The Timekeeper (8 page)

I glanced at my watch and finished up with the bar of soap I‘d been wrapping and tossed package into the bin. I needed to get to NA, and for once, I was looking forward to going. Anything was worth saving me from this conversation I didn’t care to continue. Those are parts of my life I’m not interested in reliving. Zev had taken one of the most important nights of my second marriage and ruined it. I will never forget
,
or forgive him
.

“I’ve got to run, court ordered Narcotics Anonymous calls. I’ll catch you later.” I snatched my purse and didn’t wait for her to respond. I let the door shut behind me and walked down the street, enjoying yet another sunny day in the Mile High City.

The meeting hall wasn’t far from the shop near Capital Hill, in an old church basement. Not my idea of uplifting places, but anything was better than jail. Well, that’s what I thought when I took the plea bargain. They had been working on me to reconsider the lesser sentence every meeting, and if this went on much longer it would break me. At least I didn’t need to walk far to get to my special little Hell.

I seriously wished Echo hadn’t brought up my past with Zev. I’d been hoping telling her about the situation would warn her that she needed to be on the look out for him, I hadn’t expected to have a conversation regarding my complicated past. Everyone knew he had done me wrong. In Azazel’s territory Zev had a price on his head.

Out of all of my sisters, Azazel loved me the most. He’d been more hurt by Zev’s deception than I had. The King was grateful to find such a worthy son-in-law for his favorite daughter. The marriage hadn’t ended the way any of us wanted, especially Zev. He’d been forced from his home, never allowed to return again by command of the Demon King
.

I wandered into the church and down the stairs, praying faithlessly the holy walls would protect me from the past. I should’ve known better, faith in a God who didn’t love my kind was entirely fruitless. He listened to me about as well as I tolerated to him.

I’m the daughter of a Demon, and for some reason the mortal’s God didn’t care for me. I can’t understand why, I’m doing a perfectly fine job at being relatively good, saving the world. I think he’s into stereotypes and he hates women. Of course, this is based off of the last two thousand years of history, but I could’ve misinterpreted
.

I wandered down the stairs, hanging a left at the corner and down a narrow hallway, which seemed to be always poorly lit. The church wanted to help the junkies in the room, only as long as they weren’t forced to look at them. The whole thing reminded me of a bad horror movie
.
I walked through the open, frosted glass door and made my way to the cheap folding chair directly across from the one and only opening in and out of the shit-hole.

I hated surprises, I needed to watch every one coming in and out and make sure I had a clear path in case I found a reason to come up with an exit strategy in a hurry. With the way my life tended to be, I’d never been a hundred percent positive as to what was going to happen.

I tried to be one of the first people trickling in. I never bothered with the refreshments they supplied, where most of the earlier arrivers gathered. I always got the pick of the seating and I wasn’t missing anything at the snack table. The coffee, if you could call it that, was the consistency of mud and the donuts, usually stale.

I picked at my fingernails, a bad habit I couldn’t shake
,
while I waited for the meeting to start. One of the other court ordered disasters sat next to me, I was clueless why he was here. I didn’t care. I rolled my eyes as he slid into the seat next to me. This guy was terrible
,
always hitting on me. Oh, I informed him I was married several times, but he fancied himself a real ladies man and swore I would change my mind someday. I told him he didn’t have a fucking chance in hell, and he conveyed to me that he’d wear me down.

He smelled of rotten meat and days old stale beer, he was missing teeth, a scarred face around his left eye and the corner of his mouth, and going bald
.
The smell was putrid enough to make me gag
.

“Hello, Jim.” I refused to glance at him. A look from me would only encourage him. I shouldn’t have said anything to him in the first place, but I wanted to get this exchange over with so he’d move away and I could avoid his stench
.

“Ilana, you are stunning today. You’ve still got a ring on your finger. A real shame, we’d be wonderful together. Your beauty, my brains, we would be unstoppable.” I couldn’t stifle my laugher
,
bursting into hysterics before I managed to get a word out.

I didn’t care about hurting his feelings. Jim gave me the opportunity to be needlessly cruel, something I needed to do to relieve the stress of the day. It took me a minute to catch my breath. The expression on his face was priceless.

“Fuck off, Jim. I wouldn’t get with you if you were the last creature on Earth. I’ve got the beauty and the brains, and you’ve got absolutely nothing to offer in a relationship except your terrible odor. You’re so foul that soap and a SOS pad don’t stand a chance of ever removing your stink. One of these days
,
I’ll drag my hubby to one of the meetings so he can beat the shit out of you. Since he’s not here, keep talking to me and I’m going to kick the life right out of you myself.” I glared at him, and he quickly scurried away to a different chair, deciding he had taken enough abuse
.

An ex-hooker I happen to get along with rather well took his place.

“Damn girl, I can’t believe he’s still trying that shit on you.” I smiled, she’d been the only person in here I could relate to, and we had become good friends over the course of this ridiculous, court ordered bullshit. She was real, with bona fide problems and I appreciated that, especially since she had the same cutthroat attitude I did.

“Hey Ro. Yeah, he doesn’t seem to get the hint. I keep telling him, and he keeps ignoring me. Fucking moron. How you been girl?” She grinned back at me, missing teeth and all.

“I think I’m doing better than you. You look kind of down, everything okay?” I guess you need to be good at reading people as a hooker. Ro ranked as one of the best in my eyes.

The woman never missed a thing. Most didn’t bother to give her any credit. Everyone assumed she was nothing but a nappy-haired crack whore. Judge a book by the cover and you might be surprised
.
If I had my way
,
I would take her to the Aliis with me and given her a job as an assistant Ambassador, she’d be excellent
.

