"My apologies for the abrupt transport," Carter continued. "Jerome started freaking out that I'd left you alone for so long."
"I've never 'freaked out' in my life - er, existence, er whatever," mused Jerome, strolling into the room. Studying him, I could believe his words. Dressed immaculately as ever, he held a martini in one hand and looked utterly at ease amid the disarray.
"Nice place," I told him, still aghast at the damage done to such beauty. "Fixer-upper?"
The demon's eyes flashed with amusement at my joke. "I do so love having you around, Georgie." He sipped his drink. "Yes, it is a little rough around the edges right now, but no worries. It'll clean up. Besides, I have other domiciles."
Jerome had always been very tight-lipped about where he lived, and I suspected it was only Carter's intervention that allowed us to even remain here right now. The demon would have never invited us. Walking over to a large bay window, I beheld a magnificent view of Lake Washington, the Seattle skyline glittering beyond it. Based on the angle of my view, I would have wagered money we were in Medina, one of the more elite Eastside suburbs. Only the best for Jerome.
"So what happened?" I finally asked when it became apparent no one else intended to broach the subject. "Was this a nephilim attack, or did you just throw a party that got out of hand? Because honestly, if it's the last one, I'm going to be really pissed we weren't invited."
"No such fears," Carter told me, smiling. "Our friend the nephilim did a little redecorating, kindly flashing us when it was over. That's why I abandoned you at Erik's. I would have given you some warning, but when I felt it over here..." He looked meaningfully at Jerome. The demon scoffed in response.
"You what? Thought I was in danger? You know that's not possible."
Carter made a nondescript noise of disagreement. "Yeah? What do you call that?" He inclined his head toward the spray-painted symbol.
"Graffiti," responded Jerome disinterestedly. "It means nothing."
I walked away from the breathtaking window and its pricey view, looking the symbol up and down. I'd never seen anything like it, and I was familiar with a lot of characters and markings from all types of places and times.
"It must mean something," I countered. "Seems like a lot of trouble for nothing. Otherwise, he could have just written 'you suck' or something like that."
"Maybe that's in one of the other rooms," suggested Cody.
"A punch line worthy of Georgie. You're learning more than dancing."
Ignoring the demon's attempt to change the subject, I turned to Carter for answers. "What is it? You must know what it means."
The angel studied me speculatively a moment, and I realized I'd never appealed to him before for serious help. Until our recent roommate stint, most of our interactions had been downright antagonistic.
"It's a warning," he said slowly, not looking at his demonic counterpart. "A warning of impending disaster. The real phase of a battle about to begin."
Jerome's finely suppressed control snapped. He slammed the glass down on an off-kilter table, face flushing. "Christ, Carter! Are you insane?"
"It doesn't matter, and you know it. Everything's going to come out anyway."
"No," hissed the demon icily, "not everything."
"Then you tell them." Carter made a grandiose gesture toward the symbol. "You explain and make sure I don't say too much."
Jerome glared at him, and they locked eyes in their usual way. I'd seen it happen countless times, but upon reflection, I felt pretty sure I'd never actually seen them at such odds with each other before.
"It might have meant those things at one time," Jerome admitted at last, exhaling in an effort to calm himself. "But not anymore. As I said, it's meaningless now. An archaic scrawl. A charm which, without anyone to believe in it anymore, holds no power."
"Then why use it at all?" I wondered aloud. "More of the nephilim's bizarre sense of humor?"
"Something like that. It's to remind me who we're dealing with - as if there was any possible way I could forget." Picking up his sloshed martini, Jerome finished it in one gulp. Sighing, suddenly looking tired, he glanced at Carter. "You can tell them about the other ones if you want."
The angel's face registered mild surprise at the concession. He looked back up at the marred wall. "This symbol is the second in a set of three. The first is the declaration of battle - a way to sort of psyche out your enemy with what's to come. It looks just like this but with no diagonal. The last symbol marks victory. It has two diagonals and is displayed after the enemy is defeated."
