Airs & Graces by Jeffrey Cook, A.J. Downey Page A

dude with the bad tan, that was about when I figured out that this Grace thing had me seeing things, I just wasn’t sure if those things happened in the past or not and was going to ask you later, but that question is answered so moving on…”
    At this sudden efficiency, even in the face of her apparent need to remember everything aloud in the hopes of clarity, I couldn’t help but chuckle.
    “What’s so funny?” she asked.
    “You don’t want to know what Hadad is?”
    “He’s a right scary motherfucker,” she replied. “That’s what he is.”
    “Fair enough. You wanted to move on?”
    If her intent expression did not quash any desire for laughter, her responding question. “Yeah, okay. So who is Iaoel and where did you hide her?”
    I hoped that shutting my eyes would be betray less of a reaction than showing them. “She was the Angel of Visions,” I said, more glad than ever that we were being quiet. “When her physical expression was destroyed, I hid her Grace in Piorre, years ago.”
    “Holy crap, that’s what’s in my head? Some Angel’s soul?”
    “The closest equivalent possible. Now, I believe you were reviewing our visit to the Abbey.”
    “Right. So aside from even more traumatizing stuff I didn’t need, and something about some keys, I mostly got a pretty, if scary, but still useful necklace out of that encounter, and then all of a sudden we’re outside a ramshackle village in apparently Chile with two trucks full of Demons coming at us. By then I was about to have a full-on melt down and told you so, and then you brought me to Seattle, and we grabbed my boss’ journal…and here we are. So what exactly is going on, Tab? No bullshit, I’m scared, and I’m trying, but forewarned is forearmed, and I feel like I am way behind on the learning curve.” She sat back in her seat and sagged a bit, her dark blue eyes tight with worry, her attention full on me.
    “What’s precisely been going on,” I finally said, still quietly, “has changed from preventing your murder by Rahab – or by Michael when it turned out the Grace could not be extracted easily – to preventing Judgment Day. Information about the keys and about the Judgment changes everything. We must get to the keys first, which means unfolding the Grace, something Piorre was trying to do. You’ll need to follow the same path.”
    “Only without the getting killed part at the end,” she clarified, her expression somber and far from glib.
    “Ideally,” I affirmed.
    “So, how do I do this?” She took the diary in her hands.
    I leaned forward and started to explain. “The diary itself is nothing but footprints in the sand. We can track his progress to or away from an important landmark. We can determine what his motivation was. Failing at that, we could probably try to achieve the same results by performing the same action. For example, if he was looking up people and apologizing to them, he’s trying to clear the slate and take a burden off of his conscience.”
    “I see,” she said. “If he’s looking for ways to give back to the community, he’s repenting for past indiscretions. Like that?”
    “Yes.”
    “So all I need to do is read the diary.” She took the journal from my hand and opened it up to the front, a lock of her hair dangled down between her eyes and mine as she read. I watched her quietly until her eyes came off of the book and met my own.
    “Why are you staring at me?”
    I looked left and right at the people in seats all around us. “Am I bothering you?”
    “Not exactly, but you’re staring. Just, I don’t know, look someplace else.”
    I was confused. “I thought you liked to be looked at. It’s why you put so much effort into looking a certain way.” As I said the last, the waitress arrived and smiled at me.
    “Trust me,” the young woman said. “Every girl likes to be noticed. It’s just a matter of what form that attention takes,” she offered.
    “Oh great,” I heard Adelaide