Immortal (Page 36)
Immortal (Fallen Angels #6)(36)
Author: J.R. Ward
Jim thought back to the first round … to Vin diPietro, and the subtle clues that had brought them together. That had been the only time he’d been given any direction. The rest of the rounds had been “luck”: Matthias. DelVecchio. Then Matthias again. And finally the twins. Adrian probably had a point, come to think of it.
Maybe he should have trusted the system more from the beginning.
“So, ah, I’m going to crash if it’s okay,” he said, getting to his feet. “Unless you need help cleaning this up?”
Ad laughed. “I’m tackling the paper bags from dinner, not the room. I think I can handle it.”
“Cool. G’night.”
He was almost through the doorway when Ad drawled, “Keep Sissy warm, buddy.”
Jim froze and looked over his shoulder. Before he could say anything, the other angel shrugged.
“Come on, she didn’t say good night to you. You think I’m stupid?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Ad shook his head. “You were ready to leave her to get Nigel back. You put it all on the line for the war. I know your game head’s back, and going to stay that way. And listen, if I had a harbor in this storm … I’d take it, too. So enjoy it while you can—but keep the sex noise down, ’kay? It’s fucking tacky.”
Jim frowned. “I feel like I gotta say this. I’m not going to get distracted by anything or anybody.”
Again, if he played this right? He and Sissy could work shit out afterward.
In the meantime, however, he had no intention of keeping his hands to himself.
“Roger that,” Adrian said from his picnic of one on the floor of the trashed parlor. “But I’m eating your sundae. It’s the only kind of enjoyment I got left.”
A good half hour later, and Sissy wasn’t the only one who’d taken a shower before “bed.”
Although she probably hadn’t wasted twenty minutes shaving her face, Jim thought as he leaned into the mirror over the bathroom sink.
Double-checking his jaw, he was going for baby’s-ass smooth, and he had to give his five-bladed Gillette whatever-the-fuck props. No risk of razor burning her—at least for the next couple of hours.
There was so much steam in the loo that he had to wipe his forearm across the glass again as he inspected the other side. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done this for a woman … and then realized that, like the ILY thing, it was a first.
Stepping back, he decided he looked about as good as he was going to. The stab wound in the meat of his shoulder was already on the fast track to healing up, and the bags under his eyes didn’t show much as long as he wasn’t standing directly under a light. Did she like cologne?
“Not like I have any,” he muttered as he picked up his clothes and opened the door.
The cooler, drier air of the landing rushed in like a cleaning crew after a party, draining out the humidity, defogging everything. It did the same to his head—and the dose of reality that followed, the hard shot of crystal-clear on what he was about to do, made him hesitate.
Okay, fine. He was nervous.
Up overhead, footsteps in the attic made creaking sounds: Adrian was settling in beside Eddie again, probably on some makeshift bed that involved old Victorian clothes and a shoe box for a pillow. Not that the angel was going to care. He was made of tougher shit than that.
That SOB had sacrificed so much to win. What had he gotten in return?
Loss of a good friend. And fast food tonight.
Hell of a compensation rate.
With a curse, Jim went into his own room, dumped the clothes he’d been wearing in the dirty pile, and picked out a laundered version of precisely what he’d had on from the clean one: white Hanes undershirt that he wore like it was a T-shirt, blue jeans. He left his feet bare. With any luck, he was going to be naked in a matter of moments so who needed socks and shoes.
He couldn’t resist one last look-see in the mirror and actually smoothed his hair down. His buzz cut was growing out, and the fact that the fade wasn’t regulation tight made him itchy.
Old habits of being a military man died hard.
Just as he was about to turn away, he narrowed his eyes and thought of Devina. Over dinner, Sissy and Ad had filled him in on the particulars of how they’d created the portal to Purgatory, and that made him think of the two vortexes that the Creator Himself had made.
One was that mirror of Devina’s.
He’d seen the hump-ugly thing once before, when they’d found her loft in the meatpacking district. Ad—or had it been Eddie? Probably Eddie—had said that taking possession of it was the way to hit Devina in the nuts the hardest. Steal its transportive powers from her, and she was trapped either in Hell or on this side. But you had to be careful how you did it. You shattered the reflective surface in the conventional way and, assuming he remembered right, you yourself were destroyed, busted into a million Humpty Dumpty pieces.
With no hope of a Super Glue save.
The temptation to eliminate the bitch was nearly all-consuming, but he had to wonder what was on the other side of that. Something worse? The safest bet was to just win the war and let the Creator’s rules take care of her.
Except fuck safety. To him, there was a law of equity that demanded she lose the thing that was dearest to her—in light of her fucking with his Sissy and taking Eddie away from Ad.
And PS, he was done apologizing for referring to Sissy like that.
She sure as hell felt like his.
On that note, he left his room and shut the door quietly, even though there was no reason to pretend he was sleeping in his own bed.
Guess he wanted to protect her virtue even in the hypothetical.
Even as he was about to take it.
As he started down the hall, behind him on the main staircase, that fucking grandfather clock started chiming, the gonging noises timed perfectly with each footfall he planted.
Like the damn thing was following him.
Stopping, he turned around, put his palm out, and before he knew what he was doing, created a wall of molecules. Worked perfectly. Whatever that clock was up to, he couldn’t hear it anymore.
The door to Sissy’s bedroom was the same as all the others on the second floor: seven and a half feet tall, four feet wide, with two sets of raised panels that were larger on the top, smaller on the bottom. The knob was crystal and cut in a sunburst pattern, and as he watched his hand reach out for it, he thought of that old movie The Sixth Sense—the knobs that had mattered had all been red.