db1bd484fe8700408f51338793ca8c56

In the instant between Diana taking him back and shoving him forward again, Samuel thought he heard voices.

“So he’s off the duty roster?”

“Let’s just say he’s on an extended leave of absence.”

“Let’s just say?” The first voice snorted. “Oh, easy for you, Gabriel. You’re not the one who has to fill his post on the Perdition front.”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch.”

“Hey, there’s a war on, you know. Or maybe that’s something you guys in the band have forgotten.”

And then there was only light, and a question.

If he wasn’t an angel, and he wasn’t a human, what was he?

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Diana blinked away afterimages and stared down at the towel she’d thrown over Samuel’s crotch. Whatever he’d become fit under it with room to spare. Fingers crossed, she bent down and flicked it back.

The marmalade tabby sat up and looked around.

“You’re a cat.”

“Well, duh. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that angels were like cats only with…” He cocked his head, trying to remember just what it was Ilea had said. “…you know, differences.”

Staggering back, Diana went to sit down on one of the chairs but, at some time during the proceedings, it had self-defined as a plant stand, and she hit the floor instead. It suddenly became painfully clear who Samuel had reminded her of as he’d made his reproachful way to the bathroom.

Austin.

TWELVE

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SINCE DEAN HAD POLITELY but vehemently objected to her willing the truck faster, Claire let her head loll back against the headrest and closed her eyes. Extending her will toward Toronto, she slid past the permanently monitored sites, her passage noted only by the elderly Keeper at the site in Scarborough.

“Oh, sure, you can go by like a ship in the night, but you never write, you never call. A lousy birthday card would kill you? The best forty-two years of my life I give to you and you don’t even remember my birthday. You got a memory like a cantaloupe.”

“Excuse me?”

“Why? What did you do?”

Claire moved on into the possibilities a little faster. Keepers who essentially became the seal that stopped darkness from emerging out of an unclosable hole, became caricatures of their former selves. She’d narrowly missed becoming the youngest Keeper to ever hold such a position and shuddered at the sudden vision of herself at ninety-two in stretch capri pants and wedges, scarlet lips and crimson fingernails, badly dyed hair poofed out over way too much purple eye shadow—a cross between Nancy Reagan and Miss Piggy.

Didn’t happen, she reminded herself.Didn’t…

Wait.

Something was happening.

She heard voices…

“I’m warning you, Michael, don’t touch the horn.”

“Or you’ll what? Blow me?”

…then a sudden flash of light threw her back into her body. She stiffened and moaned. The Summons hit a heartbeat later.

“As much as I’m happy you two are back into it,” Austin muttered without opening his eye, “given that we’re speeding down a snowy highway with a bunch of lunatics who’ve forgotten how to drive since the last time the frozen white stuff fell, don’t you think Dean ought to keep both hands on the steering wheel?”

“I can feel the demon.”

“I thought you were calling it Floyd. Ow!” He turned his head and glared at her. “Don’t poke the cat, I’m old.”

“So Diana came through, then?” Dean asked, making a mental note to ask about this Floyd guy when the cat wasn’t around.

“I knew she would.”

Austin snorted.“You thought she was going to destroy the world as we know it, bringing upon us the Last Judgment and roller disco. Not that there’s a lot of difference,” he added.

Somewhat redundantly in Dean’s opinion. “Are we still after heading to Toronto, then?”

Claire checked the Summons.“So far.”

They drove in silence for a few moments.

“The angel’s gone, then?”

Curious about Dean’s tone, Claire turned to face him. “Yes.”

“And you can find the demon now?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And when you find the demon, you can get rid of it?”

“I’m a Keeper. Of course I can get rid of it.”

He glanced toward her and smiled suggestively.“No angel, no demon…”

“No problem.” Realizing where he was headed, she returned his smile and stroked one finger along the top of his thigh.

“Is it just me,” Austin asked, sitting up, “or are we suddenly moving a lot faster?”

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The angel had changed.

Feeling suddenly exposed, Byleth ran into the only room in the mission where she’d be left alone—unexpectedly finding three other girls already in there sharing a cigarette.

The dominant member of the trio slid off the sink and turned to face her.“You want something, new girl?”

The part of her that was a seventeen-year-old girl wanted to protest that she’d just come in to use the bathroom and she wasn’t looking for trouble. Then the rest of her pushed that part down and stole its lunch money. “I want you to leave.”

“What?”

“Leave.” Breathing heavily through her nose, barely holding all the parts together, Byleth reached into the darkness. “I want you to leave.”