In an instant, we dropped a perilous foot. I had a death grip on the bars, my feet dangling as I tried to get a foothold. I looked down again before I remembered the old adage: Never look down. Five stories was freaking high!

“Charley!”

Garrett was hanging out the window above me.

“What?” I asked. “Get me off here before I plummet to my death.”

But he was gone. Seriously?

“Having fun?” Reyes asked me. My adrenaline had spiked, and he was there. It was kind of nice, but he was incorporeal. He couldn’t really help me. Or, well, I didn’t think he could. He was sitting on the railing, his full robe waving like the sails of a flagship in the wind. He pushed back the hood, then let the robe settle around him and disappear.

“Not really.” I heard sirens in the distance.

“Son of a bitch,” Daniel said, trying not to make the metal contraption sway. He was more on the top part of the escape and I was more on the bottom part, hanging on by my fingertips. Memories of the elementary school playground flashed before my eyes. I sucked at monkey bars. I was always the girl who got blisters and fell into the dirt halfway across.

“Any ideas?” I asked him.

“You could climb up,” he said matter-of-fact.

I was literally hanging by my fingertips. Climbing up from this position would require way more upper body strength than I currently possessed. “You’re not putting any weight on this metal thing, are you?”

“I don’t think so. I can go if you want.”

“No!” I shouted.

“Bitch, what?” Daniel said. “I didn’t do a damn thing to you.”

I groaned. I had to be stuck on a collapsing fire escape with a guy who could give a sumo wrestler a run for his money.

“I could help you,” Reyes said, and I felt my fingers slipping, the wetness of my palms making the bars slick. “Do you want my help?”

Clearly we were playing games. I gave him my best death stare.

He chuckled and said, “It’s a simple yes/no question, Dutch.”

Before I could say anything else, a sheet floated down from overhead.

“Grab hold!” Garrett yelled, but I couldn’t let go. If I did, I would fall.

My fingers slipped a centimeter more, and I heard Reyes at my ear, his voice as deep and as beautiful as he was. “Let go.”

“I can’t,” I replied in a whispered strain.

“Of course you can.”

But before I could argue any further, my hands slipped again and the bar disappeared from my grasp entirely.

10

I used to be indecisive.

Now I’m not so sure.

—T-SHIRT

My reaction was instantaneous. Adrenaline spiked hard and fast. Sound ceased. Gravity let go. And time slowed to a stop. The blood pumping in my ears was replaced by a thick, odd feeling of pressure all around me like a vacuum.

I looked up. The sheet floated over my head as though it were rising instead of falling. I could just see Garrett as he stood at the window, holding the sheet, his expression severe. He’d cut his hand. Blood that had been dripping off his palms was headed back to where it came from as time not only slowed but reversed itself.

Amazement consumed me. I literally felt the shift of gravity. The pull of the earth beneath my feet became a soft, subtle push in the opposite direction.

I was flying!

Or, well, floating. But before I could get too happy and lose the precarious hold I had on the moment, I felt Reyes’s strength surround me like a force field, his hand wrap around my wrist as I took hold of the sheet.

“Ready?” he asked, but the moment he said it, time bounced back in place with a vengeance. It crashed into me in one giant wave. Sound rocketed through me and gravity staked its claim, jerking back toward the earth and almost wrenching the sheet out of my hand.

I slammed against the building and struggled to hold on as Garrett pulled.

“Hold on!” he said from between gritted teeth.

He didn’t need to tell me twice.

* * *

I tucked my errant hair behind my ears as Garrett walked up. “What the f**k was that?” he asked, raising my ire. “We had a guy waiting for him below. You didn’t have to go out the window.”

“I didn’t know you had a guy down there. Nor did I know Daniel over there was so paranoid that he disabled the fire escape. You might have shared your plan with me.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. I’m fine. Except my fingernails hurt. How’s your hand?”

“It’ll heal. Especially when it’s holding a ten-thousand-dollar check. So, I guess it’s your turn: What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Oh, right, the Twelve. My sources say the Twelve are a group of imprisoned demons who escaped hell and are coming here to rip me apart.”

He stilled.

“No, wait, to rip me to shreds. I think that’s what he said.”

He leaned against the tailgate with me, testing the bandages on his hand. “Dr. von Holstein told me there were several mentions of the Twelve. I’ll ask him to look closer at that.”

“Sounds good. In the meantime, be really really really really careful.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Yeah, some men broke into my apartment and said I had to find this lady within forty-eight hours or my friend was dead.” I took out a photocopy Cookie made me of the picture. “The problem is, I have no idea which friend it is.”