[Corine Solomon 5] Agave Kiss by Ann Aguirre Read Free Book Online Page B

meal of me.” I liked to think I was fairly intelligent, so I wouldn’t have called a demon without all the trappings of ritual. Would I? At this juncture, distracted by the loss of Chance and worried about Booke, I had to admit it was impossible to say for sure.
    Hopefully not. Probably not.
    “If I didn’t summon you, why are you here?”
    “I felt your use of my true name,” he said softly. “It was a tug on my attention, but not irresistible. I had to wrap up a few things and get permission from my archangel first.”
    “Oh. He let you come?” Bits and pieces I remembered through the lens of Ninlil’s cruelty. She had hated the archangels with a passion—called them ka , which meant ancient spirits. In her reality, they had started as demons too, until being cast out of Sheol. I didn’t know if that was true, but it was more information than I’d ever gotten from Kel.
    “Yes, to recruit you.”
    I stared. “Are you kidding ? For what?”
    “Didn’t you wonder why your causes received such attention?”
    Obviously, I had. At first, Kel had been vague, hinting at a destiny and first claiming God had sent him to help me. Eventually, he stopped playing crazy long enough to explain how things actually worked—that his orders came through an archangel, not the high one himself.
    “When we first met, you were pretending to be a lunatic,” I pointed out. “So obviously, I took your words with a grain of salt.”
    A whole shaker, actually.
    “Why did you do that?” I added.
    “What?”
    “Act so . . .” There were no words for it, but I remembered how he had been in Texas when he escaped prison and hunted me down.
    “To make myself comprehensible to you,” he said gently. “You could fathom a religious fanatic. Would you have believed me then if I had said, ‘I’m a supernatural being, impossibly ancient, and I’m here at the behest of my archangel’?”
    “No. But I didn’t believe you served the Lord directly either.”
    “Yet you’ve heard of people who believe the holy spirit speaks to them, impels them to do things.”
    “Of course. And most of them kill people.” I realized I’d just made his point. “Can we talk about my destiny later? I called you to help my friend Booke.”
    “I’m listening,” he said.
    Apart from breaking this curse, the only other thing I cared about was finding a way to get Chance back. I wanted the life I had been dreaming about since I ran away from Kilmer. If I could make wishes come true, I’d have Chance and my pawnshop, and someday, down the line . . . kids. Just before he died, we’d finally gotten to a place where we trusted each other, despite the demon queen’s meddling. He died for me, for God’s sake. There was no matching him, now or ever.
    I choose you, I told Chance silently. Wherever you are.
    Kel read my sincerity with a glance. He knew I had accepted the end of things when he kissed me good-bye. As it turned out, I wasn’t always self-destructive. Sorrow darkened his features for an instant, but only that—because he hadn’t been fixed on an impossible dream either. In a life so long, he had learned the value of resignation; and without free will, he could only follow orders and obey, no matter what his heart desired. I wondered if things had ended badly for him and Asherah too, the goddess he loved so long ago. His ship did not sail toward a happy ending.
    I studied him, wondering if he could be this detached. My decision meant we’d probably never see each other again. And while a long-term relationship was off the table for oh-so-many reasons, it stung for him to show so little concern over our final parting. What did I want, exactly? I had no idea. Kel pretty much wrote the book on stoic acceptance. But whatever he thought or felt, it was, frankly, irrelevant. And pursuing it wasn’t fair to either of us. It served no purpose to dig into his state of mind just to sate my curiosity. He didn’t owe me a damn thing.
    “Will