Angels of Darkness

that time, he’d try to repair some of the damage he’d done. Try to rebuild a friendship that he’d always valued over any other, and that he’d had to force himself not to miss after he’d destroyed it. If he couldn’t do that, if that was too much to hope for, Marc would just make damn certain he didn’t do anything so careless and hurt her again.
    Right now, that might just mean catching her if she slipped on the icy sidewalks. A Guardian’s feet wouldn’t freeze, but he couldn’t imagine walking barefoot across the slush and snow as she was.
    â€œIt’s bothering you,” she said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œMy feet. You keep looking at them.” She wiggled her toes, gold rings winking. “You’re not alone. It bothers Mariko, too. She thinks I do it to be like Michael.”
    The Guardians’ leader—who didn’t need shoes now anyway, trapped as he was in Hell. “Why do you?”
    â€œPartially because I want to be like Michael.” Her grin invited him to laugh with her. Probably every Guardian had admitted such a thing at some point. “But it also helps me build illusions. The better I know how something feels or tastes or looks, the more convincing I can make it. And I like the feeling, too. Cold doesn’t hurt us, so why would I protect myself from it?”
    â€œYou could cut your feet.” God knew how many broken bottles or sharp stones were hidden beneath the snow.
    â€œAnd heal in less than a minute. You weenie. Afraid of a little blood?”
    God, he’d missed her teasing. “Maybe. But you wouldn’t like the look of my feet anyway, so I’ll spare you the sight of them bare.”
    â€œI remember perfectly well how they looked, thank you—and they were nice. Long and lean, just like you. Every part of you was long. That was nice, too.”
    Was she still teasing him? Probably. But all that he could think was that her feet were just like her, too. Small, delicate, soft—and that when he’d touched them, kissed them, she’d gasped and shivered.
    She wasn’t shivering now. “Is that the girls’ Jeep?”
    He forced himself out of that memory, spotted the Cherokee parked in front of the small city library—about a half block down from Perk’s Palace.
    â€œThat’s theirs,” he confirmed. “Let’s hope we don’t have to slay the bastard in front of them.”
    Radha slanted that Don’t say stupid things look at him, and he realized that with her Gift, the girls wouldn’t see anything that Radha didn’t want them to.
    But the girls weren’t at the coffee shop—and he and Radha wouldn’t be slaying Gregory Jackson unless they planned on breaking one of the most important rules that a Guardian had to follow: not to hurt or kill humans. One psychic touch told Marc that the kid behind the cash register was human, through and through. The demon might have taken his shape at some point, but it wasn’t here now—and so Gregory Jackson probably wasn’t the demon’s default identity, the form the demon used when it wasn’t shape-shifting and stirring up trouble.
    â€œIt figures,” Radha murmured. “Finding him after one conversation would have been too easy.”
    She’d had one conversation since coming to Riverbend. Marc, on the other hand, had talked to about thirty people so far, starting with the county sheriff and his deputies. Still, he had to agree. It would have been too easy.
    But it wasn’t a wasted trip. Gregory might have seen something that homecoming night, especially if he was with Miklia. He might not know what he’d seen, but that was Marc’s job—to figure out what fit and what didn’t.
    On the other hand, he could imagine quite a few places where Gregory Jackson wouldn’t fit. Marc wasn’t a small man by any measure, and it wasn’t often that he had to look up at someone, let alone a seventeen-year-old kid who must have weighed the equivalent of him and Radha put together, all muscle. A small monitor hanging in view of the front counter played a classic football game, and Jackson kept an eye on the television while Marc showed his identification and asked for a few minutes.
    â€œI have a break in five,” Jackson said.
    Marc glanced at the screen. “The ’84 Orange Bowl?”
    â€œYeah.” Jackson flashed a big smile.