Inhaling deep he tried to clear his head, but just ended up clogging his nose. That smell…what was it? And where was it coming from?

The bathroom, he realized.

“Don’t go in there, Jim,” Eddie called out as he started in that direction. “Jim! No—”

Yeah, fuck that. The smell was the nostril equivalent of new pennies in your mouth, and there was only one thing that made that—

From out of nowhere, Eddie appeared in front of him, blocking the way. “No, Jim. You can’t go in there.”

“Blood. That smell is blood.”

“I know.”

Jim spoke slowly, as if Eddie had lost his damn mind. “So someone’s bleeding in there.”

“If you breach the seal on that door, you might as well trigger a security alarm.” Eddie pointed to the floor. “You see that.”

Jim frowned and looked down. Right in front of his boots, there was a faint line of dirt, as if it had been lightly sprinkled there by a careful hand.

“If you open this,” Eddie said, “it’s going to pass over that barrier and our cover will be blown.”

“Why?”

“Before she left, she treated the edge of the door with a specific kind of blood and that dirt’s from a graveyard. One passes over the other and it releases energy she’s going to sense clear as an atomic bomb going off.”

“What kind of blood is it?” Jim asked, even though he knew he wasn’t going to like the answer. “And why didn’t she do it to where we entered through?”

“She needs a controlled environment to pull the protection spell off. The hall outside? She can’t be sure the cleaning staff wouldn’t disturb the dirt or that someone wouldn’t mess it up. And all this stuff”—Eddie swept his hand around—“is not as important as what’s inside here.”

Jim stared at the closed door as if at any second he might pull a Superman and be able to see through the thing.

“Jim. Jim…you can’t go in there. We need to find the ring and take off.”

There was more to this, Jim thought. As much as Adrain had revealed back at his studio, the angels had a pattern of telling him what he needed to know for the moment and not one byte of information more than that. So there was definitely shit going on here that he was unaware of…

“Jim.”

Jim focused on the doorknob that was within grabbing distance. He was kind of through with being out of the loop, and if it took a showdown with Devina to bring him up to speed, it was hard to think that was a bad thing.

“Jim.”

CHAPTER
33

Warm water over her breasts and thighs…warm lips on her mouth…warm steam billowing out around her.