And maybe doing so would finally make telling him about Michael easier, too.

Alex's good intentions lasted right up until she stepped out of the office elevator and into chaos.

She leapt out of the way as two of her fellow detectives pushed past her, boarding the elevator she'd just left, and dodged three others headed for the stairs. All were gone before she had a chance to formulate a single question. From behind the Homicide door, voices competed with the shrill of telephones.

Then, above all else, the roar of Staff Inspector Roberts. "Where the h.e.l.l is Jarvis?"

She pulled open the door. "Here," she called, waving her hand for Roberts's attention. "I'm here."

Roberts's gaze met hers, relief warring with something dark and awful in its depths. "My office," he said. "Now."

She headed across the office, catching snippets of conversation as she pa.s.sed by desks. Enough to know that there had been an incident in the Leaside neighborhood, not enough to figure out that incident had been. Joining her supervisor, she closed the door against the commotion. Roberts paced the tight s.p.a.ce behind his desk. Filing cabinet to wall, window to desk.

"There's been a stoning."

His voice was so quiet, Alex didn't think she'd heard right. Was certain she couldn't have.

"Excuse me?"

"A stoning," Roberts repeated. He stopped to stare out the window, holding apart the slats of the horizontal blind covering it.

She shriveled inside. "A stoning. As in-?"

"As in an honest-to-G.o.d, straight-out-of-the-f.u.c.king-good-book stoning." Roberts released the blind with a metallic clatter and turned to her, his face ashen. "Two of them, actually. Women. Buried up to their necks in a playground in Leaside."

Alex's hands curled at her sides. Horror rose in her. Words to describe it didn't exist. Things like this just didn't happen here. Not in Toronto. Not in a civilized world.

"At least one of them was pregnant," Roberts continued hoa.r.s.ely. "They haven't pulled out the other one yet."

"Where do you want me?"

"Now that you have a partner again, on scene. Bastion has point, report to him when you get there."

Partner? What partner?

"Thank you for that, by the way," her staff inspector said. "I still don't know who he is exactly, and I would have preferred you give me a heads-up, but I'm happy to have him back. Bringing someone new into Homicide in the middle of all this"-he waved an encompa.s.sing hand-"would have been a nightmare."

A brick slid down her throat and landed with a sickening thud in her gut. She swallowed twice before she found a semblance of her voice.

"Him? Him, who?"

"Trent. He stopped by a few minutes ago-" Roberts broke off. "You didn't know."

He continued speaking, but the buzzing in her ears drowned him out. Trent. Jacob Trent, a.k.a. Aramael, angel of the Sixth Choir, the Powers. Aramael, who had killed his twin to save her and had endured exile for his sin; who had been sent to a.s.sa.s.sinate Seth and then, at the last minute, chosen to help her save him instead. The room tilted sideways.

"Jarvis."

She jolted back to the present and found her supervisor scowling at her.

"You caught all that, right?"

"Um . . ."

Get a grip, Alex.

"No," she said. "I mean yes, I caught it. But no, I didn't know he was back."

"And? Tell me you can do this, Detective. I know the two of you don't see eye-to-eye, but I need you on the street and I can't put you out there without a partner."

Aramael, back as my partner.

f.u.c.k.

She looked out the window into the main Homicide office, half empty now. The remaining faces were all familiar. Joly, Abrams, Penn, Smith.

No Aramael posing as Jacob Trent.

She unglued her tongue from the roof of her mouth. "Where is he?"

"He said he'd wait in the coffee room."

She straightened her shoulders, drawing on the strength she was learning she possessed. Wondered, briefly, how much longer that strength would hold out.

She strode toward the door.

"Detective."

Pausing, her hand on the doork.n.o.b, she looked over her shoulder.

"You can't fall apart," Roberts said. "Not now. We can't afford to lose you."

She went in search of an angel.

Chapter 21.

Alex tried to keep her stride purposeful, but placing one foot in front of the other on the way to the coffee room proved to be an all-consuming exercise in determination.

Aramael. Was he still in exile? Had he, by some miracle, been taken back into Heaven? Either way, what the h.e.l.l was he doing here? She'd chosen Seth over him. Had made that choice clear. Hadn't seen so much as a feather from him since. So why now, and why like this? Why as her G.o.dd.a.m.n partner again?

