“I need something to eat,” Beezle announced.

“Of course you do,” I replied. “Pizza all around, then.”

Beezle pumped his fist in the air. “Hawaiian?”

Not my favorite, but it was Beezle’s. And I had missed him. He’d only been gone for a few hours, but I had missed him.

“Hawaiian,” I said, and went inside to call for delivery, Nathaniel following silently behind.

9

A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER I WAS SHOWERED, FED and ensconced on the couch with Beezle watching one of our favorite movies—the one where the alien attaches itself to this guy’s face and then bursts out of his chest and eats everyone on the ship. You would think that, given the large quantities of actual monsters in my life, I would prefer preschool cartoons, but for some reason this film still entertained me. Maybe it was because Beezle felt free to comment on the total stupidity of the characters who got eaten.

“Move, lady, move!” he shouted at the television. “The big monster is standing right there. Don’t cry. Run!”

Nathaniel had gone downstairs to Gabriel’s apartment for the evening. I hoped that he wasn’t poking around in Gabriel’s private things. I felt bad about letting Nathaniel sleep in Gabriel’s space but I definitely didn’t want him up here, even on the couch bed. I did not want to get into an argument about husbandly rights.

I also felt more than a little guilty about being happy that Beezle was home when Gabriel wasn’t. The lack of his presence was starting to press on me, like a niggling headache. Even when I was engaged with something, I was always aware of the fact that Gabriel wasn’t with me.

The front doorbell rang just as the he**ine of the film was making her escape from the ship that was about to self-destruct. Beezle and I glanced at each other, then at the clock. It was past ten.

“Who could it be?” I asked.

“J.B.?” Beezle guessed. “Gabriel, tied up in a burlap sack?”

“Antares, Samiel, an emissary from Amarantha come to take my mortal remains back to her . . .”

“Lucifer with a great big stick to beat you with for jeopardizing his negotiations . . .”

I stood up. I didn’t want to contemplate Lucifer being angry with me. For all of my bravado where he was concerned, he scared me. I generally tried not to think too intently about him or I would feel sick to my stomach. It seemed that he had far too much power to affect my fate.

“Okay, let’s not speculate and say we did.”

“Can I go out the front window and see who it is?” Beezle asked.

“Absolutely not,” I replied as I went down the front stairs. “What if it’s Antares again?”

“Are you going to keep me in the house forever?” he whined. “I’m a gargoyle. I have guardian duties.”

“Oh, excuse me. It must have been torture to sit on the couch and eat pizza and watch a movie. I’ll be sure to send you outside the next time I’m thinking of doing such a crazy thing.”

I peeked through the curtain on the door at the bottom of the stairs. J.B. stood in the foyer with his hair sticking up all over the place and a haggard look in his eyes.

“It’s really J.B.,” Beezle said.

“I know that. He wouldn’t be able to stand in the foyer otherwise,” I replied.

I swung the door open. “Can’t you ever show up during regular visiting hours?”

“Feeling better, I see,” J.B. said. “Well enough to burn down about forty acres of outland forest and kill two of my mother’s favorite pets.”

I rolled my eyes and turned around, indicating that he should follow. J.B. slammed the front door shut behind him.

“How many times do I have to say that those pets of hers were trying to eat me?”

“That’s what they’re there for,” J.B. said.

“Well, was I supposed to let them do their job?” I opened my front door and waved him inside ahead of me.

He turned on me, his face full of anger. “Of course not. But why the hell were you there in the first place? I thought that you were going tomorrow as part of an official envoy. You have no idea how bad this looks. The queen was ready to demand your head as compensation from Lucifer and call off the negotiations entirely. I’ve spent the last several hours trying to convince her not to do so and to let the negotiations proceed as planned.”

“Well, thanks for that,” I said grudgingly. “But how did she find out so quickly? Those faeries that we saw in the forest said it was a day’s walk from where we were.”

J.B. looked at me pityingly. “It was a day’s walk. But they have magic, you know. They were at the queen’s court a few minutes after they left you.”

“Those little bastards,” I said, and then I latched onto something that J.B. had said. “Yeah, wait a minute. They LEFT me. Us. Me and Beezle and Nathaniel. As soon as the spider showed up, they took off without a by-yourleave. So I didn’t see any reason why I should chase them down again.”

