Page 128 of Bones

“They’re at the dog park now, but later. For the shitting-in-the-ashes thing.”

“The house was empty,” Stellan reminded her before speaking to the group. “We swung by and checked.”

Juno grimaced. “Right. Well, still. I want to do something.”

“Maybe we’ll luck out, and you’ll get your chance for some mayhem.” He tore his smiling focus away from her to pull out his phone as he asked Aurora, “What was the name of the church?”

“Beacon of Absolution.”

His thumbs moved across the screen at a blur, like he’d been souped up by Juno’s magicks. “Nothing.”

“There has to be something.” Denny got up and nudged our chair out of the way before starting her computer. She spoke as she typed. “I’m not an IT expert or anything, but I’ve had to find accidentally deleted files or website landing pages before. IfI’ve learned one thing, it’s that the internet is forever… Except apparently this. There’s no record of any church by that name. Not a trace of anything online. Not even old data.”

“There has to be. I saw the emails. He went to a service in Portland.”

“There are churches. An abandoned one. But nothing by that name.”

“The abandoned one,” Aurora said.

“What about it, my one?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I didn’t get that far. But it’s making something fuzz at the back of my mind. I think maybe they held the service there to make him think it was legit?”

“We need to focus on finding a way for you to get these visions without going catatonic,” Juno said, surprisingly serious as she looked from Aurora to me. “And test if the mate bond gave you anything.”

Nate turned his attention to me, too. “What did you find out from Heaven?”

“Not much,” I said. “Levi wanted Aurora, but?—”

She whipped around. “The devil wantedme? Why? What’d I do?”

I could feel her heart pounding since mine sped up to match it. “Juno sent a message to him when you said you were his creation. He wanted to see if it was true, that’s all.”

“Who’d you draft on your angel fantasy league anyway?” Juno asked.

“Uriel.”

“Of course. Her name. His ink. The light archangel. As in, the archangel of light, not like a weird diet angel.”

“All the uptightness, half the calories,” Lilith whispered.

Everyone else looked at my arm despite the fact my flannel covered my tattoo.

“We go through this every time, yet no one else has bothered to pick up a baby name book or research the archangels.” She sighed, throwing her head back onto Stellan’s arm. “Aurora means dawn. His tattoo is of the sun at the tree line. The light angel is… Well, that one’s self-explanatory.”

Nate tried to steer the conversation back on topic, but I lowered my mouth to Aurora’s ear. Keeping my voice low so only she could hear, my lips brushed her skin. “My dawn after a lifetime of darkness.”

A small tremor went through her. I wasn’t sure if it was my words or the gentle touch. I liked it either way.

“You mentioned a possible Absolve encounter,” Nate said to me as Juno added Aurora’s info to the board.

I told them the gist of my relationship with Marissa. Even though I didn’t go into much detail, Aurora’s jealousy radiated from her until she looked as murderous as I’d felt.

I was a sick fuck because her possessiveness had me fighting a hard-on.

I was contemplating getting us out of there when the song “Sympathy For the Devil”blasted in the room.

“What the hell?” Denny grabbed her phone to see if that was where the music came from.

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