Alex cast a weary look at her wristwatch and groaned. Almost eleven thirty. She and Trent had been canvassing their assigned sector for more than two hours without a break. No wonder her feet hurt and her belly grumbled.

She plucked at the shirt clinging between her breasts. Despite the earlier rain, the heat hadn't abated in the least and thunder growled again in the distance. She glowered at the bluish glimmer of sheet lightning behind the clouds, and then looked down the sidewalk.

Interior lights had gone out in most of the homes, but a glow still crept out from behind curtains and blinds in some. Apart from her and Trent, who stood bathed in neon orange beneath an all-night corner store's sign, the only other person out of doors was an elderly man waiting patiently for his terrier to complete its business at the base of a garbage can. For all intents and purposes, the neighborhood's rhythm had continued as if no murder had occurred and two homicide detectives hadn't just wasted an entire evening pursuing wishful thinking.

About the only good thing to have come of this exercise was the time it had given Alex to get her act together. It had been far easier to put things back into perspective here, tramping up and down endless, narrow flights of stairs in elevatorless buildings, than it would have been alone at home with too much time to think.

She'd managed to return certain demons to the mental closet where they belonged, but she didn't delude herself that the peace would last. Like it or not, at some point she'd have to deal with what she'd spent the last twenty years trying to ignore. For now, however...

She shot a dark look at Trent, who had turned aloof after her embarrassing display at the crime scene and then proceeded to grow ever more surly as their evening wore on. At last her patience had reached its limits and she told him, as pleasantly as she could manage through gritted teeth, to just wait for her while she knocked on the last few doors at the end of the street. Now that she'd finished, she would have preferred to face a hundred more doors rather than drive back to the office with him.

Her eyes lingered on Trent's broad shoulders and she felt a tingle at the memory of the hard, muscled arm that had gone around her at the construction site, leading her away from the victim, holding her against a solid chest. She let her gaze slide lower, until it rested on Trent's flat stomach. Wondered if his stunning musculature extended to that part of his anatomy...or any other.

Heat flared low in her belly and scorched her cheeks, like the aftermath of a slap in the face. A well-deserved slap. Fantasies about her partner? Christ, that was all she needed. Next thing she'd be imagining the two of them—

Stop.

Gritting her teeth and shoving her unruly hormones as far from mind as she could manage, Alex scanned the quiet street a final time, noting that the man with the terrier was gone, leaving the street deserted between her and Trent. Footsteps hollow in the night air, she started toward her partner. The sooner they headed back, the sooner she could get away from him and get a few hours' peace, if such a thing were possible after her little episode. So many memories after so many years...her insides jittered and she cinched her self-control a little tighter.

Over and done with, Alex. You remembered, you survived, now let it go again.

A barely there sound caught her ear.

Alex stopped midstride, cocked her head, and listened.

A hundred normal summer noises floated through the muggy, ozone-scented night: the steady hum of window air conditioners, a distant siren, the rumble of a truck the next street over, a baby's wail, a television. Against the familiar soundtrack, however, there had been something else. Something that hadn't belonged.

One by one, she filtered out the ordinary sounds until nothing remained. Waited.

Heard it again.

A soft scrape. A rustle. She whirled and scanned the sidewalk behind her. Her gaze settled on a narrow, inky-dark gap between buildings. She retraced her steps, stopping at one side of the opening. A quick peek around the corner showed nothing except the blaze of a floodlight at the opposite end of a long, narrow passageway—maybe four feet wide at most, and impossibly black.

Thunder rolled again, closer, more menacing, and the hairs on the back of Alex's neck lifted. She patted her pockets on the chance she'd stashed her mini-flashlight in one of them, but she found no familiar metal cylinder. Damn.

She listened. Not a sound. It was probably nothing. An animal, or a kid avoiding curfew, maybe. The possibility the killer had remained in the area this long was almost nil. Their guy was far too cautious for that kind of mistake. But she couldn't take the chance.

She looked over her shoulder. If nothing else, this would be the perfect opportunity to show a certain someone the right way to handle how to go into an alley: as a team. She gave a short, low whistle to get Trent's attention, and he turned his head. She held a finger to her lips, pointing with her other hand toward the passageway. Trent took his hands from his pockets, his posture straightening as he came alert. He started toward her.

Alex divided her attention between listening for more movement and watching Trent's approach. When only a few feet separated them, she rested her hand on the grip of her nine-millimeter pistol and stepped into the inkiness. The musty odor of old, damp building foundations rose to surround her. She stood for a few seconds to let her eyes adjust to the dark, but the brilliant floodlight at the other end continued to blind her.

Trent's footsteps stopped behind her. Instantly, irritatingly, her entire body tuned to his presence, burying her cop's instinct under an avalanche of tightened skin, heightened pulse, and quickened breathing.

"Shit," she muttered. So much for sensing anyone else who might be near.

"Detective?" Trent's voice sounded muffled and oddly flat.

