Ken cursed and Hank spun around, morphing into the red-hot female before he’d completed the rotation and shouting in a masculine growl, “Be careful with those! Please.”
“What have you got in here?” Edwards gasped, limping under the weight of a smaller box. “An elephant?”
“Must I do everything myself?” Hank muttered. Holding a hand aloft, Hank’s fingers snapped and the box was gone from Edwards’s hands.
Without the weight to balance his contorted pose, the Englishman toppled over. “Bloody hell! If you could do that the whole time, why didn’t you?”
Hank faced Eve again, as a man. “Novices are so tiresome.”
“I’m a newbie.”
“You are unique.”
Uniquely plagued with bad luck. She visually searched the area. “Where did the box go?”
“Into the house.” Linking their arms, Hank started toward the men’s side of the duplex.
She glanced over her shoulder at Montevista. “Don’t leave without me.”
The guard gave her the thumbs-up.
As she and Hank passed the girls, Eve asked, “Do you know what they’re doing?”
“Watching a video they found in the kitchen.”
Eve frowned. “A video?”
“A television show about ghosts here at the base.”
“Oh . . . right.”
“I can’t tell you much about Cain’s advancement,” Hank went on. “To my knowledge, no one has been promoted to archangel in the history of . . . well, in history. Period.”
“Great.”
“You worry that you’ve lost him.”
She shook her head. “I worry that he’s lost himself. I was with him—in him—when the change happened. I don’t know how anyone can live through pain like that and still be the same person. I could feel his . . . soul separating from his body.”
“He did not lose his soul, Evangeline. It has simply connected more fully with God. Sammael is known for his ability to lure the weak to worship, but he has yet to achieve the level of expertise that God enjoys.”
“Are you saying that God is luring Alec away from me?”
Hank smiled. “He can make Cain happier without you. You bring turmoil. God will give him peace.”
“Peace.”
“It is easy to entice someone to have sex, yes? Sammael does it every minute. It’s much more difficult to convince someone to forsake it, forever, yet God manages to do that regularly. With the strong, not the weak.”
Eve tried to picture Alec—the most virile man she knew, along with Reed—forsaking sex. “Uh . . . I don’t think that—”
“—Raguel is dead?” The sparkle in Hank’s pale blue eyes told her that he knew what she’d intended to say.
“You’re right, I don’t.”
They reached the porch, and Hank surveyed the damaged partition. They had cleaned up the destruction as much as possible, but it was clear that things were not what they should be.
The front door was open to facilitate the moving of the boxes. Hank entered first, which made Eve wonder if Hank was a woman or just clueless about etiquette. Moving directly to the largest crate, Hank circled it. “It isn’t by chance that the number of archangels has been immutable,” he murmured.
“No, I wouldn’t think so.”
He looked at her, smiling. “I love that you aren’t naïve, you know. Makes you much more interesting.”
“Thanks. You’re pretty interesting yourself.” She gestured at all the crates. “Can I help you with any of this?”
He pointed to three crowbars propped up against the wall by the door. “There has to be a balance. Just as the kings of Hell are still alive and well, so are the archangels. They both make a great show of protecting themselves, because they don’t want to insult the other by making it too easy.”
Eve grabbed a crowbar and picked the nearest crate, which was chest height. “Like nuclear weapons in the Cold War? The United States and the Soviet Union spied on each other, lied to each other, and were prepared to blow each other up, but in the end, no one wanted to tip the balance. The cost was too high.”
“Exactly.”
“But,” she tugged on the crowbar, venting her frustrations with physical exertion, “Alec might remain an archangel, regardless of what happens to Gadara?”
Hank’s arms crossed over the top of a crate. “Maybe. He could be demoted back to mal’akh, which would create more issues to deal with. It’s easier to adjust to an improvement in one’s circumstances than it is to taste success and slide backward into failure.”
Pushing down on the bar with all her might, Eve pried the top open amid a cacophony of protesting nails. “Can you find out who or what killed the two Marks with this equipment?”
“I can certainly give it my best shot. I take it you don’t want to talk about Cain anymore?”
