“No,” Cookie said, shaking her head. “There’s no way. Charley, he is crazy about you. He crossed the badlands of a hell dimension just to get to you. He waited for centuries for you to be sent to Earth. He gave up everything, even his memories, to be born a human just so he could see your smile.”

“When you put it that way … but let’s face it, Cook. I’m not the easiest person to live with on a daily basis.”

“Like he is?” When I dropped my gaze, she added, “Charley, you’re amazing, and you know I think the world of you, but perhaps we should focus on more pertinent details of all this.”

“Right,” I said, straightening my shoulders. “Exactly. It’s not about when. It’s about whom. And did he love her?” I gasped when the next thought hit. “Does he still love her?”

“Well, I actually meant along the lines of the fact that Reyes is an evil god hell-bent on destroying Earth and an archangel wants to kill you. But we can start with that.”

I drew in a deep, cleansing breath. “No, you’re right. I need to just put on my granny panties and deal. We have a case. No more thongs for me.”

“We have a case?” she teased.

“A real one,” I said with a nod. “And according to Nick the Pri—Nick Parker, an innocent man could go to prison if we don’t figure out who really killed his girlfriend, Emery Adams.”

“See? It’s good to keep busy. Keeps your mind off all the other, total-annihilation-and/or-death-by-an-angry-celestial-being stuff.”

“But you’ll still look into it, right? The child support?”

“You know I will. Now, go do private-investigator-y stuff. I’ll see what I can dig up here.”

I nodded. Throwing myself into my work would keep my mind off the other things. Like Cookie said, the total-annihilation-and/or-death-by-an-angry-celestial-being things. Not to mention the most pertinent of our problems: Reyes’s other child.

What I did not place in that category was the Beep thing. I didn’t ever want to stop thinking about her. Not for a minute. I’d been there, done that in New York. It would not happen again.

Not that I was worried about the possible outcome of that scenario. I was going to get my daughter back. No god in this dimension or the next was going to stop me.

5

My love is like a candle.

Carry me with you and I’ll light your path.

Forget me and I’ll burn your fucking house down.

—T-SHIRT

I heard footsteps in the hall outside my office where a balcony overlooked Calamity’s, Reyes’s restaurant-slash-bar. The creaking of floorboards stopped on the other side of the door.

I walked to it and waited, knowing who stood on the other side. I could feel the emotions cording through him like the center spirals of a tornado. Also, I could smell red chile. Gawd, I loved that man.

“Are you going to let me in?” Reyes asked from the other side. Not, like, the other side, but …

“Depends. Do you know the secret password?”

“Chile.”

I swung the door wide. “Holy green chile, Batman. You’re good.”

“I like to think so,” he said, his eyes sparkling. He was holding two plates, but when I stepped back to let him bring them in, he stayed in the hall. “You have to invite me in.”

I narrowed my lashes. “Is your middle name Dracula, by chance?”

“Close.” But he still didn’t come in.

So, I swept my arm in a grand gesture and said, “You are officially invited into my humble abode.”

Humble was taking things a bit far, because while we were away, he’d had the entire top floor of this building remodeled as well, and yet he kept the restaurant exactly as my father had left it. As though to preserve the memory for my sister and me. But my office now resembled a posh Manhattan apartment, minus the dining room table, all soft colors and smooth lines.

He still didn’t step inside. I glanced around, suddenly self-conscious. Did I have offensive material up? I didn’t see any but, admittedly, my tastes ran a little west of the norm.

I turned back to him, and his expression had changed. He’d grown serious in the space of a heartbeat.

“Are you sure you want to do that?”

“What?”

“Invite me in.”

He’d lost me. “Of course. I mean, you do own the building.”

“We,” he said, his voice hard. “We own the building. And that’s not what I asked.”

Without another word, he stepped forward, and while still holding a plate in each hand, he bent down and put his mouth on mine. I raised half-closed fists to his chest and melted into him. Most of me did, anyway. Some of me melted into my panties.

He hadn’t kissed me, really kissed me, in a week. His mouth, like fire against mine, grew more demanding instantly. He ran his tongue over my teeth then plunged it deeper, and I had to curl my fingers into his shirt to keep from unbuttoning his jeans. The heat that perpetually surrounded him scalded my lips, soaked into my hair, brushed flames over my skin, pushed between my legs.

Even with all that, the niggling in the back of my mind nudged its way forward. That part of me that worried about how much control the Razer had over him. Over my husband. Would he be a threat to our daughter? Would the god of destruction someday take over? Or was the god in him—like the one in me—a part of who he was now? A part of his makeup? Ingrained into his DNA?

I was Val-Eeth, the god Elle-Ryn-Ahleethia. But I was just as much Charley Davidson. We were not two separate beings. Two separate personalities. Was it the same with Reyes, the last and youngest god of Uzan? Was it simply who he was now? Could a being made of absolute evil change when melded with something good? I had high hopes that it could.

Then there were the child support payments, and suddenly I was in the tenth grade, wondering how many girls my boyfriend had kissed before me. How many he’d groped in the backseat of his father’s Buick. How many bases he’d stolen before he got tagged out.

Reyes had to sense my hesitance. Was that it? Why he’d been pulling away?

He tensed, and I knew that he felt my concerns. I sucked in a sharp breath of arctic air between our mouths. It was like ice on my teeth. It startled me, and I broke off the kiss, wondering where the cold air had come from.

A sad smile lifted one corner of his mouth. He licked his lips slowly as though to savor our encounter, then said, “That’s what I thought.”