Haunted by Kelley Armstrong

“Trsiel.”
    I assumed that was an introduction, but it didn’t sound like any name—or word—I’d ever heard. Though I refrained from a rude “Huh?” my face must have said it for me.
    “Tris-eye-el,” he said.
    His phonetic pronunciation didn’t quite sound like what he’d said the first time, but it was as near to it as my tongue was getting.
    “Bet you got asked to spell that one a lot,” I said.
    He laughed. “I’m sure I would have…if I’d ever needed to. I’m not a ghost.”
    “Oh?” I looked him over, trying to be discreet about it.
    “Angel,” he said. “A full-blood.”
    “Angel? No wings, huh?”
    Another rich laugh. “Sorry to disappoint. But putting wings on an angel would be like hitching a horse to a motor car. Teleportation works much faster than fluttering.”
    “True.” I glanced toward Janah’s door. “But teleportation doesn’t work for her, does it? Or is that because of the anti-magic barrier?”
    “A bit of both. It doesn’t always work for full-bloods, either. There are places—” His faced darkened, but he shrugged it off. “Even full-bloods can be trapped. Like Zadkiel.”
    I nodded. “The last one who went after the Nix.”
    “Normally, he’d be here, helping you. That’s his job, to assist on the inaugural quests. But obviously he can’t, so I’ve been asked to step in. I’ll be helping you with anything that might be difficult for a non-angel, like talking to Janah.”

    “So that’s her problem. Now that she’s an angel, she doesn’t like talking to us mere ghosts?”
    “It’s not that. She picked up the demon blood in you. Her brain, it misfires, gets its connections crossed, especially when it comes to anything that reminds her of the Nix.”
    “She sensed demon, and saw the enemy.”
    He nodded. “She even does it to me now and then.”
    I frowned.
    “Because of the demon blood,” he said.
    “I thought you said you were—”
    “Demon, angel, all the same thing if you go back far enough, or cut deep enough. I wouldn’t advise saying that too loudly, though. Some don’t appreciate the reminder. When Janah sees you or me, she sees demon, which to her means the one demon she can’t forget: the Nix who put her in there. I can usually get through to her, though. Ready for a rematch?”
    “Bring it on.”

 

    San Francisco / 1927
    THE NIX ROUSED HERSELF INSIDE JOLYNN’S CONSCIOUSNESS , struggling to stay alert as the woman droned on about her life. The subject, as dull as it was, wasn’t the only cause of the Nix’s lethargy. She was growing weak—a concept so repugnant that she fairly spit each time she thought of it. Once she’d sipped chaos like fine wine; now it was like water. Too long without it, and she weakened.
    She was too particular in her choice of partners. Yet she still refused to lower her standards. Selecting the wrong partner was like quenching her thirst with sewer water.
    This time she’d waited longer than usual, probably because her last partner had been such a disappointment. That’s why she’d taken a chance with Jolynn. No smarter than her last partner—perhaps even stupider—with the vacuous self-absorption that sometimes afflicted young women with not enough going on behind their pretty faces. Yet Jolynn lacked more than common intelligence—she had an empty head, and an empty soul to match. The Creator, perhaps realizing the defect, had given her to a minister and his wife, as if hoping they’d supply what she lacked.

    Jolynn’s missing soul had proved to be a moral blank slate. Her parents inscribed goodness on it, and she became good. She married a good man, a doctor many years her senior, and followed him into the wilds of Africa, bringing medicine to the afflicted. But when she contracted malaria, her husband sent her home to recuperate, not with her aging parents, but in a California sanitarium. Freed from the watchful eyes of parents and husbands, the truth about Jolynn’s soul became clear.