Chapter 18

Nowadays, each day felt longer than the last. Finally, I arrived back home. After I had the witches brought to Nerissa's lab, I walked to my chamber to settle down for another lonely night by myself.

Gypsy was waiting for me in my room.

"How did you get in here?" I said, yawning.

"Your cat let me in." Gypsy petted Angel's head.

My cat purred and weaved between Gypsy's legs. Apparently, they'd bonded. Taking on a bunch of thugs together had a way of forging friendship.

"You were supposed to hold the fort," I scolded my cat.

She stretched her long, white body out in front of the fireplace, then closed her eyes and went to sleep.

Sometimes, I envied the simplicity of her life.

"Why are you here, Gypsy?" I slipped my gun out of its holster.

"Not to fight," she assured me, her eyes locked on the gun. "You won't need that."

"You really think I'd shoot you for trespassing?"

"No, you'd probably stab me instead. Or use your magic."

I slid my gun into a magic security case, then I fell onto the sofa. "After what I've been through these last few days, I don't think I'm up for shooting, stabbing, or using my magic on anyone."

"Good. Especially on the not-using-magic front." She shuddered.

"You aren't overly fond of magic, are you?"

"Being hurt or otherwise controlled by forces outside my understanding and power? No, I'm not overly fond of magic. And most people who have magic are arrogant assholes. Present company excluded, of course. You're normal."

"At least I try to be." I patted the cushion next to mine. "Why don't you sit down and tell me why you're here?"

"You're depressed."

"Yep." I slouched against the back of the sofa. I knew angels weren't supposed to slouch, but right now, I didn't give a damn about what angels were and weren't supposed to do.

Gypsy sat down beside me. "Well, you're in luck, Leda, because I'm here to cheer you up."

I gave her a wary look. "By being here, you're not hoping to gather information that might give you an edge at gaining the one million dollars, are you?"

"Hoping, sure. I'm not an idiot. But I'm not depending on it. Besides, if you really knew where to find Sellsword, you wouldn't have put out a bounty on him."

"Spellsword," I corrected her.

"Sellsword's a nickname the dark angel has picked up. Given his defection and his rather mercenary tendencies."

"If he's just the mercenary carrying out a job, do you have any idea who hired him to kill all those people with their own kind of magic?" I asked her.

"No, but once I do, I'll stop by to collect my money. Right now, though, I'm going to focus on cheering you up instead."

I snorted. "Ok, I'll bite. Exactly how do plan on doing that?"

"By getting you out of the house!" She pulled me to my feet. "Look at you, all floppy and dour. Go get changed into an outfit that doesn't make you look like the Angel of Death, and then we're hitting the town."

* * *

An hour later,Gypsy, Angel, and I were seated at the bar of the Witch's Watering Hole. We were on our eighth plate of chicken wings, and had already ordered the ninth. I'd lost count of how many cocktails we'd had.

The music was cheesy, the food greasy, and everyone was staring at us. We were a funny sight indeed: an angel, a bounty hunter, and a cat sitting at the bar of Purgatory's favorite saloon.

I was dressed in a dark red minidress and a pair of black sandals with four-inch heels. I'd worn my hair up in a high twist with a blossom of cascading curls. One of the great things about having magic was I could curl my hair using only my finger. All I had to do was make it as hot as a curling iron, but not as hot as a bonfire. After gaining elemental magic, I'd spent a lot of time—and lost a fair bit of hair—finding that sweet spot.

Halfway through my dinner with Gypsy, Alec called with an update on the case.

"I should step back from work more often," I told Gypsy as I tucked my phone back into my purse. "While I was away, my soldiers played."

Angel batted her paw at the umbrella straw sticking up from her glass of warm milk.

"They've figured out how the dead supernaturals are connected," I continued. "It turns out that the fire elementals and the ice elementals in Beyond all escaped from the vampire nest in Purgatory the night the vampires died. And so did the two witches in Abyss."

That explained why I'd found Drummoyne's lion ring near the witches in Abyss. And why I'd found the leather strip with the insignia of Drummoyne's nest close to the fire elementals in Beyond.

