Chapter 28

Ipushed open the doors of the ballroom and entered, the train of my evening gown trailing me like a river of liquified midnight-blue diamonds. Tonight I was wearing the same gown I'd worn to the family dinner, the gown Nero said made me look elegant and refined.

Angel trotted beside me, her white, fluffy tail held high and proud. We wore the matching necklaces Nero had given us.

The ballroom of the Legion's Purgatory office hadn't looked this good since my wedding to Nero. Both events shared the same coordinator, my little sister Tessa. Right now, Tessa was fluttering to and fro like a hummingbird, darting between gods and demons, discharging any decoration that wasn't pulling its weight to make everything absolutely perfect.

First, the wedding of two angels, and now the gala of gods and demons. Tessa was certainly building an impressive portfolio in no time at all. Her new business was good for her. Since she'd started it, I'd seen a real change in her. She was so focused, so determined. Gone was the fickle teenager. She was a real woman now. And she'd found her calling. The ballroom looked gorgeous, and the food smelled amazing.

The purpose of the gala was to be a celebration of the new peace between gods and demons, but from the way they were all glaring at one another from opposite sides of the room, it was clear that millennia of discord and distrust could not be dismissed so easily. Their immortal war hadn't ended so much as it had been put on hold for the time being, until the Guardian threat could be dealt with.

"You sure know how to throw a party, Leda," Aerilyn commented.

She was dressed in a navy-blue satin evening gown with a v-neckline that plunged halfway to her bellybutton, and a high side slit that nearly showed off her underwear. She wore silver sandal-stilettos with shiny metal heels.

"They'd all have a better time if they occasionally took a break from glaring daggers at one another and just sampled the damn appetizers," I replied.

Aerilyn showed me her plate; every inch of it was covered in tiny finger foods. "Well, I, for one, am having a marvelous time." She crouched down, making the skirt of her dress slid up even higher, and offered a cheese pastry to my cat.

"Don't do that," I sighed. "She's already had five of them. Plus two bowls of ice cream."

"She knows what she wants," replied Aerilyn as Angel ate the cheese pastry off her hand.

"She usually eats much more sensibly."

Aerilyn's gaze panned across the ballroom. "If you wanted your cat to eat sensibly, you should have invited a few wild turkeys to the party."

Yeah, the gods and demons would have really appreciated the sight of my cat tearing across the room to catch her dinner. And Tessa…she would have been horrified. I guess galas with wild turkey hunts generally didn't make it onto the cover of high-brow fashion magazines.

"Congratulations on your divine triumph, Leda."

But the triumphant look in Aerilyn's eyes made me wonder if the biggest winner in all this was the demons. And Aerilyn herself, as the one who'd masterminded my successful ‘test'.

Aerilyn gave me a little wave, a big smirk, then walked off, probably to get more food. Stash crossed paths with her.

"Who is that?" he asked me, watching Aerilyn go.

"My cousin. On my mother's side of the family," I added.

"She looks like she's up to no good."

I nodded. "Yeah, that about sums her up. Because I passed Aerilyn's test, demons once more walk the Earth."

He shrugged. "Such is the price of peace."

"Tell it to the gods."

"They know."

"They just don't like it."

"They never like it when someone makes a decision without them." Stash patted me on the back. "But your decision allowed you to achieve the impossible, Leda. You excel at that."

"No wonder I have so many enemies."

He laughed. "You also have friends." He waved over the rest of the godly soldiers I'd worked beside in Heaven's Army.

Devlin, Octavian, Arabelle, Punch, and Patch were all here. I didn't care for most deities, but I was really glad to see the five of them again.

"Pandora," the leader Devlin greeted me with a very dignified nod.

Arabelle's gaze flickered from the gods' council, to the demons' council. "You've certainly been busy."

"I live to serve," I said with a bow.

Octavian snorted.

"So you guys are here on gala babysitting duty tonight," I said. "I hope you don't mind too much."

