I reached back and took his chin into my hand. “Angel.”

“That’s not my real name.”

“Yes, sweetheart, it is. It’s your middle name and the name you went by before you passed away.” I was stroking the fuzz around his mouth with my thumb. “Look at me,” I said softly.

He did, but quite reluctantly, his deep brown gaze settling on mine.

“This changes nothing. I still adore you. You’re still the best investigator I have.”

“I’m the only investigator you have.”

“That doesn’t lessen your importance.”

“Can I see you naked, then?” he asked, his gaze traveling south of the border, aka my neckline.

“Up here, buddy,” I said, pointing two fingers at my face. “And no.”

“It would make me feel better.”

“Is he always this frisky?” Jessica asked.

His gaze found hers again. He gestured a greeting with a nod and a saucy wink. I tried not to giggle.

“I summoned you for a reason, you know,” I said, drawing him back to me.

“Okay, who am I following now?”

“I just need information. Can I block Reyes from feeling my emotions?”

“I keep telling you, pendeja, you can do anything you want to.” He glanced back at Jessica. “She’s loca, yeah?”

I fought my eyes’ natural urge to roll back into my head. “Yes, but how? How do I do something like that?”

“You just speak it. Remember when you bound Rey’aziel to his body so he couldn’t leave it and, like, float around and shit?”

“Yeah, but that was, I don’t know, in the heat of the moment. I was desperate.”

“Then get desperate. Just do it.”

“Just do it.” I nodded and shut my lids to concentrate. “Okay. Just do it.”

“Just say the word.”

That was easy for him to say. Which word? I had several thousand to choose from. But what exactly did I want to accomplish? I wanted to hide my feelings. My emotions. At the moment, I didn’t want Reyes to know I’d left without him. But it was more than that. I didn’t want him to feel it every time my insides turned to mush around him. Or every time I felt a streak of jealousy slice through the chambers and antechambers of my heart – a very new sensation for me. I’d never been the jealous type, but today with that newswoman, I bordered on stalker with a heaping side of lunatic. And that made me weak. I didn’t want Reyes to see me as weak. I could be strong. I could take anything he threw at me.

Of course, if I really did block my emotions, he wouldn’t be able to feel them if I got in trouble. Thankfully, that didn’t happen often. If I needed Reyes, I would just summon him. Easy as pie.

With that settled, I bowed my head, drew in a lungful of air, and said the first word that came to me. “Occultate,” I whispered, focusing my energy behind the word inside myself.

Hide.

Hide my feelings. Hide my fears. My doubts about being a mother. About raising a child in our world. If demons weren’t attacking, maniacs were. There was always another murderer around the corner, or a messed-up departed person who mistook me for his overbearing mother and came at me with a butcher’s knife. What kind of world was I bringing the bun into? How could I ever keep her safe?

“You know,” Angel said, his voice full of humor, “you could say it in any language. You’re the reaper. What you say goes.”

I blinked to attention. “I know. But it just feels right giving commands in Latin. Or Aramaic. Or even Mandarin. It sounds more important. I don’t really feel any different, though. Did it work?”

“No idea. It works only if you want and believe it will work. You are the center of your power. Only you can determine what works and what doesn’t. Are you finished?”

“I guess, but I wanted to talk to you about something else. We’re supposed to have a few unwelcome guests on this plane soon.”

“Yeah, I heard. The Twelve.”

“What do you know?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Not much. Just that they’re, like, hellhounds or something, and they were summoned.”

My ears perked up. “I heard that today, too. They were summoned. They didn’t just escape and make their way here willy-nilly. Do you know who summoned them?”

“Nah. I only know the general gossip. Some of these dead people are worse than old women.”

I was neither disappointed nor surprised he didn’t know more. But I really wanted to find out who on earth – literally – would summon hounds from hell.

“Just be careful, hon. I don’t know what these things are capable of. What they’ll do.”

He smirked. “You worried about me?”

I took hold of his chin again, drew him forward until our lips met, giving him a gentle kiss before breaking away. “I’m always worried about you.”

His head dipped shyly. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

“Where are you going?”

“Mrs. Garza’s niece has a recital. She’s going.”

“You mean your niece. They’re your family, too, remember? She wants you to call her Mom. That’s a pretty good validation of how she feels about you.”

He lifted a shoulder again before disappearing. He was on his way back to me. We’d been together for over ten years. Surely my learning that he’d been lying about his identity this whole time wouldn’t stop us from remaining friends. He constantly reminded me that, technically, he was older than I was, but times like this, I always felt like the older one. Probably because he still looked thirteen.