Someone Else

  The afternoon light sat low and pale against the storefronts, the kind of thin winter light that didn't seem to warm anything it touched. St. Cloud had a quiet to it — the streets were half-empty, and people moved with their heads down. I was three blocks from the office, hands in my coat pockets, watching my breath disappear in the cold air. My stomach growled loud enough that Az flinched.

  "Christ, Mud," he said from my shoulder. "Feed us already. I'm starving here."

  "You don't eat," I said.

  "No, but you do. And I feel everything you feel, remember? Remy does too, even if he's too polite to mention it."

  Remy materialized on my other side as I walked. "The demon is correct. Your body requires sustenance."

  "To Mable's then," I said.

  "Good choice," Az said. "And before you start worrying—my old host never went there. Demons riding meat don't bother with food. We stick to the hotel rooms and speakeasies. Public spots like that are clean."

  The diner sat on the corner of Third and St. Germain. The bell chimed when I pushed through the door.

  The warm air hit me first, and then that smell — coffee, bacon grease, something sweet baking in the back. The lunch crowd filled most of the tables — farmhands in work clothes, a few women with shopping bags, and two men in the far corner speaking German about crop prices and weather.

  Mabel spotted me from behind the counter. Her face lit up.

  "Well, look who's back," she said. "Twice in two days. I must be doing something right."

  "The food's good," I said.

  "Flattery will get you everywhere, hon." She grabbed a menu and led me to the same table as before. "Coffee?"

  "Please."

  She poured without waiting for me to sit down. "I'll give you a minute to look over the menu."

  "Actually," I said. "Do you still have any of that meatloaf left from last night?"

  She stopped mid-turn. "From last night? Well, sure, but it's lunchtime. I can make you a fresh one if you want to wait a bit."

  "No, I want the leftovers," I said. "But not like you'd normally serve it."

  Her eyebrow went up. "Oh?"

  "You ever make a meatloaf sandwich?"

  She set the coffee pot down on the table. "A what now?"

  "A meatloaf sandwich," I said. "Take two slices of bread—good bread, not that soft stuff—and toast them in a pan with a little butter until they're crispy. Then you take a thick slice of that cold meatloaf, slap it between the bread with maybe some of that gravy from yesterday if you've got it. Little bit of pepper."

  Mabel stared at me like I'd just explained how to build an airplane.

  "You toast the bread first?" she asked.

  "It has to be toasted. The bread's got to have some crunch to stand up to the meatloaf. Otherwise it just gets soggy."

  "And you eat it cold? The meatloaf?"

  "Cold meatloaf, hot toast. It's perfect."

  She put one hand on her hip. "Where'd you learn to eat like that?"

  "I just don't like wasting leftovers," I said.

  "Huh." She picked up the coffee pot again. "Well, I'll be. You might've just invented something, Mr. Donati."

  "I doubt I'm the first," I said.

  "First one to order it in my diner." She grinned. "I'm gonna make you the best meatloaf sandwich you ever had. You just wait right there."

  She walked off toward the kitchen, already calling out instructions to the cook.

  Az was trying not to laugh on my shoulder. "A meatloaf sandwich? Really?"

  Shut up. I'm hungry.

  "You just charmed the hell out of that woman with a sandwich."

  I said shut up.

  Remy drifted toward the window. His whole body went rigid.

  "Nephilim," he said quietly. "Look. Far corner."

  I followed his gaze to the back table. Two men sat there. They wore decent clothes, nothing flashy, with their hats sitting on the table between them. They had coffee cups but no food.

  They looked like completely ordinary men. But when I focused on them, something shifted at the edge of my vision.

  There was a faint pale-gold glow around their bodies, thin and dim, like an aura clinging to their shoulders and heads.

  "Angels," Remy whispered. "But I don't know them."

  My chest tightened. I kept my eyes on my coffee cup.

  Can they see me? I thought.

  "I don't know," Remy said. His voice carried an edge I'd never heard before. "Don't move."

  The angels kept their voices low, but I could hear them clearly over the background noise.