I followed his gaze. "So, wait... if this is the second, does that mean you've seen the first already?"
Jerome walked out of the room and returned a moment later, handing me a piece of paper. "You're not the only one who gets love notes, Georgie."
I opened it up. The paper was the same kind used for my notes. Displayed on it, in heavy black ink, was a copy of the symbol on Jerome's wall without the diagonal. The first symbol, the declaration, according to Carter.
"When did you get this?"
"Just before Duane died."
I thought back through the weeks. "That's why you didn't push me too hard when he died. You already had a good idea who was responsible."
The demon shrugged by way of answer.
"Wait a minute then," exclaimed Cody, coming to look over my shoulder at the note. "If this is the first warning... are you saying that everything that's happened - Duane, Hugh, Lucinda, Georgina - has been part of the 'psyching out'?" The vampire grew incredulous when neither of the higher immortals responded. "What more can there be? What is this 'real phase'? I mean, he's already attacked or killed, what, four immortals?"
"Four lesser immortals," I supplied, suddenly catching on. I looked back and forth between Jerome and Carter. "Right?"
The angel gave me a tight-lipped smile. "Right. You guys have been the practice round before the big hit." He gave Jerome another pointed look.
"Stop it," the demon snapped back. "I'm not a target here."
"Aren't you? No one spray-painted this on my wall."
"No one knows where you live."
"You're not exactly in the yellow pages yourself. You're the mark here."
"It's a moot point. It can't touch me."
"You don't know that - "
"I do know that, and you know it too. There is absolutely no way it can be stronger than me."
"We need backup after all. Call Nanette - "
"Oh yes," laughed Jerome harshly. "No one would notice if I pulled her from Portland. Do you have any idea what a red flag that would throw up? People would start noticing, start asking questions - "
"So what if they do? It's no big deal - "
"Easy for you to say. What would you know about - "
"Please. I know enough to know that you're being overly paranoid about..."
The two went back and forth at each other, Jerome adamantly denying there was any problem, Carter maintaining that they needed to take appropriate precautions. As noted earlier, I had never seen the two of them in such open disagreement. I didn't like it, especially as their voices began to rise in volume. I didn't want to be around if they came to blows or displays of power, having already seen too much of their strength in the last few weeks. Slowly, I backed up out of the living room toward a nearby hallway. Cody, catching my mood, followed.
"I hate it when Mom and Dad fight," I commented as we retreated away from the divine bickering, seeking a safer locale. Looking in doorways, I saw a bathroom, a bedroom, and a guest room. Somehow I didn't imagine the demon hosted too many overnight guests.
"This looks promising," observed Cody as we turned in to an entertainment room.
More leather seating surrounded a massive, absurdly thin plasma screen hanging on the wall. Sleek, beautiful speakers stood in strategic spots around us, and a substantial glass case displayed hundreds of DVDs. This room, like the others, had been sacked. Sighing, I threw myself on to one of the ripped chairs while Cody checked out the sound system.
"What do you think of all this?" I asked him. "The new developments, I mean, not the entertainment setup."
"What's to think? It seems straightforward to me. This nephilim character warms up with lesser immortals and now decides to take on the higher ones. Sick and twisted, but well, that's the way it is. On the bright side, maybe we're out of danger now - no offense to Jerome or Carter."
"I don't know." I tipped my head back, thinking. "Something still isn't right to me. There's something we're missing. Listen to them in there. Why is Jerome being such an idiot about all of this? Why won't he listen to Carter?"
The young vampire glanced up from his perusal of the movies and gave me a sly smile. "I never thought I'd see the day when you advocated for Carter. You must have gotten really chummy this last week."
"Don't get any romantic delusions," I warned him. "God knows I have enough of that on my plate already. It's just that, I don't know. Carter's not as bad as I used to think."
"He's an angel. He's not bad at all."
"You know what I mean, and you've got to admit, he has a point. Jerome should be taking appropriate measures. This thing trashed his place and left warnings - even if they're obsolete charms or whatever. Why is Jerome so convinced he's safe?"
