The Angel of Death (The Soul Summoner Book 3) (20 page)

I gave her a hug. “You weren’t an afterthought. It was a last-minute decision.”

Azrael moved over to make room for her on his side of the table.

Adrianne did a double-take when she saw him. “Is this…?”

I pointed at him. “This is Azrael. Warren’s dad. Az, this is my best friend, Adrianne Marx.”

He slightly bowed his head. “Hello.”

She looked him over again, absolutely mesmerized. “Ho…ly…crap. The genes run strong in this family, don’t they?”

“They certainly do,” I agreed as we all sat down. Nathan took the inside so I could sit across from Adrianne.

She picked up a menu and held it up in front of her face. She mouthed the words ‘Oh my god’ and dropped her mouth open dramatically.

I rolled my eyes.

“Is he single?” she whispered.

“I don’t know, but he has supernatural hearing,” I said.

She dropped her menu and looked over at him. He was smiling. Her face turned four different shades of crimson.
 

Nathan looked at him. “Are you single?”

Azrael’s eyes slowly slid toward him. “I hope you’re not asking for yourself.”

I giggled. “Listen to that. He makes jokes.”

Azrael raised an eyebrow. “Who said I was joking?”

Nathan sighed and picked up his drink.

“I am single,” he finally said.

Adrianne leaned toward him and stuck her hand out. “It’s nice to meet you, Azrael.”

“Oh, no! Absolutely none of that,” I said.

“None of what?” Adrianne whined, batting her eyelashes at me.

“I know that look,” I said. “And I’m putting my foot down now.”

She winked at Azrael. “She never lets me have any fun.”

He leaned on his elbow a little too close to her. “Somehow I doubt that does much to deter you.”

“Mmm, an angel and a mind reader,” she said.

I held my hands up. “That’s it!” I got up and pulled on her sleeve. “You can sit by Nathan.”

She laughed and stood, but she grabbed my hand and cut her eyes at me with a grin. “Can I flirt with him instead?”

“I learned how to kill people today,” I warned.

Laughing, she pressed a kiss to my forehead, certainly leaving a bright red lip print behind.

14.

That week, refusing to leave my side, Azrael began accompanying me to work every day. While I fielded holiday news requests and worked on my end of the year expense reports, the Angel of Death sat opposite my desk and played Angry Birds on his cell phone.
 

Each evening we practiced my superpowers. Most of that time was spent teaching me to conjure up my own deadly light ball and project it onto nearby trees and bushes. Note: no natural vegetation was harmed in the practicing of this skill. Despite popular belief in the mountains of North Carolina, trees don’t have souls.

I still hadn’t heard a word from Warren.

Friday afternoon, I had a scheduled day off for my follow-up doctor’s appointment from the accident. Nathan left for work, and I slept in. When I came downstairs around eleven, I found Azrael standing in the middle of my kitchen.
 

“Let’s go out. The baby is craving cheese grits for breakfast,” I said as I walked to the refrigerator.

He rolled his eyes. “It’s not breakfast anymore, and the baby will have to settle for a sandwich and potato chips. I’ve got something special planned for today.”

He successfully piqued my interest. “What are we doing?”

“Playing with fruit,” he answered.

There was a bag of navel oranges on the kitchen counter. My brow scrunched together. “Is this a joke?”

“I never joke,” he said as he ripped the bag open.

That was the truth. One thing had become obvious about my mysterious faux-father-in-law: the Almighty didn’t instill a sense of humor within His angels. I hopped up on the counter and peeled an orange. Azrael yanked it from my fingers.
 

“Hey!” I objected.

“This fruit is not for eating,” he said.

A thin smile spread across my face. “Is that what God told Adam in the Garden of Eden?”
 

He pointed a warning finger at me. “You tap dance on blasphemy, you know.”

I pretended to zip my lips sealed.

Azrael carried an orange across the kitchen and placed it in the center of the dinette table by the window. He turned to look at me. “I’m going to teach you how to move the orange.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Move it?”

“Without touching it,” he added. “Stand up.”

Obediently, I jumped down from the counter. With a smile plastered across my face, I walked to the center of the kitchen. I spread my feet apart, bent my knees, and rubbed my palms together furiously. “Let’s do this.”

