“Absinthe? What are you talking about?” Raphael frowned. “I thought you stopped drinking that swill. Don’t tell me you’ve fallen off the wagon. I thought you were better than that these days.”

Gabriel stared at his fellow demon. Either Raphael had completely lost his grip on reality, or he was telling the truth. Unfolding the stack of papers Raphael had handed him, Gabriel glanced at the will, a quote toward the bottom of the page leaping out at him.

I live in sin, to kill myself I live; no longer my life my own, but sin’s; my good is given to me by heaven, my evil by myself, by my free will, of which I am deprived.—Michelangelo

“What’s with this sudden obsession with Michelangelo?” he asked as he stuffed Raphael’s will in his back pocket, angry that he couldn’t make sense of what was going on.

Raphael gave a slight smile. “Michelangelo saw angels. ‘I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free.’ Don’t you think it’s odd that these women, the women I cared about, the women I loved, the women I wanted to help, Gabriel, were carved? Carved until set free . . . sent to heaven.”

A cold sweat broke out over Gabriel’s flesh. That was the most appalling visual, the most horrific metaphor, he’d ever heard, and he almost choked on his disgust. Raphael had done it, had killed those women, and he was sitting there in his suburban doctor clothes with a stupid smile on his face.

Gabriel reached for his knife without hesitation. “Raphael, stand up so I can send you back to our Maker.”

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

Jocelyn pulled the door to her apartment open immediately. “You’re back early.”

“Rafe’s not home.”

“Good. Well, not good, but I’m glad you’re back, because I really want to talk to you about your samples, but I didn’t want to hold you up when you got here earlier. You seemed really eager to see Rafe.”

She had been. Not so much anymore. “So what did you find with the samples?”

“Well, your samples were tainted or mislabeled.”

“What do you mean?” Sara was still unnerved from the encounter with Rafe’s girlfriend, and the quasi-fight she’d had with Gabriel the night before when she’d left New Orleans. She wasn’t sure she could wrap her mind around deciphering how she could have screwed up the samples.

They sat down on Jocelyn’s sofa and Sara pulled her legs under her skirt. She was tired. Numb. Jocelyn, who was a six-foot-tall brunette with funky retro glasses and more energy in one minute than Sara had in an entire day, had a glass of red wine in her hand. “Do you want a drink? You look worn out, Sara.”