"Because he thinks he's stronger than it is."
"How would he know though? Neither of them have gotten a good feel for it - even Carter didn't the night he saved me."
"Jerome doesn't seem like the type to dismiss things without a reason. If he says he's stronger, then I'd - holy shit. Check this out." His serious spiel melted into laughter.
Getting up, I walked over and knelt beside him. "What?"
He pointed to the bottom row of DVDs. I read the titles. High Fidelity. Better Off Dead. Say Anything. Grosse Pointe Blank. All John Cusack movies.
"I knew it," I breathed, thinking of the demon's coincidental resemblance to the actor. "I knew he was a fan. He's always denied it."
" Wait'll we tell Peter and Hugh," crowed Cody. He pulled Better Off Dead off the shelf. "This one's his best."
I pulled out Being John Malkovich, my tense mood momentarily relaxed. "No way. This one is."
"That one's too weird."
I glanced up at the plasma screen, a huge gash slashing across its surface. "Normally I'd suggest we have a showdown to settle the point, but somehow I don't think there'll be any viewings for a while here."
Cody followed my gaze and grimaced at the massacre. "What a waste. This nephilim's a real bastard."
"No doubt," I agreed, standing up. "It's no wonder - "
I froze. Everything froze. A real bastard.
"Georgina?" asked Cody curiously. "You all right?"
I closed my eyes, reeling. "Oh my God." A real bastard.
I thought then about the entire trail of nephilim events, how from the very beginning Jerome had been warning us away. Ostensibly, his actions had been to keep us safe, but there had been no reason not to explain nephilim to us, no real danger to us in understanding the nature of our adversary. Yet Jerome had stayed tight-lipped about it, growing irrationally angry when any of us got too close. When Cody had first posited the "rogue angel" theory, I had written the secrecy off to embarrassment from the other side. Yet, it wasn't their side that had something to hide. It was ours.
Click, click. Once started, the dominoes in my head tumbled forward in a rush. I thought about Harrington's book: the corrupted angels taught "charms and enchantments" to their wives while their offspring ran wild... Charms. Like the obsolete one on Jerome's wall. It's to remind me who we're dealing with - as if there was any possible way I could forget, he had explained offhandedly.
Carter had told me demons generally get into hunting down nephilim. Nanette had wanted to come and help with this one, but Jerome wouldn't let her, thus minimizing those involved. Carter he had kept on hand for the kill, however. Wouldn't Jerome want to do it himself? I had wondered, but the angel had evaded answering.
Still the dominoes fell. Nephilim inherit a lot more than half their parent's power, though they can never exceed it. Jerome's words to us last week, again spoken casually, just after my attack. Only minutes ago, I had wondered at his confidence at being stronger than the nephilim, questioning how he could be so certain. But of course he could be. Divine genetics had already dictated the parameters.
"Georgina? Where are you going?" Cody exclaimed as I strode out of the room, back toward the still-roaring argument down the hallway.
"Look," Carter was saying, "it won't hurt anything to just - "
"It's yours," I cried to Jerome, attempting to stare him down - difficult, since he was taller than me. "The nephilim is yours."
"My problem?"
"No! You know what I mean. Your child. Your son... or daughter... or whatever."
Silence descended, and Jerome stared at me with those piercing black eyes, boring right into my soul. I expected at any moment to be blasted across the room. Instead, all he asked was, "So?"
Startled at his mild response, I swallowed. "So... so... why didn't you just tell us? From the beginning? Why such secrecy?"
"As you can perhaps imagine, this is not a topic I enjoy bringing up. And contrary to popular belief, I do feel entitled to some privacy."
"Yes, but..." Now that it was out, I didn't know what to say or think or do. "What will happen? What are you going to do?"
"The same thing I've been planning on doing. We will find this creature and destroy it."
"But it... he or she... is yours..."
I, who had so jealously and longingly watched Paige's growing pregnancy and Seth's bevy of nieces, could not even begin to fathom calmly announcing the murder of one's offspring.
