Angel Eclipsed (The Louisiangel Series Book 2) (6 page)

Admittedly, Cupid normally covered the front desk, fielding any calls and looking out for stray tourists wanting to view the historic building, but I just wasn’t convinced. There was trust, and then there was just asking for trouble. I sighed and shook my head. It wasn’t my call. Instead, I decided to focus on something I could change: the ringing bells.

I made my way up the beautiful cypress wood staircase which lived in the main entrance, then went up another set of stairs to the attic. Up here was Michael’s domain.

On the other side of the dark wood door, I could hear voices although I couldn’t quite make out what was being said. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the door open without bothering to knock: if Michael didn’t want me to enter, he wouldn’t have been calling me for the past twenty-eight minutes. The room fell silent as I stepped in and I was met with four pairs of eyes watching me.

The first, a set of hazel eyes, were full of relief. I gave Cupid a small smile which was returned tenfold in a wide grin. The tall, yet skinny, archangel with shaggy brown hair met my gaze, before studying my overall appearance. When his eyes found the red cowboy boots, he arched an eyebrow at me. I gave him a small shrug, knowing he would question my outfit later.

I was also hyper aware of the intensity radiating from a set of chocolate brown eyes which were making me feel uncomfortable even from ten feet away. From behind his desk, Michael tilted his head. The only way I could describe this archangel was ‘an Adonis –
the
Adonis’. He had chiseled good looks, a strong jaw, and muscles that would have made my heart skip a beat – if it still beat normally. “I’m glad to see you finally left your room,” he told me. “This is Raphael and Paddy.”

My attention switched to the other two people in the room, and I glanced back at Michael before doing a double take. Every angel I had encountered so far looked like they belonged on a catwalk so it didn’t surprise me that these two newcomers were just as good looking. Raphael was another beautiful creation. He was just as tall as Michael and Cupid though his frame was more like Michael’s muscular one than Cupid’s slimmer one. While both Michael and Cupid looked to be only a few years older than me, Raphael looked to be in his early thirties. His auburn hair was kept long, tied back at the nape of his neck, although several strands had broken free and had to be tucked back behind his ear.

It was Paddy who had surprised me. Unless he had been to an exceptionally good plastic surgeon, he was actually a she. She was the shortest in the room by several inches, even with the high heeled stiletto boots she wore. Her hair was a mass of natural red curls which hung down her back, almost to the bottom of the mini skirt she wore. “You’re female,” I blurted out, earning a bark of laughter from Raphael, a look of horror from Cupid, and a disapproving scowl from Michael.

Before Michael could vocalize his disapproval, Paddy grinned at me. “I blame the Catholics,” she told me, with a rich Scottish accent. “Patricia,” she added. “But everyone calls me Paddy. I’m a Saint,” Paddy added, a twinkle in her green eyes. “As an English girl, I’d like to think you’ve heard of me anyway, but I’m pretty big over here too.”

Saint Patricia? I gave Cupid a helpless look and he winced. “We haven’t covered saints yet,” I admitted, sheepishly.

“Stop teasing her,” Raphael chided Paddy, as he bumped her with his hip. Unlike Paddy he had an Irish accent, but his voice was deep and rich. “While there is a Saint Patricia, Paddy here hasn’t been called Patricia since the 4
th
century. And don’t let that Scottish accent fool you. You’re looking at the Patron Saint of Ireland.”

My jaw hit the floor. “But you’re...” I spluttered off into something incomprehensible as I tried to wrap my head around this one. “You’re a Patricia, not a Patrick,” I tried again. “Can you even do that?” Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Cupid face palm, and I found myself cringing in embarrassment. It was a pretty stupid question.

Paddy took it with another laugh. “I take it you’re not clued in to why I have a day celebrated after me either? That’s kind of refreshing,” she gave me a grin. “Firstly, I’m Scottish, not Irish. When I was child, I was taken from my home and over to Ireland as a slave. Then one day I had a dream where God told me to run, so I did. I escaped back home to Scotland. When I had another dream in which God told me to return to Ireland, but disguised as a man, I didn’t question it. I was free thanks to him.”

“Why would he make you go back there?” I asked, wondering if I would have been able to return to a place which had made me a slave.

“Raphael needed my help to banish the Snakes from Ireland,” Paddy replied with a shrug, like the answer was obvious.

I looked at Raphael, arching an eyebrow at him. “That’s one of the reasons we’re here,” he explained.