  "The resonance is unmistakable," one said. "There's definitely a Nephilim in this town."

  My blood went cold.

  "We've been tracking it for three days," the other continued. "Young. Untrained. Probably doesn't even know what it is."

  "Have the demons caught wind yet?"

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Three of their hosts arrived two nights ago. They're at the Breen. But they seem focused on their own business for now. Territory disputes, from what we can tell."

  "Good. Gives us time to locate the target and eliminate it before they notice."

  They're hunting a Nephilim, I thought. My hands wanted to shake. They're hunting me, I thought — and then caught myself. No. They were looking right past me.

  But neither angel looked in my direction. Their attention swept the room, passed right over me, and kept moving.

  They didn't see me.

  "Mud," Az whispered. "They don't see you."

  "How?" Remy's voice was tight. "How is that possible?"

  "It's the balance," Az said. "Mud's stats — Ascension fifty, Damnation fifty. Perfect equilibrium means he's not reading as either side."

  "And the blade," Remy added, understanding dawning in his voice. "It's stored in your inventory, not manifested. They can't sense it."

  The first angel continued. "The clergy at St. Marys has been uncooperative. They won't answer our questions directly. We haven't detected any other Arcane wards in the area. No traces of spent mana anywhere in town."

  "You think they're hiding the Nephilim in the cathedral?"

  "Maybe. But what we sensed in the church has a different resonance than our target. Either way, we can't get into the back rooms without drawing attention. We need reinforcements."

  "The Seraphim are being prepared now. They should arrive within the next two weeks. Once we have hosts among the clergy itself, we'll have access to everything."

  Remy went completely still beside me. "Did you hear that?" he whispered.

  "Wait," Az said quietly. "No Arcane wards anywhere? No mana traces?"

  The first angel lowered his voice even further. "The Nephilim is the priority. We eliminate the target before its powers manifest fully. We can't let it breed."

  "Did you hear that?" Remy said again, his voice shaking now.

  The second angel continued. "Let the Seraphim kill the clergy and destroy the cathedral. Any Arcane remnants must be purged."

  "These are not scouts," Remy said. His form flickered. "These are Principalities."

  What's the difference? I thought.

  "Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues—those aren't different kinds of angels," Remy said quickly. "They're just choirs. Categories. Like different divisions in an army. The actual ranks are Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. I'm an Archangel. Those two—they're Principalities. They outranked me."

  "Religion got that part scrambled," Az muttered. "Big surprise."

  "It was scrambled on purpose," Remy said. "To hide how the hierarchy actually works."

  "And Principalities know things Archangels don't," I said.

  "It would appear that these ones do," Remy said quietly.

  The Principalities kept talking in fragments.

  "...can't let it slip away..."

  "...three days, maybe four, before the demons figure it out..."

  "...the Seraphim will handle the clergy. I'll see that their orders are changed..."

  I took a slow breath, picked up my coffee cup, and forced my hand steady.

  They're not hunting me, I realized. They can't even see me.

  "There's another Nephilim," I said quietly in my head. "Someone else in this town."

  "At this point, they're just searching the town for the Nephilim," Az said, scratching his chin.

  "And they're bringing in more Seraphim," Remy said. "Using clergy as hosts to gain access to the church. They're referring to myself and the other two Archangels that were sent here." He paused. "But by the time we arrived, our orders had changed. We weren't told to simply investigate the church. We were told to raze it and leave no witnesses."

  "They lied to you," I said.

  "Not just lied," Remy said. "The Principalities know about the Arcane. They knew there was a possibility the Nephilim wasn't inside. They just detected something arcane in the church. We were never here to investigate."

  "They sent us here to murder the clergy because they might have knowledge or access to the Arcane. They knew the truth. This had nothing to do with orders from God or Divine will. They sent us here as assassins to murder the faithful in order to hide the truth."

  Remy's form flickered violently, his voice dropping to something cold and fractured.

  "Jesus," Az muttered.

  "None of these pieces were fitting cleanly. I'd been treating them as two separate problems — the Nephilim these angels were hunting, and whatever was locked away in that church," I whispered.