"No," replied Patch. "In fact, we volunteered. This is a historic occasion. It's the first time in many millennia that the two councils have met together in the same room. It should be very enlightening."

"It will be more than enlightening, bro." A grin of boyish delight lit up Punch's face. "It will be exciting. Gods and demons together, all in one room?" He rubbed his hands together in obvious anticipation. "Trouble is bound to break out."

"Punch, this event is about peace and new beginnings," Devlin reminded him. "It's supposed to be a tasteful affair."

"What things are supposed to be, and what they end up being, aren't always the same," Punch retorted. His delighted eyes panned across the room. "But there are certainly some tasteful elements present."

I saw where he was looking—or, more specifically, who he was looking at—and I felt it was my duty to intervene.

"Try to hit on my little sister, Punch, and the next time I blow up a monster with explosives, I'll use you as the launching pad," I promised him.

He chuckled, his eyes still locked on Tessa. "It might be worth it."

I made a mental note to introduce Punch to Alec. They'd get along splendidly.

"Break's over," Devlin told his team. "Back to your posts."

As they moved off, I tracked down Calli in the crowd. She wasn't a god or a demon, or even a Legion soldier, but this was my office, and I was going to invite anyone I felt like. I hadn't seen Calli since yesterday, when Nyx had led off Gemini and Sagittarius in chains. I really needed to speak to her.

"Leda," she said as I slid into line beside her at the dessert table.

There were more different variations of chocolate cake than I'd ever seen before, all artistically shaped onto tiny plates or into tiny glasses. Angel rose up, putting her front paws at the edge of the table. Calli slid her a glass of chocolate cheesecake.

"You all need to stop feeding her junk food," I said. "She'll become complacent."

Calli watched me grab two glasses of chocolate mint ice cream. "Are you sure you should be dispensing health advise, Leda?"

"Sure." I licked ice cream off my spoon. "I run like five thousand miles a day, so I'm allowed to eat unhealthy stuff."

Calli's brows arched. "Five thousand miles a day?"

"Give or take."

"You're sure taking a lot," she commented as I claimed another ice cream glass.

"Negotiating peace between immortal enemies builds up one hell of an appetite," I replied. "But this isn't what I wanted to discuss with you."

"You wanted to talk about Gemini and Sagittarius."

"Yes. You know Gemini."

"I knew her," she corrected me. "And that was a long time ago."

"So you think they're guilty?"

"No," she said quietly. "Gemini isn't the kind of person who would kill so many people, especially not so many innocent people."

"The whole thing feels wrong."

Calli wrapped her arm around my back, drawing me in closer to whisper, "I looked into this so-called magic-hating organization that Gemini and Sagittarius are members of."

"And?"

"And it's harmless. No more dangerous than a bookclub. They don't even distribute pamphlets or stage protests. They just meet in the members' basements, where they wax poetic about the grand past none of them remember and romanticize the days before any of them were born. But that's it."

"That doesn't sound like the kind of people who'd take up arms against the gods," I said. "Or who would kill all those people."

Calli shook her head. "Something isn't right here, Leda. Someone's set up Gemini and Sagittarius. I can feel it in my gut."

"And is your gut telling you who set them up?"

"I'm not sure who set them up, but…" She lowered her voice further. "What do you know about your friend Gypsy?"

"What about her?"

"Right after Gemini and Sagittarius were arrested, I dug a bit deeper into the pasts of the other bounty hunters. I figured I had to start somewhere, and the bounty hunters managed to get close to you. Especially Gypsy."

"That's what makes her suspicious?" I demanded. "That she was a friend to me?"

"She seemed to be a friend to you. If I were behind the curse, I'd try to make friends with the person investigating it, so I could keep tabs on how close they were getting to figuring it all out. That would help me derail the investigation."

"You're paranoid," I told her.

"Of course I'm paranoid. There's way too much backstabbing in this business. You know that, Leda. You can't survive as a bounty hunter if you leave on the rose-colored glasses."

