Page 61 of Reapers Don’t Ride

“Dealings, not deals.” He took my hand and pulled me closer so he could gaze into my eyes while his heart beat in his chest, harder and faster the closer we were together. “If you haven’t met him, that means that your demon avoided him, right?”

I scowled at him. “Tralcon wasn’t my demon.” Also, he shouldn’t be so close to me, and he definitely shouldn’t look at me like that. His heart shouldn’t be reacting to me, and I shouldn’t be craving more of him, either.

“You’re so beautiful when you give me that fierce gaze of righteous indignation.”

I shook him off me and headed for the door. “There’s nothing righteous about me.”

Wonderland was in a more respectable part of Song, if such a thing existed, across the street from the Sphinx’s Curse. The gate into the park wasn’t large enough for cars. That must be a different entrance, or devils don’t deal with cars. Just cards.

I glanced at Gavriel, who I’d avoided looking at on our entire walk. I was still too aware of his every breath, his movement, the way his wings brushed the wall on my right side protectively around me.

“You’ve been here? Did you gamble?” I asked as we walked through the iron gates and headed beneath the trees that swayed under a different sky than had ever been in Song. It was a sky, for instance, instead of the roof of a cave, a pocket that was in another world, or at least a different place in our world. It made my skin itchy; the trees that weren’t quite right, the flowers that exhaled a perfume that mesmerized the senses, relaxed and beguiled like an angel with delicious blood that was too perfect and pure for the world.

“It was something of a gamble, but I stacked the deck first.”

The flowers were supposed to put me in a state of relaxation and lower my inhibitions. Happily, I didn’t breathe. I glanced at Gavriel again.

He looked back at me, brow raised.

“Don’t relax,” I said.

He smiled slightly. “The flowers are lovely. You don’t think I should enjoy them?”

I scowled and stopped looking at his beautiful face. “No.” And I shouldn’t enjoy looking at him, either.

“Is there something wrong with enjoying your life?”

“Yes.”

He chuckled. “Why is that, Miss Ruby?”

He’d called me Louisa. That had felt so good to be called a name given to me by someone who loved me instead of someone who owned me.

“You’re an angel. Enjoyment is for those without a purpose.”

“Don’t listen to Shane. He knows nothing about angels, only sees Lorien after he’s abandoned his cause and thinks he knows all of us. The thing about angels is that we don’t enjoy very many things, not that we’re against enjoyment. For instance, the flowers make me irritable and impatient at their lack of truth. They tell me lies, which I can’t take pleasure in. Richard is constantly seeking pleasure and is unable to find it. He did enjoy the vampires taking his blood, though.”

I stiffened up. “He shouldn’t.”

“I also enjoyed you taking my blood.”

“Why would you say that?” I hissed, looking around to make sure we were alone. Not that the trees weren’t listening.

“I take pleasure in truth. Don’t you? I wouldn’t normally bother you with my feelings, but as you drank them and know something about my raw emotions, I can fill in some of the extra pieces you may be missing.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“But I think it might be. You don’t understand me. You assume that I’m the same kind of angel as every other angel you’ve heard of and avoided unless you were executing them because they were corrupt and mingled with business that certainly wasn’t theirs. Pure and perfect. It’s the goblin, you see. My natural cravings are at odds with my angelic ones, leaving me with very few things that truly interest me.”

“I don’t suppose cake is one of them.”

“Not cake, but energy exchange, yes. You cooked your feelings and emotions into that cake, which I consumed, eating your affection, as it were. And the card. That gave me even more pleasure, even if it was torn and covered in blood when Frankie brought it to me. Very sweet of him, don’t you think, to go back to the scene of the crime to retrieve your hearts?”

I didn’t think I could get any stiffer, but here I was, a walking board. “No. Fairy blood is never sweet.”

“Some vampires prefer it.”

“I thought you said that you’d stopped.”