“You’re going to banish the snakes from New Orleans?” I asked, cynically. “Good luck with that one,” I scoffed. It wasn’t like they lined the streets, but there was more than one species of snake indigenous to Louisiana. Banishing them from the city wouldn’t take anything less than a miracle. My eyes narrowed at that thought.

“The Plague of Snakes was a faction of men,” Paddy informed me. “They thought they could raise Luc-”

“The Plague of Snakes is nothing you should worry yourself with,” Michael said, cutting Paddy off.

Paddy’s cheeks reddened as she frowned at the same time as she bit her lip. I shook my head and stared down at her. “They thought they could raise who?” I demanded. “Lucifer?”

“Angel,” Michael said in a low, warning tone.

I ignored him, keeping my attention focused on Paddy. “You’re here because you think that Lucifer’s back,” I said, staring her down. She stared back at me, her green eyes unwavering, but she refused to either confirm or deny my accusation.

“Angel,” Michael snapped. “This is none of your concern.”

I pointed myself in his direction, my hands finding my hips as I glared at him. “How is it not my concern?” I snapped back at him. “Like I told you before, what I did – it unlocked something. Lucifer-”

“Enough!” he bellowed, silencing me. His brown eyes suddenly seemed molten as he glared back at me. A muscle in his jaw twitched and I knew I was crossing into dangerous territory. As the archangel in charge of the House I resided in, I was well aware that he seemed to have some power over the angels he oversaw. If he commanded me to walk off a bridge, I would have to do so. As it happened, his order was much more frustrating: this conversation was over – whether I liked it or not.

I folded my arms over my chest and glowered back at him, knowing full well that I was acting like a petulant child. I didn’t care. “Then why did you summon me back?” I growled out at him.

“I’m beginning to question that myself,” he told me, the anger still evident in his tone.

It was Raphael who interrupted our glaring competition by clearing his throat. “Perhaps we should have this conversation later this evening. Over dinner?” he suggested, although the emphasis on ‘dinner’ hinted that had been the plan all along.

Michael’s eyes flicked over to Raphael before returning to mine. He nodded, releasing a breath. “Dinner will be at eight o’clock.”

I accepted the dismissal, glad to be able to leave, managing to close the door behind me without slamming it.

Bad Influence

I had taken a couple of steps down the narrow staircase when the door opened behind me. I carried on walking, trying to ignore the footsteps as someone hurried to catch up with me. “Angel?” Raphael called after me. I sighed and turned back around. He was a few steps above me, but he towered over me. His muscular frame seemed to take up all the available space around him. “Michael filled me in on what you said happened.”

“You make it sound like I lied and made it up,” I told him.

Raphael shook his head, taking another step down towards me. He leaned against the wall, his hands stuffed into the pockets of the dark trousers he was wearing. “I don’t think you made anything up,” he assured me. “But Michael doesn’t lie: Lucifer is dead. You don’t need to worry about anything other than getting yourself...” he trailed off.

“Better?” I snarked in suggestion.

He gave me a sad smile. “He’s been worried about you, you know?”

I knew he was talking about Michael. I felt myself deflate slightly. So much had happened, in so short a space of time. For weeks all I had been able to think about was what happened that night. Everything else had been pushed back, deep into a dusty corner of my mind – including Michael’s feelings for me.

He had kissed me, admitted he had feelings for me, and then apologized for it. He’d also confessed that he resented me for causing these feelings which was why he was hard on me. Was that why he was being an ass with me now? I mentally shook my head. This was not something I wanted to think about right now. “There are more important things to worry about,” I muttered.

“But Lucifer isn’t one of them,” Raphael told me. His tone was firm, but there was sorrow in his gaze.

Lucifer had been his brother too, I realized. Cupid and Veronica had explained to me the three tiers and the nine different types of angels which were split amongst them. Essentially, they saw each other as family. And every time I mentioned Lucifer I was bringing up the fact that Michael had killed his brother. Although it didn’t have me doubling over, a flash of guilt shot through me. “I’m sorry,” I told him quietly. “I just... I saw it in Lilah’s eyes. She believed in what she was doing.”

Raphael leaned forward and rested his hand on my shoulder. “Half the population doesn’t believe in angels. It doesn’t make that true, does it?” He gave my shoulder a squeeze, and then retreated back up the stairs to Michael’s office.

After spending weeks holed up in my bedroom, I had no desire to go back there. I did, but only to get changed into my own clothes. I replaced the dress with a pair of denim cut-offs and a long, black tank top, but kept the cowboy boots on. They were growing on me. I slipped the phone into my pocket and rummaged amongst my things to locate some money. Finally, I grabbed an old copy of the
Times Picayune
which had probably been left in my room by Cupid, given that it was left open at the horoscopes, and tucked it under my arm.

