“For the most part—a ballroom big enough to comfortably handle so many wings would be an impersonal structure.”
“Like a stadium.” She made a face. “I get why angels would prefer an outdoor setting. It’s much prettier this way. The carpet over the cobblestones—it must’ve taken the weavers a human lifetime to complete.”
Raphael nodded, making a mental note to take her to visit the master weavers in the Refuge on their next visit. Elena would appreciate both their skill and their artistry. “Do you see how the buildings are built in a staggered pattern around the square?” Sliding one arm around her waist, he pointed out the design with his other. “It’s so each rooftop has an uninterrupted view of the festivities.”
Elena’s face glowed as she took in the informal seating areas that had appeared on those rooftops, each warm with candlelight. “It was built this way on purpose!”
“Yes. Should we ever have a ball in Manhattan,” he said, laughing when she pretended to stab herself in the eye, “it will require us to get creative. I was not thinking of angelic balls when I built my city.”
“Thank God or I’d have had to divorce you.” Leaning against him, their wings sliding intimately against one another, she returned to the darkness beneath the sparkle and the gilt. “If Jason’s right and Amanat was the only other target aside from New York, then it reduces the short list of possible enemies down to one.”
“Yes, Lijuan seems the perfect candidate, yet Jason is dead certain Lijuan has not left her stronghold for the past month.”
Elena frowned. “Not that I doubt him, but she has that whole other noncorporeal form.”
“I had the same question, but your favorite archangel has apparently been highly visible attending celebrations thrown in her honor in her territory.” He watched a tiny bird come to sip at one of the large blooms that climbed up the side of the house, its wings a splash of red and green. “Lijuan was at a winter festival during the entire span Kahla was missing from the city.”
“Damn, that takes us back to square one.”
“Not quite, for we now know Lijuan is not the diseasemonger.” Yet his instincts said she had a hand in this nonetheless. “The others, bar Neha”—who had a legitimate reason for excusing herself from the gathering—“will be here tonight.”
His consort smiled as the jewel-toned bird hopped onto a small table to one side of the balcony. “I’ll see if I can get close enough to pick up a scent,” she said, her eyes on the tiny creature. “Maybe since this is a bloodborne disease, the angel will carry some hint of it in his own blood and it’ll speak to my hunter senses.”
Raphael had no disagreement with her idea, but, gripping her chin gently, he held the silver-gray of her gaze. “Do not permit yourself to be separated from me this night.” The situation was too volatile, the risks deadly. “I would declare war should anyone do you harm, and the entire immortal world knows that fact.”
• • •
Two hours into it and the ball was extremely . . . civilized. Elena, her senses hyperalert, was almost disappointed that everyone proved to be on their best behavior—even Michaela. The archangel had chosen a dress in dazzling crimson, the cut caressing her every curve, her curls glossy and lush down her back, her eyes made up with sweeps of bronze and gold; it was impossible to deny her sheer, painful beauty.
Of course, that beauty didn’t make her any less of a bitch.
“Raphael,” she said with a sensual smile. “We parted badly and I was at fault. You must not be angry with me”—a pout—“we have always been meant to be intimate friends.”
Pointedly ignored by the female archangel and happy about that fact, Elena focused on drawing in Michaela’s scent. All she picked up was the complex notes of a lush perfume . . . then there it was, that bright splash of acid hidden deep.
I can definitely sense Uram in her.
Can you judge the depth of the infection?
No. Her angel-sense was nascent at best; the fact that she could pick up anything at all from Michaela was likely due to the fact that Uram had been a bloodborn angel. Bloated with the toxin that turned humans into vampires and was meant to be purged at regular intervals through the Making process, he’d gone truly insane, becoming a monster more vicious than any vampire, his thirst for blood and death unquenchable.
After Michaela, they ran into Elijah and Hannah, followed by Titus, then Favashi. Neither Elena nor Raphael had any suspicions about Elijah, but she took a scent reading nonetheless. Nothing. The other two archangels didn’t register on Elena’s senses, either, but that might not mean anything. When Astaad, with his dark eyes and neatly trimmed goatee, lifted her hand to his mouth, her mind flashed to what his own hands must’ve done mere months ago, when he’d beaten one of his concubines to a pulp.