Azrael folded his arms across his muscular chest. “I need you to be serious.”

I pressed my lips together and straightened my posture. “I’m sorry. I’ll be serious.”

“Close your eyes,” he said. When my eyes were sealed, he continued. “For the next several moments, I want you to forget we are standing in your kitchen. I want you to forget we are even connected to this world you live in.”
 

I wanted to ask if he would be burning incense, but I kept my mouth shut.

“Where you exist, Sloan, is inside this shell called the body.” I felt his fingertips tap lightly against my forehead. “The part of you that makes decisions, that loves, that hurts, that fears—that is who you really are. Your body actually limits you. Let’s do an exercise,” he said. “Where’s the most beautiful place on Earth?”

I smiled. “Bora Bora.”

“Have you been there?” he asked.

Sadly, I poked out my bottom lip and shook my head.

“That’s even better. Can you see it right now?”

I smiled again. “Yeah.”

“What’s it look like?” he asked.

“I see a turquoise lagoon with thatch-roof bungalows built over the sparkling water. Behind it are green mountains against a bright blue sky,” I said.

“Is it warm?”

“Yes, but there’s a cool ocean breeze that smells like coconut and limes.”

He chuckled. “Now open your eyes.”

My eyes popped open, expecting to see that we’d been teleported across the globe to tropical Tahiti. Nope. We were still in the middle of my kitchen. The only thing I could smell was lemon scented bleach from the sink. I shook my head and pointed at him. “That’s a dirty trick, Azrael.”

He waved his hand down my face. “Close your eyes again.”

With a huff, I obeyed.

“Everything in this house, in this city, in this country is standing between you and Bora Bora, correct?” He tapped my forehead again. “You’re already back there in your mind, aren’t you?”

I was. I was currently peering through the glass bottom floor of my bungalow watching a school of blue and purple fish swim under me.

His large hand gripped my skull. “This is the most powerful tool you possess, and everything outside of it is simply matter that can be moved and bent to your will.”

“Is this like, ‘Do not try to bend the spoon, Neo’?,” I asked with a grin.

“What?” he asked.

My eyes opened again. “The Matrix? Keanu Reeves?”

Azrael was glaring with disapproval.

“Sorry,” I whispered, closing my eyes.

“The art of what you know as telekinesis is really a simple process. Your body is a store of potential energy, and if you consider your potential energy as an accessible entity, you can learn to harness it and project it as kinetic energy onto an external object.”

I groaned. “I should have paid more attention in high school physics.”

“Please stop talking,” he said.

I nodded.

“I want you to try to see that energy inside you, the same way you created your vision of Bora Bora.”

My eyes opened again. “Are you serious?”

He was standing only inches in front of me. His expression was a mix of frustration and annoyance. “Yes. Do you want to learn this or not?”

“I’d rather learn how to teleport.”

“Someday I’ll teach you.”

He had my attention. “Really?” I asked.

“Yes, but not today. Focus.”

I closed my eyes again and huffed.

Two of his fingers touched my forehead. “You were given creativity for a reason. Use it to create your energy into a viable resource. See it in your mind.”
 

I took a few slow and deep breaths to rid my mind of how ridiculous this all was to me. On the next inhale, I held the breath. It was surprisingly easy to dream up a glowing haze of energy. I imagined it to be like the first orb of light Azrael had passed to me when we were on the mountain road. It sparkled and sizzled and danced around in my mind like static electricity in the clouds on a dry summer night.

He removed his fingers and walked in slow circles around me. “Hold on to that image and then imagine forcing that energy into the space between you and the orange I placed on the table. Use your hands to direct the energy toward the orange, but do not open your eyes.”

I raised my hands and imagined sending the ball of sparkling light across the room and into the orange. I slowly exhaled.

A deafening crack exploded behind me and reverberated around the room nearly sending me flying out of my skin. I clapped my hands over my splintered ear drums and opened my eyes in time to see the glass shattering as the orange crashed through the kitchen window. I spun around on Azrael who was holding a small handgun pointed toward the ceiling. He was smiling.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! What did you do?” I screamed.

