“You mentioned my hair. Twice. So it grew back. What’s the big deal?”

Beezle narrowed his eyes at me. “What happened between you two while you were out there?”

“I’m sure Nathaniel told you all about it,” I said with studied nonchalance.

“I’m sure you’ve noticed that Nathaniel is somewhat taciturn,” Beezle said. “He’s not what you’d call a gripping storyteller.”

“What’s to tell? We put a veil over the hospital to protect the people inside. We were chased by Bryson and a bunch of his goons. They shot us out of the sky and we had to walk home, dodging monsters along the way.”

“And nothing else happened?”

I gave Beezle my best big brown eyes and tried not to blink too much. I’d read somewhere that blinking was a sign of lying. “Nope. Nothing else.”

The door opened and Nathaniel came in. It was like all the air had just been squeezed from the room.

Beezle turned his head slowly from me to Nathaniel and back again. Then he addressed me. “You are a crappy liar. Don’t think you’ll be able to hide…whatever this is…from the others.”

And he flew out of the room, grumbling under his breath.

Nathaniel closed the door behind him. He looked clean and rested, and he was dressed more casually than I’d ever seen him in a gray sweater and blue jeans.

It was hard for me to look at him now that the crisis was over. What had happened between us seemed like a moment out of time, a thing that had happened once but couldn’t happen again. I could only imagine what Samiel would think if Nathaniel and I became involved. I’d just buried Samiel’s brother, and I was carrying his brother’s child.

Even as I thought all of this, Nathaniel sat down on the bed beside me. He took my hand in his, and the space between us crackled with electricity. I had serious doubts about my self-restraint. Something was compelling me toward Nathaniel, despite all reason, despite our history, despite the fact that a part of me sensed it was dangerous for both of us to go any further. Was I turning into a woman who wanted the wrong man for all the wrong reasons? Would my baser instincts really prevail?

“You are well?” Nathaniel asked. “Your powers are restored?”

I did a quick internal check and found that everything was as it should be. My baby fluttered its wings reassuringly.

“Yes. And you?” I said. “Is your wing healed?”

Nathaniel turned so that I could see that his wing had been restored. “Samiel helped me repair it.”

“That’s good,” I said, then decided I might as well forge right ahead before I lost my nerve. “Nathaniel, what happened between the two of us…”

He put his hand on my lips. “What I said to you still stands. I want you to choose me. I do not wish to be a dirty secret.”

“I understand,” I said, although part of me wanted to keep him as just that, if only so I could satisfy the unreasoning lust that had appeared when I’d kissed him the first time. “I just want you to know that I’m not ready to make that choice.”

Nathaniel rubbed his thumb over my mouth. “Then I will have to convince you,” he said, and replaced his hand with his lips.

As soon as he kissed me it was like I was falling again, falling into a mad abyss where I didn’t care about anything except Nathaniel, Nathaniel’s touch, Nathaniel’s heat. I could sense the same madness on him, as his mouth became more insistent, more demanding. His hands moved over me, and it seemed I moved inevitably toward him, that there was only one way this could end.

He pulled away, rested his forehead against mine. “Madeline. I cannot control myself around you.”

“I know,” I said, moving reluctantly away and rising from the bed. “Whatever this is, it seems to get stronger the more we…do stuff.”

The corners of his mouth quirked upward at my phrasing, but he sobered quickly. “I cannot tell if this is the normal course of intense attraction, or if there is another factor at work here.”

“Do you think someone put us under a love spell?” I was pretty much grasping at straws here.

“To what end? Who would benefit from our joining?”

“Maybe someone who wants me to be distracted.”

Nathaniel shook his head. “It does not have the sense of a love spell. Everything goes back to the moment when our powers combined. It was as if your magic unlocked something inside me. Since that moment I have felt stronger, more powerful. I have abilities I did not have before. And I sense something more, something untapped beneath the surface.”

He was coming into the legacy of his bloodline. I understood how he felt. I’d gone through this when Lucifer’s powers had manifested inside me, and I think the full magnitude of that magic still had not fully presented itself.

“Maybe we should quit the touching and the kissing for a while until we figure out what’s going on,” I said, and I felt a pang of loss. My words were sensible, but my body craved him. It was a little frightening.

