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"Comforting." She hitched her bag higher on her shoulder and eyed the box of the family relics tucked under his other arm as if it were made of glass. "Are you planning on carrying that all night? Or can I have my dead relatives back?"

"Considering what's in this box nearly killed you twice tonight, I'm carrying it." He started for the door without waiting for her opinion on the matter. Of course, that only made her madder. Mainly because the man wasn't wrong, and she hated that.

Abraxos didn’t bother introducing her to the angels hanging around. Instead, he led her up to a room with a bed big enough to lose a body in. The window looked down on a fountain larger than the front room in her shop. Sarah took one look at the bed and a longer look at the box of relics. There wasn't any real contest in her head about which one was getting her attention tonight.

“Thanks. I’m going to do some more reading. Go do whatever it is angels do.” She waved him off and grabbed some of the journals from the bag Rami must have left for her.

She needed many answers and hoped there was something in the tomes that could help her. She dove right in, ignoring the sexy angel looming over her. She needed to learn more about her situation before she got involved any deeper with Abraxos. She had no idea when he left, but it was after three in the morning when Abraxos filled her doorway again. He had water in one hand and something wrapped in a napkin in the other.

"You're supposed to be sleeping," he told her, leaning a shoulder into the frame as if he had nowhere better to be.

"Did Amelia tell you that?" Sarah didn't look up from the page under her thumb.

"Amelia bet me a bottle of Camael's good bourbon you'd be doing exactly this instead of sleeping." He set the water down and unwrapped the napkin to reveal a beignet. The sight of it made her stomach rumble. "Café du Monde was the one thing open this late."

"Amelia knows me better than anyone else." She moved her eyes back to Nana's cramped, furious handwriting.

"You've been on the same page for an hour.” He smirked at her when her head snapped in his direction. “I've been watching you." He dropped into the second chair backward and set the beignet down. He braced his forearms on the rail while his wings folded behind him with a sound like a sigh. "What are you struggling with?"

She could've thrown him out. The words were right there, polished and ready to go. Instead, she turned the journal toward him. She was sick to death of being the only person alive who knew what she knew.

"There are two kinds of notes in here," she told him, tapping the worn corner of the page. "Stuff anybody could read about ley lines, seal-checks, and which foundations to babysit. Then there's this part. I always figured it was about my lineage. Like a family Bible. Turns out it goes beyond anything I ever imagined, Abraxos. I don’t understand everything, but it seems as if being Guardians is our job."

He leaned in to read, and the lazy warrior drained right out of his face. "That's Enochian. Under the Latin." His jaw went tight. "Guardian's wrong. It's what somebody handed down so their daughters wouldn't run screaming."

He looked up at her, and that weight was back in his eyes again. The same one she'd seen in her shop hours ago. "The real word is Scribe. Your family didn't watch over the Codex, Sarah. Your family wrote it."

"That's not possible." She shook her head from side to side. "Every scholar who's ever cracked that book agrees it was written in angel's blood and holy water. Human hands didn't write the book containing the magic to hold the Titans down."

"It wasn’t human hands." He reached for her branded palm and turned it up toward the lamp. He held a fingertip just above the mark as if it might bite him. "The first scribes were as old as angels. They’re older than the war. Somebody had to write the rules down, so they'd have power. Metatron talks about them as a male would his grandmother. He told Camael's witch something similar not long ago. Her blood runs down to them, too."

"Amelia?" The name left her on a breath as a hundred little things slid into place. "You're telling me Amelia, and I are⁠—"

"Cousins. A few thousand years removed," he cut her off. His old grin showed up again. "Her branch kept the magic while yours kept what was necessary to protect the Codex. They come from the same root."

CHAPTER 5

ABRAXOS

"We’re cousins?" Amelia poured coffee as she spoke.

"Dozens of generations separated. The universe just couldn't help itself," Sarah replied before she let out a gust of air.

“It did put the two of us in the same parish," Amelia countered as she slid the mug across the table until it knocked Sarah's knuckles. "It explains why your magic always smelled like my grandmother's kitchen. All this time, I thought it was a coincidence. Turns out I was related to you. It’s also probably why I was drawn to you and why we became fast friends."

Abraxos stood at the edge of the courtyard with his arms crossed and his wings tucked tight as he listened to them talk. He kept his mouth shut because his opinion didn’t matter here. He'd translated the Enochian for her at three in the morning. After dropping that bomb on her, she’d put the rest of it away and gone to bed. It had left him floundering. Inexplicably, he wanted to make it better for her. To ease her suffering. But he couldn’t imagine pushing Sarah toward something she wasn't ready for.

"Don't get gooey on me." Sarah wrapped both hands around the mug, but didn't drink from it yet. "I've had four hours of sleep and a religious experience in the same night. My emotional budget is spent."

Amelia rolled her eyes so hard he half expected them to get stuck that way. "I'm not getting gooey. I'm telling you we're where we are because certain powers wanted it that way." She jabbed a finger in Sarah's direction, punctuating the point like she was nailing it to the wall. "You spent your whole life thinking you were the last of your line. You're not the last of anything. You've got me now. That's new information for both of us. We're taking it in."

Abraxos watched Sarah's throat work around whatever she wanted to fire back. The words rose and then died before they ever made it to her mouth. Amelia didn't give her the chance to try again. She clapped her hands together. The sound cracked through the courtyard as brisk as a slap.

"All right. Enough gushiness. You've got creatures out there who want you. You've got a body full of power you can't wield worth a damn yet. I'm not losing one of my best friends and the only cousin I've got." Her eyes cut to Abraxos. The look in them almost made him step back. "You. Get over here and make yourself useful. Stick close. If she starts to go glassy-eyed, it’s your job to catch her before she hits the ground."

“Don't push her to the point she’s going to pass out,” he warned Amelia as he crossed the flagstones and took up position near Sarah, close enough to feel the heat coming off her skin.

“I’ll try my best,” Amelia deadpanned before she began rattling off instructions.