Jenga opened her door before I got the chance to knock. She was wearing a men’s gray t-shirt, which looked more like a comfortable nighty on her. Her black hair was a mess with half of it still in a ponytail, the other half sprawled over one shoulder. Jenga’s usually flawless makeup was smeared slightly around her eyes and the lipstick I didn’t even know she wore was smudged outside her lips. She stared at me with equal wonderment and I realized I probably looked as wild as she did. Without saying a word, she stepped aside and let me in. Her apartment was nice—nicer than mine, anyway. Her walls were a deep red, as opposed to my boring cream colored ones. The skirting was wooden, giving the place a real classic, royal feel. She ran across the floor, closing what I assumed was her bedroom door, and then returned to me. I stood before the kitchen and surveyed the rest of the house. Dark chocolate, shaggy rugs were placed strategically throughout the living room, giving me a strange urge to lie on them and never leave. Jenga pulled a bottle of Vodka and two shot glasses from her cupboard. She sat them at the breakfast bar and gestured for me to sit. Despite the hard wooden look of the stool, it was really comfy. Beside me sat a strange figurine of a red and yellow robot.
“Iron Man,” Jenga said, bringing my attention back to her.
“Huh?”
“It’s an Iron Man collectible.”
“Oh… I have no idea what an Iron Man is.”
She gaped at me like I was an idiot, and truthfully, I felt like one. “Well, we’ll have to change that one day. I’ve got loads of collectibles. They remind me of my human life. I ran a comic book store in Clover.”
I grabbed my shot as she finished pouring it and downed it. My throat burned and my eyes watered. I hated Vodka, but it was strong, and strong was exactly what I needed right now. Jenga downed her shot like it was water.
“I’ve never really been into anything except reading, I guess,” I replied meekly.
“Yeah, well, fun things aren’t for everyone.” Her lips tilted into a full blown smile and I stuck my tongue out.
“Very funny.”
She poured us another shot each. “You look like shit. Tell me what happened.”
I slammed back the Vodka and cringed. “Lucas happened.”
“What? I thought you were hunting Trackers?”
“I was, but then he showed up with his split personality and scared them off. And threw a fucking tree at me!”
Jenga exploded into a fit of laughter. Apparently it was so hilarious that she had to keel over and clench her stomach. I glared at her.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I wasn’t expecting that. That’s probably the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.” She leaned across the bar and freed a small stick from my hair. “Why’d he throw a tree at you?”
I pursed my lips and the bottom one stung, I must have cut it.
“I promise I won’t laugh,” Jenga said, already trying to suppress a giggle.
I told Jenga the whole story from start to finish and she made sure to laugh at every unnecessary moment. Bitch. By the end of it, I was laughing my ass off, too. Strange, Vodka usually made me tired, not happy.
“Wow, is Miss Violet enjoying herself for the first time in her life?” Jenga called, turning on her stereo and blasting music I hadn’t heard in a very long time. She really didn’t strike me as a T-pain fan, but apparently she was. “You’re like the grumpy cat.”
There was another reference to something I was supposed to know. I didn’t question it. It obviously wasn’t a positive thing.
“I can have fun!” I shouted, almost falling off my bar stool. The mystery man that answered the intercom wandered half naked from Jenga’s bedroom. I’d forgotten he was even here. Man, he had a body on him. The whole front of his torso was muscle on top of muscle. He wasn’t very tall and that made me want to laugh, but I bit my lip and fought it. His slacks hung loosely off his hips and every few steps he took he had to pull them up.
“Can’t sleep, baby?” Jenga giggled, turning the music up slightly.
The man she referred to as baby poured himself a shot, drank it, and then poured me one.
“Thanks…” I managed to drag my eyes from his chest to his face. He was a handsome guy, I suppose. I mean, there were things that made him look really young, like the dimples, the big blue eyes, and absent facial hair. I wasn’t really into boy-looking men. I looked at Jenga, who eyed him hungrily. Good for her, I’m glad one of us was getting some kind of sexual action.
