"He must feel bad."

She pointed to the little fiber optic tree, the one that was already decorated. Words were scrawled on the side of the box in spidery, nearly illegible writing:

G—

Figured you could handle this one. Ready and decorated!

—C

P.S.—And flame retardant.

"Hmm," I mused. "‘C' could be Cody too."

"Nah. I recognize the poor attempt at penmanship. It's Carter."

"Okay, so the angel repents. But who are the rest from?"

We soon found out. The wrapping job on the two matching boxes had already given Peter away. The larger box contained a very beautiful, very expensive tree with ‘winter moss green' needles that were lightly dusted with silver glitter. The smaller box contained a matched set of lights and ornaments all done in purple and fuchsia. Peter apparently hadn't trusted me to decorate his gift myself.

The Austrian Fir turned out to be from the bookstore staff. A card from Maddie read: Surprise! We all pitched in for it. Now you can't be a Scrooge. It was signed by other store workers, as well as Seth.

I looked back and forth between the boxes. "It's a Christmas miracle. I had no tree. Now I have a forest."

"C'mon," said Yasmine. "I'll help you set them up."

I looked at her in surprise. "Aren't you here to meet up with Vince or something?"

She shook her head. "I'm here to talk to you."

Uh-oh.

I didn't really want to set up the Christmas trees, but a being vastly more powerful than me did, so I set to it. Carter's tree was the easiest since all I had to do was plug it in. I placed it in a window sill, one with an outlet right underneath. The tree's fiber optic needles lit up to pale pink, then purple, then teal, then white.

"Good God," I said. "It's the Christmas tree equivalent of a lava lamp."

"I like it," declared Yasmine. "It's got moxie." She looked really excited. She could have been a kid on Christmas morning. You'd think after seeing so many Christmases (and trees) in her existence, they'd get kind of old. She pointed at Peter's tree. "Let's do the prissy one now."

We were stringing purple lights on the ‘winter moss green' tree when she finally started The Talk.

"So. Vincent told me what happened." She paused as she looped the lights over a branch. "I'm glad your guy is okay."

"Me too. He was lucky…if Vincent hadn't been there…"

More silence. I didn't entirely know where Yasmine was going with this. My guess was that she was concerned I'd tell someone about Vincent. I felt absolutely certain, however, that she wasn't going to threaten to break my kneecaps or anything to keep me silent. In fact, I realized then that what she wanted was reassurance. It was a crazy and startling idea. She was an angel, after all. A being of hope and peace, a being that others prayed to for comfort. Yet, here she was, seeking it from me—a creature of Hell.

"I meant it," I told her. "What I said to him. I'm not going to tell anyone."

"I believe you," she said, confusion all over her face. Angels knew when others were telling the truth. "But I don't understand it. Why? Why wouldn't you? You could get into big trouble if your superiors—if Jerome—found out you knew and weren't telling." Vincent had said the same thing. It was true. "Your people tend to get pissed off over stuff like that."

"What, and yours don't? Would they be forgiving if they found out?"

She looked away from me, diverting her attention to hanging a pink glass dove.

"Look," I said. "I work for Hell, but I don't, like, delight in others' suffering. Especially since I like both of you. I don't want to see you get into trouble. I don't even think what you're doing is wrong. Dangerous, maybe, but not wrong."

"Which part? The loving part or the nephilim part?"

I shrugged. "It's all risky."

She smiled at me. "You talk about nephilim pretty calmly. Most people—in our circles—go running for the hills."

"I met one once. Dated him." I hung a bejeweled purple orb on the tree. "He was scary as hell, yeah. Had this whole homicidal revenge thing going on, which kind of negated his sexiness a little. But at the end of the day…I don't know. He wasn't much of a monster. He couldn't help being born what he was."

I was glad to be free of Roman, glad he was somewhere far away from me. He'd posed too much of a threat to both me and those I loved. Still, there had been something in him I found appealing. It was why we'd connected before things literally blew up. I understood his weariness with the games Heaven and Hell played. He'd offered to take me away and free me from it all, and there were days I would still wake up and long for that.

"No," Yasmine agreed. "They can't help what they are. And it's not their fault. But their existence is a reminder of our faults…of our weaknesses." She held her hands open in front of her, studying them as though they held answers. "None of us higher immortals want to be shown that we're weak. That's our hubris, I guess. Especially the angels. No one's perfect, but we like to play that we are." She sighed and let her hands drop. "I should walk away from this. I should have a long time ago."

I jerked my head up. "But you love him."

"Sometimes loving someone means you have to do what's ultimately good. What you need instead of what you want."

"I suppose. But ending it seems so extreme. There must be a way to…I don't know, have it all."

The door opened, and Vincent walked in. He didn't look surprised to see either of us, but then, he would have sensed our auras. His eyes met Yasmine's, and it was like lightning crackling through the room. Both of them lit up, shining in a way that I doubted my succubus glamour could even begin to compete with.

He expressed surprise over my Yuletide Forest but jumped in to help us, appearing just as excited as Yasmine over the activity. The two of them never touched, but I noticed the same thing that I had at breakfast: an intimacy in the way they interacted with each other. They didn't need to touch. Their relationship was obvious, and I wondered how it was possible none of the other angels had ever noticed this. Maybe it was like what Yasmine had mentioned about angels and hubris. Maybe angels always assumed they were perfect and were too blind to see flaws in each other, whereas someone like me—who exploited weakness—knew what to look for.

We finished Peter's tree, and then I found my ornaments from last year—the ones that hadn't been destroyed in the fire—and used them on the bookstore's tree. When my woodland paradise was finally complete, Yasmine and Vincent made their farewells and left. I still had no idea what their divine mission in Seattle was, but I assumed it had universal consequences. I felt a little weird that it had been put on hold to decorate my home.

As I cleaned up the boxes, I kept thinking about what Yasmine had said about needing versus wanting. In some ways, that was what Seth and I did. We wanted to have sex. We needed to avoid it.

I also found myself recalling Andrew again, that annoyingly good priest who'd caused me so many headaches. I hadn't thought much about his story since last week, but as my body mindlessly completed chores, the images began replaying in my mind.

Despite my best efforts, he'd remained a bastion of purity and willpower. While frustrating, it nonetheless continued to make the game fun. And although I didn't appreciate it as much back then as I did now, I sort of took pleasure in just hanging around him. He was good company, and he came to mean more to me than just a sexual conquest. It was obvious he cared about me too.

It would figure that things went bad between us on a beautiful, sunny day. I remembered it distinctly. I had wandered over to the church he ministered out of and sat with him in the vegetable garden. I stayed clear of the dirt, conscious of the yellow silk dress my bishop had just had made for me. Andrew, less concerned, worked on his knees, unhesitatingly digging in—literally—and cultivating the church's small crop.