“Don’t worry, Billy. The Lord will watch over me.”

“He damned well better,” Ray said, “and I’ll be waiting in the wings in case he fucks up. You just call me and I’ll be there. Screw SCARE.”

“Billy,” she whispered. She put a gloved finger against his lips. “Don’t blaspheme.”

Then they were kissing, pressed hard against each other, holding each other tighter than normal people could. It was, the Angel thought, simply heaven. She wanted this moment to last forever.

“Get a room, you two.”

They broke off the kiss and turned their heads, Billy wearing the scowl that meant he was really annoyed. Bubbles was standing in the open entrance to the lounge. She was beautiful, the Angel thought, taller than her and slim as, well, a model. Graceful and elfin, like all those lovely blondes in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies.

“I always seem to be interrupting you two, don’t I?”

“You don’t have to enjoy it so much,” Ray growled.

Bubbles wiped the little smile off her face. “Sorry guys. I don’t, really. Klaus sent me to find you, Sheeba. We’re heading out to the airport.” She turned to go, stopped, and looked again at them, the grin back on her lips. “I guess you have time to say good-bye one more time.”

She turned and walked away.

“Not the way I’d like to,” Ray said in a low voice.

“I know what you mean.”

He put his arms around her waist again. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, carefully. “When you get back. Maybe we should change it up a little.”

“Change?” she said.

“I’m getting tired, Angel. I’ve saved the world I don’t know how many damned times, and, fuck, it just needs saving again by the next weekend. How much is enough?”

“Maybe you need a vacation.”

“Yeah, a long vacation.”

“How about in beautiful, sunny downtown Talas?”

She was gratified at the smile that lifted his craggy, slightly mismatched features. “Maybe,” he said.

“Good-bye, darling.”

She kissed him again, a quick kiss this time because she didn’t think she could just walk away from another long one.

He let her go. She turned and walked away. She looked back as she left the lounge. He was still watching her. He lifted a hand and she blew him a kiss and then went down a branch of the corridor and was gone from his sight.

The tarmac stretched out into darkness from the yawning, huge mouth of the hangar, the lamps lining the taxiway blurred in fog. The eastern horizon was lightening as dawn approached. Around the Committee’s private Concorde, workers were loading the last of the equipment and supplies. The Committee team, with the exception of Klaus, was already on board. The pilots could be seen in the cockpit, making last-minute checks.