"You want to go someplace warmer?" I asked.
"Not cold. Just…" She shook her head, then gave herself a full-bodied shake, and straightened. "Thanks for the help. With the stalker. I owe you."
"And I'm sure you'll get the chance to repay me soon. I don't know exactly what I'll need or when I'll need it, but we should set up something, so I can find you when I need to."
She agreed. The Fates gave me just long enough to make arrangements for contacting Jaime again, then sent the Searchers to retrieve me.
The Searchers dropped me off in a foyer the size of a school gymnasium. It was white marble, like the throne room, but without any decoration or furnishing-a room for passing through on your way someplace else.
Lots of people were passing through it at that very moment. Wraith-clerks, those who kept our world running smoothly. Wraiths are pure spirits, beings that have never inhabited the world of the living, and they look more like classic ghosts than we do. Everything about them is white. Even their irises are a blue so pale that if it weren't set against the whites of their eyes, you'd miss the color altogether. Their clothing and skin are almost translucent. If they cross in front of something, you can see the dark shape pass behind them.
Wraith-clerks can't speak. Can't or don't-no one is sure. They can communicate telepathically, but never telegraph so much as a syllable if a gesture will suffice.
As I walked through the foyer, wraith-clerks flitted past, pale feet skimming above the floor. They smiled or nodded at me, but didn't slow, intent on their tasks.
From the center of the room, I surveyed my directional choices. Too damned many, that was for sure. At least a dozen doorways off the foyer, as well as a grand arching staircase in each corner. No helpful building map to show the way. Not even discreet signs above the doors.
"Okay," I muttered, "what am I doing here and where am I supposed to be going?"
Without so much as a hitch in their gait, the four wraiths closest to me lifted their translucent arms and pointed at the northwest staircase.
"And what's up there?" I asked.
An image popped into my head. A winged angel. Whether the wraiths had put it there or I'd made the mental jump on my own, I don't know, but I nodded thanks and headed for the staircase.
The staircase ended at a landing with three doors and another, narrower set of stairs spiraling up. As I stepped toward the nearest door, a passing wraith-clerk pointed up.
"Thanks," I said.
I climbed the next staircase, found three more doors and another, still narrower staircase. Again, a wraith showed me the way. Again, the way was up. Two more landings. Two more sets of doors and a staircase. Two more helpful wraiths. I knew I'd reached the angel's aerie when I had only a single choice: a white door.
Beyond that door was an angel. A real angel. I'd never met one before. In the ghost world, angels were rarely discussed, and then only in tones half-derisive, half-reverent, as if we supernatural wanted to mock them, but weren't sure we dared.
Angels are the earthly messengers of the Fates and their ilk. Every now and then we'd hear of an angel being dispatched to fix some problem on earth. Never knew what the problem was-probably some tear-jerking misfortune straight out of a Touched by an Angel episode. The angels went down and flitted about, spreading peace, joy, and goodwill like fairy dust, realigned the cosmos before commercial break, and winged back up to their clouds to await the next quasi-catastrophe.
Why the Fates would dispatch an angel to catch that murdering bitch of a demi-demon was beyond me. Like sending a butterfly after a hawk. The Nix had done exactly what I'd have expected, chewed the angel up and spit her out in pieces. But, as the Fates admitted, they'd had no idea how to handle the Nix. When she'd escaped, their first reaction, understandably, had been to send their divine messengers after her.
As I reached out to knock on the door, a jolt of energy zapped through me. When I caught my balance, I looked down at my hand and flexed it. No pain… just surprise. A mental shock.
I cautiously extended my fingers toward the door again, braced for the jolt. Instead, a wave of some indefinable emotion filled me, amorphous but distinctly negative. A magical boundary. Instead of physically repelling me, it triggered a subconscious voice that said, "You don't want to go in there."
But I did want to. I had to.
So, pushing past the sensation, I knocked. For a split second, all went dark. Before I could even think "Oh shit," the darkness evaporated. The door was gone. The foyer was gone. Instead I stood in yet another white room. This one, though, appeared to have been built of brick, then plastered and whitewashed, the pattern of the brick just barely showing through. The floor also looked brick, but darker and patterned. In the middle was a large reed that surrounded by several high-backed wooden chairs, a few tables, and a carved sofa piled with embroidered pillows.
A window covered the far wall. Beyond it was a desert dotted with boxy pyramids. An illusion, I assumed, but a nice one nonetheless. If the people who ran that psych hospital had given such thought to their patients' surroundings, I doubt the haunters would have found them such easy pickings.
"Hello?" I called.
No one answered.
As I turned to look for a door, something moved at the base of the window. I peered around the divan. On the other side, huddled by the window, sat a woman, her back to me. A flowing, silvery robe swallowed her tiny form. She couldn't have been more than five feet tall. Bird-thin wrists poked out of the loose sleeves. Dark hair tumbled over her back, the ends kissing the floor. No wings that I could see, but that billowing gown could have hidden wings and a set of carry-on luggage. One thing was for certain-I sure wouldn't have sent this fragile little thing after a Nix.
"Janah?" I said softly.
She didn't move. I slid across the room, moving slowly so I didn't startle her.
"Janah?"
She lifted her head and turned. Huge brown eyes locked on mine. Those eyes were so devoid of thought or emotion that I instinctively yanked my gaze away, as if they could suck what they lacked from me.
I crouched to her level, staying a few yards away.
"Janah, my name is Eve. I won't hurt you. I only came to ask-"
She sprang. A mountain-lion screech ripped through the room. Before I could move-before I could even think to move-she was on me. I pitched back, head whacking against the floor. Janah wrapped both hands in my long hair, vaulted to her feet, and swung me against a grouping of urns. Pottery shattered and I sailed clear over the divan.
"Div farzand," Janah snarled.
She charged. I lunged to my feet and spun out of her reach. When I cast a binding spell, it didn't even slow her down. I leapt onto the divan and bounded across the cushions, then jumped onto the table. As she charged me, I tried to blind her. Either that didn't work on angels or she was indeed blinded… and didn't give a damn.
I swung around for a sidekick, but a mental barricade stopped my foot in mid-flight. Kicking a mad angel? My moral code may be a little thin, but that broke it on two counts.
I jumped across to an end table and looked around for a door. There wasn't one. The only way out of this gilded cage was the window, and I knew that was an illusion. Here, walls were walls. Even ghosts can't walk through them.
As I leapfrogged back onto the coffee table, I recited the incantation to take me home. It didn't work. Tried another one. Didn't work, either. Whatever mojo the Fates had going in this angel's cell, it was obviously designed to keep her in. All things considered, that didn't seem like such a bad idea. If only I weren't in here with her.
"Yâflan dâdvari!" she spat at me.