The Angel's Fall (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 6) by Katherine Sparrow

five years.” Lila glanced toward a pile of white robes that lay on the ground and shoved her hands into her pocket. “What a d-bag. I can't believe my mom ever fell for him.”
    “It has been a day of days for lost fathers meeting their children, my dear,” Merlin said. The King of Hell. The man who I loved, who I seemed to fall in love with, again and again, even though there were stumbling blocks after stumbling blocks in our way. But this time? I was not sure I could follow where Merlin's life would lead him next.
    “Stop looking at me like I have murdered all your kittens, Morgan,” Merlin snapped. “I didn’t get trapped in Hell forever. Lila is well fed. There will be time enough to figure all the rest of it out later.”
    “There will be time,” I agreed. I would wait to see what he would become with his kingdom.
    “Can we go home now?” Lila said in a small voice. “I can't believe I get to go home. Earth home, Seattle home, you guys home. Can we go to wherever Adam is and can I crawl into bed with him and be the little spoon, even if I'm way taller than him now?”
    “Of course, my dear,” Merlin said. “He will be so glad to see you.”
    Lila nodded and stared hard at him, and then me. “Wait. I forgot. You two are still undead.”
    I nodded and put a hand on my stilled chest.
    “You could ask me to reverse it.”
    “Didn’t want to tax you, Lila,” I said.
    “Oh, it’s nothing.” She snapped her fingers twice.
    All my vital essences started up again, and I took a deep inhalation of breath.
    “Excellent,” Merlin said. “I was starting to day dream about places open this time of night that served brains. Thank you.”
    “Sure.”
    “That was clever thinking, making us undead,” I added.
    Lila beamed. We flanked her on both sides as we walked out of the alley, neither of us, I think, quite believing that we had made it out with Lila. Not trusting that something else was not going to attack us, or trick us, or dissolve the very reality around us.
    The road stayed a road. The air held the smell of rotting fish. Reality, for the moment, acted as it should.
    It was a mere seven blocks to Merlin's hotel and penthouse. To a shower, a bed, and the blissful emptiness of sleep. We turned left on Third Avenue, wide and empty of cars at this late hour, save for a few lumbering city buses. Down the road, most of a block away, something shone with a bright yellow light.
    “Pretty,” Lila said and pointed. “Oh, and magic. That's new, right?”
    Merlin and I nodded as we drew nearer to the shining … statue. A statue of a man, wound through with a type of magic that would render it invisible to the mundanes of the city.
    “Is that…?” Lila’s mouth dropped open.
    We quickened our pace and walked toward the tall statue of a man that looked like a well-shaven and impeccably dressed Adam. The statue stood on a marble base etched with words.
    Adam Rivera. Werewolf. The Sheriff of Seattle, bringing justice to all magical creatures and under folk since September 2016.
    The date was six months hence from when we had left for Hell this morning. I swallowed. The Marid had said we’d taken a long time.
    Merlin scowled and reached into his bag, rustling around for a while before he pulled out a cellular phone. The fancy kind with a wide glass front. He turned it on and showed us the date.
    “How is that possible?” Lila said.
    “Hell was destabilized, unmoored in time as well as place, it seems.”
    We'd been gone for a full eight months. Adam had been the sheriff for two months.
    I looked up and up at the statue.
    “A sheriff for unders? What does that even mean?” Lila asked. “And who made him sheriff?”
    “I'm afraid we will soon find out,” I said.
    We walked on from the statue and into the night, desperate and exhausted and trying to pretend, each in our own way, that we had gotten out of Hell unscathed and that we were fine and ready for whatever happened next.