“Cronus is pa?en. What makes you think the rest of us don’t stand behind him?” I asked. “Would rather stand behind him any day than have anything to do with a bunch of cloud squatters, present company excluded.”
“You bunch are crazy, but none of you is as crazy as Cronus,” he answered. It was a valid enough point, except that I didn’t think Heaven would be much help.
“Maybe.” I held up my glass for the waitress. “It’s a nice gesture and all, much obliged, sugar. I just don’t see that your former place of business has anything to offer. I wish they did, but unless we get . . .” I stopped and let a thought somersault around my brain for a second. It might not work. Ninety-nine point nine percent it wouldn’t. Talk about your real hate-hate relationship. No, no bookie in Vegas would take that bet, but it was worth thinking on a little more.
“Trixa?”
I waved the unvoiced question away. “Never mind.” I didn’t think Ishiah would betray me by spilling a seed of a plan—we were on the same side in this. But while that was true, you could plan all you want, but know at the end something will either go wrong or, worse yet, go right at the wrong moment. Angels, real nonretired angels, were mostly windup toys. If you burdened their brains with a plan and someone, theoretically speaking, blew up the bridge they were supposed to cross, they’d cross anyway. Splat splat splat. If I needed their help, I’d tell them what I needed precisely when I needed it. There was much less chance of their screwing things up.
Then there was the saying, an oldie but a goody, that loose lips sink ships. Ishiah said demons talked and Heaven had listened. That’s how they’d found out about Cronus and his quest for the map to Hell. Demons weren’t the only ones who talked. Ishiah was no gossip, but someone Upstairs had sent him here. He’d report to them and then there was no stopping it. Secrets by their very nature fought not to be kept. Put something in a cage and it wanted out . . . just like with Pandora’s box. No, I’d feel better if I kept the key to the box that held my ghost of a plan to myself—ghost of half a plan. It was safer for everyone. Smarter as well, and I did so pride myself on being smart.
It could be Ishiah was right. I was vain, but how could you expect others to appreciate your brilliance if you didn’t appreciate it yourself?
I sucked the bit of gravy off my thumb and slid the check to Ishiah’s side of the table. “Oh, there is a tiny thing, you should know about. Very small.” I held my thumb and forefinger barely a half inch apart and gave an encouraging, pep-rally smile to show how very tiny a thing it was. “I lied to Eli about what Cronus wanted and conned him into turning a hundred thousand or so souls loose from Hell. I’m not sure he knows yet, but when he does, you might not want to be around for that.”
“You lied to Eligos?” The check in Ishiah’s hand became a tightly wadded ball of paper as his fist clenched. “To Eligos?”
“I’ve done it before. He seems to find it entertaining.” I pushed my chair back and stood. “But I have a feeling when his boss, the big boss, finds out he was cheated out of that many souls, Eli won’t find me quite as amusing anymore.”
“Tricksters.” Ishiah grimly smoothed out the check and stood to go pay. “All of you. Pucks or shape-shifters. Whether you’re the kind with a survival instinct or not, you’ll throw it away instantly for the chance at one good trick.”
“It wasn’t good,” I corrected, vexed. “It was unparalleled. I saved thousands, maybe a hundred thousand souls.” I didn’t invent the big fish story, but I was sure it was a trickster who had. “I’d think I’d get a sainthood at the very least.”
“A hundred thousand souls saved, but did they all deserve to be saved?”
The voice of conscience. I was glad it lived in NYC and not here. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t thought some of the souls might not be rightfully damned. Abusers, murderers, but I knew, I’d seen that one Rose hadn’t deserved anything close to damnation. Leo had promised to pass along the word via his family. Our afterlives weren’t Heaven or Hell. There was more leeway, more flexibility between what was evil and what was only naughty. Most of the souls would find the home they were due. Justice would be served, and if some did escape to wander alone, unable to touch the real world or any world for the rest of eternity, that was a punishment all its own.
“Your rules aren’t necessarily our rules. I saved an innocent girl. I tricked Hell—that’s what I was born to do. Chirp away, Jiminy. It won’t do you any good.” He kept the chirping silent, but it was implicit in the way he held himself as we walked back to the bar. Stiff back, tight jaw, braced shoulders.