“I’m going to go back to my apartment. I have to go to Earth in the morning.” He walked over and kissed Jenga on the lips and squeezed her bum. I focused my attention on the gothic-like paintings on her wall as they whispered dirty things to each other. One painting in particular caught my eye. It was a picture of a skeleton in a beautiful blue nineteenth century dress. Her long dark hair blew in the wind behind her. She was standing at the top of a mountain beside a grand Victorian manor overlooking a cracked, deserted road. There were no trees in the picture. Instead, the ground and the sky were painted in a weird red hue.
“Do you like it?” she asked, forcing my attention back to her.
“I don’t know… It’s kind of depressing.”
She laughed, handing me another shot. I looked around the room and her boy was gone. “That was George, by the way.”
“He seems nice.”
Jenga arched an eyebrow at me. “You never have anything nice to say, so tell me what you really think.”
I feigned insult. “I have nothing bad to say about Ge—okay, he’s a little on the short side, isn’t he?”
“Yes, and I like it like that. I don’t have to stand on my tippy toes, I can wear his pants without worrying about the bottoms being trapped under my feet, and I’m not eating chest hair when we have sex because he is the perfect height. It’s face to face, you know what I mean?”
Jenga swayed slightly on her feet. She was a lot drunker than I was.
“Good for you. I’m glad you’re happy.”
Seeing Jenga and George all cute and stuff made me want that, but I couldn’t as long as I kept running into Lucas. How could I move on if he was hiding behind every corner waiting for me? He was clearly unstable. He wanted to protect me one minute and kill me the next. I didn’t want to see Lucas again, not after tonight. It didn’t take a psychologist to know that our relationship wasn’t healthy.
“Do you think I can do it?” I asked.
Jenga made her way over to the fridge. She pulled out two beers and handed me one. I wasn’t going to mix my alcohol, but I grabbed it anyway to be polite.
“Oh honey, no. I’m not into sharing partners…”
I stared at her wide-eyed. “That’s not what I—”
She laughed loudly, cutting my words off. “I know I’m just playing with you. Yes, I do think you can do it. Whatever ‘it’ is…”
“Do you think I can kill one of the Horsemen?”
“Oh hell yeah, you’re badass. You’ve killed ninety-nine demons. That’s some pretty amazing stuff.” She took a large mouthful of beer and swallowed. “What made you change your mind? You seemed pretty adamant this morning.”
“I think it was seeing Lucas again. He was so set on killing me. I like Earth and I don’t want to see it destroyed. If I can get Lucas off Earth, then I won’t have to watch my back all of the time. If I want to feel safe, one of them has to die. It can’t be Lucas. I can’t bring myself to hurt him and War is way too big and strong. Conquest has this creepy bow made out of bone. He’d kill me before I even saw him coming, and Famine… I’ve killed Famine before, but it wasn’t the right way.”
“Famine’s your guy, then. If you’ve killed him before, then he’s probably the weakest link.”
I nodded, twirling the beer bottle on the counter. Suddenly I felt nauseous. Lucas wanted to keep me away from his brothers and now I was planning to hunt one down. What a wasted effort on his part.
“I should get going then, I want to sleep off this alcohol if I’m going to hunt a
Horseman in the morning.”
I slid off the stool and shakily supported my weight on my two feet.
“You’re not walking home in your condition.”
Jenga sat her beer down on the kitchen counter and stumbled over to her couch. She bent over, exposing her leopard print thong, making me glance awkwardly everywhere else. She tugged on the sofa. The cushions flew off and the couch transformed into a bed. Without another word from Jenga, I threw myself onto the wide mattress. It was so… uncomfortable compared to my bed at home. “What, did you fill this with bricks or something? Jesus.” I groaned, rolling onto my back.
Jenga shrugged. “You can share with me if you want, but know that I like to be the big spoon.”
The thought of Jenga spooning me made me arch an eyebrow at her. “No, this will do.”