"What makes you think Gypsy is behind this?" I asked. "Besides the part where she was a friend to me?"

"Well, as I said, I looked closely into all the bounty hunters' pasts, including Gypsy's. And I discovered that she's more than just a bounty hunter. She's a thief. Her history goes way back. She's connected to several people the authorities suspect were part of some large heists. She even spent some time in jail. She specializes in gaining people's trust."

Gypsy sure had managed to gain my trust fast. An instant best friend. I'd gone out drinking with her and told her everything about the case—and about my personal life, for that matter.

"Being a bounty hunter appears to be a cover for some of her more elicit activities," Calli said.

I didn't want to believe Gypsy could be behind the curse. I couldn't have bonded so quickly with someone who'd killed that many innocent people.

"My research tells me her tech skills are comparable to those of Gemini and Sagittarius. She could have repaired the control collars." Calli was pounding one nail after the other into the coffin of my friendship with Gypsy.

"And then she planted the evidence against Gemini and Sagittarius?" I asked.

"Possibly. She was in New York a few weeks back, right when you fought the beasts with the control collars. She could have snatched some of the broken collar pieces from the Black Market."

Some very weak monsters didn't even register as monsters to the Magitech barrier. On the magical scale, they were much closer to mundane wild animals, beasts that had been bred to have just a little bit of monster in them. So they could survive on this side of the wall. I wondered if that would change now that we'd pushed the barrier up to full power. Maybe it wouldn't only keep out the really powerful monsters; maybe it would also keep out the monsters with so little magic that they had previously passed through the barrier unnoticed.

"Can you send me everything you've found on Gypsy?" I asked Calli.

She pulled out her phone, swiped her finger across the screen a few times, then declared, "It's done."

"Thanks," I said, then walked to the edge of the ballroom.

I pressed my back to the wall so no one could see what I was doing. First, I sent a message to Alec, asking him to look into Gypsy. Then I read through the materials Calli had sent me.

"Are you actually working during a party?" Nerissa asked me.

I looked up from my phone. "Well, I play when I work, so I guess that every so often I should work when I play."

Nerissa adjusted the many ruffles of her pale blue ballgown, then leaned against the wall beside me. "Something I can help you with?"

"Maybe."

I quickly located Gypsy across the room. The other bounty hunters were here too. I'd invited them. I couldn't help but wonder if that decision had been a mistake. If Gypsy had framed Gemini and Sagittarius, she must have had a reason. Maybe she wanted us to think it was all over, so we'd let our guard down. So she could strike. But strike how? What was she even planning to do?

"Leda?" Nerissa asked me.

I tore my gaze away from Gypsy. "Sorry. I'm just a bit distracted," I told Nerissa.

"Still fighting with General Windstriker?"

I found Nero beside Nyx. They'd been standing together all night, like they were waiting for something to happen. Maybe I was wrong. Their guard didn't appear to be down. Not at all.

"They know something," I commented.

"Who?" Nerissa asked.

"Nero and Nyx."

She snorted. "They know a lot of things we don't."

"They look so alert."

"The demons' council and ten of their demon soldiers are in the room. Of course the First Angel and General Windstriker are alert."

She had a point. It certainly seemed more likely that they were worried about the demons than that they'd hijacked my investigation without telling me. Maybe they knew Gemini and Sagittarius weren't guilty and were now trying to lure out the real culprit. But if that were the case, then wouldn't they have told me their plan?

Unless they were afraid I couldn't keep a secret. It was a known fact that the gods and demons were watching me closely right now, and I'd done a horrible job thus far of keeping deities out of my mind while I was asleep. That's why I'd been training with Damiel.

Maybe one of the deities, either a god or a demon, had hired Gypsy to spread the curse. Surely, she couldn't be working alone. What was her motivation for spreading the curse?

