He crossed out of the lot and into the alley, his footsteps slowing as he approached us. We were tucked unobtrusively in a little four-foot depression in the building, one of those architectural oddities that seem to have no explanation. The building went straight across and then it dipped in, like someone had planned to put a closet there, and then resumed its normal course. It was just enough to keep us from being seen by anyone who passed by.

The vampire stopped dead, a few feet away. I saw his nostrils flare.

“I know you’re there, Agent,” he said.

I stepped out of the depression and into the light of the one yellow streetlamp that hung over the parking lot. Gabriel followed and stood behind my shoulder. I said nothing. The vampire’s eyes widened a little when he saw Gabriel.

He smirked. “You must be the famous Madeline Black, the only Agent with a guard dog.”

If the vampire thought he could make a little sport for himself by getting a rise out of Gabriel, he had another think coming. Gabriel is the type that burns slow—so slow, I wonder sometimes if he’s got a pulse.

“What is your business, vampire?” I asked.

“If you are here, then you know my business,” he said. He raised an eyebrow at me. “You will not interfere?”

“You know I am bound against it,” I said, and there was a little shivering of magic as I said it, as if the source of my power was affirming the truth of that statement.

That was one of the suck things about being an Agent. I saw a lot of death, and most of those deaths would break my heart if I let them. Stupid accidents, horrific murders, deaths of children and young mothers and college kids before their time. But it was not for me to judge which lives should be saved. If their name was on my list, then their death was fated and I was bound not to interfere. I’d learned early on to adopt a circle-of-life attitude for my own sanity. It didn’t mean that I liked it.

The vampire sidled a little closer to me, and I could almost feel Gabriel’s hackles rise. He loves me, he can’t have me, but he does not like other men coming near me. If Gabriel had his way, there would be a thirty-six-inch manfree radius around me at all times.

“I have heard stories of your beauty,” the vampire purred. His nostrils flared again. “I see that they are not exaggerated.”

I crossed my arms. My beauty is so not legendary. “Do I look like I just fell off the turnip truck? Get lost. I’m not the helpless victim you’re looking for.”

I saw a glint of fang as he stepped closer. He seemed hypnotized by some scent. “But the blood of angels . . . I have always wanted . . . and you are Lucifer’s own . . .”

I opened my palm in front of me, extended my will, and a little ball of blue flame about the size of a baseball hovered above my hand. “I understand that fire is unpleasant for vampires.”

The vampire hissed and backed away several feet. He shook his head, seeming to come out of a trance. For a moment I thought he would try again, but then he appeared to think better of it.

“Perhaps you are right,” he said, regaining his composure. “There must be easy prey awaiting me if you are here.”

I closed my fist and the ball of nightfire disappeared, leaving behind a lingering trace of sulfur. I flicked my fingers at the vampire. “Move along, then.”

He gave me a sarcastic bow and continued past us. Gabriel stared stonily at the vampire’s back as he went by. A few feet past us, the vampire stopped. I couldn’t see his face but I was sure he was scenting the air. I felt the thrum of magic that told me a soul was approaching that was marked for death. A moment later a too-skinny blonde came tottering into the alley on four-inch heels.

I sighed and slipped back into the shadows. I didn’t need to see what happened next. I just had to be there to pick up the pieces, like always.

About an hour later I was flying home. Gabriel met me in the air about half a mile away from the Door. For reasons that we don’t understand, Gabriel can’t come within a certain radius of the Door. This tends to make him annoyed, since he is charged with keeping me safe at all times. However, other non-Agents seem to be bound by the same restriction. None of my enemies have been able to cross the invisible line that keeps Gabriel from the Door. I know because I have seen some of them try.

We were about ten minutes from home when I saw it. A flash of green light somewhere on the city streets below, a pulse so large I was surprised that it didn’t wake up everyone in a four-block radius. Then the shock wave hit us.

Gabriel and I were thrown upward by a wave of energy that emanated from the pulse. I decided to relax instead of struggling against it, but as the magical energy inside the shock wave reached me, I cried out. There was malice in that magic, a sense of wrongness that chilled my heart.

The wave passed through me, but I was frozen by fear. I had felt something like this before, when Ramuell the nephilim had been released from his prison to hunt and kill. It was a sense that the natural order had been upended, that death stalked without plan or mercy.

But Ramuell was dead. I had killed him myself. How could this be happening again?

I thought all of this in an instant, but an instant of immobility in the air can kill you. I heard Gabriel’s anguished voice calling my name. I shook my head, realized that I was free-falling, my face turned toward the sky. I tried to flap my wings, to turn over and right myself, but my wings had disappeared. They do that, so that I can look like a normal human most of the time. They only appear when I need them for a magical reason, like when I’m carrying out my Agent duties.