Jenga joined me on the sofa bed. Her head rested on my pillow and I spoke. “Before I sleep, can I tell you something?”
“I’m not into girls. There was this one time I made out with a girl in high school, but I didn’t like it.”
“No.” I shoved her hard in the shoulder. “You’re not my type anyway.”
She leaned her head against mine and I wanted to move away, but I didn’t want to offend her.
“I wanted to let you know that… I came here tonight because I realized you are the closest thing I have to a friend… and I want to be friends with you.”
She rolled onto her side, her eyes wide with excitement. “I knew it!” She squealed. “I knew you wanted to be my friend! I don’t even care how lame we sound, but I’ve always seen you as my friend. I was just waiting for you to realize it and now you’re sleeping on my sofa bed. I’d say today was a productive day for me.”
Jenga and I joked and laughed for a little while longer. Eventually, sleep took me and I was immersed in dreams of his dark hair and brown eyes.
***
Well, Jenga wasn’t lying when she said she preferred being the big spoon. A headache thrummed away in the back of my head, right underneath Jenga’s chin. Her long arms wrapped around my waist and she held me tightly, like a vice grip. I frowned. How the hell am I going to get out of this? I pried her fingers off my body and began to slip out. All it took was one movement and her eyes flew open. She took one look at my freaked out expression and laughed. “Man, sorry.” She stretched her arms above her head and yawned. “I must have fallen asleep.”
“Sleeping with you is like sleeping with a boa-constrictor, you know that, right?”
“Ouch. Do you always treat the women you sleep with, with a treat ‘em mean keep em’ keen attitude? Because it’s working.” She slid out of the bed and ran her fingers through her dark hair before walking toward the kitchen. “What do you want for breakfast?” She stopped and faced me. “Friend.”
I rolled my eyes. She’d do this to me for the rest of my life probably. The thought of food made me queasy and I was seventy percent sure I was still drunk. “Nothing. I gotta go. There’s a Horseman that I need to kill, remember?”
Jenga blocked the front door. “You’re not going anywhere until you put something into your stomach. Otherwise, Mikael is going to cut you down faster than a lawn mower cuts grass.”
I glared at her even though she was right. I needed to refuel, but all I wanted to do was go back to sleep. Lucas once told me that drinking before a mission was the most stupid thing an angel can do. That kind of stress on the body is unnecessary, he’d say. With a sigh, I dragged my tired body over to the breakfast bar and sat down. From the refrigerator Jenga took out bacon, eggs, bananas, and apples. She peeled two bananas and diced the apple. She threw it all into a bowl and placed it in between us. “We’ll snack on this until the real food is cooked.”
We chatted while she cooked. She told me about how she died. She was in a train crash on her way to work. A scout picked her up and the next thing she knew, she woke up in the Never Dark hospital and they told her what had happened. The very next day she was being trained for assistant work.
“I wanted to be something cool, like a Veltra angel or a fighting angel, like you, but apparently I don’t have that skillset,” Jenga informed me.
I thought about what I’d like to be if the fighting position wasn’t available to me. I wasn’t good at anything else. I sucked at organizing and I’d never felt the need to travel. I definitely wasn’t intellectual; my past decisions had proven that. I couldn’t be anything else. This was what I was born for, to fight demons. Lucas told me that once. I believed him. I had no parents and no siblings. It’s almost as if it was all planned.
“Did you have any family?”
Jenga evenly dished out the eggs and bacon onto big, ceramic plates and handed one to me.
“I did. I come from a huge Italian family. You?”
“No. I was an orphan.”
“Jesus, no wonder you’re such a loner. Poor girl.”
I shoveled bacon and egg into my mouth. “Do you miss them?” I asked between chews.
“We can’t. The transition cuts our emotional ties to the human world, remember? I think about them a lot, but I don’t feel sad. I know they would feel sad when they think of me… and I don’t want that, but there’s nothing I can do about it. This is my life now. Helping stuck up field angels with their paperwork.” She winked at me and chewed on the corner of a piece of bacon.