“
Evet
, I’m having one of those days. Problems with the ex, nothing to worry about, just irritating.” She gave me a typical unsympathetic stare. The woman didn’t feel pity for anyone, she’d been to hell and back
,
and survived every painful moment.

“I had those same problems with a pimp I had a while ago. Kept trying to convince me to come back after I’d left. Tried to kidnap me. Told me he loved me, claimed he wouldn’t put me on the street again, and he’d stop beating me. Ain’t nothing you can do but put a bullet in his head. That’s the only thing that worked for Joe anyway.” I smiled at her and nodded
.
She’s seen a hard life, I didn’t know the half of it, but she never seemed to stop surprising me.

“Ro, I love ya. I’m not sure any of that was helpful, but I appreciate the sentiment.” She gave me another toothless grin.

“Ain’t no thang girl, we cool.” I grinned back at her and we tapped knuckles. She was making an effort to clean up her life, the chick needed a break and this was the first step to her getting one. A moment later the meeting started. I won’t bore you with the details and these damn things took forever.

Twenty people showed for the meeting, and the NA Nazi, an evil little nun of sixty-five, forced everyone participate if you wanted her to sign of on your attendance sheet for the court. The sessions were made up of a long, unbearable list of names and sob stories.

I didn’t understand the point, most of the attendees left wanting to find the substance they were trying to get off of in the first place. Reminding someone of something they’d been aiming to forget wasn’t the way to kick the habit. Starting over seemed the best plan.

Remove the problem from your life. Eventually the urge will go away. Then came the simple matter of avoiding the trigger became the thing to worry about. Not sitting in a church basement remembering the good and bad times with a large group of other drug addicts
.
When my Hell was finally over, I stood up and gave Ro a big hug.

“Catch you later, chick. Be careful, Joe’s ghost may come back to haunt you.” I said as I strolled away, listening to her chuckle.

“I ain’t worried about Joe. Man never did a damn thing for me but knock out some teeth and I don’t believe in no ghosts, Miss Thang. See ya.” I left with a smile on my face. These meetings always managed to make me want to start doing drugs. I settled for the next best thing, the bar.

I walked down the street, enjoying how much everything I seemed to need fell within a couple of city blocks from each other. This wasn’t the best part of town, but the store was here, the club and yes, even NA
.
It made my life easier knowing the crack heads were more afraid of me than I was supposed to be of them. Hence the situation that had landed me Narcotics Anonymous in the first place, I should’ve seen that one coming
.

I was being followed, and the person following me felt like an all too familiar presence. I turned to face my stalker, and scowled.

“I’ve been wondering when you planned on showing up. I have no desire to speak to you, so be on your way.” One of the most handsome men I’d seen in my entirely too long life sauntered toward me.

It appeared he’d come straight through the Veil to find me and was slightly pink in the cheeks from the strain. His golden eyes surveyed my body, his black hair rustled in the breeze that came out of nowhere. He was tall and lean, and had a regal air about him. I couldn’t stop my heart from speeding up a little. I hated the way my anatomy betrayed me around him
.

“You are a marvelous specimen, my dear. Although, I think you look better in your true form. You’ve always been the most beautiful of our race.” I refused to talk to him, now or ever. I spun on my heels and started stomping away. I didn’t get far before he appeared next to me. Now that he’d found me, escaping wouldn’t be so easy
.
I blamed Echo for this, she jinxed me earlier and she would hear about it later
.

“I have nothing to say to you, Zev.” I was only a block away from the bar, and Zev could follow me in, but he wasn’t going to be staying long. Drake would call Darius, and he’d beat feet down here to deal with the problem. I managed to take another couple of steps before he grabbed my arm and stopped me from going any farther.

I loathed the way the heat of his touch ran threw my body like an uncontainable wildfire
.
I would never stop wanting him
,
and my accursed body would always remind me. I bit my tongue, trying to control the hot flash.

“Are you still mad at me, Azriella? You took everything the wrong way and you refuse to listen to me. I adore you and I just want to explain myself.” I had no desire to pay attention to his lies today, or ever.

“You never loved me, Zev.” I attempted to walk away, but he refused to let go of my arm. Our eyes met, glaring at him and wishing for his death again at the same time I prayed he would throw me up against the wall and kiss me
.
Did I always need to be such a fucking mess around him?

“I did love you, I still do. Yes, I wanted your kingdom, but there was more to it. I fell for you the night I met you, how could I not? We married and had a lovely daughter. Did none of this mean anything to you? Everything we shared, the special times we had together, you simply walked away from our life
.
You had your father banish me from my family, you had him force me to leave my home and never return. I couldn’t even explain anything to you. You didn’t want to hear the reasons, you still don’t.”

I gazed into his gorgeous chocolate brown eyes. I wanted nothing more than to believe him. I needed him to love me, I longed for his words to be true.

“Zev, seriously? I caught you in bed with my half-sister and with one of the servants. I heard you conspiring against Azazel so you could take control of the kingdom. What was I supposed to think? How exactly did you plan on explaining any of that to me, Zev? I’m sorry, but I wasn’t interested in hearing your lies then, and I’m not now.

“You’re lucky I begged my father for your life, Zev. Adultery and treason both hold the same death sentence. I gave you life, and all I asked for in return was to never see you again. Just leave me alone.” My heart broke every time I laid eyes on the bastard.

I shook lose of his grip and started walking, trying to hold back the tears welling up in my eyes
.
The heat of my anger had diminished eons ago, although I couldn’t find it in me to forgive him. The sorrow from the end of our relationship still clung to me, a hurt I never thought would go away.