My intention was to leave the convent and pick a place to read. Instead I found myself at the corner of Bourbon and Dumaine, staring at a yellow two storey building. The building was home to a bar called Bee’s. Downstairs was themed to resemble someone’s idea of hell – red walls, dark lighting, and during the later hours, deep pounding music. Upstairs, with soft lighting, and a cloud theme, was heaven.

Bee’s was also the bar Lilah had worked in after leaving the convent. As I gnawed at my lip, staring at the unremarkable building, my gut was telling me there was more to this bar. It was closed now, with big black shutters pulled across the windows on both levels. I really wanted to believe Michael and Raphael when they assured me that I shouldn’t worry about Lucifer, but I couldn’t.

I glanced around. The streets were reasonably quiet. I was at the end of Bourbon Street, which was tapering off into residential buildings, and the number of bars and shops here meant that fewer tourists headed this far down during the day time. Behind me was one of the few bars that were open. The sign in the window announced that they served coffee and homemade crêpes. The upper balcony also had a direct line of sight to Bee’s.

I headed inside, blinking momentarily as my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. There were a handful of people seated inside, and one guy behind the bar busy wiping the surfaces down. I headed over and ordered some chocolate crêpes and a drink, and headed straight upstairs to the empty balcony.

The fans were spinning lazily above me, doing little to combat the muggy air. I commandeered a corner table and positioned myself so I had a clear view of Bee’s. I pulled the newspaper open without really looking at it, and settled in.

I’d had some sort of romanticized notion that stake-outs were fun. I was wrong. I sat there for hours and not a single person even looked at Bee’s as they walked past. Around me, the bar filled up for lunch, though people mainly stuck to the air conditioned inside, before emptying out again afterwards. I let out a frustrated grunt and turned an unread page with more force than was necessary.

“Are you a fan?” a voice announced, startling me.

My eyes fell to the newspaper and onto the singer I’d never heard of, who seemed to have made the headlines for some mischievous antic. I looked up to my side and found the guy from behind the bar towering above me, a towel hanging over his shoulder. His hair was a couple of shades darker than his skin and he had gray eyes which looked almost silver in the shadows. I blinked. How on earth was it that I had gone throughout high school without any interest from boys and now that I was an angel, and an eternity of being single stretched out in front of me, ridiculously good looking ones seemed to be appearing in front of me? My eyes fell on the camera in his hands and I shot upright, discarding the newspaper. “What’s that?”

He gave me a grin that would have made any girl’s stomach flip flop, and pulled out one of the metal chairs next to me causing it to squeak across the balcony’s tiled floor. He sat down and set the camera on the table next to my half eaten crêpe before focusing his attention back on me. “Ty,” he said.

“You called it Ty?” I asked, blankly.

He laughed. “I’m Ty,” he clarified. “And that’s a camera.”

I could feel the blush starting at my neck and quickly rising up my face to my hairline. “I know it’s a camera,” I told him shortly. “Why was it pointed at me?”

He cocked his head at me, a grin forming. “I’m sure you get this all the time, but I was hoping you would be my muse?”

My mouth fell open. “Are you for real?”

He shrugged, but the grin remained. “I’m an art student and you have just become my subject for my project. That is, if you don’t mind helping out a poor, starving senior?”

“I don’t know anything about modeling,” I told him. A thought flashed through me and I could feel my cheeks heat up even more. “And I’m certainly not about to get naked for you!” I added hastily.

The grin morphed into a smirk. “I hadn’t thought about you naked,” he assured me. “But now, I’m trying damn hard not to.”

Somehow, my cheeks managed to feel even hotter. “I think it’s time I left,” I muttered in embarrassment as I got up.

“Wait, I’m sorry,” Ty apologized, getting to his feet. “Please, don’t go. I really would like your help.” I stopped, but I didn’t sit down. “I really do have a project and when I saw your hair in the sun, I knew it had to be you. Please?” he begged.

“I don’t know if I can,” I muttered. I wasn’t sure how being photographed fell into Michael’s many rules.

He stared at me thoughtfully. “Are you going back home soon, or something?”

It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about. “I live in New Orleans,” I told him. “My aunt...” I trailed off with a frown. There was no way I could explain my living arrangements. It probably would have been easier to agree to being a tourist too, but after sitting in this bar for the last few hours, it was also the only place I could stake out Bee’s and I needed to be able to come back.

“Look, I wouldn’t ask you to do anything you didn’t feel comfortable with,” he insisted.

