“Nobody does.”

He closed his eyes and buried his face. “I had no idea.”

I went back to him and kneeled beside him. “You’ll be able to father a child now. Side effect of my touch, I suspect.”

When he looked up at me again, he had such gratitude in his expression that my heart reacted no matter how hard I tried to turn it to stone.

“You’re welcome.”

I stepped outside, closed the door behind me, and turned toward the presence of a supernatural being close by. The crickets stopped chirping, and the breeze stopped whispering through the trees. I straightened my spine and clamped my jaw shut, unable to believe Michael was paying me a visit. Another one. And at this hour.

He walked out of the shadows, his presence so powerful it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. His massive wings folded into place as I readied my hand. Faced my palm toward the ground. Prepared to summon Artemis should I need her.

When he spoke, his voice was deep and smooth and clear. “You cannot stop what has been set in motion,” he said. Even in the dark, his eyes sparkled like a swimming pool reflecting the summer sun. Their reaction to even the barest fragments of light mimicked Reyes’s. His could shimmer in the lowest illumination.

“Stop the death of my uncle?”

He wore a long black coat that swept the ground as he took another step forward. “It’s one thing to help Father’s people, but you will be changing their history. Father made a promise. You’ve already upset heaven, Val-Eeth. If you try to stop this—”

I helped people every day. It was how I made my living. And now heaven had a problem with it?

I laughed softly, astounded at his gall. “‘Try’ implies the possibility of failure.” I gave him a once-over before adding, “I have no intention of failing.”

When I turned to leave, he was by my side at once. He wrapped a hand around my arm. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough to make his intentions known. “They’ll come for you.”

He wasn’t malevolent. I felt no disdain coming off him. No anger or contempt or resentment. In fact, if I felt anything, if I had to pinpoint an emotion swirling beneath the massive wings, I’d have sworn it was something akin to admiration.

I raised my chin. “Let them.”

“You don’t understand.” He lowered his head, his face stunningly beautiful, as I supposed most angels’ were. “He will come for you, Val-Eeth. This is His realm.”

His realm. He brought me to His realm. Practically blackmailed me into coming here to be the reaper of this dimension. To save Reyes from an eternity of hell, I’d agreed. And now He dared to tell me what to do in it?

I leaned forward until we were barely centimeters apart, fought the wave of euphoria being so close to an angel of Jehovah’s induced, and shook my head at the reminder of whose realm I was in. His realm?

“Not anymore,” I said. Then I jerked my arm out of his grasp and went to see a man about his impending death.