He slid the phone shut, gave it back to her, and held out a hand. She stared at it, then lifted her gaze to the cold gray of his.
“But you’re not allowed,” she said.
“Call it extenuating circumstances. I have a bad feeling about this, Alex. We need to be there.”
“Detective Jarvis!”
Alex looked around to see Boileau, cell phone to his ear, framed in the doorway through which she’d come a moment before. He shoved his wire-framed glasses up on his nose and stalked in their direction. She didn’t wait. Didn’t question Aramael about his feeling.
Wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“Outside,” she told him. “It’s quieter.”
They headed away from Boileau, out into the chill of the night, handing the cell phone off to a security guard at the entrance as they passed. Within seconds they’d rounded the corner of the building and reached a quiet parking lot away from the main traffic area. Aramael stopped where the shadows were deepest.
“Ready?”
She shuddered as she thought back to the time when Michael had transported her this way. One could never be ready for that. But she nodded anyway, because it was Jen and Nina, and she needed to be there. With them. For them.
Aramael drew her tight against his chest. His wings enfolded her. A distant part of her noted that this was only the third embrace she had ever shared with him—if she counted having him protect her from the explosion—and then his body turned liquid with a molten energy that infused her, enshrouded her, became her.
The world fell away in a rush of vibration and heat.
Chapter 59
When they arrived at the car in the Toronto airport parking lot, Alex held out the keys to Aramael. He took them without a word. They both understood she was in no condition to drive.
He offered to stop by the hospital first to see Jen, but Alex shook her head. Jen was in good hands. They could do nothing for her. Nothing except find her daughter. Find one small, seventeen-year-old girl somewhere out there, in that vast expanse of city.
She stared out at the passing lights as Aramael maneuvered through traffic. At the storefronts, cars, apartments, and houses; at the people coming and going about their ordinary lives, oblivious to the drama playing out on their very doorsteps. Even if they knew about Nina, to them she would be just another of the city’s casualties. Another teen girl missing from her home. News today, forgotten tomorrow in the rush to get to work, to school, to yoga, to hockey practice. It was the same story in every city around the globe.
Except maybe for the part where an Archangel from Heaven had a bad feeling about the disappearance.
Strong fingers closed over hers. Squeezed. Withdrew.
It will be all right, the touch said.
She didn’t believe it. She still didn’t ask about the feeling.
“Do you want to call Seth?” Aramael asked. “He should know you’re back.”
Seth, who would have seen the newscasts by now and would be out of his mind with worry. Seth, who would be frantically trying to reach her on a cell phone that no longer functioned.
Seth, son of the One, and source of a thousand complications that she just couldn’t deal with right now.
“Later,” she said.
Aramael shot her a quick look but didn’t comment. He turned onto Jen’s street and Alex’s heart gave a shuddering thud on its way to her toes. They pulled up behind a half dozen police cars parked along the curb in front of her sister’s house. Yellow police tape stretched across the bottom of the porch stairs, and the front door stood open. No, not open. Missing.
Aramael put the vehicle into park and switched off the engine. Gathering herself, Alex made a monumental effort to switch from aunt to cop. To shove anguish to one side. At least for now.
Her supervisor met her in the shattered doorway. While a disappearance wasn’t within Homicide’s purview—not as long as the victim was assumed to be alive, anyway—the incident involved one of their own. He and the others would be keeping close tabs on it.
Roberts glanced past her shoulder to Aramael. She ignored his silent question and asked her own.
“What do we have so far?”
“We got hold of her school principal and confirmed she made roll call this morning, but we’re still trying to reach the individual teachers for period attendance. We’re canvassing the neighborhood now. Forensics is sweeping for prints.”
“You know they won’t find anything.”
“It’s what we do, Alex.” He shrugged. “And maybe we’ll get lucky.”
She didn’t have it in her to argue.
Taking her arm, her staff inspector drew her to the side of the staircase. “I wanted to give you a heads-up about something.”
“The video,” she said. She looked around at the team sweeping for evidence, at the uniform in the doorway. So far no one had paid any more attention to her than they would at any other scene. “How bad is it?”
“Anyone who knows you will recognize you.”
Shit. “Has everyone seen it?”
“In the office? Most. I’ve asked them to keep quiet, but—”
She waved him silent. It didn’t matter. “There was a man at the scene, the one who pushed the button. He was holding up a sign that said Luke 21:23. I think it might be—”
“Luke, chapter twenty-one, verse twenty-three,” Joly’s voice intruded. He came down the stairs to join them. “But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! For there shall be great distress in the land and wrath upon the people.”
Alex and Roberts stared at him. He shrugged.
“Catholic school,” he said. “The brothers thought having me memorize the Book of Luke would put the fear of God into me. I never for the life of me thought it would come in handy.”
Roberts glanced down at Alex. “Did you tell Ottawa about the sign?”
She nodded. “They’re looking into it. I wanted to see if tech had run across anything.”
Her supervisor nodded. “I’ll check with them when I go back to the office. Are you okay if I leave you here? Joly can stay with you if you want.”
Alex shook her head. “I’m fine.”
“Then I’ll start checking the incident reports for anyone matching Nina’s description,” Joly said. He hesitated, then slung an arm around her shoulders in a quick squeeze. “We’ll find her, Alex. I—”
Aramael’s voice, a veritable growl, interrupted. “Alex.”
She turned, took one look at the scowl stamped on his brow, and extricated herself from Joly’s hold with a mutter of thanks and a good-bye.
Aramael waited for her by the front window. The same window Nina had shattered almost two months ago, using one of the shards of glass to slice herself open after she witnessed the atrocities committed by Caim. Alex clamped her teeth against a shudder as she reached him.
“It was Lucifer,” Aramael said without preamble.
She groped for the back of a chair and waited for her stomach to climb up from the floor. “You’re sure.”
“There are traces left—” He broke off, his eyes growing grim. “I’m positive.”
“But why—” She stopped dead. Stared at Aramael. And knew. The room went hazy around its edges as she struggled to ward off the impossibility. The horror.
She closed her eyes, standing again in a damp, dark alley between Seth and six silent Archangels, facing down Lucifer himself. Lucifer, who had raped her and impregnated her with his child, who had caused her to pick up Seth’s discarded knife and slice into her own belly to end that child’s life.