Page 69 of Grave Humor

Michael helped Eoghan sign the last of the paperwork before stacking it in a neat pile. “I will go secure the rest of the signatures and issue the payment for the property, which will be processed by the bank immediately, as you are paying them quite the sum to do so. The tax payment is also being submitted and verified by the bank to streamline that portion of the purchasing process. I will come back here within the next hour with the keys, which is when you become the official owners of the property. I recommend you stay here at night to sleep and wait around for Director Hammel to come to you. It won’t take him long to learn you have purchased the property; the Smithys will make certain of that.”

“How should we deal with him?” I asked.

“However you see fit. We can’t do everything for you. This amuses us, which is why we lend our aid. Although, I suspect Azrael will become a nuisance until this business is finished. He dislikes when his rest is disturbed. See, Eoghan? You have common ground with my brother. You both dislike being roused from your slumber.”

“This is not a good thing.”

“It’s a great thing,” the devil replied, and he stretched. “Try to get along. You are equally important to nature’s flow, and it wouldn’t do to upset the ladies—and my lady? She’s already upset. If you keep Anwen happy, you might actually make it through this era somewhat intact.” With a pop and the stench of damned brimstone, Lucy vanished.

Michael laughed. “For the Lord of Lies, he is a disgustingly honest fellow—and he often offers good advice. That is wisdom I would take seriously, Eoghan. Do yourself a favor. Tell the devil’s wife that the devil is a lucky man to have a woman like her. It’ll help you get through the next few days of your life without earning a beating from the Queen of Hell. And don’t make the mistake most make.”

“What mistake?” I asked.

“She just looks nice. She partners so well with my brother because her capacity for evil is only matched by her capacity for good.”

As promised, I held the keys to my childhood home within an hour. The familiarity of them, once hanging from my parents’ keychains, drove home how much had changed in a few days. Obtaining financial stability shocked me, but holding the keys of my childhood felt more like a miracle than anything else that had happened since I’d offered my arm to Gordon, expecting to die in the basement of the funeral home.

“There wasn’t a third set of keys,” Michael said.

“There never was.” My parents had never believed I deserved them; if neither were home and had locked the door, I’d been expected to sit outside, amuse myself, and wait. I’d spent many an hour under the boughs of a weeping willow doing my homework or reading my text books, waiting for them to come home. I couldn’t count the nights I’d slept beneath the stars for that reason.

“I hadn’t looked into the reason why,” the archangel said, his tone heavy with remorse. “I apologize.”

“You did no harm. They are memories.” I considered those old experiences and how they’d shaped my present. “No, they aren’t bad memories. They’re just difficult ones.”

“How are they difficult?” Eoghan asked.

“I never had keys to the house. My parents expected me to wait outside if they weren’t home. By the time I dropped out of high school, they were almost never home. They usually locked the door. I did what I could, but that was the way of it.”

“They sound like cruel people.”

“She is everything they are not—and she is that way because she decided she would not be like them.” Michael closed my fingers over the keys. “These are both the end and the beginning of a journey.”

I understood what the archangel meant; I would continue the cycle by giving Gordon the extra keys to my little rented house—a house Eoghan wanted to purchase only because I liked it.

A week ago, I wouldn’t have believed for an instant so much could change in a matter of days. In some cases, my life had changed in a matter of hours.

Michael leaned over my shoulder, using the laptop to pull up a listing of a log cabin. “This model has much of what you wish, and it will be trivial for the manufacturer to add the things you want, and a second installment can be converted to be a rather nice stable for Eoghan’s horses—and your horses, too. You won’t be able to share space with him without having a horse or two of your own.”

“The devil is giving her a horse,” Eoghan grumbled.

“He is giving you both horses, and you will find them amusing. He is giving you four horses, which will keep you sufficiently busy. Perhaps they will help you with a certain matter.”

Hammel. I wrinkled my nose. “Is it too much to ask for him to just bugger off?”

“Some things you must handle yourself. This is one of them. We have meddled as much as we can. These are insignificant things we have done.”

I gestured at the papers and the laptop. “This is not insignificant!”

“To us, it is. It is but the faintest ripple in even your life. Humans always fail to remember most of life’s inconveniences will pass, often sooner than they believe possible. I recommend you try to get some sleep and look at your life with fresh eyes in the morning.”

Michael disappeared, and I grunted at the archangel’s abrupt departure. “I feel like I’m missing something important, and I don’t know what it is, and that’s starting to really annoy me.”

Expressing my frustration helped.

“I’m missing something, too,” Eoghan admitted. “I suspect we’ll figure it out when we locate the node. They tend to be wells of power and insight—or at least every one I’ve encountered. But who knows? Well, beyond those busybody archangels and the devil.”

I waited for Lucy to show up, but the kitchen remained devoid of the Lord of Lies. “How about you, Gordon?”