"So they were all the vampires' prisoners," Gypsy said.

"Interesting."

I knew that voice. I turned. I knew that face too. And that ridiculous dark goatee. Jinx. I'd been hoping I wouldn't see him, but of course I'd known all along that eventually he'd pop up. He'd never ignore a million-dollar bounty.

Back when I'd been a bounty hunter, Jinx used to track me on a job, let me do all the work, then swoop in and steal my mark. He was the hyena of the bounty hunter world. I wondered how he wasn't in prison yet—or dead, considering how many people he'd annoyed over the years.

"Mind if I join you, ladies?" he said with a silky smile.

"Yes. Go away," I barked at him.

Angel backed me up by hissing at him.

Jinx sat down anyway. "I couldn't help but overhear."

"You mean eavesdrop on our conversation," said Gypsy.

"Of course." He shrugged, his smile easy, relaxed.

I laughed. "Why am I not surprised that you've been following me around?"

"Because you're so clever, Leda."

"Don't suck up to me, Jinx." I showed him my teeth. "I know you're full of shit."

"You flatter me." He folded his hands together and bowed his head to me, smiling all the while. "I'm surprised your unimaginative Legion cronies figured out the dead elementals in Beyond and the dead witches in Abyss were all prisoners who escaped the vampires' Purgatory nest."

Alec had figured it out. Maybe I should offer him a promotion. Then again, maybe I should just give him a raise instead. A promotion at the Legion of Angels was a double-edged sword. A gift or a curse, depending on whether you were strong enough to survive the gods' Nectar.

"Regardless, you're going about this all wrong," said Jinx. "Spellsword isn't running around the Frontier, killing people. He infected the vampires with something that caused their own magic to turn against them. Then the vampires passed on that magic curse to their prisoners. And all the while, Spellsword has been sitting back and watching everything unfold. That's why you can't place him at the scenes of all the crimes. He was never there."

Gods, he was right. Damn, I hated that. Almost as much as I hated seeing the smug expression creep across his face when he saw that I'd realized he was right.

"If Spellsword isn't actively killing people, then tracking him won't help you stop this," Gypsy told me.

"No, it won't." I ordered another cocktail. I was going to need it—and about a dozen more.

"At the risk of sounding callous, does this mean you're canceling the bounty?" Jinx asked casually.

Gypsy shot him a dirty look to let him know that he'd crossed the line.

"You don't want her to call off the hunt either," he replied, unfazed.

"Of course I don't want her to call off the hunt. But no one with a lick of class would ask her outright."

"I've got class." He indicated his red-and-black leather motorcycle suit.

Gypsy rolled her eyes.

"I'm not calling off the hunt," I told them. "Spellsword created this curse, and that means he killed those people, whether or not he was actually there when they died. And I'm not going to let him get away with it." I pushed down my straw, crushing the ice in my glass.

"Something is troubling you," Gypsy observed.

"Yes. Everything seems so connected. Except the incident at Desert Rose. The witch technicians who came to repair the Magitech generators were knocked out when their equipment overloaded. That sounds like the same kind of backfiring magic as in the other incidents."

"So what's the problem?" she asked me.

"The problem is we can't find any connection between the witch technicians at Desert Rose and the Purgatory vampires. Those witches weren't their prisoners. As far as we can tell, none of the Desert Rose witches have ever gone anywhere near Purgatory or the vampires in question."

"I see what you mean," Gypsy said. "That is curious."

"We're missing something. Some connection. We must be," I said. "I feel like this is much more complicated, much messier than it seems. If we can just find the connection between the Desert Rose witches and the Purgatory vampires, we'll be that much closer to solving this."

Gypsy set her hand on my back. "We're already much closer to solving this."

"Thanks to me," Jinx declared, rising from his barstool. "You're welcome. Expect my bill in the mail."

"Saving the world isn't a for-profit business, Jinx," I told him.

"It is the way I do it." He took a bow, then left the bar.

Our next round of drinks had arrived.

"So, are you going to pay him for his help?" Gypsy took a sip of her bright blue cocktail.