"Quiet for a second," Alex whispered back. She felt her way along the narrow passage, the brick rough beneath her touch. If she put some distance between her and Trent, maybe—

She heard the scrape of a shoe against loose stones, followed by the unmistakable, metallic snick of a switchblade. She flung up her hand, unable to see the attack, but knowing it was coming.

"Knife!" she yelled. In the same instant, white heat seared through her forearm. She lunged to the side, grunting as cheek and palms impacted the brick wall. Thrusting upright again, she fought for her bearings against a wash of pain and fumbled for her gun. Struggled to see her invisible assailant, a shadow among shadows.

She heard his labored breathing and braced herself for another attack. Then, suddenly, she felt herself lifted from her feet and flung aside. Her head connected again with brick, and pain lanced through her skull. She forced herself upright, light exploding in the backs of her eyes, and stared in disbelief—tinged with horror—at the scene unfolding before her.

Fire lit the night. Golden flames, so brilliant they almost blinded her, with Trent at their center. Trent, standing in the mouth of the passageway, with powerful wings spread behind him. Trent, raising his hands, palms forward, his face filled with a terrible wrath. A man's body sailing backward, like a rag doll fired from an invisible cannon.

And then the world went dark.

***

"Verchiel!"

Mittron's roar reverberated through the great library, silencing the mutterings and whispers that followed Verchiel up the sweeping staircase. Verchiel paused, her foot on the top step, and looked down at the angels clustered in the main hall. They stared back at her, round eyed and open mouthed. From Second Choir Cherubim to Eighth Choir Principalities, each was as stunned as the next by what had just happened in the mortal realm. By what Aramael had done.

Verchiel pressed her lips together and turned her back on the gathering below her. She eyed the long gallery stretching before her and, beyond that, the hallway leading to Mittron's office. With an uncharacteristic lack of charity, she considered making the Highest wait—and stew—for a few minutes more. After all, she had told him that sending Aramael on this hunt was a bad idea, and she wasn't above feeling a little smug about being proved right.

"Ver—chi—el!"

A sprinkle of dust drifted down from the ceiling, and Verchiel winced. Another bellow like that and the venerable old library might very well collapse around their ears. She removed her hand from the stair rail and slid it into the folds of her robe with its partner. The important thing, she reminded herself as she started toward the Highest Seraph's office, was to decide what they would do next, not to indulge in a petty game of "I told you so." Besides, if she were completely honest, she knew that regardless of her reservations, not even she could have predicted this outcome.

Mittron paced the hallway outside his office, stopping when he saw her, his amber eyes accusatory. "You felt what happened?" he demanded.

She sighed. "Was there a corner of the universe that didn't?"

Mittron glared at her. "I do not appreciate flippancy, Dominion."

She inclined her head in wordless apology and bit back the impulsive, "Then perhaps you should have heeded my counsel," that hovered on her lips. After paying so little attention herself to today's earlier warning signs, she had no room to criticize. She could, and should, have done far more than simply consider the problem as she had.

The Highest's eyebrows slashed together. "He attacked a human. Turned the power of Heaven itself against one of the very beings the One has charged us to protect. Need I remind you of the consequences if the mortal does not survive?"

Verchiel leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. "No, Highest."

No angel needed reminding of the consequences should the agreement between Heaven and Hell be broken. They had all witnessed the conflict between the One and Lucifer over the mortals, had seen the love between the universe's two greatest powers ripped apart by jealousy and betrayal. For four and a half thousand years, they had all tiptoed around the fragile contract that stood between those powers and a war that would decimate humanity. Decimate the One's beloved children.

Mittron's footsteps passed Verchiel, turned, approached again, and then stopped. She opened her eyes to find him standing before her.

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

Not what are we going to do, Verchiel noticed, but you. She tightened her lips. What the Highest lacked in inter-angelic skills, he more than made up for in his ability to evade responsibility when things didn't go according to plan. The longer she wasn't soulmated to him, the more she wondered how she ever could have been.

"We could recall him."

"You know nothing short of the One's own voice can end a hunt before it is finished."

"Does the One know what has happened?"

"As you so aptly observed, the entire universe knows."

Meaning that the One knew and, for unknown reasons, wished the hunt to continue. Verchiel hoped it also meant the One had far greater insight into the matter than she did, because from where she stood, a decision not to interfere did not bode well. She straightened away from the wall, but couldn't quite coax her shoulders out of the slump that plagued her these days.

"Then I suppose I will have to speak with him," she told the Highest. Again.

***

Aramael heard them before he saw them. Alex, her voice curt and inflexible. Another woman, her response reverberating with exasperation. Both sliced through his thousandth grim review of the evening's events. The impossibility of what he had done.

A shudder jolted his core. Even as his mind tried to disengage from the memory, his soul could not forget the force of the power he'd released against a mortal. Inconceivable, inexcusable—no words existed to describe the wrongness of what he had done. His unprecedented, unforgivable loss of control.

