You would think that after nearly being killed by a nephilim I would have more tolerance for pain.
I bent over my foot and began the business of trying to extract the glass. I grabbed at the sliver with the tweezers and pulled, whimpering as it came free from my flesh.
“I am so not cut out for a life of adventure,” I muttered, wiping more alcohol on the wound to make sure it wouldn’t get infected. My eyes teared up as the alcohol did its thing.
I finished bandaging the cut and stood up to test my weight on it. I would survive. A moment later, Nathaniel slammed the remains of my back door. I stepped gingerly into the hallway to meet him and had to cover my mouth with my hand to stifle my laughter.
Well, I’d wondered if he’d ever get rumpled, and now he was. He looked kind of like that cartoon coyote after the dynamite has gone off in his face.
Nathaniel’s blond hair stuck straight up in front and had been blackened by soot. So had his face and his formerly pristine shirt front. As I sniggered into my palm, a couple of blackened feathers fell from his wings onto the floor.
He raised an eyebrow at me and I schooled my face into seriousness. Then he wordlessly thrust a piece of paper into my hand.
I turned the paper over and saw that there was a message printed on one side. It said, simply, “I KNOW WHERE THEY ARE KEEPING HIM.”
I flipped the paper again, looking for further information. There was nothing but the message.
“Well, that’s really freaking helpful,” I muttered. “You’d think they’d have included a map or some flying directions or something.”
I looked back up at Nathaniel, who appeared to be gathering the shredded remains of his dignity around him. “What happened when you brought the ball outside?”
“It exploded before I managed to get it to the rain barrel,” he said tightly.
“I didn’t hear anything,” I said.
“It was a small explosion, and I held the bomb close to my chest so as not to cause property damage.” He looked as though he were regretting this act of charity.
“Well, thanks,” I said, touched by his thoughtfulness, however grudgingly given. “And where was the message?”
“Inside the bomb.”
I rubbed my fingers on the paper. It felt like perfectly normal standard bond notepaper. “How did the paper survive the explosion?”
“Perhaps there was an enchantment on the paper,” Nathaniel replied, shrugging.
He didn’t seem as interested in the mechanics of the message-delivery system as he was in straightening and dusting the cuffs of his shirt. I, however, was very interested. An enchantment could only mean that the message had been delivered by a magical practitioner. Okay, fine. Most things that go bump in the night have some kind of magic. Not all of them had the kind of fine abilities that would allow them to keep a piece of paper safe inside an incendiary device.
So that narrowed things down to a witch or a faerie. Probably. There was still a lot I didn’t know about the world, as I was discovering every day. But it seemed that your average Agent, demon, angel, vampire, et cetera, probably couldn’t have performed this kind of spell.
Of course, one had to wonder why a witch or a faerie would send this completely unhelpful message inside a bomb. Was the being that sent the message a friend? And if so, was it their idea of a funny joke to send it in a way that could have potentially blown off a limb?
“Did you get a look at whoever lobbed this thing through the window?” I asked Nathaniel. “You were facing that way.”
He shook his head. “I only saw the bomb approaching.”
I frowned. “So whoever threw it could have flown past very quickly. Or thrown it from a great distance. Or possibly levitated it from the ground. Oh, hell. Maybe Beezle saw something.”
“Where is your gargoyle?” Nathaniel asked. “Surely this commotion should have attracted his attention.”
“You’re right,” I said, turning and hurrying toward the front of the house. Beezle kept his nest underneath the picture window, on the front porch roof. This ensured that he would not only see anything approaching the front door, but also that he could spy on anything that was going on in the street. Beezle is about as nosy as it gets.
“Beezle!” I shouted, throwing up the screen and leaning out until I could see his nest. The nest was a jumble of sticks, leaves, newspapers and the small piece of plaid wool that Beezle used to wrap around his ears. “Beezle!”
He didn’t answer, and I felt a little ping of anxiety. Whoever had lobbed that bomb at my window could have hurt Beezle. I leaned farther, my hips balancing precariously over the sill, my skin coming out in goose bumps in the chilly November air.
“Beezle!” I shouted. “You answer me right now!”
Some neighbors walking by on the street below looked up in puzzlement and then quickly looked away when they saw me hanging out of the window and shouting like a lunatic.
“Beezle!” I repeated, my eyes searching every tree branch and every roof shingle in sight. No sign of my cranky gargoyle.
“Beezle!” I said again, and I felt myself overbalancing, my nose tilting toward the roof, and I had a second to wonder if I should call up my wings, when I felt Nathaniel’s arm around my waist, pulling me back inside.
I slapped at his arm, struggled against him. “Let me go! I have to find Beezle!”
“You are not going to find him by shouting out the window. If the gargoyle were there, he would have come at your call,” he said reasonably.
I breathed long through my nose in counts of three, and then did the same for the exhalation. I had to calm down. I had to think. Beezle was missing. He could be lying hurt somewhere out of sight.
“Okay,” I said, tapping at Nathaniel’s arm and looking up at his stony face. He was probably pissed that my behavior had reflected poorly on him—again. “Okay. You can let me go now.”
“You are not going to do anything foolish?” he asked.
“Define ‘foolish,’” I said, and then shook my head at his look of puzzlement. “Sarcasm. Obviously not something you are familiar with. Anyway, no, I am not going to hang out the window and shout like the neighborhood crazy anymore.”
He released me slowly, like he wasn’t sure whether or not to believe me. I turned around and faced him.
“I need to find Beezle,” I said. I tried not to think of how alone I felt at this moment, with no Beezle and no Gabriel, because if I thought of that, I might cry, and the last thing I wanted to do was cry in front of Nathaniel. “You can head back to court.”
He raised his eyebrow, an expression that I realized I would probably be seeing often since it obviously meant he was annoyed with me. “So I am dismissed, then, Princess?”
I felt the blood rise in my cheeks. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so high-handed. But I have to go now. Beezle might be hurt.”
“I will assist you,” he said.
I tried not to look completely astonished but I am sure that I failed. Nathaniel was never going to be my first choice for company, but it would be good to have an extra pair of hands around in case whatever threw the bomb was still hanging around. “Um, okay. Let me grab some sneakers and a coat and we can head outside. Can you, um, hide yourself when your wings are out?”
“One of the first things an angel learns is how to disguise his nature from mortals,” he said in an arrogant tone.
That snide remark made me feel more at ease. I could go back to disliking him and not have to struggle with the weird feeling of being grateful to him for healing me, and for helping me find Beezle.