"It doesn't matter," the demon said simply. "It's a liability, a danger to the rest of us. My connection to it is irrelevant."
"You... you keep saying 'it.' Are you so detached that you can't even... you know, call it by name or gender? What is it anyway? A son or a daughter?"
He hesitated a moment, and I detected a faint trace of unease in that cool mask. "I don't know."
I stared. "What?"
"I wasn't there when it was born. When I found out she... my wife... was pregnant, I left. I knew what would happen. I was neither the first - nor the last - to take a mortal wife. Plenty of nephilim had been born and destroyed by that point. We all knew what they were capable of. The right thing to do when it was born would have been to destroy it right then." He paused, once more perfectly expressionless. "I couldn't do it. I left, so I wouldn't have to deal with it, so I wouldn't have to make that choice. It was a coward's way out."
"Did you... ever see her again? Your wife?"
"No."
Speechless, I wondered what she must have been like. I barely understood Jerome now as a demon, let alone before he fell. He hardly ever showed any sort of emotion or affection for anyone; I couldn't imagine what kind of a woman would have so overcome him that he would turn his back on all he held sacred. And yet, despite that love, he had still left, never to see her again. She would have been dead for millennia by now. He had left to save their child, only to once again be faced with holding its life in his hands. The whole thing was heartbreaking, and I wanted to do something - hug the demon, maybe - but I knew he wouldn't thank me for my sympathy. He was already too embarrassed at us finding out about all of this.
"So you've never seen it? How do you know for sure this one is yours?"
"The signature. When I feel it, I feel half of my own aura and half of... hers. No other creature could have that combination."
"And you've felt that every time?"
"Yes."
"Wow. Yet you know nothing else about it."
"Correct. As I said, I was gone long before it was born."
"Then... then it would make sense that you really are a target," I told him, gesturing to the wall. "Even independent of all this. The nephilim has especial reason to be pissed off at you."
"Thanks for the unconditional support."
"I didn't mean it like that. I just meant... the nephilim already have good cause to be angry. Everybody hates them and tries to kill them. And this one... well, people spend thousands of dollars on therapy to get over bad experiences with their fathers. Imagine what kind of neuroses would develop after several thousand years."
"Are you suggesting a family counseling session, Georgie ?"
"No... no, of course not. Although... I don't know. Have you tried talking to it? Reasoning with it?" I remembered Erik's comment about nephilim just wanting to be left alone. "Maybe you could work something out."
"All right, this conversation is growing more absurd, if that's possible." Jerome turned to Carter. "You want to take them home now?"
"I'm staying with you," the angel stated flatly.
"Oh, for Christ's sake, I thought we settled this - "
"He's right," I piped up. "The warning phase is over. I'm safe now."
"We don't know - "
"And besides, this wasn't so much about my safety anyway as having Carter keep me from finding out the truth about your family problems. It's too late now, and I'm tired of having a shadow. You keep him, and we'll all sleep easy, even if it is overkill."
"Eloquently put," chuckled Carter.
Jerome still protested, and we bickered a bit more about it, but in the end, the decision rested in Carter's hands. Jerome had no power to order him around; indeed, if Carter wanted to follow the demon indefinitely, there was nothing Jerome could do, not really. They weren't going to wage any epic battles with each other, no matter how annoyed they currently seemed.
Carter did agree to teleport us back, though I suspected it was more of a kind gesture to make sure Cody and I could never find Jerome's place again. After he'd taken the vampire home, Carter transported me to my living room, hesitating before he disappeared again.
"It is better this way, I think," he told me. "Me staying with Jerome. I know the nephilim can't be stronger than him... but there's still something weird going on. I'm not convinced you're out of danger either, but whatever's going on with you is something entirely different." He shrugged. "I don't know. There are a lot of hard calls here; I wish Jerome would let us get a little outside help. Not too much, of course. Just something. Anything."
"Don't worry," I assured him. "I'll manage. You can't be everywhere at once."
"Isn't that the truth. I'll have to ask this nephilim how it does it when this is over."
