Reggie blinked. “Uh, gee, thanks for the offer, Nate. But I think I’ll pass.”
Val’s eyes narrowed. “You touch him and you’ll be sorry.”
Nathaniel turned to her with the smile still in place, but he didn’t say anything.
“Now.” Julian took a step toward the doorway of light and rubbed his hands together. “Time to get this party started.”
She stepped in front of him. “Julian, listen to me. You can’t go through there. You’ll shift the balance and it’ll destroy everything. The earthly realm, Heaven, Hell. Everything. You hear me?”
He raised an eyebrow. “How incredibly exciting. Don’t you think so, Nathaniel?”
“Absolutely.”
She shot the other demon a dirty look. Yasmeen had slipped an arm around his waist and stared at him as if he were the greatest thing since sliced bread. Really bad analogy, Val thought. But she was too busy freaking out to come up with something good.
Julian was just about to walk into Heaven and obliterate everything up by his mere presence.
And again . . .
All her fault.
She was sensing a theme. The theme of Valerie Grace. Throwing everything away that she cared about because of her stupid, selfish, predictable behavior.
“Val—” Lisa said shakily. Val glanced over at the girl with her bright eyes and pale skin—a desperate look on her face as she waited for Val’s next move.
Julian smirked at her. “The funniest part of all of this is that you honestly thought you had a chance. Thought you could use my father’s key. Did you ever think about what would happen if you wandered back into Heaven without an official invite? Would they greet you with open arms? What kind of existence would an angel have who wasn’t welcome there? But you’re not an angel, are you? You’re just a sad, frail, predictable woman who would throw it all away when her hormones kicked in. Nathaniel probably didn’t even need the behavior modification at all. Perhaps all the time he was simply playing you for the little tramp you are.” He laughed coldly. “My hat’s off to him, too, because he even had me fooled. Didn’t you, Nathaniel?”
Julian turned around and was greeted with Nathaniel’s slamming fist. He was hit hard enough to be launched across the room, hit the wall and slide down to the floor.
“Yeah, I did have you fooled, didn’t I?” Nathaniel said. Then he crossed the room to grab the stunned Julian and hold him down against the faded beige carpet. “Valerie, go now. There’s no time to waste.”
She closed her now gaping mouth. “What the hell are you doing?”
“No time for explanation. Just consider this your white-horse delivery. Better late than never.
Go back to your home. To Heaven. Go now!”
Lisa was at her side, staring at the doorway, which glowed as bright as it had when it had first appeared.
Julian began to fight against Nathaniel and Yasmeen stared at the two demons as if she didn’t know what to make of this strange turn of events.
Val’s breathing was coming hard and rapid. What was Nathaniel doing? she thought frantically, but then realized it was kind of obvious. He’d just given her the chance she’d been looking for all of this time. Two long months stuck as a human and this is exactly what she’d been hoping for. The only thing that had kept her going when the going got tough.
“Come on,” Lisa said as she moved toward the glowing doorway.
Val grabbed her arm to stop her from going any farther. “Just a moment.”
“What?”
“Valerie, what are you doing?” Nathaniel pressed Julian hard into the floor.
“Let me go, halfling!” Julian’s voice was muffled by the carpet. Val suddenly wondered when the last time was it had gotten a good vacuuming. Not from her, that’s for sure.
“Val, now’s your chance,” Reggie yelled. “What are you waiting for? This is what you’ve wanted all along.”
“The weight of the world is on my shoulders right now and I’m afraid of throwing it all away by mistake,” she remembered saying in the limo ride over there, speaking to whomever it was that Seraphina was channeling.
“Excellent,” they’d said. “I believe the right choice has already been made.”
Was that the boss? she thought. Was that God himself who was speaking through Seraphina helping her to find the answers she sought? And if so, couldn’t he have spelled out the answer for her instead of making her have to guess all the time at what the true meaning was behind the words?
It never worked that way.
“You’re right. All of you,” she said suddenly. “And Nathaniel, about what you said to me in the Underworld—I am selfish. All my good deeds, whether or not I really realized it, I was doing for bonus points. Trying to get back to what I knew. Where it isn’t scary or lonely.
Where I felt wanted and safe and cared for and knew what to expect. I didn’t mean to lie to myself, but that’s just what I did. And my selfishness, all my meaningless lies have led to this very moment. Right here, right now.”
“Valerie,” Nathaniel struggled with Julian. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold him.
You must go while you still have the chance.”
She nodded “The thing is—I just wanted to let you know that you were wrong about one very important thing about me, Nathaniel.”
“Oh?” His gaze locked with hers. “And what’s that, my beautiful angel?”
“I’m not predictable.”
She threw the key at the doorway and it passed through and disappeared to the other side. In the barest of moments, a split second, it closed like a bright blind, a line of light that was there for a moment, then gone the next as if it had never been there in the first place.
She blinked with surprise. She hadn’t been sure it would work, but figured it was worth a shot.
Julian screamed, long and loud and she saw Nathaniel fly away from him as he got to his feet, flames in his eyes, so bright it hurt to look at him. More than normal, anyhow.
“You bitch!” he said, his voice pitchy. “You threw away my key.”
Val took a step back. “I didn’t see your name on it.”
He stormed toward her, hands clenched, but Nathaniel rose up behind him and grabbed him by the back of his jacket and the two of them staggered through the beaded curtain, then crashed through the manager’s office window and out to the courtyard outside. Val was about to run out after them when Yasmeen stepped into her path. She looked angry, upset, and confused. Mostly the confused part.
“You,” she began, her brow lowered enough that Val could tell she was a few hundred years overdue for Botox treatments. “You are human, yes?”
“Looks like.”
A quick glance past the curtain showed that Julian and Nathaniel were going at it outside in demon to demon combat. It actually looked to Val more like a bar fight than what she’d expect from two supernatural beings, but she supposed that fists were a more manly way to deal with conflict than laser beams from one’s eyes. Although, definitely not as cool.
Yasmeen’s eyes narrowed. “And yet he defends you.”