replied, firmly. He walked behind
the bar and came to a stop in front of me. “I work here
because
it’s not
owned by my dad.”

I narrowed my eyes. “How do I know you’re
not lying to me?” I asked. “You are a nephilim, after all. Why should I trust
you?
Again
?”

“Why did you come here?” Ty asked.

I pursed my lips. “I don’t know.”

“But you
did
come here,” Ty pointed
out. “You knew before you stepped in this bar who I am, and who my father is.”
He leaned forward onto the bar, resting his forearms on the worn wood. “Which
means, deep down, you trust me,” he finished, his eyes watching me, hopeful.

I chewed at my lower lip, considering him
carefully. “Maybe I’m just not a good judge of character,” I said, eventually.
I reached over and scooped up my groceries. “Maybe I’m a glutton for
punishment,” I added. Once again, I turned on my heel and headed for the door.

“For what it’s worth, I think you are a
good judge of character,” Ty called after me. “And I’m going to do what I can
to prove that to you.”

I took a deep breath and turned around. “You
have made my life difficult,” I pointed out. “This is the first time I have
been outside the convent walls in weeks, and even then, I had to sneak out.” I
took a couple of steps back towards him, but relaxed my shoulders. “But the
number of people camping outside the churches in this city has dropped right
down, and apparently the newspapers have gotten bored.”

Ty’s head dropped. “About that,” he
sighed.

I took another step towards the bar, the
brown paper grocery bag crumpling as my grip tightened. “What?” I demanded,
sharply.

Ty raised his hand to scratch at the back
of his neck. “My dad convinced Claudia to release your name. She ran the story
this morning. The last I heard, the network news was planning on running it,
although I think they were going more along the angle of you creating the hoax,
rather than being an angel.”

I saw red. Hardly aware of what I was
doing, I plucked an onion from the bag and launched it as hard as I could at
Ty. His reflexes seemed to be supernatural, as he ducked behind the bar, just
in time to dodge the onion which exploded against a bottle of whiskey, sending
alcohol, glass and onion raining down around him. “I can’t believe I came here
to give you a second chance!” I snarled before I stormed out of the bar,
ignoring Ty’s cries behind me.

I was surprised, and incredibly relieved,
to discover that the crowd outside St. Mary’s hadn’t grown by the time I had
returned. It would be opening soon for morning Mass anyway. Despite this, Ty’s
words were still ringing in my head and I chose to return in the same way I had
left.

Inside, I had barely finished unpacking
the onions from the bag when I heard voices carrying down the hallway. Of late,
any voices that I had heard had belonged to the angels, complaining about
something. Today, I recognized one of them, but it sounded so out of place in
the convent, that I was sure I wasn’t hearing correctly. I screwed the paper
bag up and tossed it in the recycle box which desperately needed emptying, and
made my way over to the door.

“I’m aware of the consequences of the
public finding out about this place, Michael,” the voice said, firmly. “I
climbed over the neighbor’s fences, caught the bus and got off two stops early
to make certain I got lost in the morning traffic.”

“Sarah?” I asked as I stepped out of the
kitchen. Just down the hallway, my aunt was indeed mid-conversation with the
archangel of the House. “What are you doing here? Is everything okay?” Both
Michael and Sarah turned towards me with matching grim expressions on their
faces. “Why are you climbing over the neighbor’s fences?” Sarah was fifty-six
years old, although she seemed younger. She was certainly not the type of
person who would go climbing fences unless her life was in danger.

“There are reporters camped outside the
house,” she said, calmly. “The first news crew arrived sometime around five
this morning.” She glanced up at Michael. “The others started to arrive shortly
afterwards.”

“The others?” I repeated. “Fallen angels?”

Sarah shook her head. “I don’t think so,”
she said. “I would call them believers. They were there asking for miracles.”

“Oh great,” I exclaimed. “Now there are
crazy people camped out there too.”

“Angel!” Sarah and Michael both chided me
eerily at the same time.

“Well they are,” I puffed.

“They are there because they believe in
angels,” Michael pointed out. “That is exactly what you and I are. You cannot
insult them for believing in something which is true.”

“You cannot insult them for things that
aren’t true, either,” my aunt added, sharing a look with Michael.

“Well how do we get rid of them?” I asked.
When they both shared the same shocked expression, my mouth fell open. “I am
not proposing we swoop in there and kill them!”

“We didn’t think you meant that,” Sarah
responded. “But we’re not going to rid them from my lawn.”

