He had flown . . . by plane. The wings did work, but flying across country would take a while, and he’d bought the sword once he arrived in Vegas. It didn’t do for peris outside New York City to go unarmed. Demons liked killing them as much as they liked killing angels, only peris were more vulnerable. When they retired, they could keep the wings and transform to a human body, but that was it. No zipping up to Heaven, no flashing in and out of existence, no changing from flesh to a crystal statue that was the true form of an angel, one that looked like it belonged in an art gallery and not moving around in real life. Ishiah had been one of the very high and mighty in his day, so he had a difference of such to him. Give him a few weeks of storing up energy and he could give a light show like he’d given me last night. But that was it. A Vegas magician could do a hundred times better. I told him so. Leave the shows to the experts, I’d advised.
He’d have puffed up those feathers like an outraged rooster if we hadn’t been in public. Keeping them invisible for the moment, he finished up with his food and told me why he was here. I was on my second helping and had a ways to go, but Ishiah was an efficient creature, always had been, and I listened to him as I kept scooping up some gravy with the softest of biscuits you could imagine—the cook had to be from the South. No Vegas cook could make biscuits worth a damn.
“Heaven sent me,” Ishiah said. He paused—I didn’t know if he expected me to fall to my knees at the privilege or if he was expecting a choir hidden in the diner’s back kitchen to burst into song, but neither happened and he went on. “After what happened last year, they thought you’d be more willing to listen to me than an angel still in good standing.” He frowned. “Though the higher-ups don’t seem to know what exactly did happen three months ago. They know Oriphiel”—now there had been a snooty dick and a half—“never came home and a powerful demon named Solomon was killed. There were some rumors about an artifact of some sort, but Oriphiel didn’t share much about that. He seemed to think that was his mission and his alone. Ah, and someone outed you and Leo as tricksters.”
That would’ve been Eligos, the only one besides me and mine left standing at the final battle for the Light. “No, Ori wasn’t a pigeon who played well with others, and that’s saying something. Good at bossing, sniffing around where he shouldn’t be, saying what he shouldn’t say, but cooperation—there was a word that escaped him.” I took a swallow of juice and raised it toward the waitress for a refill. “And Upstairs is right. I wouldn’t listen to another of their kind after him. He was such an ass that I didn’t mind watching Eligos play a few head games with him.” I caught a last dab of gravy on my plate with my thumb and studied it. Humans in all their imperfections had created a food so perfect that if a heavenly choir was around, they should be singing about that.
“Eligos told me once Solomon couldn’t play in his league. Neither could Oriphiel. If he hadn’t wanted a certain something all to himself . . . power all to himself . . . maybe things would’ve turned out differently for him.” I mirrored Ishiah’s frown back at him, but mine was with an eye to a past longer than three months ago. “Your kind, Ishiah, your kind isn’t nearly as careful as they ought be about that. The power. It’s in all of you, that itch. That need. One-third of Heaven falling wasn’t some fluke.” I went on before he could deny it. I’d given him a truth. What he did with that truth was up to him. “So what’s almighty Heaven want to pass on that needed sending you here? Think they could throw a little Aramaic message in some holy ice cubes in my fridge. A postcard from St. Peter at the pearly gates. Something I could sell on eBay at least.”
He pretended to have not heard my warning or my desire to make some cash on eBay—guns and boots aren’t free, boys and girls—and went to the heart of the matter. “Eligos is here, then.” The long scar on his jaw whitened. “Wonderful. I’m not surprised he’d be involved in anything that had to do with angels dying. And I came because we know about Cronus. Heaven isn’t blind. When more than nine hundred demons die that quickly, Heaven keeps an ear open. Demons talk, so the fact that the wings were being taken wasn’t a secret long. All angels know what can be done with those wings. Cronus wants Hell and Lucifer, but we don’t know why. But nothing good can come of it. I’m here to find out what I can and to let you know that now, in this particular case . . . Heaven and pa?en can stand together on this—to stop Cronus.”