Hate of magic? She'd made no secret of her distaste for the way most supernaturals treated humans, sure, but from what Calli had learned about Gypsy, she didn't do anything unless she made some profit out of it. There wasn't much profit in killing lots of innocent people because she held a grudge, but there was money in it if someone had hired her to do it.

"Does it look like Nero and Nyx are paying special attention to any particular god or demon?" I asked Nerissa.

Her brows drew together. "You ask weird questions."

"Humor me."

"All right." She glanced toward Nero and Nyx. "No, I don't think so."

"I don't think so either," I sighed.

So much for trying to figure out if they knew who'd hired Gypsy. My mind worked through what I knew. Gypsy's bounty hunter work seemed to be a cover for more lucrative operations. She had the technical skills necessary to reassemble one of the Guardians' collars and use it to control an angel. Colonel Fireswift, for instance. And Gypsy always took jobs that paid well. Someone must have hired her, someone with deep pockets and an axe to grind. But who?

"She sure looks blue," Nerissa commented.

"Who?" I asked her.

"Valora."

I looked at the gods' former queen. "She's had a tough time lately."

Just a couple weeks ago, Valora had been on top of the world—or universe, in this case—and now she was crashing down. She'd lost leadership of the gods' council to Faris. And from what I'd learned at the Lords' Gala, she'd likely soon lose her seat on the council to the goddess Saphira.

Valora had all the motivation in the world to make a supernatural-killing curse, and she had more than enough money to pay Gypsy to help her. So she was using Gypsy to do her dirty work, just as the demons had used Aerilyn to do theirs.

"Valora is not the only one who's had it tough," said Nerissa. "Have you seen Colonel Fireswift lately?"

"No. He's in the Interrogators' custody."

"That's what the official line is, but I talked to one of the Interrogators earlier," Nerissa said. "And he told me they don't have him."

"So who has Fireswift?"

She shook her head. "No one knows." Her gaze flickered to Nyx. "Except the First Angel."

Maybe Colonel Fireswift had never been compelled at all, and that lie was just part of Nyx's plan. But why?

A thought hit me.

"Nerissa, you took a look at those control collars we took off the beasties in New York a few weeks ago," I said.

"I did."

"In your opinion, could someone have reassembled the broken pieces to make a new one?"

"Well." She frowned. "Maybe. My team and I studied the few pieces you recovered, and we could hardly make heads or tails of them. I suppose someone might have had better luck, but that's unlikely. There was hardly anything left of the collars to begin with."

That was thanks to the fact that a collar exploded whenever we killed the beast wearing it.

"Whoever assembled the collars would have had to already know something about how they functioned," Nerissa said. "With all the pieces present, reassembling them would have been difficult. Without all the pieces, it would have been…"

"Impossible?" I suggested.

"Pretty much."

So chances were there never had been any collar on Colonel Fireswift. It was just another lie designed to disguise the truth, another ploy to lure out the real culprit. But would Nyx's plan actually work?

I pulled my phone out of my buzzing purse. "Alec?"

"I checked out your girl Gypsy. Our information matches what Calli found on her."

I wasn't surprised. Calli's sources were solid.

"There's something else," Alec told me. "I pulled surveillance footage from the Witch's Watering Hole the night you and Gypsy went to the bar."

One of the many upgrades I'd introduced to Purgatory since becoming an angel was a network of security cameras. It was supposed to keep the people safe, though not everyone out here on the frontier of anonymity was happy about being caught on camera.

"The footage shows that after you left the bar, Gypsy stopped by her hotel room. She was in there for a few minutes. After she left her hotel, she walked toward our main office building," Alec said. "She managed to evade our perimeter sensors and enter the building."

"Who's in charge of security right now?" I asked him.

"This week it's Lieutenant Elliot."

"No, Alec. You're in charge now."

"Cool."

"And your first duty as head of security is to plug those holes."

"I'll get right on it."

"Who is this Lieutenant Elliot anyway?"

