No Angel
No Angel
By Vivi Andrews
When Sasha’s boyfriend, Jay, is sucked through a fiery vortex to Hell, an angel reveals that Sasha’s been chosen as the Champion of Virtue in the battle for his immortal soul. As a perennial offender on Santa’s naughty list, Sasha can’t believe she’s anyone’s idea of a girl fighting on the side of the angels. But if she doesn’t save Jay, he’ll be stuck in Hell forever!
Jay—aka Jevroth—isn’t surprised to find himself back in Hell. His visa to visit the mortal plane expired three months ago, but to steal more time with Sasha he’s been ignoring his mother’s demands that he come home to spend time with his new stepfather: Lucifer.
Sasha has until dawn on the twenty-fifth of December to fight the Legions of Hell and rescue Jay, or be trapped there for eternity herself. But now she must decide if the lying son-of-a-demon is even worth saving…
Dear Reader,
There’s something magical about the holiday season, whether you celebrate Christmas or Kwanzaa, Hanukkah or Diwali. The energy and excitement surrounding these holidays charges the air and our emotions, providing a perfect platform for romance and love. So I knew we couldn’t let Carina Press’s first holiday season pass without celebrating it with a collection of special novella releases.
This holiday season, celebrate with our first collection of invitation-only novellas. We’ve pulled together eleven talented authors and author duos, all of whom have made their mark in their respective niches, and invited them to transport our readers with holiday delights. In
Naughty and Nice,
join Jaci Burton, Lauren Dane, Megan Hart and Shannon Stacey as they show you both the sensual and sweet sides of the holidays. Visit post-apocalyptic worlds and paranormal beings in an enchanted journey with authors Vivi Andrews, Moira Rogers and Vivian Arend in
Winter Wishes.
And celebrate the beauty of the season in
His for the Holidays
with m/m authors Josh Lanyon, Z.A. Maxfield, Harper Fox and LB Gregg.
Through the talent of their writing and their captivating storytelling, I believe you’ll find something in each of these special novellas to put you in the magic of the holiday moment.
Wishing you the happiest of holiday seasons.
~Angela
Executive Editor, Carina Press
www.carinapress.com
www.twitter.com/carinapress
www.facebook.com/carinapress
For my brother, who always held the other end of the garland as we decked the halls, and my sister, who makes cookie decorating an art form. Thanks for all the holiday memories—and for not spilling the beans about the Santa Claus thing.
Cloudy with a Chance of Angels
On the day Sasha Christian’s boyfriend got sucked into the fiery maw of Hell, she baked cookies.
This is not to say baking cookies will trigger abduction into the Underworld, but it is important to understand that this was not the sort of day on which one might expect one’s significant other to be kidnapped by demonic forces.
It was a Tuesday. And Christmas Eve.
Thirty minutes prior to the abduction, Sasha stood in the ten-items-or-less line at Ralph’s, holding a single bottle of molasses and fighting the temptation to count the items in the basket of the woman in front of her.
If she counted even eleven items, Sasha didn’t think she’d be able to stop herself from tackling the woman and bludgeoning her with her own canned yams until she retreated in blood-spattered shame to the three-mile-long non-express line. Since this would likely result in Sasha’s ejection from Ralph’s and force her to locate another grocery open at four-twenty on Christmas Eve where she could buy unsulfated molasses to finish her gingerbread cookies, she decided it was best to avert her eyes.
Instead, Sasha concentrated on the flat-screen above the checkstand where a twenty-four-hour news channel recapped the holiday frenzy in a highlight reel. Tinsel, holly, rosy-cheeked celebrity faces, blah blah blah.
She’d already seen the segment twice. Her oh-so-brilliant idea to pop out to the store had turned into a marathon shopping expedition. Just finding a parking space had taken more time than she’d planned for the entire trip.
Damn holiday crowds.
Sasha gritted her teeth and reminded herself that she
loved
the holidays. Jay was the Grinch in their relationship. During the rest of the year she might be the misanthropic one, but at Christmastime she was Tiny Tim, bouncing around God-bless-us-ing everyone…when she wasn’t entertaining violent fantasies about women who got in the ten-items-or-less line with
at least
eleven items, making her even later than she already was.
Four-twenty. Jay was due at her place in ten minutes and instead of the Christmas utopia she’d planned as a surprise for her bah-humbug boyfriend, he would find an empty apartment with a bowl of gingerbread goo in the kitchen.
If the apartment was still there at all. Sasha was reasonably certain she’d left the oven on.
The fact the news channel hadn’t broken in with a live aerial shot of her apartment building in flames was somewhat comforting. The holiday montage continued with footage of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels from earlier that afternoon.
A slow, panning shot of the courtyard showed a throng worthy of Times Square on New Year’s Eve, jostling and chorusing a barely identifiable rendition of “Hark the Herald” as they stared skyward. The first angel mass always did draw a crowd.