I glanced over at Bee’s and sighed. “Can I think about it?”

“Think about what?”

Ty and I both turned to the owner of the voice: Joshua. “What are you doing here?” I asked in surprise.

“Looking for you, darlin’,” he returned, eyeing Ty suspiciously.

Ty looked between the two of us, before giving me a small smile. “You know where I work,” he said, collecting his camera. He gave Joshua a nod and then disappeared back into the bar.

“Who was that?” Joshua asked, joining me at the table. He waited for me to sit back down, before he took the seat next to me which Ty had vacated.

“He works here,” I muttered, distracted by Joshua’s presence. “Why are you looking for me? Did something happen? Are you alright?” I demanded.

He held his hands up, grinning. Suddenly, he shot forward, a hand on each arm of my chair, and leaned in. His face was inches from my own. “Are you worried about me?” he asked.

The blush, that had been slowly fading, flared back up at his close proximity. I could feel his breath on my face. “How did you know where I was?” I asked, impressed my voice managed to come out clear and strong. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a GPS on me too?”

“A guy gets worried when he doesn’t hear from his angel when she promises to text him on the shiny new phone he bought her,” Joshua responded, unblinking. “Besides, I’m a detective. It’s what I do.”

“You’re a trainee detective,” I pointed out, wondering when he would back away, wondering why I didn’t want him to back away.

“Semantics,” he said, shrugging. The action bought him momentarily closer to me and I sucked in a shallow breath. That made him smirk and he leaned forward, diverting his mouth at the last moment from my lips to my ear. “Maybe I have a Find my Angel app,” he whispered, his stubble grazing my cheek.

“There’s no such...” I frowned. “You tracked that phone,” I realized, turning to glare at Joshua. The angry words I had for him vanished as soon as I saw how close we were.

“Maybe I need protecting now,” he said, his voice soft as his eyes flicked from my lips and back to my eyes.

My guardian angel mode switched on and I leaned to the side so I could inspect the area behind him. “Why?” I demanded. The soft chuckle had me whipping my head back to face Joshua.

“It hasn’t happened yet,” he told me, reaching out to tuck some stray strands of hair behind my ear. His hand lingered there, his fingertips caressing my cheek. “But I’m too pretty for jail.”

His touch was almost enough to distract me. “Why would you be going to jail?”

“Because apparently I get crazy jealous when another guy flirts with my girl,” he muttered, leaning closer. “And it turns out I really want to go kick that guy’s ass right now.”

His lips grazed mine. With every ounce of will power I had left in me, I swiped at his arm. “Quit it!”

He sat back, rubbing at his arm as he watched me. “I’m beginning to think I need a guardian angel to protect me from my guardian angel,” he complained.

I blushed, and, embarrassed to discover that I was breathing heavily, turned my attention back to Bee’s. “I think we need to find you a girlfriend,” I muttered in response.

“I think my choice is better than yours.”

It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about, and when I did, that feeling of being stabbed was back. My one and only girlfriend suggestion had been Lilah. Of course, at the time I hadn’t realized it was her, or that Paige was being possessed. I clamped my eyes closed, my muscles tensing as I fought the pain back.

“Angel?” Joshua asked.

His touch had me opening my eyes. The warmth had radiated through me with an effect like water being spread on fire. “I’m fine,” I assured him.

He didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t call me on it. He did keep his hand on my knee as he leaned towards me. “Why are you here, darlin’?” he asked softly.

I chewed my lip, staring at Bee’s before sighing. “A gut feeling?” I offered.

“Angel, Bee’s was cleared,” Joshua told me.

I looked at him, surprised. “It was?”

Joshua nodded. “Why don’t you come back to the precinct with me?” he suggested. “I can let you read the case notes?”

I didn’t want to leave, but curiosity was getting the better of me. “Fine,” I relented. “But only if you promise to quit with the flirting?”

Joshua rose to his feet and looked down at me with a smirk. “I’ll promise you that as soon as you promise me you don’t like it.”

I stood and gathered my things up before finally facing Joshua. I smiled, sadly, and shrugged. “Whether I like it or not is irrelevant, Joshua.”

Joshua inclined his head. “So you do like it.”

I didn’t respond as I led the way outside.

* * *

The last time I had been at the precinct, it had been hours before a category five hurricane had hit the city. Then, it had been chaotic with officers rushing around in an attempt to secure any data they needed to. Now, I was barely acknowledged by Curtis (I still didn’t know if that was his first or last name) on the front desk, and the large room which housed the homicide detectives was empty.