Page 39 of The Demon Next Door
Debbie looked up. "You made it."
I stopped in the doorway. "You two literally negotiated with Heaven."
May shrugged. "Yeah."
Debbie took a long sip of her coffee. "Quarterly reports were still due."
I stared at them for a moment, at their completely ordinary coffees and their completely ordinary expressions, and then I started laughing.
I couldn’t stop, leaning against the doorframe while Debbie looked pleased with herself. May looked serene and the fish tank burbled away in the waiting room exactly as it always had.
"Are you seriously just back at work," I managed.
Debbie looked genuinely offended. "Girl, the Divine gives us assignment, but we have still got to make a living…”
The front door opened behind me and I turned around. Azrael was coming through it with our daughter in the carrier against his chest, because he had insisted on driving me in.
I’d decided not to argue, and the waiting room turned toward him the way sunflowers turn toward light, every head swiveling at once.
Debbie looked at him over the crowd with the satisfaction of someone watching something they had waited a very long time to see.
"Never thought I'd see the Guardian changing diapers," she said.
Azrael looked down at our daughter, who was awake and regarding the room with the serious dark eyes she had inherited from him.
“I’m surprisingly good at it," he said.
May nodded. "Guarding tiny humans counts too."
Our daughter reached up and grabbed a fistful of his shirt and held on, and he looked down at her and then across the room at me, a smile developing like a picture in a dark room.
I returned my mate’s smile.
Outside the mountains sat solid and blue at the edge of the sky, and Blackthorn Ridge went about its ordinary Saturday morning, completely unaware of what lived beneath it or who was keeping watch.
Just the way it was supposed to be.
