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caught.”
    “I’m not your friend.”
    Cain laughed. “That’s right. As you’ve often told me, I have no friends.”
    Metatron said nothing, and Cain grinned. “Point taken,” he said. “If you’ve changed your mind, I can do this on my own. It might take longer—”
    “I haven’t changed my mind.” Ah yes, taciturn Metatron.
    “Good,” Cain said. “Then let’s get busy. I need to look over the wives and see if one of them will be of use. They’re all pretty, aren’t they?”
    “If you like that sort of thing.”
    “Oh, I do. I like pretty and plain, plump and thin, old and young. Women are delightful, Metatron. You really ought to indulge. It would help you relax.”
    Metatron just looked at him. “There haven’t beenany available women here. They’re either bonded or mourning, like Martha.”
    “I’m not about to let that stop me. You shouldn’t either.”
    “Why do you need to look at the wives? I thought you’d decided the seer would be the most useful.”
    “Probably. But I haven’t seen the others, have I? I’ll definitely have the seer on the side—I find her much too tempting. But it’s always useful to set the cat among the pigeons, and an unfaithful mate would shake things up quite nicely. Besides, I’ll need a second female eventually.”
    Metatron grunted, though whether in approval or not, Cain couldn’t tell. At least he didn’t bother to ask why, since Cain had no intention of telling him.
    “In any case,” he continued, “you’d better get out of here before someone decides to come and see how I’m settling in. We don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.” He grinned then. “Come to think of it, maybe we should give them the wrong idea. We could always pretend that you and I are romantically involved, unless the Fallen have some edict against that, and—”
    “No!” Metatron said in a stifled roar.
    Cain looked at him out of limpid eyes. “No, they don’t have an edict, or no, we shouldn’t pose as lovers?”
    Metatron headed for the door, and this time Cain kept his smile to himself. Now that he knew thefastest way to get Metatron out of his rooms, it could come in handy.
    “Don’t push me, Cain,” Metatron snarled, pausing.
    “Push you? Me? Never, old friend.” He waited for Metatron to remind him that they were far closer to mortal enemies, even if they were reluctant coconspirators, but Metatron simply glared at him and left, closing the French doors silently behind him when Cain knew he wanted to slam them so hard the glass would break.
    Two people wanting to slam doors and smash his face in before he’d been in his room for half an hour. He was right on track. By the time he got through with them, the Fallen would be such a mass of anger and upheaval they wouldn’t know what hit them.
    He expected to find it all extremely entertaining.

CHAPTER
SIX
    I ’D BEEN TRYING TO NAP, WITHOUT much success, when I heard the muffled sound. Someone, a man, had said “No!” so strongly the power of it reached through the thick walls of the annex. I sat up, listening. Who could be visiting Cain? The Alpha, most likely. Certainly not Azazel, who had looked at the newcomer as if he were shark bait and Azazel was a great white. Michael hadn’t looked much happier.
    I glanced toward the narrow glass-paned door that led from my small room to the courtyard I shared with Cain. The courtyard I would never use again, at least not until he left or moved to more central quarters. It was going to be difficult enough trying to avoid him in the narrow hallways back here. No longer would I lie naked beneath the blissful rays of a sun that never burned, never tanned, just soothed me with warm, radiant heat.
    It was a price I was willing to pay. If things got bad enough, I could always ask Raziel and Allie to move me to a room up in the big house. I’d feel safer there, surrounded by the people who were more family to me than anybody I’d grown up with. I wasn’t sure