Page 13 of Angel's Smoke

Born from the thoughts of a fantasy.

Chapter7

The snowstorm began as most New England storms did when the temperature had been below freezing for a few days. It wasn’t the pretty fat flakes that Hallmark would have its audience believe were regularly occurring in small towns. Nor were said small towns inhabited by entire populations of people who, for some reason, always wore their scarves outside their coat collars—coats that were never ever zipped up, mind you. Likewise, the snow didn’t funnel at people from the side in gusty torrents, knocking toddlers and toy poodles over left and right.

Instead, it was more of a soft snow globe effect that Iron rather liked. The kind of snow that started out lightly dusting cars and concrete like powdered sugar over a chocolate torte. All that other shit, the wind and the accumulations piling up hand over fist so DPW workers couldn’t get ahead of it? That always came later, once Mother Nature had worked up a good rage. But for now, as he sat atop the Aurora Rescue Squad’s slanted roof and looked out over the newly frosted pond nestled at the center of the municipal park across the street, he was struck with a quiet and peaceful calm. It was always Iron’s favorite place to slink off to when he needed to gather the storm clouds of his thoughts.

Kind of helped that the Rescue Squad was pretty much abandoned on days like this, as the rigs were always out running calls the moment a cloud farted out a snowflake. According to mortal logic—and he was using that last wordveryloosely—when snow started,thatwas when people magically realized they were sick and needed to go to the hospital right that goddamn minute because what if something happened and they couldn’t get to their doctor in the snow? What if that callus on their knuckle that had formed when they were fifteen was actually a small tumor?

Mortal forethought was truly an art form sometimes. If only he could have their problems. So, yeah, he enjoyed the quiet, and it was a gift from the mages that he even had the wherewithal to park his ass on freezing roof shingles instead of flying off to the precise address of the woman he had a name for—a name, along with height, eye color, age, and a few other choice tidbits the Department of Motor Vehicles had offered up when he’d run a search on her license plate.

Anna Malone.

A woman heavy on sass, light on sense, if her grocery offerings the night before a snowstorm were anything to go by, and full of so many questions, Iron’s mind couldn’t spin through them fast enough.

Why the hell hadn’t she prepared better?

When was the last time she’d had her brakes checked?

What was her plan for?—

He sucked in a sharp, frustrated breath as another paralyzing thought occurred to him.

Fuck. What if Annawaslike those mortals who might actually need emergency services during a storm because she was so ill-prepared? Or would she just ignore her welfare entirely and, fueled by fucking Fruit Loops, try to power through with spit, glue, and hope?

Iron thought back to her Subaru and its vocal protestations of its brake conditions . . . Of her overreliance on subpar chocolate to see her through the worst . . .

Shit. She was definitely one of those mortals.

Iron dragged his hand over his face, annoyed at himself because he knew damn well every single one of his questions about her had been superficial pokes at problems largely common to the mortal condition. They didn’t come close to the real quandary that had been boring a hole into his brain matter for the better part of the new year.

“Whatisshe to me?” Iron’s back teeth met as he ground the words out, giving voice to a lament that had become as soul-deep as the honor he’d sworn to the celestial mages upon taking up the mantle of an Empyrean sentinel.

Determined to still make good choices because he wasn’t a goddamn creep, Iron tamped down the urge to fly over the mountain district east of Aurora proper to check—justcheck—on the state of the roads leading to a certain cabin he hadnotmemorized the address of. Instead, he tried to clap some heat back into his frigid palms and stilled.

A subtle warmth flowed from the breast pocket of his flannel shirt beneath his coat. The kind of heat well-loved in leather car seats but in no way should be coming from a dude’s pec, least of all his.

Then a hollow realization weaseled into his brain.

“Don’t fucking tell me . . .”

Iron unzipped his coat and dug around, already knowing—and fearing—what he’d find there. When he pulled out the test tube housing the small shard, it pulsed back at him with the same glowing-heat performance it’d put on in front of him and Titan a few days earlier.

At a loss for what any of it meant, Iron brought the thing closer to his nose, gently rolling the glass vial between thumb and forefinger as if it were one of Chrome’s Nicaraguan cigars. “What the hell am I missing? What do you want from me?”

Iron traced every action, thought, and conversation back to his time with Titan, what they’d been doing, where they’d been sitting, how much fucking whipped cream it took to ruin a perfectly good cup of coffee. It was all trivial shit. Nothing that seemed important or magical enough to miraculously jumpstart a shard of a long-dead celestial relic. Nothing he hadn’t tried before. Nothing except . . .

Across the pond, the wind had begun to pick up, pushing the soft snowfall out of its steady pattern and scattering it into tiny clouds of chaos. It was only eleven in the evening, and the storm was already showing signs of ramping up, far sooner than the dense mortal meteorologists had predicted.

“Prediction,” he mused, turning the word over on his tongue, trying to grasp at what he’d been missing. “A dense prediction. About me being wrong . . .” Then his hands flew to his hair. “Holy shit, I’ve been so wrong!”

When Iron had damn near lost his mind to Titan, rattling off every single thought about this woman, his family, the fight against Cyro,everythingthat had been keeping him up at night, he’d been a man of panicked inaction. Of indifference born of some bullshit higher purpose because the not doing was easier than the doing. It wasn’t until Titan had called him on his bullshit that Iron had been able to blow the rust off his rationale and see things clearly.

If you could stop her pain, would you?

Eight words had simultaneously magnified his foolishness while catapulting him into a realization that had literally—finally—jump-started the shard’s celestial magic.

Iron slipped the glowing test tube back into his pocket as he untangled the jumble of threads that had tripped him up over the past few months and at last began piecing them together. The moment he’d begun analyzing the relic’s shard and keeping it close to him was also the same night he’d begun having dreams of her. Anna.

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