Dark clouds—imported from Seattle for the occasion, no doubt—layered the Los Angeles sky above the blocky, geometric cathedral. On cue, as the bells began to peal, a hole opened in the clouds like a camera iris widening. Spears of sunlight streaked down to gild the tan stone of the cathedral, lighting the alabaster cross that thrust out over the plaza, but no one in the crowded courtyard was looking at the building.
All eyes were on the gap expanding in the clouds as a figure appeared, riding the rays of light.
Gold-kissed wings spread wide in an eight-foot span to slow his approach until the white-robed figure seemed to float on his graceful descent from the heavens.
Sasha rolled her eyes.
How cliché can you get?
Trust an angel to play it up for the crowd. The holier-than-thou bastards were worse than starlets when it came to mugging for the cameras.
Sasha squinted, trying to identify the wings. Michael? Gabriel? L.A. always ranked an Arch at their angel mass, but they rotated through, taking turns awing the gullible masses into submission. Sasha was far from wowed. She’d been surrounded by the façade of celebrity for too long to be impressed by flashy PR stunts.
The robes, the layered clouds, even the angle of the sun had all been contrived to match Michelangelo’s famous painting of the angels’ First Appearance. Every detail was choreographed to remind mere mortals how grateful they should be for the Angelic Intervention of the fifteenth century, when the heavenly host revealed themselves to mankind, exposed the demons living in secret among humans and banished them from the earthly plane.
In their appearances during the rest of the year, angels were just as likely as mortal celebs to be photographed in designer jeans and couture gowns—specially tailored to allow for wings, of course—but around the holidays they always upped the pageantry and went biblical. Halos, sandals, togas, the whole nine yards.
And their adoring public ate it up. Even if the heavenly host hadn’t done anything more useful in the last four hundred years than cut a few ceremonial ribbons and pose for the fawning masses.
Angels. Just another brand of L.A. fame whore.
“Aren’t they magnificent?” A gusty sigh whooshed past Sasha’s ear, eating into her personal space. “I swear I’ll never get used to seeing them flying above the city. My heart just races every time I see wings.”
Great. An angel groupie.
This really was her lucky day.
Sasha made a vaguely affirmative humming noise, smiling without turning her head as she sidled away from the confidences of the chick behind her in line.
Her new best friend closed the gap with a sidestep. “Do you go to the angel masses? I haven’t missed a single holy day since I moved out here from Tulsa.”
Why are they always from Tulsa?
Sasha was not the kind of girl who bonded with people in checkout lines—no matter how excruciatingly long they might be. Maybe the Angel Lover breathing down her neck was just feeling friendly—
please, let it be that
—but in the best-case scenario they’d only be besties for another ten minutes and she didn’t see the point in bonding.
Sasha eyed the line. Maybe fifteen minutes.
Worse, and far more likely, was the possibility Miss Tulsa had finally placed Sasha’s face. And its relationship to her mother’s face. By the time they got to the front of the line, it would be “Could you just pass my screenplay along?” or “I bet you know lots of casting agents.”
The line inched up and Sasha shuffled forward, putting as much distance between herself and the Angel Lover as possible—for the two-point-five seconds before Miss Tulsa stepped forward and nudged her arm. Sasha glanced in her direction with a porcelain smile frozen on her face and her mother’s voice echoing in her head.
Be a doll and smile for the people, baby. We don’t want them to think we’re aloof.
Her mother hated aloof. It ranked among her favorite complaints.
You’re so guarded, Sasha. Would it kill you to show a little warmth and vulnerability?
Miss Tulsa looked like she’d never been called
aloof
in her life. Wholesome, Midwestern beauty. Early twenties, but short enough that she could play younger—or opposite Tom Cruise without him standing on apple crates for the close-ups. Hopeful. Bright-eyed.
Classic actress hyphenate. Actress-waitress, actress-barista. Sasha gave her three minutes before she pulled a headshot out of her shoulder bag and began begging.
“Do you? Go to the angel mass?” Miss Tulsa giggled—a coy, practiced sound.
She must be going for high-school roles.
The pride of Oklahoma sighed enviously. “The angels probably come to your house for Christmas dinner. They say even the Arches stop and stare when Layla Christian walks down the street.”
And there it was. Miss Tulsa needed to work on her timing. She’d jumped her cue. Desperation could do that to a girl.
“She’s something,” Sasha agreed and flicked her gaze back up to the flat-screen, giving up on smiling and reverting to stay-away-from-me-you-grasping-wannabe now that Miss Tulsa had tipped her hand. She was so not in the mood for this shit today.
Miss Tulsa giggled again, still working the angel angle. “You’ve met one, haven’t you? What do their wings look like in person?”
Why did everyone always assume all celebrities knew each other? Like once you’d achieved a certain level of fame, you became instant BFFs with every other figure in the public eye.
“No idea,” Sasha replied without taking her eyes from the screen. “I’ve never seen an angel up close.” Unless you counted her mother, and many people did, though the “Angel of Hollywood” had never had wings.
“Never?” Miss Tulsa gasped in shock. “You’re kidding me. Aren’t you Layla Christian’s daughter?”
