Once Alex was safely on the other side of the bathroom door I slipped out of the tub, hastily dried off, and wrapped myself in my baby blue bathrobe. I was tightening the belt and padding into the kitchen when I was treated to a view of Alex’s rump poking out of my fridge.
“Can I help you with something?” I asked his butt.
Alex backed out of the fridge, frowning. “There’s nothing in here to eat. Are there any more pinwheels?”
I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “No. I threw them away.” Threw them down my throat was more like it.
I edged Alex aside and peered into the fridge, coming out with a half loaf of bread and a stack of Kraft cheese slices. “Grilled cheese?”
“Tres gourmet.”
“You’d better believe it.”
Alex handed me a frying pan and got to work buttering bread.
“So, what are you doing here anyway? I mean here, here, in this realm. In my kitchen.”
Alex peeled the filmy cellophane from a piece of cheese and crumpled it in his hand, popping the cheese in his mouth.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Make yourself at home.”
Alex gave me a sarcastic smile and snagged a couple of beers from the fridge. He handed one over, clinked mine, and took a long pull. I did the same. “Okay, what do you want to talk about?”
“I need your help.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Is that so?”
“Remember when I told you about the Vessel?”
“The Vessel of Souls? The one that got you banned from Heaven? Stripped of your wings? That Vessel?”
Alex pursed his lips in annoyance. “Are you through?”
I sniffed. “I guess. What about it?”
“I need to find it.”
“I know that. But why now? And why do you suddenly need me?”
Alex let out a long sigh. “The Vessel of Souls houses all human souls that are in limbo. If the fallen angels get their hands on it they can take over everything—the angelic plane, the human plane—even the Underworld. We need to keep the Vessel out of the hands of the fallen.”
I looked at Alex. “You’re fallen. Why should I help you get it?”
“You know that if I can restore the balance of the planes and get the Vessel back, I can get my wings back. I’m not going to jeopardize that … again.”
I picked up a spatula. “And you need me why?”
Alex raised his eyebrows expectantly, and I flipped a sandwich, sighing. “Because the Vessel is charmed,” I said, answering my own question.
“Even the angelic plane uses magic. They like to hide things in plain sight.”
“Really?”
Alex nodded and took a swig from his bottle. “Yeah. Last I heard the Holy Grail was actually a tanning bed in Manhattan Beach.”
I narrowed my eyes at Alex’s little-boy grin. “Really, Sophie. You’re the only one I know who will be able to see through the charm.”
Along with my superior pizza-eating and state-reciting powers, I was also magically immune. My grandmother was a seer, my mother was a mind-melder, and nothing could be used on me. Veils, charms, spells, happy endings—anything that could be conjured, wanded, or abracadabraed was lost on me. The magical immunity helped working in the Underworld. The occasional fire-breathing dragon singe or High witch explosion rolled off me like water off a duck’s back. Warlocks couldn’t use glamour spells to make me fall in love with them and give them extra magiks freedoms or process their paperwork any faster, and I could share a cup of coffee with Medusa and stay perfectly, humanly pink.
“Okay,” I told Alex, “where do we start?”