I frowned at my drink. "I really don't like Jinx."

"But are you going to pay him?"

"Honestly, I haven't decided yet. He did help." I looked at her. "Why? Are you expecting a payday too?"

"No, I don't expect to be paid." A sly smile drew up her lips. "But I wouldn't mind. A girl's got to eat, you know."

"You're doing all right. I count fourteen weapons on you right now."

"I packed light because this is supposed to be a fun girls' night out."

"My point exactly. You are obviously doing well enough to afford weapons."

She chuckled. "My money goes first to weapons, then to food."

"Interesting priorities."

She shrugged. "Having food won't help me if I get killed on the job."

"And all the bullets in the world won't save you from starvation," I pointed out.

"If I had all the bullets in the world, I'm sure I could trade a few for a sandwich." She picked up a chicken wing and bit into it. "Or some chicken."

Angel meowed.

I passed my cat another deep-fried chicken wing. Then I told Gypsy, "I'll cover your dinner."

She licked the grease off her fingers. "In that case, I think I'll go completely crazy and order some dessert too." She opened the menu.

"It's a date," I laughed.

She glanced at me over the top of the menu. "You sure your archangel won't mind?"

I sighed.

Gypsy ordered her dessert, a large piece of chocolate cheesecake, then said to me, "You've got to fix that, girl, and pronto."

"I don't know how," I admitted.

"See? Magic isn't all it's cracked up to be. You're an all-powerful angel, and you can't even mend your broken heart."

"An angel isn't supposed to have a heart."

"But you do," she told me. "And it bleeds and breaks as surely as any human's heart."

"Truer words were never spoken."

"What happened between you and Nero Windstriker?"

"It's a long story." I sipped from my glowing green cocktail. "The short of it is, I made a decision for the both of us without talking to him about it, then I hoped he would never find out."

"I take it he did find out. And reacted badly."

"Of course he reacted badly." I emptied the remainder of my drink into my mouth. "I'd have reacted badly too. Now he's not talking to me. I want to fix things between us, but I don't know what to do."

"So you're doing nothing."

I frowned at her. "I wouldn't say nothing. I've tried talking to him, but he's ignoring all my messages."

"And you let him ignore you."

"What should I do: fly up to his house, chain him up, and force him to listen to me?"

She arched her brows. "Isn't that what angels in love do?"

"If you want the other angel to declare war on you, sure."

"If Nero Windstriker wanted to declare war on you, Leda, he'd have done it already."

I expelled a puff of exasperated air. "I'd rather he declare war on me than this…silence. This nothing. He's put up a wall around himself, and he won't let me in."

"He's alone and hurting. You're alone and hurting," she said. "But you need to heal together. Go to him. Stay with him. Talk. Cry. Laugh. Do whatever it takes to fix things between you. I was once in your place, and I didn't do what it took. Things got tough, and I didn't try to keep the man I loved. I lost him. Though I haven't seen him since then, I think about him each and every day—and of what I've lost."

I set my hand on her arm. "I'm sorry."

She brushed away a tear and smiled at me. "The only thing you have to be sorry about is that you're still sitting here with me when you should be with him."

I jumped off the stool. "You're right. I have to fight for me and Nero. I have to fight for our love." I took a few steps toward the exit, then hurried back to slap money on the counter to pay for dinner. "Thank you," I whispered to Gypsy.

She rose her glass to me and drank.

I hurried out of the bar, Angel on my heels. My purse buzzed.

"Of all the worst timings," I muttered as I fished out my phone.

But it wasn't a message from Lucy, summoning me to another crime scene. It was a message from Nero.

"He's asking me to come to his house," I told Angel.

She meowed.

"He wants to talk."

I refrained from jumping with excitement because my heels might have snapped off, but I did spread my wings.

Angel meowed again.

I looked at her. "Oh, all right." I reached down to pick her up. "This time, I'll bring you along. But just be warned that I've never flown with a cat in my arms before."

She purred against my chest.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

I kicked off the ground and flew off toward Nero's house. I was going to fix things between us. I had to.