He tucked the gun into his waistband and grabbed my shoulders. He was laughing with pride. “No! It is what
you
did!” He turned me back toward the window.
 

“Did you shoot the orange?” I shouted.

“No! I fired a blank!” He pointed toward the window. “You did that! You broke the window!”

My jaw dropped as another piece from the pane of broken glass crashed to the tile floor. I whirled back around and punched him as hard as I could square in the nose. His head snapped back and blood poured down into his mouth, but he was still laughing.
 

“I absolutely hate you!” I roared. “You are an evil man!”

He pulled his shirt up to catch some of the blood. Even though I really wanted to hit him again, I retrieved a towel from under the sink and handed it to him so he wouldn’t track blood all over my house. He pressed it to his nose. With bloody fingers, he pointed to the window again. “You did it, Sloan!”

“Why did you fire a gun in my kitchen?”

He examined the amount of blood on the towel. “Adrenaline makes it easier.”

My ears were still ringing, and I pressed my palms against them. “I think you ruptured my eardrums!”

“It’s a tiny gun. You’ll be fine,” he said. “I think you broke my nose.”

“I hope I did! You’re lucky it wasn’t your neck!”

He pulled the bloody towel away and pointed to his crooked nose. “Can you fix this so the bleeding will stop?”

“Fix it yourself,” I grumbled.

He shook his head. “I can’t. It won’t kill me, but I do not heal as you do.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Well, if it won’t kill you, I should let you suffer.”

“I’ll go sit on your sofa,” he warned.

I narrowed my eyes. “You’re such a jerk.”

“I know.”

For the sake of my white upholstery, I placed my hand over Azrael’s face. For a moment, I considered cutting off his oxygen supply but healed his nose instead. He winced as the cartilage and bone popped back into place and fused back together. “There,” I said when the process was finished. “I hope it hurt like hell.”

“It did. I’m going to go wash the blood off upstairs.”

I pointed to the window. “I hope God gave you some carpentry skills because I expect you to fix this!”

“Don’t worry, I will.”

* * *

I still hadn’t completely regained my hearing by the time we reached my doctor’s office downtown. While we waited in the lobby, Azrael thumbed through a pregnancy magazine.
 

I looked over at him. “Can I ask you a question?”
 

He put the magazine down. “Of course.”

“I’m sorry for the way I brought this up before, but will you tell me more about Warren’s mother?” I asked.

His hands and the magazine dropped into his lap. He looked at the floor.

I leaned into him. “I understand if you don’t want to talk about it.”

He sighed. “I don’t like to talk about Nadine.”

“That’s a pretty name,” I said.

“She was a beautiful person.” He looked over at me. “What would you like to know?”

“Where did you meet?”

He closed the magazine and put it on the table. “Nadine was a field nurse in Vietnam during the war.” Leaning sideways in his chair, he pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans. He opened it, took out a small picture, and handed it to me.

It looked like a copy of a Polaroid yellowed with age. The woman in the photo was standing next to a window in a short white tank top dress with a wide patterned sash around her waist. Her long, straight dark hair fell around her shoulders, the front pulled to the side and fastened with a barrette. She was laughing.

“Warren has her smile,” I said.

He tucked the photo back into his wallet. “I stayed close to her for several months, and after the fall of Saigon, I returned with her to Chicago.”

“Did she love you?”

He chuckled. “She didn’t like me at first. I terrified her.”

“Warren terrifies people when I’m not around him,” I said.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Humans naturally fear death. But Nadine was different. She could
see
me.”

I turned toward him. “What do you mean?”

“There are a few humans born with the ability to see us. They get glimpses of the spirit world. It’s called the gift of discernment,” he said. “Nadine was one of those few.”

I was skeptical. “I can’t even see other angels. Kasyade said it was my humanity that prevented me from seeing.”

“That’s true. Your human spirit doesn’t have the gift.”

Looking down at the photo, I studied Nadine’s exotically beautiful face again. “What was she like?”

Had I blinked, I might have missed the split second Azrael’s dark eyes glazed with the unmistakable swell of sweet remembrance. “She was feisty.”