Then again, Id never believed that people who suffered had brought it on themselves, so that sort of shot a hole in my cosmic theory of justice.
Nevertheless, some fiery pit with a chortling devil holding a pitchfork had seemed more of a twisted Disney fantasy than anything else.
Apparently I was wrong.
Though no one had said anything about Satan. Come to think of it, some of the biblical propaganda posited that the first fallen angel, Lucifer, was Satan, king of hell. Which didnt really jibe with what was going on here.
I was curious, but truth be told, it wasnt just intellectual curiosity that made me determined to stay right here.
Raziel had something to do with it.
Okay, he was way too gorgeous, and gorgeous men made me feel like a troll. I could make an exception. Whether I liked it or not, I felt drawn to him, tied to him, turned on by him; and while I was putting out a lot of energy fighting it, I was losing the battle. It didnt matterhe was more than capable of resisting me, and I wasnt going to make a fool of myself. It wasnt the first time Id suffered the adolescent pangs of unrequited, er, lust.
The sun was already setting, sinking into the dark green ocean, the golden color streaking toward me with greedy fingers. I looked down, and I could see Raziel walking on the beach, with Azazel and some of the others beside him. They were deep in conversation, and from such a distance I could barely see their expressions, much less hear what they were saying. But whatever it was, it wasnt good.
Of course there were no women walking and talking. No women angels. It really annoyed methe patriarchal control extended millennia, apparently.
I turned away. Apparently the only way to make baby fallen angels was to have female angels in the first place, and someone had neglected to create them.
I was starving.
How had he gotten that food up here last night? Was this some kind of fairy-tale world, where all I had to do was wish to make it happen?
I closed my eyes and tried to visualize a quart of Ben & Jerrys, then opened them again. Nothing on the coffee table in front of me, but on a whim I slid off the sofa and went to the freezer, looking inside to see . . . absolutely nothing. Crap.
Maybe it needed Raziels magic touch.
I started moving around the apartment, restless, trying to keep my mind off my stomach. One bedroomhis, with the king-size bed in the middle of it.
Looking at it made me start thinking about points south of my stomach, and I quickly elevated my mind to purer matters. Someone had made the bed, so maybe the place came with maid service, which was a good thing. I wasnt about to start picking up after him, though chances were he was neater than I was. Most people were.
One closet, and not much in the way of clothing. Id already rummaged through and borrowed the stuff most likely to fit me. The rest would be impossibly tight on my far-from-coltish figure, assuming I could even get the clothes on. Besides, the black was almost as depressing as the white.
I guess had to give up on the idea of ever being lithe or willowy. I was going to spend eternity being just this side of voluptuous, and I didnt like it.
On the other hand, Id never get fat, so that was something.
I wandered into the kitchen. The sun was flame red now, reflecting off the windows in front of me, and only a small sliver was left above the horizon.
Once it dropped, everything would be dark, and I leaned against the counter, watching. If the sun rose and set here, surely this must be the real world, and I must be alive. Otherwise it made no sense. Why bother with all the trappings of normal life when reality was so far removed?
The last shimmer of red dipped beneath the foamy surface, and I didnt move, almost in a meditative state as I watched the water churn and splash, the air cool and damp against my face. I licked my lips and could taste salt, and I found myself smiling. My mother had told me to lick my lips when we went to the seashoreit was the souls of the dead babies giving me a welcome kiss, trying to drag me down with them.
Hildegarde Watson had never been a bundle of laughs. Why she thought dead babies would end up in the ocean had never made sense, but I never tried to reason with my mother. It was always a losing proposition.
But damn, the old lady would be tickled pink to know that her blasphemous daughter was consorting with angels. Sleeping with one, in fact, though it wasnt quite the kind of sleeping with that I tended to think of. And it was safer not to let my mind go in that direction, not when it came to Raziel.
Actually, it was much more likely to be Neptune or Poseidon who was going around kissing me with salt-chapped lips. The gods of Mount Olympus were always a lot more entertaining than the Judeo-Christian God, who tended to be obsessed with punishment and sin. Not that Hildegarde believed in any god but her own angry, moralistic one whod somehow morphed out of a gentle, loving Jesus.
I really should have hedged my bets, since it was my mothers gloomy god whod turned out to be the one with the power. Though it seemed he was even pre-Judeo-Christian. I wondered what Hildegarde would think of that. Shed flip.