  Mabel came back, carrying a plate. She set it down in front of me with a proud smile.

  Two pieces of golden-brown toast. A thick slice of meatloaf between them. Steam rose off the bread. A small bowl of gravy on the side.

  "I heated up some of that gravy too," she said. "In case you want to dip."

  I picked up half the sandwich. The toast crunched when I bit into it. The cold meatloaf against the hot bread was exactly right.

  "This is perfect," I said.

  "Well, I'll be damned," Mabel said, watching me eat. "That actually works."

  "Told you."

  "I'm putting this on the menu," she said. "Honey, I don't think I ever got your first name," she asked.

  "You can call me Jay, Mabel, and it is a pleasure to meet you again." I smiled.

  "Well, Jay, I think we'll call this the Jay special. How's that sound?"

  "Sounds like I'm gonna have to come back more often to make sure you're making it right."

  She laughed and squeezed my shoulder. "You're trouble, Jay. Good trouble, but trouble."

  She walked away, and I kept eating, keeping my head down.

  The angels stood after another few minutes. They left money on the table and walked out without a backward glance.

  Remy watched them go. His form was dim. Flickering.

  "They lied to us," he said finally. "Not just the Powers. Other angels—Principalities at least—they know the truth. They know we're hunting Nephilim to eliminate the Arcane. They lied to my brothers and sisters and treated us like assassins for their own agendas."

  "Welcome to the club," Az said quietly. "Turns out nobody's honest in this war."

  "I have hunted my own kind. Killed Nephilim because I thought—because I was told we were protecting creation, executing God's will."

  "You didn't know," Az said.

  "I should have known."

  "Yeah, well. Now you do."

  I finished the last of my sandwich and wiped my hands on the napkin. "Then we find this Nephilim first. Before the Principalities do. Before the demons figure it out. And we warn them."

  "How?" Remy asked. "We don't know who they are. Where they are."

  "We watch," I said. "We listen. And we use the one advantage we've got."

  "Which is?" Az asked.

  "They can't see me. I can move through this town and neither side will know I'm looking. We find this Nephilim, and we keep them breathing."

  "While also figuring out what the clergy is hiding," Remy said.

  "And not getting killed by Hellhounds," Az added. "Light work."

  I left money on the table—more than enough to cover the meal and a good tip. Mabel caught my eye and waved as I headed for the door.

  In the distance, making their way down the sidewalk, I could see the backs of the two angels walking away from the diner.

  "One thing has changed, Nephilim," Remy said. "I understand now that I am no longer an archangel. I am bound to you and the Arcane forever. I will never forgive myself for the things that I have done, even if I was lied to. But I am just as much a Nephilim at this point as you are. And if those Principalities intend on culling the innocent, then I want you to take that Arcane blade and slay them both," he said coldly.

  "Now we're talking, feathers! There's that smite-driven angelic wrath I remember!" Az said with a huge toothy grin. "Same goes for any of the slimy-ass demons in this town too! I say we save this Nephilim and find whatever this Arcane thing is in the church. That way neither side gets what the hell they want."

  "So we figure out both," I said. "Before this whole town burns."

  I headed back toward my office. The delivery from the hardware store would be arriving soon. Guns, ammunition, supplies. Everything I needed to defend myself if this went sideways.

  Everything I needed to protect someone who didn't even know they needed protecting.

  "One more thing," I said. "This balance I've got. Fifty-fifty. It's keeping me hidden from both sides."

  "For now," Az said. "But the moment you use Grace or Fury, the moment you manifest that blade, you light up like a beacon. They'll see you."

  "Good to know," I said.

  "Just don't do anything stupid," Az muttered.

  I smiled. "When have I ever done anything stupid?"

  Both of them started laughing.

  "You want the full list?" Az asked. "Because I've got a hundred years' worth of examples."

  "Forget I asked."

  I climbed the stairs to my office, thinking about angels and demons and someone out there who was about to have their world torn apart.

  Just like mine had been.

  But maybe this time, I could do something about it.

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