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not,” I said shortly. “Besides, you’ve lived here before, and you chose.”
    “So I did.” In any other man I would have thought his voice even and pleasant. Not this one. There was just the faintest undertone beneath it, one I couldn’t identify. “Nevertheless, I think you need to show me my new quarters, don’t you?”
    Before I realized what he was doing, he’d reached past me to push the door open, and a moment later he’d crowded my body into the apartment simply by using his size, closing the door behind us, shutting us in.
    I skittered away from him with what I hoped was composure, looking around me. This apartment was more than three times the size of my own small room, with a bedroom off to one side and French doors leading out to our shared courtyard. The plain furniture was white, overstuffed, and comfortable-looking, and I could see past the open door to the huge bed.
    “I see the Fallen still think they live in the clouds,” he drawled, moving past me to survey his surroundings. I wondered if I’d be able to slip away before he could stop me.
    “Did they ever?” I was surprised at myself for asking. The origins of the Fallen were as shrouded as Sheol within its mists. To be sure, we all knew the stories: how the original, Lucifer, had been driven out of paradise by the archangel Michael himself, how the next had fallen because of their love for human women. Still later Michael himself had come, and others as well, exiled by the archangel Uriel, who now ruled in the place of the Supreme Being, who had simply granted humankind free will and then disappeared, leaving a sadist in charge. I’d heard stories of strange, unhappy places like the Dark City where souls lived in torment, but never had I heard of what humans thought of as heaven, a place of angels and harps and fluffy clouds.
    Thomas had never wanted to answer my questions, and eventually I’d stopped asking. He’d beenone of the first to fall, and he’d told me that world was long gone. Only the world of Sheol remained, and we should live in the present, not the past.
    We’d done so, until Thomas had been eviscerated and murdered in front of my eyes, and I had gone down in a welter of blood, barely managing to survive. Even now my loose white clothes hid scars that I showed no one.
    Cain didn’t answer my question either—not that I’d expected him to. He seemed to have forgotten about me, looking around him with an odd expression on his face, and I began to edge toward the door. “I don’t know how long it’s been since you were here,” I continued briskly, “but things run relatively smoothly. If you’re hungry you need only think about food, and it will be provided. The Source . . . well, you know what the Source provides.”
    “Blood,” he said absently. And then his gaze focused on me, and his easy smile was back. “I have no need of blood at the moment. On the other hand, it’s been a while since I’ve gotten laid.”
    The word startled me, as it was doubtless meant to. “I’m afraid everyone here is already bonded. Most widows choose to return to their homes with no memory of their years with the Fallen. Raziel says it’s easier that way.”
    “But not you, sweet Mary,” he murmured. “Why didn’t you go back home?”
    Because I had no home to go to, I thought mutinously, but I wasn’t about to admit that to him . “I never liked the idea of having my memory wiped clean.” I wasn’t going to bother correcting him about my name. I couldn’t rid myself of the feeling that this was just part of some complicated game he was playing, and that the only way to win was to refuse to play in the first place.
    “So clearly you’re the only game in town. And how long has it been since you were widowed?”
    I froze. “Why do you ask?”
    Out in the ordinary world, people talked about angelic smiles. Cain’s was the very opposite—charming and devilish. “I simply wondered how long it’s been since