“That seems wise,” Nathaniel agreed. “But it will be difficult.”

“We have to try,” I said.

“When I slept, I dreamed of you,” Nathaniel said. “I dreamed that you rose above the city on silver wings, and all below you fell to their knees in wonder and awe. The power of the universe burned within you, and as that power flowed, you shone brighter and brighter. As the light of your sun touched the faces of the vampires below, they were destroyed utterly. Even the ash of their remains was vaporized by your light.”

He’d said all of this as if he were in a trance. As he spoke a chill washed over me. I felt the cold hand of destiny draw a finger down my spine.

“Do you think it was a prophecy?” I asked quietly. I didn’t like prophecies. Most of my life had been ruled by prophecies, the deaths foreseen at the Agency. I liked to feel as though I was the mistress of my own fate.

“I believe you have the ability within you to end this war. That is what my dream revealed to me.”

“I don’t have powers like that,” I said. “I don’t even have wings anymore.”

“The potential is inside you. It just needs to be revealed.”

I rubbed my forehead tiredly. “I don’t know how to reveal it. Maybe Lucifer would know if he’d answer my damned phone calls.”

I gave the snake tattoo on my right palm an angry glare. It lay quiescent and unmoving, the way it did when Lucifer was out of touch.

There was a brief knock at the bedroom door and Jude came in. I took a moment to be grateful that the wolf hadn’t walked in while Nathaniel and I were embracing. Jude did not trust Nathaniel at all.

“You need to come out here,” Jude said. “There’s something on the television that you need to see.”

I followed Jude into the hallway and Nathaniel fell in behind me. Chloe, Samiel and Beezle waited in the living room. Beezle sat on the coffee table holding the remote. Samiel sat on the couch with Chloe in his lap. Beezle followed the direction of my gaze.

“Sickening, aren’t they?” he said. “Ever since she got out of the hospital they can’t keep their hands off each other.”

“Jealous, little gargoyle?” Chloe asked, resting her head on Samiel’s shoulder. She had dark circles under her eyes, and she didn’t look completely recovered from her ordeal in Azazel’s mansion. Her vivid purple hair was pushed away from her face with a headband that had little skulls printed all over it.

Beezle scrunched up his face. “Absolutely not. I just think there’s a little too much PDA going on around here. Human procreation is so gross.”

I’m not human, Samiel signed.

“Close enough,” Beezle said.

“How do gargoyles procreate?” Chloe asked.

“Nope, I’m drawing the line there,” I said before Beezle could respond. “I do not want to hear how you make baby gargoyles.”

“It’s quite a fascinating process, actually,” Beezle said.

I stuck my fingers in my ears. “Nope, not listening, la-la-la-la-la.”

“I thought you wanted her to see something on television,” Jude growled.

“I do,” Beezle said. “But there’s a commercial on. It will come up in a minute. The news anchor said the footage would be up after the break.”

“Footage of what?” I asked, a pit forming in my stomach. This couldn’t be anything good, and I’d had enough of bad news.

“Just wait,” Beezle said. “Although you wouldn’t have to wait if you’d gotten that DVR like I said you should.”

“You mean the DVR we can’t afford? You’re lucky we have cable.”

“If we had a DVR, I could have paused the program until you got your butt out of bed.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I spent a day and a night running for my life while pregnant. For some strange reason I was exhausted.”

“Not exhausted enough,” Beezle muttered, and I understood from his tone that he was referring to the changes in me and Nathaniel.

Luckily, the news program came back on before we could pursue that line of conversation in the presence of an audience. Of course, a reckoning in front of my gang of misfits was probably as inevitable as what would happen between Nathaniel and me. Even now I was aware of him in a low-level way, a presence in the back of my mind.

The anchor—one of those plastic newscasters who look like they’ve been pressed in an attractive-but-not-in-a-threatening-way mold—was recapping the events of two days ago, even showing the same clip of the vampires in Daley Plaza that had sent us down there in such a hurry.

“Why did I get out of bed for this?” I asked.

“Just wait,” Beezle said.

My stomach rumbled audibly. Samiel patted Chloe’s shoulder and she slid off his lap onto the couch.

I’ll make you some breakfast. I’ve already seen it.

“I’m feeling a little peckish myself,” Beezle said.