She stopped for the office cleaning lady and her cart. The tiny woman's usual nod and smile hardly registered. Alex waited for her to pa.s.s, focused on the simple act of remaining upright and not taking shelter under her desk. It didn't matter why Aramael was here, only that he left. Roberts could be as p.i.s.sed as he liked. She wouldn't work with him again. She couldn't.

And she'd tell him so as soon as she unglued her feet from the floor.

s.h.i.t.

The cleaning lady moved out of her path. Alex looked through the coffee room window at the angel standing inside with his back to her. Her vision blurred, tunneled, narrowed. Everything around her faded into the background. Everything but him. She took in the dark, unruly hair, the breadth of the shoulders straining beneath the suit he wore, the familiar, balanced poise with which he carried himself. And the wings.

Her eyebrows twitched together.

Black wings.

Aramael's wings were golden.

Cold pooled in her belly, emerged on the palms of her hands. She thought of how easily Lucifer had fooled her once, taking on the visage of his own son. Remembered how Aramael's twin, Caim, had a.s.sumed the ident.i.ty of the priest he had killed. She flicked a glance toward the door and the escape it offered. If she moved fast, and if she was very, very lucky, she might be able to get out before whoever this was-whatever it was-noticed.

And then what? Go home to Seth? Tell him she was being stalked by someone who had taken on Aramael's persona? That she'd neglected to tell him yesterday about Michael's visit? That she had once more become entangled with the ones he wanted so very much to leave behind?

She shifted her weight, held hostage by indecision tempered with the first stirrings of panic. Then she froze. The angel in the coffee room had turned. She knew without looking. Felt his attention on her, his will reaching out to her, his desire enveloping her. She fought against its pull.

This was no impostor, no other pretending to be her soulmate. It was him. It was Aramael.

Jaw set, she turned her head to meet the turbulent gray gaze, felt it reach inside to her most private places . . .

And coldly shut it down. No. Not this time. Not anymore.

She crossed the last few feet to the coffee room and stepped inside. Hands in pockets, her would-be partner regarded her warily.

"Alex."

Aramael, her heart whispered.

She ignored it. "What are you doing here?"

"You're being watched by one of the Fallen. Mika'el sent me."

So Heaven had taken him back. "Watched-why?"

"We're not sure, but the watcher is a former Archangel and Lucifer's top aide. He wouldn't be involved unless it was something important."

The very mention of Lucifer's name turned her mouth dry. Bitter. "All right, then try this. Why do you care? I'm hardly important in the grand scheme of things. What does it matter if Lu-" She pressed her lips together. Christ, she couldn't even bring herself to say the name. "What does it matter if this Fallen One does want me for some reason?"

"You know why it matters."

Alex's heart skidded sideways. She ruthlessly brought it to heel. That wasn't what he'd meant. This wasn't personal, not if Mika'el was behind it. No, it was about Seth. She lifted her chin.

"Then you're wasting your time, because I won't ask him to do it."

"Not even with all that's at stake?"

"Apart from Seth himself? I don't care."

Aramael frowned. "Your entire-"

"Today, Jarvis!" Roberts's bellow cut between them, a reminder of the job waiting for her.

She put a hand to the back of her neck, wrestling with this latest collision of her two realities. A Fallen One stalking her again. Aramael, shoulder to shoulder with her in the car. Roberts's obvious relief at her having a partner. Seth, oblivious to the machinations going on behind his back.

A stoning, not in some far-off country p.r.o.ne to religious fanaticism, but here in Toronto. Her city. Her home.

Eighty thousand Nephilim babies about to be born and molded into Lucifer's ultimate army against humankind.

A world teetering on the brink of chaos. Maybe even the brink of extinction.

All that, and she wanted to turn away the only angel volunteering to ride shotgun with her?

Yes.

No.

"Jarvis!" Roberts roared.

d.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l and back.

Twice.

"Fine," she snarled. "I don't have time to argue. I drive, you shut up."

Aramael opened his mouth. She held up a hand.

"I'm not kidding. One word about Seth or Michael or whatever new disaster you claim is looming on the horizon, and I will dump your a.s.s at the side of the road. Are we clear?"

It didn't matter that they both knew she had no way to carry out her threat, it simply felt good to set the parameters. It felt even better to have him nod acquiescence. She turned on her heel and headed for the door.

Chapter 22.

"You're certain no one else saw you?" Samael slipped the slim, leather-bound book into the pocket of his coat.

Raziel, one of only a handful of female Fallen, arched an eyebrow at him. "A dozen or more saw me," she said. "As they always do when I take his tea things in or retrieve them."

"You know what I mean."