Meanwhile Griffin dropped his head into his hands and groaned. “You are?” I asked him, amused. I’d seen how proprietary they were of each other and that had nothing to do with being partners. Then there had been Zeke refusing to let me share a bed with Griffin. The whole spooning thing I’d taken as a joke, and not because I hadn’t seen this coming. I had. I just hadn’t thought it would be this soon. I hadn’t thought they’d realize it so quickly. I did know Zeke would’ve made the first move. It was the only way Griffin could be sure it was what Zeke wanted and not Zeke going along with whatever he thought Griffin wanted—following his lead, as always. And Zeke had done it apparently, seizing that free will with both hands.

Well, you know what? Good for Zeke.

“A relationship?” I repeated, my lips twitching with humor at Griffin’s sudden retiring nature.

“We are,” Griffin confirmed, hands cupping over his forehead to shield his eyes from Zeke’s show.

“And the sex is fucking unbelievable,” Zeke said, continuing with the rundown.

“Oh hell.” Griffin’s head thunked against the table and stayed down there. I leaned over his back to ask Zeke curiously, “How unbelievable?”

“Last night . . . ,” he started with the same enthusiasm I’d seen him show for his favorite weapons—and that was considerable enthusiasm indeed.

I leaned forward further. It was all kinds of interesting what you could hear when an ex-angel who hadn’t mastered his internal filter started to talk details.

I genuinely had seen this coming. I wasn’t so full of it that I believed brown was this year ’s new magenta. It made absolute sense. Angels and demons were gen derless creatures until they chose a human form (the only form they could choose, by the way . . . amateurs). In their pure crystalline form, angels were androgy nous in appearance—neither male nor female. As for demons, if they had a gender in their true serpent shape, only a zoologist would have a hope of knowing for sure.

Put either creature in a freshly baked cookie dough human body and they had the hormones to work with, I guessed, unless they were like Oriphiel who didn’t pack his plumbing. The others, however, angels and demons alike, I couldn’t see having a strong preference either way. Created sexless, then changing into a human suit whenever they felt like it, I couldn’t see them swinging hard to either end of the sexual spectrum. It wasn’t as if they had a human’s lifetime of social experience or gender role imprinting—although the genetics of it . . . never mind. I wasn’t a biologist. I was just a trickster having the time of her life watching two guys having the time of their lives. Who cared how it happened? It could be like teenagers getting in a car to drive it for the very first time. Do you want a stick or an automatic? Who the hell cares? They just want to go.

Griffin and Zeke were different. They had had seventeen years or so of living a life they thought human. Zeke mentioned girls. I’d seen Griffin on a date or two. They’d even flirted with me once in a while, but never seriously. None of it had seemed serious. Not the talk, not the dates. None of it.

Subconsciously I thought they always knew they were meant for each other. Two halves of a whole. Zeke needed a guide, the ultimate version of the summer camp buddy system. Griffin, the empath, needed to be needed—for the empath part of him and for the tiny molecule of his subconscious that knew he had thousands of lifetimes of inflicting pain and violence to make up for.

But despite the need on both sides, it was more than that. They just . . . fit. They may have spent seven years in a foster home together, but there was never a sense of brotherhood about them. Not the family kind. The battlefield kind, yes, but not the blood kind, not the emotional bonding of siblings. From day one they’d been partners and that could be a bonding as strong as a familial one. They’d been partners, were partners, would be partners—and now in every sense of the word. You couldn’t look at them and not see it. They belonged to each other like the rest of us belonged to the earth under our feet.

“So?” I prompted Zeke without remorse. I wasn’t too good to hear some nice juicy, mildly pornographic details. “Last night?”

Griffin sat up and cut us both off before I was able to hear anything interesting. “Zeke, I will take your Colt Anaconda and sell it on eBay. One more word about our sex lives and it’s done. Got it?”

Zeke frowned. “Fine. Grump.” He then turned his attention back to the rest of the bar regulars, because, after all, the two of them were regulars here as well. “So what I want to know is if anyone has a problem with this?” The Colt Anaconda Griffin had just threatened was laid on the table with a heavy thud and the steel of it wasn’t any colder than the steel of Zeke’s gaze.

And Zeke? Zeke did not bluff.

Most had shrugged and gone on, some never woke up to hear the announcement, but a few had opened their mouths with disgruntled, unhappy, or judgmental looks on their face. The Colt had every mouth shut and a few tequila shots bought for the happy couple. And they were happy. Zeke might not give a damn about anyone else in this world, with Leo and me as the exception proving the rule, but Griffin was everything to him. On his side, Griffin, who had not once considered Zeke a burden, for all the stolen grenades, dead robbers, beaten cab drivers, car wrecks beyond numbering, the eBay threatening and the final knocking of his head on the table in frustration, had far different emotions for Zeke behind the exasperation. He always had. You didn’t need to be an empath to read them either.

I took one shot that Leo delivered and knocked it back before saying, “An ex-angel and an ex-demon getting together in a same-sex relationship. Heaven and Hell sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. Congratulations.” I raised another shot. “That sound you hear is the heads of moral conservatives spontaneously exploding in the distance.” Leo pulled another bottle and joined us.

“Félicitations.”

“Glückwünsche.”

“Congratulazioni.”

“Gelukwensen.”

“Ho‘olaule‘a.”

“L’chaim!”

By then the tequila was gone, but we clinked glasses anyway.

Griffin and Zeke took a cab back to their place. I had a feeling Eli would leave them alone as well as Leo and me—for a while at least. He’d seen what I did to those who hurt my brothers.

We booted out the remaining patrons, most of whom had a cab company on speed dial, and cleaned up the place. As I finished drying my hands, Leo waited and then offered me a gleaming raven feather. I remembered how Griffin had picked up the one that came from Zeke’s wings when we had been in the desert. He’d studied it with curiosity, awe, and wonder. Griffin turned his back on Hell and was now a man who could feel wonder. No one could say that wasn’t a miracle.

This feather was something entirely different. Well, maybe not. It had the touch of a miracle to it too. Under Leo’s patient eyes, I considered it for a moment, then took it. I stroked the sheen of it.

“We’re still too much alike,” I said with a reluctance that tugged sharply at me.

“I know.” He rested his hand on my stomach. It was warm, large, and familiar. I could actually enjoy the touch, let myself feel it in a way I’d never let Solomon reach me. There had been only pretense and trickery. It had been unpleasant, but I couldn’t kill him without proof. I needed proof to know he was the one. Otherwise I was only killing a demon with no certainty it was the one who’d taken Kimano away from me. But I never had to feel his touch again.

“You played him.” Leo who always knew what I was thinking—Leo moved until he was close enough that his breath stirred my hair and any thought of Solomon or his touch disappeared. “It was a thing of beauty.” For a trickster there was no higher turn-on than exceptionally well-done trickery.