“I want to talk to him.” She managed a half-smile to soften any sting her words might cause. “Although I appreciate what you’ve shared so far.”
She dug through the sawdust that filled the box and withdrew . . . a lampshade. A child’s lampshade with a cartoon theme featuring stars and moons. Her brows raised and she looked at Hank.
Blushing, Hank explained, “Frame of mind is as important to success as tools.”
“I’ll go with that.” Which brought home the fact that her frame of mind had been skewed all day. She needed to slow down, take some time alone, and rehash everything she knew about the events with a fine-tooth comb.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. Hoping it was Alec, she was in such a rush to get it out that she nearly dropped it. But the name on the display was Mom. Eve briefly considered sending the call to voicemail, then thought better of it. She needed a hefty dose of reality right now. Her old reality, not her new one.
“I have to get this,” she said to Hank. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I will still be here when you’re done.”
“Hi, Mom,” she greeted, while moving down the hallway for privacy.
“Your dad just told me you called yesterday. Is everything good?”
Eve winced, but said, “So far. We’re busy, but that’s to be expected.”
“Is Alec with you?”
“No, he’s away on business.” Not for the first time, she felt what it might be like to live a normal life with Alec. She grieved for that imaginary life when she allowed herself to think about it.
“And Reed?” Miyoko asked. “Is he there?”
“Yes.”
“Strange. There is something wrong with Alec that he puts up with that.”
Eve smoothed her brow with her fingertips. Her skin felt damp and hot, which worried her. “I would think there was something wrong with a man who interfered with his girlfriend’s job.”
“Jobs don’t last forever,” her mother said. “Marriages do.”
Unwilling to touch that with a ten-foot pole, Eve looked into the first bedroom as she passed it. It had been completely cleared out. “Is there anything exciting happening with you?”
“Just my children giving me gray hair. Sophia got another tattoo. Two of them.”
“Really?” Eve’s sister had been fond of tattoos when she was a single girl, but she hadn’t indulged in new ink since her marriage. “What did she get?”
“Cody and Annette’s names wrapped around her ankle.”
“I think that’s sweet, and the kids might think their mom is really cool for doing something like that.” She went on to the next room. The master bedroom had only a couple of sleeping bags and duffel bags left in it, bearing witness to the interruption of Ken and Edwards’s efforts to pack up the vehicles. Richens’s laptop case was set neatly atop his bag and a shaving kit that resembled a camera case was set on top of that.
Camera.
“Don’t sound so happy about it,” Miyoko complained. “I hope you never get one.”
Eve thought back to the conversation they’d had a few days ago when she’d thought her mother noticed the Mark of Cain on her arm. Instead she’d learned that the mark wasn’t visible to mortal eyes. “I’m not planning on it, but never say never.”
“Evie . . .” her mother said in her best warning tone.
“I have to go, Mom.”
“What did you call for last night?”
“I was lonely.” Eve pivoted and left the room. “Now I’m busy, so I have to run.”
“Eh. You call me later, then.”
“I’ll try. Love you.” She hung up and noted the time on her cell phone. It was almost two. Barely enough time to get what she wanted.
Rushing down the hallway, she waved at Hank as she passed him. She nearly ran into Ken as he backed up the steps with a crate that was steered by Montevista on the opposite end. She jumped off the porch and ran around the back of the house to the girls’ side where Claire and Sydney were just returning.
“I need your camera,” Eve said to the startled Frenchwoman.
Claire seemed confused for a moment, then her face cleared. “Bien sûr . . . of course.”
Eve waited outside while Claire retrieved the camera.
“You’ll have to hurry with whatever photos you want to take,” Sydney said. “Cain is adamant that we clear out of here immediately.”
“Did he call?” Eve looked at the phone in her hand. No missed calls.
“He’s in the driveway talking to Abel.”
Eve looked down the walkway toward the drive, but the angle was bad and she couldn’t see anything more than the driver’s side of the white van.
Claire stepped out onto the porch with the camera in hand. “There is a lot of room left in the memory.”
“That’s fine. Thank you!”
Grabbing the camera, Eve took off at a run toward the driveway.