Of course she had to say it at a decibel to rattle the windows. Sasha was suddenly the focus of every eye in the Malibu Ralph’s. “Christmas Eve in Sarajevo” sounded freakishly loud over the store’s PA as all impatient shuffling and rustling abruptly stopped. The woman with
at least
eleven items in her basket twisted around in front of Sasha and openly gaped.
Oh, joy.
So much for incognito.
“I know it’s you. I saw you on that Barbara Walters special about Hollywood dynasties.” Miss Tulsa’s hand crept toward her shoulder bag. Sasha was impressed she managed to restrain herself from whipping out her headshot right then and there. “You’re in the biz, too, aren’t you?”
“Sort of,” Sasha mumbled, fighting the urge to duck her head to hide her face, empathizing with microscope slides.
My life, the spectator sport.
If only she could be openly rude without it ending up in the tabloids and getting back to her mother. She could hear the lecture now.
We can’t afford to be seen as ungrateful, Sasha. Perception is everything.
A man in line at checkstand four waved his iPhone in what was clearly supposed to be a casual gesture, as if she wouldn’t notice he was taking her picture. Sasha wondered what the odds were that this entire episode wouldn’t be up on somebody’s blog complete with photos by the time she got back to her—possibly burned down—apartment.
Miss Tulsa the Angel Lover wrinkled her nose. “Do you do those boring indie movies? Is that why I haven’t seen you in anything?”
A font of culture and taste, that Miss Tulsa. “I’m not an actress.”
Tulsa tipped her head, playing up her lack of comprehension for their viewing audience. You never knew when a casting agent was watching. “Why not? You’re super pretty.”
“Thanks.” Sasha decided not to explain there might be a little something more to being an actress than looking good. It would be too much like telling a kid Santa Claus didn’t exist, and it
was
Christmas Eve.
“You really aren’t an actress?”
Sasha glanced to the front of the express lane where even the cashier was stealing looks toward them between scanning items. “Stunts,” she said curtly, hoping the relative lack of glamour in her chosen profession would get the attention off her.
Tulsa gasped, horrified. “You mean you do all the crazy, dangerous stuff and then they edit out your face so no one even knows it was you?”
Sasha’s mouth quirked in a genuine smile. “Yep.” It was a pretty good description of her job—especially if you added
explaining to idiot actors how not to shoot themselves in the face with prop guns
and
blowing stuff up for fun.
“Couldn’t your mom get you an acting gig? I mean, doesn’t she try to talk you into doing something safer?”
Only every single day for the last six years
—though neither of them had ever publicly said anything other than the PR-approved statement Sasha spoke now. “She’s very proud of me.”
Even if Layla vocally bemoaned her daughter’s disinterest in ballet and Shakespeare, she’d still cheered at every karate tournament and fencing meet. She may have longed for a precious little angel in her own image, but her mother barely flinched when Sasha begged for a membership to a gun range for her sixteenth birthday.
“But why doesn’t she want you to be a star? Doesn’t she want you to be happy?”
Sasha set the molasses bottle on the conveyor belt and reminded herself that shattering hopes and dreams was bad Christmas karma—even when those dreams really ought to be shattered for the good of the dreamer. If Miss Tulsa believed being famous would make her deliriously happy, wouldn’t Sasha be doing her a service to clue her in to the reality?
The total lack of privacy, being treated like a sideshow act every day of your life and harassed by random strangers in the checkout line at Ralph’s… Oh yeah, that was the definition of bliss right there.
Only the cheerful ring of her cell phone saved her from pulling a Grinch and popping Miss Tulsa’s fame bubble.
Thank God, a distraction.
Sasha made an apologetic face and dug into her purse. One look at the caller ID and she almost wished she hadn’t heard it ring.
“Hello, Joan. Did you pick up my dry cleaning?”
The spectators to her life who were leaning in, eager to eavesdrop on the conversation, sighed and looked away, disappointed by the normalcy of her greeting.
On the other end of the line, her mother huffed. “Why are you using my incognito name? Who’s listening? You told me you were staying home all day baking.”
“Joan…”
“I do wish you would stop calling me that. The
Mommie Dearest
crack has never been funny.”
“I happen to think it’s hysterical.”
“Your sense of humor is defective. Just like your father’s. Now why would you lie to your mother on Christmas Eve?”
“I didn’t lie. I ran out of molasses.”
“Is that code for something? Like the dry cleaning thing? I never could remember those silly codes.”
Sasha rolled her eyes. “It’s an ingredient, Mo—ahem, Joan. I need it to finish the gingerbread.”
“I don’t understand this domesticity fetish of yours,” said the woman whose definition of
baking
consisted of requesting a special pastry from her private chef.
“It’s called normalcy, Joan. You should look into it.”
“Normalcy is for other people. You’re special, baby. You deserve the extraordinary.”
Special
sucked most days, but this was not a conversation Sasha wanted to have standing in line at Ralph’s. Besides, it was almost her turn. Eleven-items-or-more was handing her rewards card to the cashier as she spoke. “Was there a reason for this call?”