J.B. looked interested. “The guards abandoned you?”

I nodded. “Ran right through the woods without waiting to see if we were following.”

He ran his hands through his hair. “All right, we might be able to work with that. It was a breach of conduct for them to leave you to danger. But what were you doing there in the first place?”

I explained about Antares, the bomb, Beezle’s kidnapping and the invisible portal in the alley.

“I’m sure that my mother doesn’t know anything about an invisible portal,” he said, frowning. “I wonder who put it there. And why.”

“That’s just what we’ve been trying to figure out,” I said. “And I’m thinking it must have something to do with Gabriel’s disappearance.”

“Why would anyone take Gabriel through a portal to the queen’s lands?” J.B. asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I keep feeling like I’m missing something. There are all these disparate factions floating around causing problems. Any one of them could have taken Gabriel.”

“I still think it was the wolves,” said Beezle.

“I still think you have wolf prejudice,” I replied.

“Why are you defending the wolves?” J.B. asked. “It’s not like you have a relationship with them.”

“Well, I do now, sort of. They said that I was a friend to them and vice versa. Plus, I don’t know—I’ve always kind of liked the wolves. They’re straightforward. They don’t play games like the courts of the vampires or the fallen. With the wolves, what you see is what you get.”

“That doesn’t mean that they weren’t involved in Gabriel’s disappearance,” J.B. said. “Don’t kid yourself. They have an agenda, too. They’re trying to negotiate with Amarantha right now for some ancient lands of theirs that currently belong to her, and they don’t want the faerie court to strike any new deal with Lucifer’s kingdom.”

“Why not?”

“The wolves have a long-standing argument with Lucifer. They don’t want Lucifer to gain any leverage with Amarantha that might affect their land claim.”

“Is there anyone not negotiating with Amarantha right now?” I said, annoyed. “Just how many players are in the pond here?”

“She just signed a new treaty with the vampires regarding right-of-way access, so they’re out of the picture right now,” J.B. said. “Other than that, pretty much everyone is in and out of the court for one reason or another.”

I blew out a breath. “Just why the hell did Lucifer think that I could handle this?”

Beezle and J.B. looked at each other.

“Yes, I know, that’s what you two know-it-alls tried to tell me yesterday. I’ll figure it out. J.B., go home and get some sleep. If you keep doing that to your hair, it’s going to fall out.”

“I’m overwhelmed by your gratitude. ‘Thanks, J.B., for making sure that your mom didn’t send her assassins to remove all my limbs one by one.’”

I kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks, J.B. Now, come back tomorrow morning around ten so you can escort me to the court. Surely she won’t chop off my head on sight if her son is part of my entourage.”

“Don’t count on it,” he said, and disappeared out the front door.

“Can I sleep in my nest?” Beezle asked.

“No,” I said. “You can set something up on my dresser.”

“Your dresser is hard,” he complained.

“So get a pillow,” I replied. “You’re the one who’s always going on about how cold it is outside.”

After about fifteen minutes of grumping and grumbling, I finally got Beezle settled. I collapsed on the bed and closed my eyes in an instant. And when I slept, I dreamed of Gabriel.

It was dark where he was, so dark and cold, a pit of frozen stone. The stone was black as night and shone in the faint gleam that emitted from the top of the pit. Gabriel’s eyes gave off a slight glow from the shadows.

He was na**d and shivering, and in the light I could see long welts clotted with blood on his back, his arms, his shoulders. He had only been gone for a little more than a day, but his face had a gaunt, haggard look, as if he hadn’t been eating. Since I couldn’t see any sign of food or water, he probably hadn’t been.

He hunched over his knees, arms wrapped around his legs, his wings enclosing his body in a makeshift blanket. Gabriel was always so calm, so self-assured, and it hurt my heart to see him trembling on the ground like a lost child.

I held my hand out to him, knowing that I could not touch him, that this was only a dream, when suddenly he looked up.

“Madeline?” he said. His face was alight with hope.

“Gabriel,” I replied, and I brushed my hand over his cheek, expecting to feel his skin beneath my fingertips, the dark stubble that grew there. But of course I couldn’t. I wasn’t really there.