“It’s okay, Valerie. They do this sort of thing all the time,” he said. Completely overstating the fact.

“Oh,” she said, unsure.

I saw feet through my tear-blurred vision as Sammy led her away.

Then I was up. I took a lungful of air, grateful for the fact that Reyes had pinned me to the wall as a precaution. I would have fallen otherwise.

“No fair slowing time,” I said, leaning my head back and panting.

“You did it first,” Osh replied. He was doubled over, one hand on a knee, the other massaging his throat. Testing it with hesitant pokes from his long fingers here and there.

Reyes had pressed his entire body against mine. It was the most action I’d seen all week, and I basked in the feel of it. The warmth as the tips of his flames licked across my face and saturated my skin.

Then I realized what I’d just done. I’d threatened the life of one of my best friends. One of the few beings on Earth who could help protect Beep. One of the even fewer beings on Earth who would give his life to do so.

Guilt rocketed through me. I’d never lost control like that. Or had I? Was that why the archangel Michael had tried to kill me in the diner in New York? Did I truly have no control over my powers?

Osh coughed and then straightened, falling back against the wall kitty-corner to me. He rested his head on the wood paneling as well. Closed his eyes. Drew in long, deep breaths.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to Reyes.

He wrapped his long fingers around my neck and buried his face in my hair. He smelled like a lightning storm. His emotions electricity. His body the desert after a rain. Fresh. Starkly beautiful. Dangerous.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his breath warm on my neck.

“I am now.”

He pulled back, took one look at my face, then stepped out of my embrace and turned away from me. I lifted a hand to my cheek and whirled around to face a picture, trying to see myself in the reflection of the glass, but I could only see a blurred outline of my features. Still, they looked pretty unremarkable. What was so wrong with me that my own husband would turn away?

“Your eyes,” Osh said, practically reading my mind.

Reyes growled at him, but he’d never seen my husband as much of a threat. I wondered how he would feel if he knew he was a god. Then again, he may already know. He was there, after all. When Lucifer created his one and only son, siphoning the energy from a god to mold him, using the fires of hell to temper him. To make him strong. To make him indestructible.

Before I could ask about my eyes, I heard Cookie tearing down the stairs. She rushed through the restaurant, stumbled into the office, took one look at me, and knew something was wrong.

“What happened?” she asked, a hand over her heart.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

I stepped over to Osh, and he stiffened. Guilt flooded every molecule in my body, dousing it in acid, the taste bitter in my mouth. What had I done?

“I’m sorry,” I said to him. I reached up and put my hand on his throat. He didn’t fight me this time, either. In fact, he practically leered.

“Oh yeah?” he asked, completely ignoring the man behind me. The one I was married to. A slow grin raised one corner of his mouth. “How sorry?”

He took hold of my shirttail and pulled me closer, and even though he was deflecting, drawing attention away from the fact that I’d just attacked him, I raised my arms and pulled him into a hug.

“Very,” I said into his ear.

He wrapped his arms tight around me. “I’m sorrier,” he said, and he meant it. He truly did wish he could tell me where my daughter was, but we’d decided. No one would know her location but Osh and, naturally, the Loehrs, since they were her caretakers for the time being. Beep’s guardians knew, too, of course, her army of the ragtag sort, but they were never to leave her side.

And her side was a sight to see. She had my dimension’s version of an archangel, the man I used to call Mr. Wong, a skilled warrior and leader. She had the three bikers who swore loyalty to Reyes and me. And she had twelve huge, ruthless, and completely adorable hellhounds known as the Twelve.

She had an army, and still they’d had to move her.

My chest tightened again with the thought, and I tamped down a wave of dizzying anxiety.

I slid out of his hold and wrapped an arm in Cookie’s. “Okay,” I said to him. “I won’t ask where she is again. For now. But can you at least tell me why you had to move her?”

Reyes stepped behind me, and I inched back until we were touching.