"He's on loan from East Australia."

"You see, this is why I handpick all my soldiers." I glanced at Nerissa, who'd teased me on more than one occasion for my ‘micro-managing'.

She merely shrugged, then lifted her wine glass to her lips.

"Remind me to send Colonel Silvertongue a thank-you fruit basket," I told Alec.

Desiree Silvertongue was an opportunistic angel, and she'd seized this opportunity to hide a secret hole in my security, possibly to later take me out. But Gypsy had discovered her secret security hole, which meant it wasn't as well-hidden as Silvertongue thought.

"What did Gypsy do once she was in the building?" I asked Alec.

"She broke into your room." He cleared his throat. "By climbing through a crawl space in the roof."

Well, at least my cat hadn't let her in this time.

"A crawl space? That sounds like another security hole, Alec."

"Well, this was once a gangster's house," he reminded me. "There must be crawl spaces and secret rooms everywhere."

Great. The last thing I wanted was for some disgruntled citizen or nosy reporter to fall out of the ceiling and attack me while I was sleeping. I already had enough of that bullshit from the gods.

"Now that you're in charge of security, Alec, I know all those crawl spaces and secret rooms will be promptly found and demolished."

"Is it too late to refuse the position?" he groaned.

"Yes." I adjusted the phone against my face. "Come on, Alec. I thought you were itching for a promotion."

"Somehow it sounded sexier before you attached all this work to it."

"Yeah, tell me about it."

I reached down and petted my cat, who was currently sporting a very vibrant shade of purple. Her whole fur was purple, and so was my hair. Well, at least we were color-coordinated.

"Back to Gypsy's break-in," I said to Alec. "What did she do in my room?"

"You tell me. There aren't any cameras in your room."

For good reason. My private space was just that: my private space. I did not need my bad bed hair to end up on the cover of some angel tabloid magazine.

"But there are cameras outside my room. Did they catch her leaving with anything of mine?"

"No. If she took anything, it was small enough to hide inside her jacket," he said. "Have you noticed anything missing from your room?"

I looked at Angel, who seemed to shake her head. Sometimes, I could swear that cat understood me when I talked to her.

"No, nothing's missing," I told Alec. "At least not that I know of."

Granted, my room was a bit chaotic, so it was hard to keep tabs on everything in there.

"If she didn't take anything, then maybe she left something. I'll have your room checked for surveillance devices."

"Thanks, Alec. See? I knew you were brainy when I assigned you all that research. And you're growing into your new position already."

"Yeah, right. Remind me never to accept a promotion from you, Leda."

"Happy hunting, Alec. Try to stay out of my lingerie drawer when you're searching my room."

"I make no promises," he chuckled, then hung up.

"So, are you going to arrest Gypsy?" Nerissa asked me as I tucked my phone away.

"No, I was going to watch her and see how this plays out when…" I spotted Gypsy, and this time I noticed something I hadn't before. "Hey, Nerissa. Take a look at her dress."

Nerissa looked at Gypsy, then at me. "It's the same dress you're wearing. Oh, that is funny. Do you think she spied on you, found out what you'd be wearing tonight, then wore it so she could disguise herself as you when she needs to make her grand escape?"

"You have a wild imagination."

"Not half as wild as yours, Angel of Chaos."

The aroma of freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies tickled my nose.

"Do you smell that?" I asked Nerissa.

"Smell what?"

"Chocolate chip cookies, fresh out of the oven. I smelled them at some of the crime scenes and a few other times over the past few days. I think it's the curse's scent."

"The curse that's killing people smells like cookies?"

"Maybe."

"Leda, I don't smell anything." Nerissa set her hand on my arm.

"I'm not crazy."

"I was going for ‘hungry'."

"The scent is coming from over there. From near Nyx." I began walking in that direction.

Nerissa walked with me. "Leda?"

"Nerissa, did you ever figure out if angels can be infected by the curse?"

"My tests were inconclusive," she replied.

