Black Night

“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.

I ran to my room, pulled on an overcoat and my black Converse sneakers, and then met Nathaniel by the front door. He was fixing his hair in the small mirror that hung over the table where I dumped my keys and spare cell phones.

“Come on, beautiful,” I said, rolling my eyes. “We have work to do.”

I let my wings out and winked out of sight. Nathaniel disappeared a moment later. Mortal eyes would not be able to see us, but to anything supernatural we would appear see-through, like ghosts.

We headed out the front window and started from the roof of the house down. I carefully checked every eave, every nook, every windowsill. I practically pinned my nose to the ground and crawled all around the front and back yards, calling down rabbit holes and peeking behind bushes. Nothing.

No sign of Beezle. No evidence of my attacker. Nothing.

I tried not to panic. Losing Gabriel was one thing. I had confusing, lusty feelings for him and didn’t want to see him hurt. But losing Beezle was devastating. I had never, never been without him in my whole life. He had always been there—irascible, sometimes annoying, but he was mine. He’d been like a parent to me when I was young and alone and afraid, and a constant companion as I grew older. I could not even contemplate a future without Beezle in it.