***
After I left Jenga’s I went home and showered. Pulling all the sticks out of my hair was torture and I was surprised I didn’t go bald. My scalp hurt whenever I pressed on it. I looked at myself naked in the mirror. My long red hair clung to my body and I shivered. I hated when wet hair touched my skin. On the plus side, if you looked at me you wouldn’t be able to tell that I was almost beaten to death at the beginning of this week. Yay for freaky healing powers. I felt much better after breakfast and a shower. The gross nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach vanished and the thrumming headache ceased. I wasn’t completely cured. There was still that unnerving feeling of going after Famine today. I couldn’t fail. Everything rested on my ability to fight. I was trained by Lucas Cross and I needed to prove that I was.
The fresh new uniform felt nice against my skin. It wasn’t filled with dirt and leaves, unlike the last one I took off, and hopefully, this one stayed dirt free. I braided my hair down the side of my head and let it fall over my shoulder to drape over my breast.
I’d decided to jog to headquarters this morning to keep myself warmed up and when I got to the front steps, Jenga was waiting for me in a cute all black business dress with a short white tie. In her hands she held a folder as thick as my forearm.
“Took you long enough,” she called out. I ran up the stairs and we entered HQ. “I grabbed as much information on Famine as I could. I have a list of all his usual hangouts. All the bars and strip clubs he owns and visits regularly. There’s a place called The Lion’s Den he goes there a lot, but I suggest you avoid that place at all costs. It’s usually crawling with demons and it’s owned by War. Your best bets are The Soft Kitty and Big, Busty Babes.”
I sighed. “So my best bet at finding Famine is at strip clubs? Remind me why I’m doing this again?”
“You’re doing this because you feel terrible that I have to put up with Govlonsky because you couldn’t kill Death. Now go.” She turned away from me, but spun back around quickly and threw a tiny headpiece at me. It rebounded off my chest and I caught it in my hands before it shattered on the floor. “Take your head piece so we can communicate and don’t switch it off like you usually do. That would be very unfriend like.” She disappeared into a room filled with filing cabinets and I headed over to the missions office. Once again, I was given a mission that required only the death of two Tracker demons. The receptionist with the pretty golden ringlets and her golden eyes glared up at me. “You’re slacking off. These are the same two demons you failed to kill yesterday. Get it done.”
I ran my tongue along my front teeth. It took a lot of strength not to mock her and I felt
I deserved a cookie or something equally delicious. “I’ll be sure to do it this time.”
“You better.” She handed me the missions tablet and it said the same thing as last time—two Tracker demons in Logansville. I signed my name along the bottom and she gave me the forms for the teleportation chamber. With a superficial smile, I turned away from her.
Tom didn’t say much when we teleported today. From what I gathered, he was feeling ill, even the green pills he was slamming down didn’t help him. I guess I wasn’t the only one that hit the bottle hard last night. I stepped out of the teleportation chambers and walked right up to Gladys, who was still wearing too much purple. She signed my forms and sent me on my way. As I stepped out of the waiting room, Janet’s big red hair and makeup-caked face greeted me.
“Vi! How are you?” Her long, soft arms wrapped around me as she forced me into a hug.
“Good… thanks.” I pulled away and instinctively glanced down at my suit. Surprisingly, no fake tan or makeup rubbed off.
“So, how long are you here for this time?”
“A few hours, tops.”
She pouted her over-glossed lips. “Oh. That sucks.” Her green eyes softened and I could tell she was waiting for me to take the conversation further.
“What’s up?” I sighed.
“Well, it’s my twenty-first birthday today and I wanted to invite you to my birthday party tonight. A few of my friends and I are going out.”
I wanted to answer straight away but I was still shocked on the fact that Janet was only twenty-one. I was twenty-three. With all that makeup I was going to say she was borderlining her late twenties.
“Um… I’d love to, but I’m really busy. I’m have to kill a few demons and then go straight back, sorry.”
She pouted even harder. “Oh… okay.”