I kept walking. "Stay here," I told her.

I had a feeling things were about to get really hairy. Valora had always hated her half-sister Nyx. She'd been looking for a way to get rid of her for centuries.

Nyx had been gone for days. And all that time, no one had known where she was. What if…what if Valora had given Gypsy the curse, had her infect Nyx, then tricked Nyx into using her siren magic. When the sirens I found in Purgatory had tried to compel the shifters, their magic had turned against them, compelling them to do whatever the shifters told them.

If Nyx had tried to compel Gypsy while infected with the curse, then her magic would have turned against her too. And she'd been under Gypsy's control ever since. Gypsy didn't even need the control collars to make Nyx do as she said. Nyx's own magic was doing it for her.

And now Nyx was here, at the gala of gods and demons. A gala that never would have happened if Nyx hadn't ‘caught' Gemini and Sagittarius, the so-called perpetrators of the curse. No, the gala would have been postponed because it was too risky to hold it with a curse-creating maniac on the loose. But with two curse-creating maniacs secure in a Legion prison, the gala could go forward.

But what was Valora trying to do with Nyx? Stop the alliance between the gods and demons?

No, this wasn't a purely political move. One look at Valora's dour face was enough to convince me that this was personal. Valora wanted Nyx to kill the other six ruling gods and the seven ruling demons. It was an act of blatant revenge for how they'd wronged her, how they'd discarded the goddess who had once been their queen. In the aftermath of the massacre, she would be named queen again, and Nyx would be sentenced to death for her crime. Sure, that would kill the alliance too and make it damn near impossible to defeat the Guardians, but Valora wasn't thinking about those consequences.

But how would Nyx kill thirteen deities at once? She was a powerful angel, a demigod. Even so, deities were even harder to kill than angels.

I moved toward Nyx. I had to act quickly but without drawing attention to myself. Neither Valora nor Gypsy could realize I was on to them. I didn't know how Nyx was going to kill all those deities, but I knew I had to stop her. The fate of this world and all others depended on it.

I was just twenty steps away from Nyx.

Maybe Valora had found a way to turn the First Angel into some kind of magic bomb. And if the gods and demons were close enough to her when Nyx blew, they'd die with her. Valora would probably appreciate that even more, the idea of her enemy blowing up all her other enemies with her.

I had to defuse that bomb. Somehow. I didn't even know how.

Only ten steps to go.

Damiel moved into my path. "Hi, Leda. How's it going?"

I looked past him, keeping Nyx in sight. "I can't talk right now, Damiel."

He looked from me, to the First Angel. And that's when I realized he knew what I was doing.

"Nyx isn't your enemy," he said.

"I know. I'm trying to help her."

"How?"

"I don't have time to explain. You just have to trust me."

Damiel didn't move out of my way. Nyx could blow at any moment. I didn't have time for this nonsense.

"Damiel, move. Or I'll move you."

"Nyx isn't your enemy," he said again, with the same exact intonation.

"Are you a damn robot now?"

"No."

He still wasn't moving. This was getting ridiculous. Damiel had never been so dense before.

Oh, shit.

I realized he was infected too. Just like Nyx. But if Damiel was being controlled by Gypsy, then why had he been helping me train my mental defenses all this time?

"I don't know what you're talking about, Leda," he said. "I haven't seen you since we all had dinner in your apartment."

"You're not making any sense," I replied. "And I didn't say anything to you."

"No. You didn't say it. You thought it. I can read all your thoughts, Leda."

"You're reading my thoughts?"

"Your mental defenses are so weak right now," he told me. "She's whittled them down to nothing."

"Who?"

He shook his head. "How many times did she attack your mind these last few days?"

"No one attacked my mind these last few days except you," I growled at him.

"Aren't you listening to me? That wasn't me you saw. It was an illusion." Damiel's voice dropped lower, darker. "And Nyx isn't the one being controlled. You are, Leda."