Immortal (Fallen Angels #6)(53)
Author: J.R. Ward

God, she’d looked so different back then, Sissy thought as she stared at herself.

“Give me your hand,” he said.

Absently, she put her palm out—and found her arm getting stretched up to his neck by him. “Feel this?”

It was a charm. On the end of a necklace.

She frowned. “That’s mine.”

“I know. Your mother gave it to me.”

“When?” she breathed.

“I went to see her after I had to leave you down there. It was before I figured out a way to get you back. I knew how badly she must have been suffering, so I went to your house and found her sitting in that armchair in the living room. She was staying up for you.”

As the glowing picture started to get wavy, she brushed at the tears in her eyes. The reality of her mother waiting by the door, not because Sissy was out after curfew … but because something terrible had happened … was more than she could take.

“I promised your mother I would bring you back,” Jim said gruffly. “She gave me this, and I was going to give it to you, but I’d like to keep it. That way you know you’re with me. Wherever I go, whatever I do. You’re right there with me.”

“It barely fits you,” she murmured, tracing the way the thin chain had to stretch around his thick neck.

“I’m not going to fuck you over, Sissy. Not going to happen.” He leaned in for a kiss and she let him have one. “And you want to know what I want to do?”

“What.”

“After this is all over, I want to take you out on a date. A dumb-ass dinner date. Or, shit, I don’t know. Walk on a beach—not that there are any around here. I just … if I win this war, on the other side of it all, I want you on the back of my bike. Maybe it’s only going for a ride. I don’t care. Just you and me, nothing else. Promise?”

She didn’t know which one of them to believe. The lying demon … or the trained killer who seemed the least likely person on the planet to get sentimental—who was nonetheless wearing a tiny dove around his throat and had stopped in the middle of everything to take a picture of a photograph of her.

“That’s what you were going to ask,” she said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Down in the parlor, right after you came back while we were having dinner. You were going to ask Adrian to take a picture of us, weren’t you.”

“Yeah.”

“Can angels be photographed?”

“You wanna see?”

He took the phone from her and realigned the shooter so that the fuzzy dark shadows that were the two of them came into vague focus.

“Brace yourself for the flash,” he said. “Three, two, one…”

The bright light blinded her and made her blink, but when her eyesight returned and she looked onto the little screen, there they were, their heads close together, him looking at her, not the camera’s eye, her gaze focused myopically straight ahead.

And there, around both of their heads, like some kind of benediction, were the halos.

“You can trust me, Sissy. I’m at war with the bitch, not in love with her.”

She thought back to when he’d been down in Hell, tortured by those demons, violated by the masses. How could anybody love or be attracted to someone who could do that to them? Jim was a lot of things, but he didn’t strike her as a masochist on that kind of scale.

God, she didn’t know who to believe.

But she did like the picture of the two of them together. She really … liked the way they looked. If it weren’t for those damn halos, she could almost believe they were just a normal couple.

“Can I keep this?”

“Yeah, you can have my phone.”

Cradling it to her heart, she scootched down and put her head on the pillow. “When will you be back.”

“After I put that cunt in her place.”

Well, at least he showed no signs of looking forward to seeing the demon; that was for sure. And the sex the pair of them had just had? Nothing to sneeze at.

“Be safe,” she said.

“Always.”

She heard him walk for the door—but then he turned and came right back, capturing her face in his hands.

“I’m going to take care of you.” His voice had the strangest tone to it. “I swear on my mother’s soul. I’m going to make things right.”

And then he kissed her and left, closing the door behind himself quietly before striding down the hall. It was a while before she figured out what had been behind that odd inflection, and she shivered.

It was fear.

Jim Heron was terrified, for some reason.

Chapter Twenty-seven

“May I help you.”

Not a question. And the attitude was more along the lines of, What are you doing here?

As Jim stopped on the shiny marble floor of the Freidmont Hotel’s lobby, he looked across at Mr. Officious, who was manning the front desk. The guy was wearing a discreet black suit with a gold name tag, a bright white shirt, and a black tie—like he was the maître d’ of a funeral home.

“The service entrance is around the back,” was the tack on.

Annnnnd this was why it was better to be invisi.

“I’m here to see a guest,” Jim muttered, and went to head for the elevators.

“Excuse me,” the man said as he busybodied his way out from behind the counter.

Jim put his palm out and whammied the little prick into silence. Then with a quick spin and a metaphysical shove, he sent the suit back to his station.

Jim took the elevators, not the stairs.

For one, it was because a set of those ornate doors opened on cue like the damn thing knew he needed a lift. Har-har. And two, the closer he got to the demon, the more worked up he was becoming, and that limited his powers to the likes of the parlor trick he’d pulled on the front-desk guy.

Stepping in, he hit the button marked PH and looked up at the line of numbers over the doors. With a series of discreet dings, the progress up the middle of the old building was slow and steady.

His temper rose as well.

There were mirrors all over the inside of the elevator, and he avoided looking at himself. He didn’t want to think about anything other than giving Devina a very clear message—and the sight of his face with the stubble and the exhaustion was too much a reminder of how close to the bone he was.

Shifting his eyes even higher, so he was looking at the ornate wood carvings on the ceiling, he muttered, “Nigel, you’d better come through for me.”