Alex's voice drew nearer, and louder. Aramael glanced across the nearly full waiting room to where Roberts stood at the coin-operated coffee machine. He met the dark-skinned man's resigned gaze. With a wry twist of his mouth, Roberts offered his untasted cup of coffee to an elderly man in a wheelchair, then crossed over to join Aramael.

"Sounds like we're driving her home."

"But she's hurt."

The staff inspector grunted. "You tell her that."

They turned as the doors beside the reception desk swung open and Alex stepped out of the examination area, her face pale and set. She stalked toward them.

Aramael tensed, bracing himself for the worst. He had no idea what Alex had seen in the passageway, and therefore no idea of what to expect from her now. When she'd regained consciousness after only a few seconds—seconds that had felt unnervingly like an eternity—she'd asked only a single, terse question about her attacker. Then, on finding out the man still lived, she had settled into stony silence, her hand clamped over the gaping wound in her left arm, refusing Aramael's assistance. Refusing to so much as meet his eyes.

Continuing to do so now.

Aramael grimaced. He supposed he could hope her hostility stemmed from the day's events in general, but he wasn't that naïve. No, Alex Jarvis had seen more than she should have, and now he needed to find a way to alleviate the harm he had caused.

The additional harm.

A stocky, middle-aged nurse stomped through the doorway behind Alex, clipboard in hand and voice raised in objection. "Detective Jarvis, be reasonable. All we're suggesting is a few hours of observation."

Alex's face darkened. She planted herself in front of Roberts. "Will you please tell this woman I don't need observation?"

Roberts looked over her head. "How is she?" he asked the nurse.

Aramael watched Alex's glare turn murderous.

"I'm fine," she snapped.

"She has a headache—" the nurse began.

"Of course I have a headache. I whacked my head on a goddamn brick wall!"

In spite of himself, Aramael felt the corner of his mouth twitch. He'd barely registered the phenomenon—a Power feeling humor?—when Alex's gaze flicked to him, intensified, and moved away again. He narrowed his eyes. There had been something ugly in that look. Something more unsettling than having her ignore him.

"—and a mild concussion," the nurse finished, setting her hands on her hips and returning Alex's defiant look. "Plus twenty-three stitches in her arm. We want to keep her here for a few hours just to make sure she's all right."

"Alex?" Roberts asked.

"No." Alex crossed her arms, paled, and uncrossed them again, cradling the bandaged one against her.

"You need observation," the nurse huffed.

Alex's lips compressed. Pain had etched itself into the tight lines about her mouth and cast a haze over her eyes. Apparently it also brought out her stubborn side.

"I need," she said through clenched teeth, "to go home."

The two women glowered at one another. Conversation in the waiting area ceased as the other patients watched the argument unfold in their midst.

"What if someone stays with her?" Aramael asked.

Alex stiffened. "I don't need a babysitter."

She directed her words to Roberts, wordlessly rejecting Aramael's very presence, back to behaving as if he didn't exist. Aramael's mouth tightened. Damage control would be challenging.

Roberts looked askance at the nurse. "Would that do? Having someone stay with her?"

"I don't need—" Alex growled.

The nurse turned her back on Alex and spoke to Roberts. "We'd prefer to keep her here, but I suppose that would do."

"Alex?" Roberts asked.

Aramael watched Alex wrestle with her loss of independence, her expression running the gamut from denial to grudging acceptance. At last she heaved a sigh.

"Fine. Now can I go?"

"I'll get the discharge papers ready," the nurse said. "You'll have to sign yourself out against our advice."

"Whatever."

The nurse stalked back through the doors by the reception desk, her back rigid with disapproval. With the argument resolved, the other patients in the waiting room lost interest and returned to their own business. Alex glared at Roberts.

"I don't need you to stay with me."

"I'm not. I have to write up the file on this and submit it to the chief before morning. I'll call your sister, and she can meet us at—"

"No!"

Heads turned their way again. For the first time, Alex seemed to notice that they weren't alone in the waiting room and lowered her voice. "I don't want to worry Jennifer. A good night's

sleep—"

"Forget it, Jarvis. I'm not taking any chances, especially after a head injury. You either have someone stay with you at home, for the night, or you stay here. Your choice. And yes, that's an order."

"You can't make me stay—"

"Actually, I can," Roberts interrupted. "And if I need to, I'll put a uniform outside your door to prove it."

"But—"

"I'll stay with her," Aramael said. He watched Alex go still. He knew how badly she wanted to refuse his offer, but she had no other options. He waited for her to reach the same conclusion.

Alex nodded, a single, curt incline of her head, and looked up at him at last.

"Thank you," she said.

Her eyes did not echo the gratitude.

*******************

I'm so sorry I didn't post this on Friday as promised! I was at the Climate Strike that day, and then I had to drive to Montreal to take my daughter's boyfriend to the airport and pick up my husband from the airport, and then I was playing catch-up all day yesterday and today, and PHEW!

But here it is at last, and I hope you enjoyed!