"You can't question the dead."
"No," he agreed grimly. "You can't." He turned as if to depart.
"It's weird..." I began slowly. "The whole idea of Jerome loving someone. And falling because of it."
He gave me one of those canny, creepy smiles. "Love doesn't make angels fall, Georgina. If anything, love can have quite the opposite effect."
"So, what? If Jerome fell in love again, he could turn back into an angel?"
"No, no. It's not quite that simple." Seeing my baffled look, he chuckled and gave my shoulder a quick squeeze. "Watch out for yourself, Daughter of Lilith. Call if you need help."
"I will," I assured him as he blinked out, not that ever actually getting a hold of higher immortals was easy. Jerome could sense if I was hurt, but he was a lot harder to call for a casual chat.
I went to bed shortly thereafter, fatigued by everything that had happened, too tired to worry about nephilim attacking me in my sleep. I worked the closing shift tomorrow, and it was my last day before another two days off. I needed the break.
I woke up later the next morning, still alive. While walking into the bookstore, I ran into Seth, armed with his laptop, ready for another day of writing. Recalling the dance lesson with him put my nephilim concerns temporarily at bay.
"Got my book?" I asked as he held the door open for me.
"Nope. Got my shirt?"
"Nope. I like the one you're wearing, though." His themed T-shirt today displayed the logo for the musical Les Miserables. "My all-time favorite song comes from that."
"Really?" he asked. "Which one?"
"'I Dreamed a Dream.'"
"That's a really depressing song. No wonder you don't want to date."
"So what's your favorite then?" I had asked Roman my stock question, but not Seth.
" 'Ultraviolet' by U2. You know it?"
We approached the espresso counter. Bruce was there, and he started making my mocha before I even ordered. "I know some of their other stuff, but not that one. What's it about?"
"Love, of course. Like all good songs. The pain of love juxtaposed with its redemptive power. A bit more optimistic than yours."
I remembered Carter's comment from last night. Love doesn't make angels fall.
Seth and I sat down to talk, conversation now flowing smoothly between us. Hard to believe there had ever been any awkwardness, I thought. He was so comfortable.
Finally, knowing I had to work sometime, I dragged myself away to check on the rest of the staff and then retreat to my office. I only intended to check my e-mail, however; I felt sociable today and wanted to work the floor. Tossing my purse on the desk, I started to sit in my chair when I saw a too-familiar white envelope with my name on it.
My breath caught. So much for being off the nephilim's radar. Trembling, I lifted the envelope up, opening it with clumsy fingers.
Miss me? I imagine you've been kept pretty busy with your immortal friends, making sure everyone is safe and accounted for. I imagine you've been just as busy with your oh-so-fascinating personal life, barely sparing a thought for me. Cruel, considering all I've done for you.
I wonder, though, do you worry just as much about the mortals in your life as you do the immortals? Admittedly, mortal deaths are so much less meaningful. After all, what's fifty less years compared to the centuries of an immortal? Mortals hardly seem worth the fuss, yet you put on a good face of caring for them. But do you really? Or are they just a diversion for the long stretch of your own centuries? What about your boyfriend? Is he another toy, another hobby to pass the time? Does he really mean anything to you?
Let's find out. Convince me he does today. You have until the end of your shift to ascertain his safety. You know the rules - keep him in safe places, keep others around him, etc., etc. I'll be with you, watching. Convince me you really care, and I'll spare him. Make me believe. Fail - or involve any of your immortal contacts - and no amount of "safekeeping" will do him any good.
I dropped the note, hands cold. What kind of fucked-up game was this? It made no sense. The nephilim told me in one breath to keep someone safe, yet implied in the next that it didn't matter, that there was no safety. It was stupid, another stirring of the waters, shaking up the status quo just to watch what I'd do. Looking around uneasily, I wondered: Was the nephilim here now? Was Jerome's disgruntled offspring lurking invisibly beside me, smirking at my distress? What should I do?
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, just who the hell was my boyfriend anyway?