I folded my arms. “You’re going to let
them stay there?” I asked Sarah. “And you’re happy to continue leaping over
fences?”

“No,” Michael replied for her. “She is
going to stay here for a while.” He opened his mouth, ready to say something
else, but no words came out. He stood frozen, his gaze which had been focused on
me seemed to suddenly be looking straight through me.

“Michael?” I said, waving my hand in front
of his face.

He blinked, and then turned to Sarah. “I
will have a room allocated to you. Cupid will see to that shortly. Please
forgive me but I have business to attend to.” He barely waited for Sarah to nod
an acknowledgement before he vanished in front of us.

I looked at my aunt. “Weird.” I shrugged
and gestured to the large hallway. “Welcome to the House of Michael.”

“What had I interrupted you in doing?” she
asked, looking around.

“Preparing dinner,” I replied, smiling as
my aunt’s eyes widened in disbelief. “You remember me telling you that the
cherubim left, right?” I may have been under house arrest, but I had managed to
call her a few times a week to explain my latest disappearing act.

“The ones that did all the chores,” Sarah
nodded. Her eyes narrowed. “Wait,
you
are doing the chores? I thought
you were allergic?”

I rolled my eyes. What person liked doing
chores? “I want to eat. No one else seems capable.”

She followed me into the kitchen and saw
the nine onions waiting for me on the metal counter. “How hungry are you?”

“There are thirty-three mouths to feed in
here,” I said. Sarah rolled up her sleeves and walked over to the sink. “What
are you doing?” I asked as she turned the taps on.

“You have never been trained to cook for
that many people,” she informed me. “You will be in this kitchen all day. I
have nothing better to do, and a love for cooking. You leave the kitchen to me,”
she instructed me as she started to lather up her hands.

“You know you’re a guest here, right?” I
pointed out.

She glanced back to me. “Regardless of the
circumstances, you have a job to do. Shouldn’t you see what was so important
that Michael had to disappear so abruptly?”

I hurried to give her a hug, then did as
she suggested, darting up the stairs, two at a time until I reached Michael’s
attic abode. Outside the door, I could hear multiple voices. One I recognized:
Michael. There were at least two I didn’t. “… All over the news. Again!” One
was saying. “It is unacceptable.”

I knocked on the door and waited for
Michael to call me in. When he did, I stepped in, and didn’t wait for the door
to close behind me before I spoke. “It’s not Michael’s fault,” I quickly told
the two newcomers.

“Not now,” Michael warned me.

“You must be Angel,” one of the new angels
said. She was a stunning, ridiculously tall, Asian who could pass for eighteen,
with warm honey-colored eyes – the polar opposite of the tone of voice she was
using on me.

“That’s me,” I said, making sure to keep
my back straight and my chin held high. “You have me at a disadvantage.”

“Which isn’t hard when you’re currently
being broadcast across the local networks,” the second newcomer announced. Looking
at this guy a Scandinavian college-aged hipster was what came to mind. Even the
man-bun didn’t seem out of place with the suit he wore. He was also looking at
me like I was the second coming of Lucifer.

“As I have said, Zachary, this will soon
blow over,” Michael said in exasperation.

“You are not hearing us, Michael,” the
woman said. “We are not here because Angel and Veronica decided to announce the
existence of angels to the world.”

“Oh, come on! ‘Announcing the existence of
angels to the world’ is a little extreme,” I jumped in. “We didn’t want that to
happen, any more than I wanted Beelzebub to throw me out of that window.”

“Angel, be quiet,” Michael said, trying to
keep his cool.

“
That
is why we are here,” Zachary
said, pointing his finger at me.

“She is a little brash and certainly needs
to learn when she should be quiet,” Michael said, seemingly forgetting I was in
the room. “But I still think she will make an excellent archangel.”

My eyes widened: he did? Today was the
most I had seen Michael since the day after Halloween – the morning after the
night’s events which were being discussed – when I shouted at him for not
realizing what was happening in New Orleans under his nose. If my aunt hadn’t
have turned up at the convent, I was certain we could probably go the same
length of time again before we crossed paths. He thought I would make an
excellent archangel? I started to smile, but as quickly as it had formed, it
disappeared: that meant these two didn’t.

“She seems surprised,” the woman mused,
smiling at Zachary, mistaking where my surprise came from.

“Why don’t you show her, Savannah?” Zachary
suggested.

“There is no need for this,” Michael
objected as Savannah walked over to one of the brown leather couches in the
corner of the room.

