“Huh,” Beezle said, hunched in front of the microwave and focused with a predator’s intensity on the popcorn bag turning on the glass plate. The only food that Beezle liked better than chocolate was popcorn.

“Beezle,” I said. “How come you never told me about my father?”

The gargoyle dragged his eyes reluctantly away from the popcorn bag, which had started to pop. His face was a mixture of shame and defensiveness. “I wanted to,” he said.

“But . . . ?” I asked, rotating my wrist in a circle to indicate that he should go on.

“Your mother asked me not to tell you anything unless it became necessary.”

The microwave beeped, indicating that the cycle was complete. Beezle scurried out of the way so that I could get the popcorn out of the microwave and put it in a bowl.

“Define ‘necessary,’”I said as I took two handfuls of popcorn and put them on a napkin.

He watched me take my serving of popcorn with greedy eyes. “You know . . . if Azazel showed up, I was to tell you everything. Other than that, Katherine left it to my judgment.”

“And your judgment was to keep me completely in the dark, even after I made nightfire? I’m sure that most gargoyles would consider that a ‘necessary’ moment.”

He looked abashed, but there was a defensive note in his voice as he said, “I was already under that devil’s geas when you manifested nightfire. I couldn’t tell you anything that would reveal him or your father.”

I looked at Beezle carefully, trying to decide how angry I wanted to be about his withholding information from me. Beezle loved me, I knew he did, but he had loved my mother far more. If she had asked him to keep a secret until he turned to stone, he would have. I could be as upset and angry as I liked, but the fact that his loyalty was to Katherine and the promises he made her wouldn’t change. I sighed as I handed Beezle the rest of the bowl and he stuck his face so far into the popcorn that all I could see were the tops of his ears.

There would be no talking while Beezle was eating, so I decided to eat a little, too. I was pretty sure that I hadn’t eaten all day. After two kernels of corn I realized that my head was still too sore from Antares’s beating to chew anything. When I tried to crunch down, a bolt of pain ran from my back teeth up to my eyeballs. I dumped the rest of the popcorn back into the bowl. I could see Beezle’s whole face now. His jaws worked with grim determination on the remaining few handfuls at the bottom. I decided I wasn’t that hungry after all.

I was definitely tired. Everything that I had learned in the last couple of days weighed on my heart. Patrick’s death and avenging my mother had been shunted aside by Antares, Gabriel, Lucifer, and my father, the fallen angel. And even with all of this happening, I still had my job to do. People don’t stop dying just because an Agent has personal issues, even if those personal issues are increasingly apocalyptic in nature.

I could infer without any help from Beezle that Gabriel had been sent to me because Azazel was clearly having troubles of his own, and his enemies would want to use me to get to him.

Case in point: my darling half brother. And Antares was probably going to take it very personally that he hadn’t been able to rip my heart from my chest on the first try. He just seemed like the type.

Thoughts of being a pawn in a looming demon war made me want to swallow a jar of antacids, so I pushed that aside for the time being and tried to concentrate on what I needed to do immediately.

“Beezle,” I said, tapping my finger on the counter. “Tomorrow I want you to go with me to Greenwitch’s.”

Beezle licked the greasy butter film off the bottom of the bowl before he spoke. “I don’t do things or go places. I stay here and guard the domicile. That’s the duty of a gargoyle.”

“It wasn’t the duty of a gargoyle the night Patrick was killed,” I reminded him. “Besides, I want you with me for a while.”

“What for?” Beezle said crossly. You’d think he hadn’t come as close to dying as was possible for a gargoyle. He was just as much of a crab as usual.

“First, because I might need more information as you deem it ‘necessary,’” I said with a meaningful look. “And second, I want to know that you are safe. So you stay with me.”

“Right, because anyone looking at you would immediately think ‘safe,’ ” he grumbled, but he looked secretly pleased.

I carefully touched all the tender places on my face, and realized that no amount of makeup could cover the damage done from demon saliva. I wanted a shower, though, to wash off the general ickiness of my encounter with Antares.

“Besides,” Beezle said. “What do you want to see Greenwitch for? Like you haven’t had enough supernatural incidents this week?”

“I need to get a concealment charm from her so I can break in to the Hall of Records,” I said.

Beezle snorted. “Are you stupid or just acting like it? What makes you think the charm will get you into the Hall? Besides, the last thing you need right now is an encounter with a witch.”

I shut the bathroom door firmly and turned on the shower, drowning out the sound of his voice. It sounded too much like the one in the back of my head, and I didn’t need the warning in stereo.

8

THE NEXT DAY I SLEPT AS LATE AS POSSIBLE AND PUTTERED around the house until it was time to head out to Greenwitch’s. I had a brief thought that maybe I should tell Gabriel where I was going—I did have his cell phone number—but then I decided that it was daylight and I was a big girl. I didn’t need my father’s errand boy leaning over my shoulder everywhere I went, no matter how cute he was. I had my late-evening soul pickup—one James Takahashi at the corner of Clark and Belmont—and I was going to get the charm a few hours beforehand. I hoped she’d had time to finish it up, because after my pickup I was planning on trying my break-in plan.