I was momentarily distracted by the grace with
which she walked across the room, wearing what looked to be five inch
stilettos. No wonder she looked so tall. She was dressed like she worked in a
boardroom, but she looked like she belonged on a runway. She plucked an iPad
from a purse and stalked straight back over, switching it on as she did so. She
handed it over as a saved video of a news report started playing.

“Thank you, Ryan,” the reporter was saying
as she stood in front of a painfully familiar blue house. “I’m standing outside
the home of Angelina Connors; the girl KWN News has identified as the person
responsible for the angel hoax three weeks ago in New Orleans. Angelina, who
goes by the name of Angel, has perhaps taken her namesake a little too
seriously. You may remember the pictures which dominated the national
headlines.” The shot switched to the all-too-familiar photographs of me and
Veronica outside of Bee’s as my mouth fell open.
National headlines??
“KWN
News has been trying to figure out how these photographs were staged, and to
what motive. Theories on the internet range from a girl desperate for her
fifteen minutes of fame to a political statement about the importance of
religion in today’s society. Either way, one thing is for certain: Luke Goddard
has certainly been reaping the benefits of this stunt as his fans claim it was
a sign of a true Follower. This is Regina Ward reporting for KWN News.”

I was too busy staring at the small screen
in astonishment to stop Savannah from reaching over and selecting a different
saved video. This one was a local breakfast show my aunt watched all the time.
The presenters – Brent and Candice – were sat either side of a widescreen monitor
with the same photograph displayed between them.

“I have to say, Brent, this doesn’t
surprise me at all,” Candice said, gesturing to the screen. “This is a girl
crying out for attention.”

“I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t
think the drunken antics of a college student qualify for a cry for help.”

“This alone, maybe not, but when you look
at everything else?” Candice shrugged. “She ran away from home six months ago.”
The monitor between them flashed to a rumpled missing poster. Although the
contact number was blurred out, I was certain it was something that my aunt had
created. “And then when you look at her Facebook profile…” The missing poster
was replaced with various photographs of me, taken across my first two years of
college, clearly on a night out, clearly drunk, and clearly drawing attention
to myself. I actually winced at the one my friend Nina had taken of me, dancing
on top of a bar.

“Candice, if you were to look at any other
college student’s Facebook profile, you’d likely find similar things. She’s
young, she’s having fun. I bet you were the life and soul of a party too, when
you were her age,” Brent pointed out.

“I didn’t go out and encourage someone
even younger to join in. That raven-haired girl looks like a high school
junior, at best, and look at the stunt she’s pulling.”

Brent shook his head. “We’ve already
concluded that this was an elaborate photo manipulation. We’ve yet to identify
who the other girl is… If anything, this shows how good Angelina’s computer
skills are: I bet that girl, that angel, is just a manipulation too.”

Savannah leaned over and took the iPad
from me. Numbly, I let her.

A while ago I had thought about deleting
my Facebook profile – and all my other social media accounts – but only because
I was worried that I would one day log on and accidentally alert a friend that
I was alive and well. Then everything at Halloween had happened and I never had
the chance. The actual
contents
of my profile had never crossed my mind.
If they had, I definitely would have found the time to delete it.
Talk about considering your future
employees when you post things!

“You cannot judge her past actions from
before she had even earned her wings, on her future potential to become an
archangel,” Michael spoke up for me. “I agree, these stories do not highlight
Angel in a positive and inspiring manner, but that is not the angel I see
before me. This age has people seeking and finding their five minutes of fame –
this will soon blow over and she will be forgotten about.”

I wasn’t expecting Michael to jump to my
defence so quickly but my anger was making it easy for me to keep the surprise from
my face. “I don’t know who you two think you are, but you don’t know who I am.
A couple of drunken nights out does not make me an evil person,” I told them.

Savannah flicked her head to toss her hair
out of her face and then turned back to Michael. “We are not looking at her future
potential, Michael, and until now, we would not have even considered her past,”
she wrinkled her nose. “Indiscretions.”

“The only reason we would look into the
past is because she has thrust it so willingly into the present,” Zachary
pointed out. His bright eyes narrowed. “Just like she has now thrust angels
into the spotlight. That is unacceptable.”

There was a loud harrumph which caused me
to jump and I whipped my head around in the direction it had come from. Behind
me, next to the door, leaning against the wall with his arms folded was another
guy. Like everyone else in the room, he could have had a job in Hollywood.
However, with heavy boots, charcoal cargo pants and a black T-shirt under his formfitting
jacket, compared to the others, he looked ready to lead a band of mercenaries
into battle instead of star in the latest RomCom.